Transcript Slide 1
Vietnam
French Indochina War
France controlled
“Indochina”
– 1800-WWII
Plantation colony
– Rice, rubber
Peasant unrest,
uprisings
French crush
– Free speech, jail
Indochinese Communist Party
Founded 1930
Ho Chi Minh
Ran away from
Vietnam to USSR and
China
– French want dead
Returns 1941
Form Vietminh
– Pro-Independence
Events of WWII/post-WWII
Japanese control Vietnam
Forced to leave in 1945
Minh declares independence in Hanoi
French send troops in 1946, take control
of southern half--war
Truman sends $15 mill. In 1950 for French
effort
1950-1954-$2.6 billion
Eisenhower continues
support of French
Domino Theory
May ’54 Dien Bien
Phu
– Vietnimh beat French
France surrenders,
begins to pull out
May-July ’54-Peace
treaty in Geneva
Geneva Accords
– Divide according to
17th parallel
– 1956 election to unify
country
Problems
Minh brutal, but gives
peasants land.
National hero for
beating Japanese and
French
U.S. supplies military
and economic aid to
S. Vietnam
Ngo Dinh Diem
opposes elections
1956
Eisenhower promises aid to Diem if
reforms gov’t
S. Vietnamese corruption, anti-Buddhist
1957- opposition group, Viet-cong forms
– Assassinates thousands of Vietnamese
officials
National Liberation Front
– Support of Ho Chi Minh
U.S. “sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem”
Kennedy and Diem
Sends military advisors to train S.
Vietnamese troops
1963- 16,000 American soldiers in
Vietnam
Diem starts moving peasants for their
protection, more upsets
Attacks on Buddhism
Buddhist Protest
Coup
Nov 1, 1963
Coup on Diem
– Executed
Leads to instability in gov’t
North Vietnamese push harder for
Communist unification
Escalation
Kennedy planning on withdrawing?
Johnson afraid of looking “soft on
communism”
Tonkin Gulf
Aug 2, 1964
North Vietnamese
fired on USS Maddox
Aug 4, N. Vietnamese
fire two torpedoes
Johnson orders
Bombing raids and
asks Congress for
help
Aug 7, Tonkin Gulf
Resolution
– Military powers to
Johnson
The Problem
Maddox was a spy boat
The two torpedoes never happened
Maddox fired on Vietnamese
Johnson had Tonkin resolution prepared
for months
War
By end 1965- 180,000
U.S. troops in
Vietnam
General
Westmoreland
Little confidence in S.
Vietnamese Army
1967- 500,000 U.S.
troops
Agent Orange