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