Transcript The Two Vietnams - Pascack Valley Regional High School District

Objective: To examine the causes and effects of the Vietnam War.
The Two Vietnams
· Vietnam, a former French
colony, was divided into two
sections in 1954.
· North Vietnam, led by
Ho Chi Minh, was
communist and backed
by the Soviet Union.
· South Vietnam, led by
Ngo Dinh Diem, was
democratic and backed
by the U.S.
· Many South Vietnamese distrusted Diem and joined the
Vietcong, a communist guerilla group supported by North
Vietnam.
An
execution
of a
Vietcong
prisoner
Feb. 1,
1968
South Vietnamese paratroopers jump from U.S. Air Force
transports in an air assault against the Viet Cong, March
1963
A Viet Cong base camp burns as Pfc. Raymond Rumpa of St.
Paul, Minnesota, walks away with his 45-pound 90mm rifle
in My Tho, Vietnam, April 1968
Growing American Involvement
· The U.S. believed that if South Vietnam fell to the
communists, the rest of the nations in Southeast Asia would as
well in a theory called the domino theory.
Robert McNamara
• Robert McNamara:
“We seek an independent on Communist South Vietnam.
We do not require that it serve as a Western base or as
a member of a Western Alliance. South Vietnam must be
free, however, to accept outside assistance as required
to maintain its security. This assistance should be able to
take the form not only of economic and social measures
but also police and military help to root out and control
insurgent elements. Unless we can achieve this
objective in South Vietnam, almost all of Southeast Asia
will probably fall under Communist dominance. “
Lyndon B. Johnson
• Lyndon Johnson served as the 37th
President of the United States (19631969)
• Johnson would succeed the presidency
following the assassination of John F.
Kennedy
• Johnson completed Kennedy’s term, and
then was elected in the 1964 election.
Johnson Domestic Policy
• Johnson was responsible for designing his
“Great Society” legislation.
• This included laws that upheld civil rights,
Medicare, Medicaid, environmental
protection, and aid to education.
• Also his War on Poverty, legislation that
was introduced as a response to the
national poverty rate of near 20% in the
United States
Johnson
• Shortly before his death Kennedy had
announced his intent to withdraw US forces from
South Vietnam.
• “In the final analysis, it’s their war” he declared.
• Whether Kennedy would have in fact withdrawn
from Vietnam remains a matter of debate.
• Johnson would escalate the nation’s role in
Vietnam and would lead the US into what would
become America’s longest war.
War under Johnson
• When Lyndon Johnson took over the
presidency Vietnam was not a priority.
• The decision in the early months of his
presidency was to hold it down and delay
decisions.
• Too many other things took primacy over
it, including Johnson’s Great Society, and
War on Poverty.
• Things would however change in 1964
Robert McNamara
• McNamara was one of the most forceful figures
of the Johnson Administration on Vietnam.
• Was a business executive and was the
Secretary of defense under the Kennedy and
Johnson administrations.
• McNamara would be extremely influential in
escalating the United States involvement in the
Vietnam War.
• Distressed about what he saw in Vietnam he
formulated covert operations against the North
known as 34A. He would also be instrumental in
presenting the Gulf of Tonkin crisis to Congress.
Dean Rusk
• United States Secretary of State under the
Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.
• Rusk along with McNamara and Bundy
would help escalate American involvement
in the Vietnam War.
USS Maddox
• In 1964 the war in Vietnam was not going well
for the South, and the United States sent the
USS Maddox, an American destroyer, to
provoke the North Vietnamese radar in the Gulf
of Tonkin.
• Using expensive and sophisticated equipment,
the Maddox could simulate an attack on the
North, thus forcing the Chinese Communists and
the North Vietnamese to turn on their radar.
• T this time the Americans could pinpoint where
the other side’s radar installations were located.
Maddox Cont…
• On August 2 the Maddox sighted three North
Vietnamese PT boats, was attacked by them, and
destroyed one.
• Robert McNamara would claim that the Maddox was
attacked when she was thirty miles from the North
Vietnamese coast. In truth the attacked began when the
Maddox was thirteen miles from a North Vietnamese
island.
• Out of this, and a subsequent incident was to come the
Tonkin Gulf incident, the first bombing of the North, and
almost immediately the Tonkin Resolution.
• But in particular, out of all this would come the sense
that we had been attacked, and we were the victims.
• The next day the Maddox was sent back into the
same dangerous waters as a sign that the
United States would not back down.
• Almost immediately the North Vietnamese
appeared to challenge them, in what would
become the second Tonkin incident.
• Whether there had been an attack was
somewhat unclear (in fact, much of the Tonkin
Gulf controversy centered around whether or not
an attack really took place )
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
• In response to the attacks on the
Maddox Congress passed the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on
August 7, 1964.
• The resolution gave the President
the authorization, without a formal
declaration of war by Congress,
to use military force in Southeast
Asia.
• Although we call it the Vietnam
war, war was never actually
declared by Congress.
• Through this resolution the
Johnson administration escalated
the US involvement in Vietnam
from just advisors, to actual
military forces.
· By 1968,
over half a
million
Americans
were
fighting in
the
Vietnam
War.
· As the fighting escalated, the U.S. relied on the draft for
raising troops.
The War
• The United States entered the war in Vietnam
believing that its superior weaponry would lead it
to victory over the Vietcong.
• However, the jungle terrain and the enemy's
guerrilla tactics soon turned the war into a
frustrating stalemate.
• Adding to the enemy’s elusiveness was a
network of elaborate tunnels that allowed the
Vietcong to launch surprise attacks on American
soldiers and then disappear quickly.
• Of the 2.7 million Americans that served in
the Vietnam war…
• 300,000 were wounded in action
• 75,000 were disabled
• Of the casualties listed on The Wall,
approximately 1,300 remain missing in
action
• 58,129 were killed
• The average age was 19
Vietnamese Losses
• On the Vietnamese side it is
estimated…
• 1.1 million North Vietnamese and
Viet Cong (Southern resistance
soldiers) were killed
• Over 2 million North and South
Vietnamese citizens were killed
On Aug. 4, 1964, Defense
Secretary Robert McNamara
reported to Pres. Johnson
that an American destroyer
in the region was under
torpedo attack by the North
Vietnamese. That brief
conversation was the tipping
point for the entire Vietnam
War.
Video: Defense Secretary Robert McNamara speaks about the
attack that precipitated our involvement in the Vietnam War
Video Clip: Platoon
The Uncertain Enemy
· Jungle warfare was
difficult, and it was hard to
locate the enemy.
· In addition, it was very
difficult to identify which
South Vietnamese were our
allies and which were
supporting the Vietcong.
Ex Vietcong showing secret
tunnels, November 7, 2004
Question
• How did the Tonkin Gulf Resolution lead to
greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam?
Working Class War
• Because many middle class and upper class
American youths were able through college and
other means to avoid military service, most of
the soldiers who fought in Vietnam were from
the lower economic classes of American society.
• Many soldiers who fought in Vietnam were
drafted into combat under the country’s
Selective Service System.
• Under this system, which had been established
in the 1940s during World War II, all males had
to register with their local draft boards when they
turned 18.
African Americans and Women in
Vietnam
• African Americans served in disproportionate numbers in
ground combat troops. During the first several years of
the war, blacks ccounted for more than 20 percent of
American combat deaths despite representing only
about ten percent of the U.S. population.
• Many African Americans experienced the same racism in
Vietnam that they endured at home. Throughout the war
racial tensions between white and black soldiers ran high
in many platoons.
• In some cases, the hostility led to violence. In 1967, a
race riot erupted at the US Army stockade at Long Binh,
Vietnam.
Women
• While the US military in the 1960s did not
allow females to serve in combat, nearly
7,500 women served in Vietnam as army
and navy nurses.
• Thousands more volunteered their
services in Vietnam to the American Red
Cross and the United States Organization,
which delivered hospitality and
entertainment to the troops.
A guerrilla in the Mekong Delta paddles through a
mangrove forest defoliated by Agent Orange (1970).
This Pulitzer Prize winning photograph is of Kim Phuc
Phan Thi, center, running down a road near after a napalm
bomb was dropped on her village by a plane of the Vietnam
Air Force. The village was suspected by US Army forces of
being a Viet Cong stronghold. Kim Phuc survived by tearing
off her burning clothes.
• in spite of ongoing escalation
throughout the 1960s, the US
experienced a lack of success
against the Vietnamese
guerrilla forces in S.
Vietnam (the Vietcong) as the
US Army was unprepared for
their tactics and mentality
 The US was also never entirely
successful in shutting
down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a
supply line that ran between
North and South Vietnam via
difficult jungle terrain,
often underground and
through neighboring nations
like Cambodia
The Tet Offensive:
A Turning Point
· In January of 1968, the
Vietcong launched
surprise attacks on cities
throughout South Vietnam.
· The American embassy
was attacked as well in the
South Vietnamese capital
of Saigon.
· The attacks were known as the Tet Offensive because they
occurred during Tet, the Vietnamese News Year’s holiday.
· The Tet Offensive proved to the world that no part of South
Vietnam was safe, even with the presence of half a million
American troops.
The Tet Offensive: An Audio Description by NPR
Tet and TV
• the war definitely turned against
the US in 1968, when the NVA’s
General Giap began the Tet
Offensive, a surprise offensive on
a major Vietnamese holiday that
saw attacks all over the country,
including in Saigon itself
• ongoing US casualties and losses
saw an increase in antiwar
sentiment on the American Home
Front,
in large part because Vietnam was
a TV War where American
audiences saw the brutality of war
firsthand
Protests at Home
· Thousands of Americans protested against the war, especially
on college campuses.
Video:
Country Joe
and the Fish,
Woodstock
Music Festival
(1969) 3:18
Anti-Vietnam
War protests,
Ohio State
University
· On May 4,
1970, the Ohio
National Guard
killed 4 antiwar protesters
at Kent State
University.
This Pulitzer Prize winning photo shows Mary Ann Vecchio
screaming as she kneels over the body of student Jeffrey Miller at
Kent State University. National Guardsmen had fired into a
crowd of demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine.
“Ohio”
Crosby Stills Nash & Young
Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.
Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.
Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.
Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.
Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.
(chorus) Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are cutting us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you
know?
(chorus)
Tin soldiers and Nixon's
comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the
drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio. (9X)
McNamara
• Defense Secretary Robert McNamara
confessed his early frustration over the
Vietcong’s resilience to a reporter in 1966.
• “I didn’t think these people had the
capacity to fight this way. If I had thought
they would take this punishment and fight
this well,…I would have thought differently
at the start.”
Chemical Warfare?
• Over a ten-year period from 1961 to 1971 the US used an
estimated 77 million liters of herbicides as chemical
weapons for "defoliation and crop destruction" in Vietnam.
• Unable to control the Viet Minh's access to food supplies
or their grassroots village support, the US military
response was simple:
• Killing food crops was both a military strategy and - with
the procurement of tens of millions of liters of toxic
herbicides from US chemical companies - it was also a
very profitable business. Indeed, the notion of killing what
can't be controlled suited perfectly the logic of the agrochemical industry.
"Napalm is the most terrible pain you can imagine," said Kim
Phuc. “Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. Napalm generates
temperatures of 800 to 1,200 degrees Celsius.“ Phuc sustained
third-degree burns to half her body and was not expected to
live. Thanks to the assistance of South Vietnamese
photographer Nick Ut, and after surviving a 14-month hospital
stay and 17 operations, Phuc eventually recovered.
Agent Orange
was the nickname
given to a
herbicide and
defoliant used by
the U.S. military
in its Herbicidal
Warfare program
during the
Vietnam War.
Cropdusting in
Vietnam during
Operation Ranch
Hand lasted from
1962 to 1971.
Effects of Agent Orange
Images taken from Agent Orange: "Collateral Damage" in Vietnam by
Philip Jones Griffiths
Agent Orange
The war also witnessed the
usage of weapons like
Napalm and Agent Orange,
which devastated the
environment.
· In April of 1975, the communists captured the South
Vietnamese capital of Saigon, renamed it Ho Chi Minh City,
and reunited Vietnam under one communist flag.
Video: People rush to leave Saigon as the city falls to the
Vietcong. April 30, 1975 (9 min.)
Civil War in
Cambodia
· The U.S. and
South
Vietnamese
began to secretly
bomb communist
bases in
Cambodia used
by the North
Vietnamese.
· Cambodia soon fought a civil war, which was won by the
communist Khmer Rouge in 1975, whereupon they changed
the name of the country to Kampuchea.
· The Khmer
Rouge were
brutal leaders,
killing
approximately
two million
people in just a
few short
years.
Cambodia: Khmer Rouge 1975 to 1979 (2:55)
Vietnam Balance Sheet
· Between 1961 and 1973 over 58,000 Americans died in the
Vietnam War.
· During the same time
period, over 1,500,000
Vietnamese died as well.
Vietnam War Memorial,
Washington, D.C.
Televised War
• The horrors of war entered the living rooms of
Americans for the first time during the Vietnam
War. For almost a decade in between school,
work, and dinners, the American public could
watch villages being destroyed, Vietnamese
children burning to death, and American body
bags being sent home. Though initial coverage
generally supported U.S involvement in the war,
television news dramatically changed its frame
of the war after the Tet Offensive.
Media-then and now
• By the mid-1960's, television was considered to
be the most important source of news for the
American public, and, possibly, the most
powerful influence on public opinion itself.
Throughout the Korean War, the television
audience remained small.
• What is the impact of television on news today?
In Iraq? Afghanistan? Libya?
• Does Social Media play a role?
Nixon
• Nixon would win the Presidency and
began what was known as Vietnamization.
• This was a plan for the gradual withdrawal
of US troops in order for the South
Vietnamese to take on a more active
combat role in the war.
• Over the next three years the number of
American troops in Vietnam dropped from
more than 500,000 to less than 25,000.
Peace Without Victory
· In January 1973, the U.S.
reached a cease-fire agreement
with North Vietnam and brought
their troops home.
· However, the U.S. continued to
send billions of dollars in support
of the South Vietnamese.
Veterans
• At first, rather than giving returning veterans of the war
welcoming parades, Americans seemed to shun the 2
million plus Americans who went to Vietnam.
• Virtually nothing was done to aid veterans and their
loved ones who needed assistance in adjusting.
• Then a torrent of fiction, films, and television programs
depicted Vietnam vets as drug crazed psychotic killers,
as vicious executioners in Vietnam and equally as
menaces at home.
• Not until after the 1982 dedication of the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial in Washing DC did American culture
acknowledge their sacrifice and suffering.
Vets Come Home
• Many Vietnam veterans readjusted
successfully to civilian life. However about
fifteen percent of the soldiers deployed
developed delayed stress syndrome.
• These veterans had recurring nightmares
about their war experience. Many began to
abuse drugs or alcohol and several
thousand would commit suicide.
Lily Jean Lee Adams
• “In the bus terminal, people were staring at
me and giving me dirty looks. I expected
the people to smile, like, “Wow, she was in
Vietnam, doing something for her country
– wonderful.’ I felt like I had walked into
another country, not my country. So I went
into the ladies’ room and changed”
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hDjvK
F_X78&feature=related