The Vietnam War Era An Era of Protest and Change

At a peace conference in Geneva in 1955 the Vietnamese agreed that their country would be divided in two: North Vietnam was to be ruled by Ho Chi Minh’s communists; South Vietnam, by an

The Vietnam War Era &

An Era of Protest and Change

US History Unit #17 – Chapters 29 and 30

 The most important leader for Vietnamese independence; Born in

1890, Ho became involved in anti-French organizations as a young man In 1912 he left Vietnam and traveled the world before ending

up in Moscow, where he was trained in communist ideas He

returned to Vietnam after WWII, leading rebels to defeat the

French in 1954, then continuing the fight against the United States

Review Question #1

 Which U.S

President refused

to meet with Ho Chi Minh in Paris after World War I?

 French military base in northwest Vietnam in which Ho Chi Minh’s army, known as the Vietminh, trapped a large French

garrison in 1954 After suffering 15,000 casualties, the French surrendered At a peace conference in Geneva in 1955 the

Vietnamese agreed that their country would be divided in two: North Vietnam was to be ruled by Ho Chi Minh’s communists; South Vietnam, by an anti-communist government supported by the United States

 Vietnam thus became a pawn in Cold War politics To ensure

French support in the Cold War, Truman agreed to aid France’s efforts to regain control over Vietnam After communist forces won the civil war in China in 1949, American increased its aid to the French in Vietnam Truman did not want to see another

communist victory in Asia Between 1950 and 1954, the United States contributed $2.6 billion to France’s war efforts

Containing Ho Chi Minh’s communist Vietminh – an abbreviation for the Independence of Vietnam – became a national priority When President Dwight D Eisenhower took office in early 1953,

he continued Truman’s policies toward Vietnam He sent

monetary aid to the French, arguing that by battling Ho Chi

Minh, they were containing the spread of communism The

domino theory was the idea that if Vietnam fell to communism, its closest neighbors would follow This in turn would threaten Japan, the Philippines, and Australia In short, stopping the

communists in Vietnam was important to the protection of the entire region

Vietcong used surprise hit-and-run tactics to assassinate

government officials and destroy roads and bridges, weakening

support of the anti-communist government led by Ngo Dinh Diem

 What was the European

equivalent of SEATO?

Closure Question #2: What goals motivated President Kennedy’s

policy decisions regarding Vietnam? (At least 1 sentence)

 After his election in 1960, President John F Kennedy took a more aggressive stand against the communists in Vietnam Beginning in 1961, he sent Special Forces troops to South Vietnam to advise the Army of the Republic of Vietnam

(ARVN) on more effective ways to fight the communist

forces By 1963, more than 15,000 American “advisers” were fighting in Vietnam

 Although U.S advisers fought bravely and achieved some

success, Diem continued to alienate South Vietnamese

citizens By late 1963, his regime was in shambles Buddhists protested his restrictive policies, occasionally by setting

themselves on fire The Kennedy administration eventually concluded that South Vietnam needed new leadership

Working behind the scenes, Americans plotted with

anti-Diem generals to overthrow anti-Diem’s government On

November 1, 1963, Diem was removed from power and later assassinated

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

 On August 2, 1964 a North Vietnamese torpedo boat fired on the American destroyer USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast

of North Vietnam Congress passed the resolution, authorizing the use of American military force in Vietnam, giving President Johnson the power to commit U.S troops to the area to “defend American troops”, though an official war had not been declared

Review Question #4

Resolution, which Branch

of the U.S government

exercised command over the U.S military, taking

the country into war

without asking the other

2 branches for

permission?

 Answer the following questions based on what you have learned from Chapter 29, Section 1:

1 Identify one argument for and one argument

against Truman’s decision to support the French

rather than the Vietnamese nationalists (At least 2 sentences)

2 What goals motivated President Kennedy’s policy decisions regarding Vietnam? (At least 1 sentence)

3 How did the Maddox incident contribute to the

outbreak of war? How did it lead to a change in

the balance of power in the American government? (At least 2 sentences)

William Westmoreland / Napalm & Agent Orange

 William Westmoreland – The American commander in South

Vietnam; Along with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara,

Westmoreland believed the U.S needed to increase its military

presence in Vietnam and do more of the fighting in order to defeat the Vietcong Following Westmoreland’s advice, in 1965 President Johnson increased U.S troop numbers to 180,000 and authorized extensive bombing of North Vietnam (a.k.a Operation Rolling

 What was the

chemical known as

“Agent Orange”

originally designed

to do?

Closure Question #1: What military strategies did the United States

employ in Vietnam? How successful were these strategies? (At least 2 sentences)

 As airstrikes intensified, American ground troops landed in South Vietnam On March 8, 1965, U.S Marines arrived to defend the airbase at Da Nang They

were soon followed by other troops The soldiers accepted a wide range of

missions Some guarded bases Others conducted search-and-destroy missions

to kill as many Vietcong guerrillas as they could Helicopters ferried

commandos to and from remote locations for quick strikes against enemy

positions Large-scale battles against Vietcong or North Vietnamese Army units were not typical of America’s strategy in Vietnam American soldiers generally fought lightly armed Vietcong guerrillas in small engagements

 The Vietcong traveled light, often carrying just a rifle and a few handfuls of

rice They dug tunnels to hide in during the day and emerged at night to

ambush American patrols They infiltrated American bases and set off

explosives They set booby traps that maimed and crippled American troops Their strategy was to wear the Americans down The leaders of North Vietnam and the Vietcong remained convinced that if they could avoid losing the war, the Americans would eventually leave American strategy during this stage of the war yielded limited results U.S bombers did disrupt North Vietnamese

industry and slow the movement of supplies to the Vietcong But when the

communists did not sue for peace American troop commitments and battlefield deaths escalated rapidly By the end of 1965, there were 184,300 U.S troops in Vietnam and only 636 American soldiers had died in the war Three years later, there were more than a half million U.S troops in Vietnam and the number of American dead had risen to more than 30,000

Naval Academy and became a jet pilot While serving in Vietnam in

1967, his plane was shot down and he was held prisoner in North Vietnam for over 5 years Following his release in 1973, McCain spent 8 more years in the Navy before becoming a politician

Review Question #6

born in the United States of America?

American forces supported the survival and development of South Vietnam, which was besieged by the Vietcong and their North Vietnamese allies In this fight, U.S troops could never fully tell their friends from their enemies Yet from the outset, they faced the dangers of Vietnam’s battlefields with dedication and bravery Although American troops won numerous battles, they could not win the war outright The problem was that the Vietcong and North Vietnamese avoided significant engagements Rather than expose

themselves to superior American firepower, the communists fought smaller skirmishes where their small-unit abilities and their knowledge of the

landscape bettered their chances for victory

 U.S forces often had no alternative but to fight indecisive battles in the

jungles, rice paddies, and mountains of Vietnam Most of these battlefields abounded with natural cover Clad in black pajamas, Vietcong gunmen would spring out of the dense foliage, attack with automatic rifles and grenades, and disappear back into the landscape Much of the fighting took place at night, which reduced the effectiveness of American planes, artillery, and

troops tactics

Hawks / Doves

 Hawks – Conservative congressmen who supported President

Johnson’s war policy in Vietnam due to their strong belief that

communism needed to be contained

 Doves – Liberal congressmen who opposed President Johnson’s war policy in Vietnam, questioning the war on both moral and strategic grounds The doves argued that the conflict in Vietnam was a local civil war, not a vital Civil War battleground

Closure Question #3: How did the disagreements between hawks and doves reflect different views about war and world politics? (At least 2 sentences)

 Hawks believed that the United States

needed to keep

fighting in Vietnam to stop the spread of

_?

2 What difficulties did American soldiers face in Vietnam? What effect did these difficulties

have? (At least 2 sentences)

3 How did the disagreements between hawks

and doves reflect different views about war

and world politics? (At least 2 sentences)

Draftees / Deferments

 Draftees – Young men drafted into military service; By 1965, most of the troops sent to Vietnam were no longer volunteers, but instead were draftees In total, the U.S government drafted 1.5 million men into military service during the Vietnam War

 Deferments – A postponement of military service; According to the Selective Service Act of 1948, men who were in college or who

worked in certain occupations could have their military service deferred Critics argued that as a result of these policies minorities and the poor were bearing most of the military burden while the wealthy and white young men avoided military combat

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

 Founded in 1960 at the University of Michigan to campaign against racism and poverty The SDS changed its focus in the mid-1960s to campaign to end the war in Vietnam, organizing demonstrations against the war and encouraging draft-age males to sign “We Won’t Go” petitions

Review Question #9

 On what college campus was the

SDS Organization established?

Review Question #10

 Name the U.S President who repeatedly issued

optimistic statements

regarding the War in

Vietnam during the 1960s

mid- In November 1967, President Johnson brought General Westmoreland home from Vietnam to address the nation’s concerns about the war Westmoreland said that the Vietcong were declining in strength and could no longer mount

a major offensive As Westmoreland made his claims, however, the North

Vietnamese and Vietcong were planning just such an attack

 In early 1968, U.S officials anticipated a communist offensive As expected,

on January 21, the North Vietnamese Army hit Khe Sanh in northwest South Vietnam The Tet Offensive – named after the Vietnamese lunar new year – was a coordinated assault on 36 provincial capitals and 5 major cities, as

well as the U.S embassy in Saigon

 The communists planned to take and hold the cities until the urban

population took up arms in their support They thought the Tet Offensive had a good chance of ending the war The fighting was fierce, but in the end the American and South Vietnamese forces repelled the offensive and there was no popular uprising against the government of South Vietnam Although U.S forces won a tactical victory by preventing the Vietcong and North

Vietnamese Army from achieving their primary objectives, the Tet Offensive was a strategic blow to the Americans It demonstrated that the communists had not lost the will or the ability to fight on

Eugene McCarthy / Robert Kennedy

 Eugene McCarthy – Democratic Minnesota Senator who ran for

President in the Democratic Primary in 1968 as an antiwar candidate

 Robert Kennedy – Democratic New York Senator, and younger brother

of John F Kennedy, who ran for President in the Democratic Primary

in 1968 After winning the California primary on June 5, 1968, Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, leaving the Democratic Party

without a clear front-runner for President going into its party

convention

 Name the assassin who murdered

Senator Robert

Kennedy in 1968.

Chicago Democratic Convention (1968)

 With Johnson’s refusal to run for another term and Robert Kennedy’s assassination, Democratic delegates arrived in Chicago to choose a

presidential candidate After angry debate regarding the war, the

delegates chose Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s Vice-President and a War Hawk News of the decision led to eruption of violence between anti-war protesters and Chicago police outside the convention TV coverage

of the violence and bitter arguments at the convention shocked

Americans, who responded by electing the Republican presidential

candidate, Richard Nixon The Convention also marked the downfall of liberal control of the government and sparked a resurgence in

conservative values in the United States, a trend which dominated

American politics until 2008

Closure Question #3: What were the chief weaknesses of the Democrats

in the 1968 election? How did these weaknesses aid the election of

Richard Nixon? (At least 2 sentences)

 The violence in the

Chicago Democratic

Convention led to

the election of what

Republican President?

Closure Assignment #3

 Answer the following questions based on what you have learned from Chapter 29, Section 3:

1 Identify three factors that led to the growth

of the antiwar movement Which do you think was the most important? (At least 1 sentence)

2 How did the military outcome of the Tet

Offensive differ from its impact on the

American people? (At least 2 sentences)

3 What were the chief weaknesses of the

Democrats in the 1968 election? How did

these weaknesses aid the election of Richard Nixon? (At least 2 sentences)

 Policy for withdrawal from Vietnam presented by President Nixon; U.S forces would withdraw as the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) assumed more combat duties Though the hope of the policy was that the ARVN would be able to secure South Vietnam with aid from the U.S behind the front lines, the reality was that the ARVN troops were outnumbered and outgunned without U.S combat

troops

Kent State University

 (May 1970) Following the U.S bombing of communist supply lines in Cambodia, antiwar demonstrators protested at Kent State,

throwing rocks and bottles at members of the National Guard

When one guardsman thought he heard a sniper’s shot, he fired his rifle, prompting other guardsmen to fire as well into a group of

protesters, killing four youths The killings led to increased protests nationwide

My Lai / Pentagon Papers

 My Lai – (March 16th, 1968) American troops led by Lieutenant

William Calley shot and killed between four and five hundred

unarmed civilians Lt Calley later said that he was following orders, but many soldiers present did not participate in the massacre Life magazine published photos taken during the event in 1971, forcing the military to try Lt Calley for his participation in the attack The massacre, its coverup, and Calley’s trial fueled anti-war protest in the United States while tarnishing America’s international

reputation

 Pentagon Papers – Classified government history of American

involvement in Vietnam which was leaked to the NY Times in 1971 The Papers revealed that American leaders involved the U.S in

Vietnam without fully informing the American people and

occasionally lied to Congress

Review Question #15

 Approximately how many civilians were killed in the attack

at My Lai?

Paris Peace Accords

 (January 1973) Agreement signed by the United States, South

Vietnam, North Vietnam, and the Vietcong which ended U.S

involvement in Vietnam The parties agreed to a cease fire, U.S

troop withdrawal from South Vietnam, and that POWs would be exchanged However, North Vietnamese troops would remain in

South Vietnam, and in the spring of 1975 the South Vietnamese

capital of Saigon fell to the communists, who unified Vietnam under one government