[APUSH 2] Vietnam Vocab

Dien Bien Phu

last site of French occupation in Vietnam; the US called for elections

• US wants to cut Vietnam in half, and in 1 year the US wants to reunite North Vietnam (Communist Vietnam) and South Vietnam through elections

  • North Vietnam Candidate: Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh

Communist leader of North Vietnam, nicknamed the “George Washington” of Vietnam

• Guy who read from the US Declaration of Independence

• Spent his life fighting for Vietnamese independence

• Met with Wilson to ask for self determination for Asian people in Versailles in 1919

Ngo Dinn Diem

“Democratic” leader of South Vietnam that was killed by his own people in 1963 (sort of)

• Catholic, but was in charge of a country that was majorly Buddhist

• Tried to outlaw Buddhism

• US canceled the election, keeping the line between North & South Vietnam existent

  • Their reasoning for cancelling the election was that there would never be a “fair election” between Minh and Diem

• Buddhist monk sits in the middle of Saigon, pours gasoline on him, and sets himself on fire silently due to Diem’s policies

• If LBJ let Vietnam be taken over by Communism, he feared that he would lose reelection

• North Vietnam was launching continuous raids on South Vietnam to try to take it over

17th Parallel

line that divides North and South Vietnam

National Liberation Front (NLF)

Communist Guerillas who attack the US in South Vietnam (also called Vietcong/VC)

• Also called Vietcong, VC, Victor Charlie, Chuck

• “We own the night, Charlie owns the day”

• By day, people in the NLF lived normal lives

• Had tunnels all over Vietnam and dug air vents when necessary

• Set up traps that caused HVAC helicopters to come into a clearing to pick up the wounded, where they were shot down and forced to vacate the area

• Young children were known to run to American soldiers with grenades on them, which killed many of them

NVA

North Vietnamese Army

• Carried modern weapons as they were given them by the Soviets and China

  • At this time, Vietnam didn’t have electricity in many areas

• If the US was fighting just the NVA, we could’ve won, but having this paired with the VC made the war essentially impossible to win

USS Maddox

American ship that was allegedly attacked twice in the Tonkin Gulf in 1964

• Johnson lied and said that the Maddox was attacked to garner more war support

• “For all I know, our navy was shooting at whales out there” - Lyndon B. Johnson

Tonkin Gulf Resolution

Congressional resolution that gives Johnson all authority to protect American interests in Southeast Asia

• Approved by vote of 504 to 2 (the 2 people that voted against it were against war)

• NOT a declaration of war

• Congress does this because if the war goes bad, it falls on the President, but if the war goes well, Congress gets more of the credit for it

  • Ever since Pearl Harbor, war hasn’t been declared due to these “authorization votes”

William Westmoreland

Supreme Commander of all US forces in Vietnam that shaped Vietnam Policy with Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara

• Equivalent to the roles Eisenhower and MacArthur had in WWII

• Robert MacNamara: CEO of Ford Motor Company prior to being Secretary of Defense

  • He was really smart

• Westmoreland is kind of subordinate to MacNamara

• MacNamara claims that the war would be won with math, and he says that if they have a 5-1 kill-death ratio, they win Vietnam

• Hard to tell apart North Vietnamese & South Vietnamese when counting death tolls, 

• American casualties were 59,000, but Vietnam lost an estimated 1.5 million, but Vietnam won the war

Operation Rolling Thunder

US bombing campaign of Hanoi in North Vietnam (the US dropped more bombs in Vietnam than in all of WWII)

• Bombs are measured in tonnage (how many tons of bombs you dropped)

• North Vietnam is carpet bombed (bomb everything)

• In an effort to remove foliage, Agent Orange was used so that the enemy had less cover

  • Had lasting implications on the health of soldiers that fought due to the harmful chemicals used (carcinogen)

Ho Chi Minh Trail

supply lines used by the NVA and VC from North Vietnam to South Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia that was bombed by Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon

• Laos and Cambodia want to shut down these supply lines, but couldn’t

• Supply lines couldn’t be shut down because Laos & Cambodia had weak central governments and therefore didn’t have the power to do so

• America needed to decide between bombing these supply lines or not

• After Cambodia was bombed, Cambodia’s weak monarchy was taken over by Communists after the people revolt

  • Cambodian Genocide: killing of everyone that lived in cities and intellectuals (anyone with a college degree, doctors, lawyers, etc.)

  • Cambodian Genocide had a death toll of 5-8 million

Tet Offensive

coordinated nationwide attack by the NVA and VC against American forces in South Vietnam where the US wins virtually every major engagement and US public opinion turns against the war

• In 1968, LBJ goes on TV and says that the war is almost over and that the enemy is in their last phase of their revolt

• Tet is the biggest holiday in Vietnam, and to respect South Vietnam, the US didn’t fight

• NVA uses this as an advantage, and unleash a barrage of attacks around Tet

• NVA takes over the US embassy in Saigon

• US wins back everything, yet US public opinion turned against the war because LBJ claimed that the enemy was almost done, yet this happened, so they distrust the presidency

  • “Hey hey LBJ how many kids did you kill today?” was a chant the people said

• Johnson refuses to run for presidency if Vietnam continues to be like this

• Americans refuse to send their children to war to be the bad guys

Credibility Gap

difference between what the government says and the truth

Hubert Humphrey

LBJ’s Vice President that lost to Richard Nixon in the Election of 1868

• LBJ was likely to win prior to the Tet Offensive

• RFK runs for Democratic presidential nomination and won the California primary, and was murdered after his “victory” speech

• Protesters were chanting to the police “the whole world is watching” as they were being beaten on live television

• 1968 is arguably the worst year in American history

Vietnamization

when the US replaces American soldiers with South Vietnamese soldiers in an effort to win the war

• Nixon was elected to end the Vietnam War, not extend it by bombing North Vietnam more

• Nixon needs to find a way to exit the war without looking weak to Russia & China, and these were his options

  • Get out immediately

  • Vietnamization (Nixon picks this)

  • Go all in and try to win the war

• If you looked weak, you would end up needing to wait 

• US continues the draft during Vietnamization as drafts lasted 1 year, and this lasted a couple

Neil Armstrong

first man to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969

• “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”

• This was one of the very few good events that happened during this era

Kent State Massacre

when 4 college students were killed at Kent State University, Ohio by the National Guard while protesting the Vietnam War

• Protesters got uncomfortably close to the National Guard, and a gun accidentally went off, so the Guard opened fire

• Bad look for America because they were expressing their constitutional rights, yet were killed just for doing so

• Vietnam veterans don’t like this because the killing of 4 people causes such public outrage, yet the multiple lives lost in Vietnam aren’t recognized more

Henry Kissinger

Nixon’s Secretary of State that was an NSA (National Security Advisor) who controlled US foreign policy in the 70s

Real Politik

Kissinger’s pragmatic (practical) foreign policy to deal with countries as they are, not as we wish them to be

• Stop wishing Communism away, deal with the Communism as-is

Detenté

the “cooling off” of the relationship between the US and the Soviet Union in the 1970s

• Didn’t happen with Truman & Stalin or with JFK and Khrushchev

Watergate (1972)

worst political scandal in US history that led to the resignation of Nixon in 1974, investigated by the Washington Post

• There was a break-in from the Republicans of the Watergate hotel in 1972, since one of its offices was owned by the Democrats

• Two reporters from the Washington Post ask why anyone would invade the Democratic offices in the Watergate hotel and notice that they have a lot of money in their bank accounts, realizing that their money came from people a part of CREEP

  • CREEP: Committee to Re-elect the President

• All burglars from Watergate ended up with CREEP money in their bank accounts

• Nixon says he knows nothing about this

• In 1973, a congressional panel was held, where the president’s lawyer knew about this affair and ordered it

• Nixon again claims that he knows nothing, but the White House Council knew about it, saying that it was also taped (due to LBJ’s taping in the Oval Office)

  • Nixon says that they don’t get the tapes

• The court asks for the tapes, and Nixon submits them with gaps

• Nixon calls for meeting of all Congressional Republicans and asks for Barry Goldwater to save him, and he says that he wouldn’t even if he could, and two days later he resigned

• No president has ever been removed from office from impeachment, but Nixon would have been impeached and removed from office if he didn’t resign

Pentagon Papers

study about the Vietnam War ordered by MacNamara “leaked” to the New York Times, exposing the government’s lies

• MacNamara ordered study in 1968

  • Study was from 1945-1968

• NY Times publishes this one story at a time in 1971

• Government goes to the Supreme Court and the NY times win as long as they don’t publish information that could get an American killed

• Nixon hires a group of people he calls the “Plumbers” to find the “leak,” which was Daniel Ellsberg, and “shut him the hell up”

Paris Peace Agreement (1973)

treaty that ended the Vietnam War

• Draft was stopped in 1972 because it was an election year

• Most Americans don’t want to hear about Vietnam anymore by 1973

• Claimed that all American forces would be out of Vietnam by June 1973, so in July 1973, the NVA attacked South Vietnam, and by 1974, the NVA was advancing to Saigon

  • US Embassy is in Saigon

• NVA killed Vietnamese that they knew helped Americans

• Gerald Ford was Nixon’s VP and succeeded his presidency

  • Asked Congress for 500,000 Marines to help Vietnam, and they declined

Fall of Saigon

refers to the evacuation of Saigon by the United States by helicopter as the NVA approached

• Awful for US reputation