APUSH 8.8 - Vietnam

Main Idea: During the 60s and 70s, the United States failed to stop the spread of communism in Vietnam.

FRANCE’S WAR

A. French Indo-China

  1. Overview
    • French owned colony in the 1850s that would eventually become Cambodia and Vietnam
    • Cash crops grow very well
  2. Colonial Legacy
    • French were trying to empower certain Vietnamese families following colonialism
  3. Ho Chi Minh
    • Founds what is basically a communist party
    • Exiled from Vietnam in the 1930s due to very extreme views
    • 1941, Japan takes over Vietnam and makes it a colony, at which point ==Ho Chi Minh is allowed back in and organizes an army==
    • Vietnam is returned to France, which they don’t want

B. The War Against France (1945-1954)

  1. Overview
    • Rise up in ==1945== and begin a civil war for independence
    • Lasts 9 years, during which the French are just having several problems
    • ==Vietnamese use guerrilla warfare== against the French, U.S. gives France money because they are struggling, so that Ho Chi Minh doesn’t gain power and set up a communist government
  2. Dien Bien Phu
    • ==French defeated in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu==, and basically quit the war and let them do their own thing
    • Vietnamese split between Ho Chi Minh and other candidates

C. Geneva Peace Accords

  1. Division
    • Divide the country in half at the ==17th parallel==: U.S. supports south as a democracy, north supported by communists countries
    • Supposed to be a 1956 electioin to determine the leader of the whole country
    • Ho Chi Minh is in charge of North Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem leads South Vietnam

DEFENDING SOUTH VIETNAM

A. The Viet Cong (NLF)

  • North Vietnam engages in some fighting, and there’s never an election held, it devolves into a civil war
  • The Viet Cong (aka the National Liberation Front) is the rebel movement reinforced by North Vietnam, who don’t like Diem
    • ==Supporters of this movement in both the north and the south==

B. Supporting Diem

  1. Objective
    • Support the existence of South Vietnam and try to contain communism
  2. Problems
    • Rural population of South Vietnam supports the Viet Cong, making it hard to control
    • Implement ==Hamlet programs==, government villages that were controlled by the government, meant to keep villages from supporting the North/Viet Cong
      • This is incredibly unpopular
    • ==Diem is anti-Buddhist== (not winning him any points), hasn’t set up a democracy, puts family members in high government positions
  3. JFK
    • In 1963, there are a lot of people in South Vietnam leadership worried about Diem who come to the US saying that they are going to kill him, effectively warning them in advance
    • America tacitly authorizes the assassination and overthrow, with the CIA involved in the funding and execution of the plan
    • JFK sends first U.S. military advisors to Vietnam to give assistance: education and training in terms of advisory
      • ==Very small number of people who were not authorized to be in a combat role==
  4. LBJ
    • After Kennedy is killed, Lyndon B. Johnson takes over as president
    • Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, promotes limited commitment because he believed that a war in Vietnam was unwinnable
    • Johnson fires McNamara and instead increases commitment and puts more troops in South Vietnam
    • The issue is there’s no reason to increase involvement, even if LBJ wants to

C. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution 1964

  1. Background
    • American boats are stationed outside of Vietnam, many of them in the Gulf of Tonkin
    • USS Maddox is fired upon by the North Vietnamese, so ==LBJ takes it to Congress and asks to take military action against North Vietnam,== to which they pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
  2. Implications
    • Congress essentially gives away the power to declare war
    • Authorized Johnson to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression”
    • ==Effectively gave him unrestricted, unchecked power over the military==
  3. Strategy
    • ==War is never declared on North Vietnam, it all has very complicated legal standing==
    • Half a million American soldiers in South Vietnam to fight
    • Bomb North Vietnam with airplanes to prevent them from sending more supplies and troops to the South
      • ==Operation Rolling Thunder:== huge bombing campaign that didn’t work too well
    • Seek and destroy/search and destroy: Instead of gaining ground, just tried to kill all of the soldiers to the point where there wouldn’t be enough soldiers to fight and they would quit

THE QUAGMIRE

A. Strategic Difficulties

  • Viet Cong has homefield advantage, ==hard to tell who the enemy was==
  • Rural farmers were more sympathetic to the rebels fighting against Diem

B. The Draft

  • Used on the young people
  • ==Average age of people drafted during the war was 19 years old==
  • Most people are younger and lower-middle class
  • Wealthy people tended not to be drafted or could find ways to avoid having to go fight
  • Largely a war fought by the poor people and by minorites

C. American Soldiers

  • ==Soldiers aren’t that motivated,== they didn’t necessarily know why they were fighting, they didn’t really know what they were going to be able to do
  • Soldiers start fragging their officers (shoot the commanding officer if they try to lead them into an unsafe battle)
  • Lots of out of control drug use: opium, marijuana

D. The War at Home

  • The Anti-War movement is very vocal, student groups holding the idea that young people are being forced to fight a war they didn’t believe in
  • ==Vocal minority of anti-war protestors,== did not actually represent the views of most Americans

E. The Television War

  • Television is so prevalent at this point that everybody has one
  • News has soldiers, videos taken the days of the batt,e uplinked by satellite to New York and its broadcast on the nightly news
  • Not filtered by the government with propaganda, ==all uncensored== and shows Americans being hurt/wounded/dying
  • For the first time Americans get concerned and helps the minority of Anti-War protestors get their point across

F. The Tet Offensive 1968

  • Tet - Vietnamese holiday
  • Vietnamese soldiers on both sides took an unofficial ceasefire, let the guard down, but ==North Vietnamese had planned a massive nationwide assault to take place on Tet==
  • Many cities in South Vietnam were run over by the North
  • Part of Saigon, military bases attacked
  • Americans are able to prevent that from being peranent, but when the news gets back to America, people are frustrated
  • Creates a credibility gap, with govt. leaders saying we’re winning but it looks like we’re losing
  • Walter Cronkite, CBS news anchor, goes to Vietnam and joins a group of soldiers, present for the Tet offensive, says he believes the war is unwinnable
    • America is likely to believe him