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US History Unit 9 Vietnam

The 10,000 Day War 1946-75

Phase One - War of Independence

  • Vietnam - French colony under the name of French Indochina (along with Cambodia and Laos)

  • Vietnam fights for independence from France during WWII

  • Vietnamese revolutionary leader was Ho Chi Minh, a Communist

  • Wanted to be the leader of an independent, communist Vietnam; received support from both the USSR and “Red” China

  • French are defeated in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu

  • Peace conference in Geneva, Switzerland (attended by France, Vietnam, the US, and the USSR)

  • Vietnam divided at the 17th parallel. Communist north (led by Ho) and democratic south (led by Ngo Dinh Diem

  • Elections to be held in 1956 to end partition

  • The US sees Vietnam as a “Domino.” Determined to stop it falling according to the US policy of “Containment

  • Estimated that 80% of Vietnamese would have voted for the Communists - elections were never allowed to happen

  • Many ordinary Vietnamese viewed Diem as an elite who had cooperated with the French

  • Diem tortured and executed nearly 40000 political prisoners

  • The Southern resistance increases as communist support grows - creation of the National Liberation Front (NLF)

  • The Southern “freedom fighters” were also known as the Viet Cong

1963

  • With US approval, the South Vietnamese Army kills Diem

  • and of course, Kennedy is killed

Phase Two - American Military Movement

  • Phase originated with “Ike” and JFK but was intensified under Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ)

  • 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident - 2 American destroyers were “supposedly” fired upon by the North Vietnamese

  • Congress passes Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

  • Congress gave LBJ their support in sending American personnel and material

1965 - Operation Rolling Thunder

  • sustained American bombing raids on North Vietnam

  • 864,000 tons of bombs dropped on North Vietnam

    • 503,000 tons in the Pacific theater during the Second World War

  • 4 objectives

    • boost the Morale of South Vietnam

    • Persuade North Vietnam to stop supporting rebels in the south

    • destroy North Vietnamese industry and air defenses

    • cease the flow of men and material along the Ho Chi Ming Trail

  • US ground forces sent to Vietnam

    • over 200,000 by the year’s end

  • Danang: The first American combat troops the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, arrive in Vietnam to defend the US airfield at Danang

Ho Chi Minh Trail

  • The US was never entirely successful in shutting down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a supply line that ran between North and South Vietnam

  • Difficult jungle terrain often underground and through neighboring nations like Cambodia and Laos

1968

  • In January, the Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive, a surprise offensive on a major Vietnamese holiday that saw attacks all over the country including in Saigon itself

  • A Vietnamese defeat, but many in the US now saw the war as unwinnable

  • ongoing US casualties and led to an increase in the antiwar sentiment on the American Home Front in large part because Vietnman was a TV War where American audiences saw the brutality of war firsthand

  • Americans witnessed the usage of weapons like napalm and Agent Orange, which devastated the people and environment of Vietnam

My Lai

  • Who is the enemy?

  • How do you “find and eliminate the enemy” if you can’t tell which side anyone is on?

  • Between 350 and 500 raped, tortured, and murdered

  • 26 US soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses

  • Only Second Lieutenant William Cally, a platoon leader was convicted

    • Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence but only served three and a half years under house arrest

Hippies

  • inherited values of the 1950s Beatniks

  • created their own communities

  • listened to psychedelic rock

  • embraced the sexual revolution

  • and used drugs such as cannabis, LSD, and magic mushrooms to explore altered states of consciousness

Protests Increase at Home

  • Hippies led the Counterculture movement

  • Protests became widespread and began to polarize the nation

  • not just hippies

Election

  • Polls show that over half of the country doesn’t agree with the handling of the war

  • LBJ chose not to run for reelection in 1968

  • Increasingly the American people came to perceive the “Credibility Gap

  • Republican Richard M. Nixon was elected on a platform of “Peace with Honor

  • Vietnamization: Nixon wanted the South Vietnamese to play a greater role in the war

  • Despite that, he continues to carpet-bomb Hanoi and orders a secret invasion of Cambodia

    • seen as a further widening of the war, Americans feel deceived and protests

Kent State, May 1970

  • Kent State University, Ohio

  • Student protests turn deadly when National Guard troops open fire on students

  • 4 students dead

The Draft

  • in 1969, a “lottery” was held to select young men from the age of 18 to 26 to fight in the war

  • the voting age was 21

  • The first 122 dates drawn would be drafted to go to Vietnam

  • The next 122 “may” have been drafted

  • If the number was from 245 to 365 you were spared from being drafted until the next draft lottery

Tinker vs. Des Moines

  • Mary Beth Tinker

  • 13-year-old junior high school student

  • she and others wear black armbands to school to protest the war in Vietnam

  • 5 students suspended

  • 1960 - Supreme Court rules that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Pentagon Papers

  • classified documents stolen from the Pentagon

  • exposed government knowledge that war would cost more lives than the public was being told

  • the public was told the war was ending but escalation was happening

  • government censures the information but SCOTUS says no

  • Public distrust of the government

1973

  • the US agreed to remove troops on Jan 27, 1973

Phase 3 - Vietnamese Civil War, 1973-75

  • the NVA easily defeated the South by 1975

  • 1975 - the US abandoned its embassy in Saigon which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in the newly unified and communist Vietnam

War Powers Act 1973

  • “the President can send US armed forces into action abroad only by authorization of Congress or in case of a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces”

  • POTUS must notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action

  • forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, without congressional authorization or declaration of war

Remembering Vietnam

  • Vietnamese

    • approximately 3 million military and civilian deaths

  • America

    • 58,000 dead

    • 300,000 wounded

  • Many felt it was a pointless war that could have been avoided - veterans were not seen as “heroes”

  • Returning veterans were ignored or in some cases suffered verbal and physical abuse

Post War America

  • Losing a pointless war

  • distrustful government

  • a weak and divided America

  • 1982 - the Vietnam War Memorial (“the wall") encourages Americans to reflect on the war and “heal some of the war’s wounds”

US History Unit 9 Vietnam

The 10,000 Day War 1946-75

Phase One - War of Independence

  • Vietnam - French colony under the name of French Indochina (along with Cambodia and Laos)

  • Vietnam fights for independence from France during WWII

  • Vietnamese revolutionary leader was Ho Chi Minh, a Communist

  • Wanted to be the leader of an independent, communist Vietnam; received support from both the USSR and “Red” China

  • French are defeated in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu

  • Peace conference in Geneva, Switzerland (attended by France, Vietnam, the US, and the USSR)

  • Vietnam divided at the 17th parallel. Communist north (led by Ho) and democratic south (led by Ngo Dinh Diem

  • Elections to be held in 1956 to end partition

  • The US sees Vietnam as a “Domino.” Determined to stop it falling according to the US policy of “Containment

  • Estimated that 80% of Vietnamese would have voted for the Communists - elections were never allowed to happen

  • Many ordinary Vietnamese viewed Diem as an elite who had cooperated with the French

  • Diem tortured and executed nearly 40000 political prisoners

  • The Southern resistance increases as communist support grows - creation of the National Liberation Front (NLF)

  • The Southern “freedom fighters” were also known as the Viet Cong

1963

  • With US approval, the South Vietnamese Army kills Diem

  • and of course, Kennedy is killed

Phase Two - American Military Movement

  • Phase originated with “Ike” and JFK but was intensified under Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ)

  • 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident - 2 American destroyers were “supposedly” fired upon by the North Vietnamese

  • Congress passes Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

  • Congress gave LBJ their support in sending American personnel and material

1965 - Operation Rolling Thunder

  • sustained American bombing raids on North Vietnam

  • 864,000 tons of bombs dropped on North Vietnam

    • 503,000 tons in the Pacific theater during the Second World War

  • 4 objectives

    • boost the Morale of South Vietnam

    • Persuade North Vietnam to stop supporting rebels in the south

    • destroy North Vietnamese industry and air defenses

    • cease the flow of men and material along the Ho Chi Ming Trail

  • US ground forces sent to Vietnam

    • over 200,000 by the year’s end

  • Danang: The first American combat troops the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, arrive in Vietnam to defend the US airfield at Danang

Ho Chi Minh Trail

  • The US was never entirely successful in shutting down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a supply line that ran between North and South Vietnam

  • Difficult jungle terrain often underground and through neighboring nations like Cambodia and Laos

1968

  • In January, the Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive, a surprise offensive on a major Vietnamese holiday that saw attacks all over the country including in Saigon itself

  • A Vietnamese defeat, but many in the US now saw the war as unwinnable

  • ongoing US casualties and led to an increase in the antiwar sentiment on the American Home Front in large part because Vietnman was a TV War where American audiences saw the brutality of war firsthand

  • Americans witnessed the usage of weapons like napalm and Agent Orange, which devastated the people and environment of Vietnam

My Lai

  • Who is the enemy?

  • How do you “find and eliminate the enemy” if you can’t tell which side anyone is on?

  • Between 350 and 500 raped, tortured, and murdered

  • 26 US soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses

  • Only Second Lieutenant William Cally, a platoon leader was convicted

    • Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence but only served three and a half years under house arrest

Hippies

  • inherited values of the 1950s Beatniks

  • created their own communities

  • listened to psychedelic rock

  • embraced the sexual revolution

  • and used drugs such as cannabis, LSD, and magic mushrooms to explore altered states of consciousness

Protests Increase at Home

  • Hippies led the Counterculture movement

  • Protests became widespread and began to polarize the nation

  • not just hippies

Election

  • Polls show that over half of the country doesn’t agree with the handling of the war

  • LBJ chose not to run for reelection in 1968

  • Increasingly the American people came to perceive the “Credibility Gap

  • Republican Richard M. Nixon was elected on a platform of “Peace with Honor

  • Vietnamization: Nixon wanted the South Vietnamese to play a greater role in the war

  • Despite that, he continues to carpet-bomb Hanoi and orders a secret invasion of Cambodia

    • seen as a further widening of the war, Americans feel deceived and protests

Kent State, May 1970

  • Kent State University, Ohio

  • Student protests turn deadly when National Guard troops open fire on students

  • 4 students dead

The Draft

  • in 1969, a “lottery” was held to select young men from the age of 18 to 26 to fight in the war

  • the voting age was 21

  • The first 122 dates drawn would be drafted to go to Vietnam

  • The next 122 “may” have been drafted

  • If the number was from 245 to 365 you were spared from being drafted until the next draft lottery

Tinker vs. Des Moines

  • Mary Beth Tinker

  • 13-year-old junior high school student

  • she and others wear black armbands to school to protest the war in Vietnam

  • 5 students suspended

  • 1960 - Supreme Court rules that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Pentagon Papers

  • classified documents stolen from the Pentagon

  • exposed government knowledge that war would cost more lives than the public was being told

  • the public was told the war was ending but escalation was happening

  • government censures the information but SCOTUS says no

  • Public distrust of the government

1973

  • the US agreed to remove troops on Jan 27, 1973

Phase 3 - Vietnamese Civil War, 1973-75

  • the NVA easily defeated the South by 1975

  • 1975 - the US abandoned its embassy in Saigon which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in the newly unified and communist Vietnam

War Powers Act 1973

  • “the President can send US armed forces into action abroad only by authorization of Congress or in case of a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces”

  • POTUS must notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action

  • forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, without congressional authorization or declaration of war

Remembering Vietnam

  • Vietnamese

    • approximately 3 million military and civilian deaths

  • America

    • 58,000 dead

    • 300,000 wounded

  • Many felt it was a pointless war that could have been avoided - veterans were not seen as “heroes”

  • Returning veterans were ignored or in some cases suffered verbal and physical abuse

Post War America

  • Losing a pointless war

  • distrustful government

  • a weak and divided America

  • 1982 - the Vietnam War Memorial (“the wall") encourages Americans to reflect on the war and “heal some of the war’s wounds”

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