Vietnam

Mr. Homburg

American Studies

Ho Chi Minh

• Born in Vietnam 1890• Founding Member of

French Communist Party• It was the duty of all

communists to "make contact with the masses to awaken, organize, unite and train them, and lead them to fight for freedom and independence."

Ho Chi Minh

• 1940 the French surrender Indochina to the Japanese

• Ho formed the Vietminh. Vietminh began a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese.

• Vietminh received support from the Soviet Union and U.S. (after Pearl Harbor)

• 1945 Ho proclaims Vietnamese independence

continued

• At Potsdam, Roosevelt, Churchill, & Stalin had already decided what to do with Vietnam- North under Chinese control, South under British control

• After WWII France attempts to regain Vietnam- Britain and China agreed to leave Vietnam

• 1946- French fight Vietminh• By 1953 the Vietminh controlled the north and

the French the south

• French public opinion turned against the war- between 1946-1952- 90,000 deaths. The cost of war was too expensive, no sign of victory, people in France had reached the conclusion that their country did not have any moral justification for being in Vietnam.

Dien Bien Phu

• 1954- French set up a complex at Dien Bien Phu, which would block the route of the Vietminh forces trying to return to camps in neighboring Laos

• French believed that in a large scale battle they would win

• instead of making a massive frontal assault, Giap choose to surround Dien Bien Phu and ordered his men to dig a trench that encircled the French troops. 

Dien Bien Phu

• Giap had 70,000 soldiers surrounding Dien Bien Phu, five times the number of French troops enclosed within.

• When the French realized that they were trapped, they appealed for help- U.S. contemplated using Nuclear Weapons- Eisenhower refused to intervene, however

• The French surrendered on May 7th, 1954• The following day the French government

announced that it intended to withdraw from Vietnam.

Geneva Accords

• Vietnam would be divided at the 17th parallel• North Vietnam would be ruled by Ho Chi Minh • South Vietnam would be ruled by Ngo Dinh

Diem, a strong opponent of communism • French troops would withdraw from Vietnam • the Vietminh would withdraw from South

Vietnam • the Vietnamese could freely choose to live in the

North or the South; and • a General Election for the whole of Vietnam

would be held before July, 1956

• Vietminh were reluctant to accept the Geneva agreements. However, Ho Chi Minh argued that this was only a temporary situation and was convinced that in the promised General Election, the Vietnamese were sure to elect a communist government to rule a re-united Vietnam.

Ngo Dinh Diem

• United States delegation proposed the name of Ngo Dinh Diem as the new ruler of South Vietnam. Held elections in the South between Bao Dai and Diem.

• After the election Diem informed his American advisers that he had achieved 98.2 per cent of the vote. They warned him that these figures would not be believed and suggested that he published a figure of around 70 per cent. Diem refused and as the Americans predicted, the election undermined his authority.

• it became clear that Ngo Dinh Diem had no intention of holding elections for a united Vietnam (as he was required by the Geneva Accords)

• The year following the cancelled elections saw a large increase in the number of people leaving their homes to form armed groups in the forests of Vietnam

• Diem began arresting his opponents. In a short period of time, approximately 100,000 people were put in prison camps

Kennedy- Domino Theory

• If South Vietnam fell, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Philippines, New Zealand and Australia would follow. If communism was not halted in Vietnam it would gradually spread throughout the world.

• America would be willing to: "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty."

1961- Kennedy sends advisers

• Kennedy agreed to send another 100 military advisers to Vietnam to help train the South Vietnamese army. As this decision broke the terms of the Geneva Agreement, it was kept from the American public.

• U.S. manipulated the statistics and reported that S. Vietnam was undergoing an economic miracle

• 10% of Vietnam was Catholic, 70 % Buddhist

• On May 8, 1963, Buddhists assembled in Hue to celebrate the 2527th birthday of the Buddha. Attempts were made by the police to disperse the crowds by opening fire on them.

Diem’s response

• The government's response to this suicide was to arrest thousands of Buddhist monks.

• One member of the South Vietnamese government responded to these self-immolations by telling a newspaper reporter: "Let them burn, and we shall clap our hands." Another offered to supply Buddhists who wanted to commit suicide with the necessary petrol.

Diem’s Assassination

• At the beginning of November, 1963, President Diem was overthrown by a military coup. After the generals had promised Diem that he would be allowed to leave the country they changed their minds and killed him. Three weeks later, President Kennedy was also assassinated.

Viet Cong

• December, 1960, the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) was formed. The NLF, or the 'Vietcong', as the Americans were to call them, was made up of over a dozen different political and religious groups

• Tactics of Viet Cong was Guerilla Warfare• Organized into cells of 3-10 with little knowledge

of other groups• Goal was to gain the support of the peasants

living in the rural areas

Lyndon B. Johnson

• Johnson told his Joint Chiefs of Staff that he would do all that was necessary to prevent the Viet Cong winning in South Vietnam but was unwilling to take unpopular measures like sending troops to fight in a foreign war, until after the 1964 Presidential Elections. Just let me get elected," he told his military advisers, "and then you can have your war."

Gulf of tonkin

• Operation Plan 34A involved the sending of Asian mercenaries into North Vietnam to carry out acts of sabotage and the kidnapping or killing of communist officials.

• On August 2, 1964, the US destroyer, "Maddox" was fired upon by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin

• In retaliation, "Maddox" fired back and hit all three, one of which sank. 

• The “Maddox” left the gulf but was ordered to return.• The captain reported being fired upon

continued

• Johnson now had the excuse he had been waiting for 

• He ordered the bombing of four North Vietnamese torpedo-boat bases and an oil-storage depot that had been planned three months previously.

• The Congress approved Johnson's decision to bomb North Vietnam and passed what has become known as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution by the Senate by 88 votes to 2 and in the House of Representatives by 416 to 0. 

• Johnson (before his election) "to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."

• On March 8, 3,500 US marines arrived in South Vietnam. They were the first 'official' US combat troops to be sent to the country. 

• Three months after being elected president in 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson launched Operation Rolling Thunder. The plan was to destroy the North Vietnam economy and to force her to stop helping the guerrilla fighters in the south. Bombing was also directed against territory controlled by the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. The plan was for Operation Rolling Thunder to last for eight weeks but it lasted for the next three years. In that time, the US dropped 1 million tons of bombs on Vietnam.

• "You never knew who was the enemy and who was the friend. They all looked alike. They all dressed alike."

•  They "were usually counted as enemy dead, under the unwritten rule 'If he's dead and Vietnamese, he's VC'."

Ho Chi Minh Trail

• The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a complex web of different jungle paths

• Viet Cong received sixty tons of aid per day from this route. Most of this was carried by porters. Occasionally bicycles and ponies would also be used.

• The North Vietnamese also used the Ho Chi Minh Trail to send soldiers to the south. At times, as many as 20,000 soldiers a month came

Draft Lottery

• The days of the year including Leap Year Day were represented by the numbers from 1 to 366 written on slips of paper. The slips were placed in separate plastic capsules that were mixed in a shoebox and then dumped into a deep glass jar. Capsules were drawn from the jar one at a time.

Bombing

• Dropped 8 million tons of bombs on Vietnam between 1965 and 1973. This was over three times the amount of bombs dropped throughout the whole of the Second World War 

Agent Orange

• in an attempt to destroy the Viet Cong hiding places. In 1969 alone, Operation Ranch Hand destroyed 2,555,810 acres of forest. 'Agent Orange', the chemical used in this defoliation program not only destroyed trees but caused chromosomal damage in people.

• Between 1962 and 1969, 688,000 agricultural acres were sprayed with a chemical called 'Agent Blue'. The aim of this exercise was to deny food to the Viet Cong. However, research suggests that it was the civilian population who suffered most from the poor rice harvests that followed the spraying.

Tet Offensive

• On the evening of 31st January, 1968, 70,000 members of the Viet Cong launched a surprise attack on more than a hundred cities and towns in Vietnam

• The Tet Offensive proved to be a turning point in the war. In military terms it was a victory for the US forces. An estimated 37,000 Viet Cong soldiers were killed compared to 2,500 Americans. However, it illustrated that the Viet Cong appeared to have inexhaustible supplies of men and women willing to fight for the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government.

My Lai Massacre

• The My Lai Massacre was the mass murder conducted by a unit of the U.S. Army on March 16, 1968 of 347–504 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam, all of whom were civilians and a majority of whom were women, children (including babies) and elderly people.

• Many of the victims were raped, beaten, tortured, and some of the bodies were found mutilated.

Johnson/Nixon

•  1968, Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not stand for re-election in the forthcoming presidential election.

• 1968- Nixon won the election

Vietnamization

• Soon after taking office. President Nixon introduced his policy of "vietnamization". The plan was to encourage the South Vietnamese to take more responsibility for fighting the war

Kent State Shootings

• Involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970.

• The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis

• hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of four million students

Pentagon Papers

• The papers were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of the New York Times in 1971

• Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara created the Vietnam Study Task Force on June 17, 1967, for the purpose of writing an "encyclopedic history of the Vietnam War". The secretary's motivation for commissioning the study is unclear. McNamara claimed that he wanted to leave a written record for historians, but kept the study secret from the rest of the Johnson administration.

• The study comprised 3,000 pages of historical analysis and 4,000 pages of original government documents in 47 volumes, and was classified as "Top Secret - Sensitive". 

• Ellsberg and his friend Anthony Russo photocopied the study in October 1969 intending to disclose it

• The Times began publishing excerpts on June 13, 1971

Impact of Papers

• The most damaging revelations in the papers revealed that four administrations, from Truman to Johnson, had misled the public regarding their intentions. For example, the John F. Kennedy administration had planned to overthrow South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem before his death in a November 1963 coup. President Johnson had decided to expand the war while promising "we seek no wider war" during his 1964 presidential campaign, including plans to bomb North Vietnam well before the 1964 Election. President Johnson had been outspoken against doing so during the election and claimed that his opponent Barry Goldwater was the one that wanted to bomb North Vietnam.

Impact of papers, cont.

• in another example, a memo from the Defense Department under the Johnson Administration listed the reasons for American persistence:

• 70% - To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat.• 20% - To keep [South Vietnam] (and the

adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.• 10% - To permit the people [of South Vietnam]

to enjoy a better, freer way of life.

Peace

• The only way that America could avoid a humiliating defeat was to negotiate a peace agreement in the talks that were taking place in Paris.

• Nixon developed what has become known as the Madman Theory. Bob Haldeman, one of the US chief negotiators, was told to give the impression that President Nixon was mentally unstable and that his hatred of communism was so fanatical that if the war continued for much longer he was liable to resort to nuclear weapons against North Vietnam.

• The last US combat troops left in March, 1973. It was an uneasy peace and by 1974, serious fighting had broken out between the Viet Cong and the AVRN.

• At its peak US aid to South Vietnam had reached 30 billion dollars a year

• The Viet Cong arrived in Saigon on April 30, 1975. After declaring that Vietnam was now a united country, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam was established in July 1976