Vietnam War.
Izabella Morales.
What was Vietnam ?
• Second Indochina War – 1954-1975.
• Result of a long conflict between
• France
• Vietnam
• July 1954 – France was forced to leave
Vietnam.
The Geneva Peace Accords
• Signed by France and Vietnam
• Summer of 1945.
• It represented the worst possible future for
the war-torn Vietnam.
Continued.
• Vietnam's delegates and the Geneva
Conference agreed to a temporary
separation of their nation at the
seventeenth parallel to allow France a
face-saving defeat
• Vietnam would hold national elections in
1956 to reunify the country.
17th Parallel.
• Temporary separation without cultural
guide would vanish with the elections.
• John Foster Dulles, didn’t support the
Geneva Accords because he thought they
granted to much power to the Communist
part of Vietnam.
• Dulles and Eisenhower agreed on the creation
of a country-revolutionary alternative south of
the 17th parallel.
• U.S supported this effort through a series of
multilateral agreements that created the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. (SEATO)
• SEATO was used to political cover , the
Eisenhower administration helped create a
new nation from dust in southern Vietnam.
• 1955 – Government of the Republic of
Vietnam ( GVN or South Vietnam) was
born through the help of
• American Military
• Political
• Economic aid.
Under Ngo Dinh Diem.
• Following year Ngo Dinh Diem – an anticommunist figure from the South , won
president of GVN.
• Diem claimed that his newly created
government was being attacked by the
communist in the north.
• Diem argued that the Democratic Republic of
Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) wanted to
take South Vietnam by force.
• In the late 1957, with American military, Diem
began to counterattack with the help of the
American Central Intelligence Agency to identify
those who tried to bring down his government
and arrest thousands.
• Diem passed a series of acts known as Law
10/59 – made it legal to hold someone in jail if
he/she was a alliance to the communist without
any formal charges.
• Diem passed a series of acts known as Law
10/59 – made it legal to hold someone in jail if
he/she was a alliance to the communist without
any formal charges.
• Citizens such as : Buddhist monks, nuns,
students, business people, intellectuals, and
peasants in resistance to the dishonest rule of
Diem.
1956-1960,
• Communist Party of Vietnam desired to
reunify the country though political means
alone.
• Accepting S.U political struggle ,
Communist Party tried and failed to cause
Diem’s collapse by exerting tremendous
internal political pressure.
• After Diem’s attacks on suspected
Communist in the South. Southern
Communist convince the Party to adopt
more violent tactics to guarantee Diem’s
defeat.
15th Party Plenum.
• January 1959 Communist Party finally
approved the usage of revolutionary
violence and the combination of political
and armed struggle movements
• Result
• creation of broad-based united front to help
mobilize southerners in disagreement to the GVN.
National Liberation Front.
• United front had long and historic roots in
Vietnam.
• Used earlier in the century to organize
anti-French forces, the united front brought
together Communist in an umbrella
organization.
December 20, 1960.
• National Liberation Front
(NLF) was born.
• Anyone can join as long as the
opposed Diem and wanted a
reunified Vietnam.
NFL Continued.
• Its relationship to the Communist in Hanoi
has cause a great debate between scholars,
anti-war activists, and policymakers.
• Since the birth of NLF, government
officials in Washington claimed that Hanoi
directed the NLFs violent attacks against
Saigon system.
• In a series of government “White Paper”
Washington insiders denounced the NLF,
saying :
•It was a mere puppet of Hanoi.
•Non-Communist essentials were Communist tricks.
• NLF argued that it was independent of the
Communist in Hanoi, and that it was mostly
made up of Non-Communist.
• Many anti-war activists supported the NLFs
claims.
• Washington continued to dishonor the NLF,
but, calling it the “Viet Cong” a derogatory and
slang term meaning : Vietnamese Communist.
White Paper.
• December 1961, President Kennedy sent a
team to Vietnam to report all conditions in the
South to evaluate future American aid
necessities.
• Report ( December 1961, White Paper) argued
for an increase in military, technical, economic
aid, and American advisors to help settle the
Diem control and defeat the NLF.
Kennedy’s fashion.
• Sought limited agreement with Diem.
• U.S would increase the level of its military
involvement in South Vietnam through :
• More machinery.
• More advisers.
• but would not get involved with troops.
• This arrangement was doomed from the start.
• Soon reports from Vietnam came into
Washington to prove further NLF successes.
• To counteract the NLF’s success in the
countryside.
• Washington and Saigon launched an ambitious
and deadly military effort in the country areas.
Strategic Hamlet Program.
• Counter insurgency plan rounded up
villagers and placed them in “safe
hamlets” constructed by the GVN.
• Idea – isolate the NLF from villagers, its
base of support.
• Produced limited results and further
separated the peasants from the Saigon
government.
• Countryside Vietnamese viewed GVN as a
distant annoyance.
• Strategic Hamlet Program brought the
GVN to the countryside.
• Saigon government reactive policies
ironically produced more cadres for the
NLF.
Military Coup.
• Summer of 1963, because of NLF victories
and its own failures, it was clear that GVN
was on the edge of political collapse.
• Diem’s brother Ngo, had invaded the
Buddhist pagodas of South Vietnam.
• Claiming they had docked the Communist
that were creating the political instability.
• Result – massive protests in the streets of
Saigon.
• Late September, Buddhist protest had created
a disruption in the south that the Kennedy
administration supported the coup.
• 1963, some of Diem’s own generals in the Army
of the Republic of Vietnam (ARV) approached
the American Embassy in Saigon with plans to
defeat Diem.
• With Washington’s implied approval, on
November 1,1963, Diem and his brother were
captured and later killed.
• Three weeks later President Kennedy was
assassinated in the streets of Dallas.
• Kennedy’s administration had managed to run
the war from Washington without bringing and
interference with American combat troops.
• Political problems still continued in Saigon. This
convinced the new president Lyndon Baines
Johnson that more aggressive action was
needed.
• Perhaps Johnson was more interested in
military intervention or maybe events in
Vietnam had forced the president’s view to
direct action.
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
• In August 1964 launched a local and controlled
attack against C. Turner Joy and the U.S.S
Maddox.
• Two American ships.
• A second attack was issued on August 4, Vo
Nguyen Giap (DRV’s leading military figure) and
Johnson’s Secretary of Defense Robert S.
McNamara confirmed that there was no second
attack.
• Johnson administration used the August 4
attack as a political cover for a Congressional
resolution that gave the president broad war
powers.
• This was known as the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution.
• Throughout the fall and into the winter of 1964,
the Johnson administration argued over the
correct strategy in Vietnam.
• The Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to expand the
war over he DRV to help stabilize the Saigon
government.
• Only Undersecretary of State George Ball
disagreed and claimed the Johnsons Vietnam
policy was too provocative for its limited results.
1965
• NLF attacked two U.S army installations in
South Vietnam, as a result Johnson
ordered to sustained bombing missions
over DRV that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had
long supported.
• The bombing missions, also known as
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER caused the
Communist Party to reassess its own war
strategy.
• 1960-1964 Communist Party believe it could
win a military victory in the south.
• With new American military commitment,
confirmed in March 1965 when Johnson sent
the first combat troops.
War in America.
• Johnson administration wanted to fight this
war in “cold blood”.
• This meant that America would go to war
in Vietnam to the accuracy of a surgeon
with little noticeable impact on domestic
culture.
• A limited war called for limited mobilization of
resources, material and human, and caused
little disruption.
• Vietnam war did have a major impact on
everyday life in America, and Johnson
administration was forced to consider domestic
consequences of its decisions everyday.
• Protest erupted on college campuses and in
major cities at first, but by 1968 mostly every
corner of the country seemed to felt the wars
impact.
• One of the most famous event in the anti-war
movement was the police riot in Chicago during
the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Tet Offensive
• By 1968 things went from bad to worse for
the Johnson administration.
• In late January, the DRV and the NLF
launched coordinated attacks against the
major southern cities.
• These attacks were known as the Tet
Offensive.
• Designed to force the Johnson
administration to negotiate.
• Communist party correctly believed that the
American people were growing war-weary and
that its continued successes tipped the balance
of forces in it favor.
• In late March 1968, a disgraced Lyndon
Johnson announced that he would not seek the
Democratic Party’s re-nomination for president.
• He would go and negotiate with the Communist
to end the war.
Paris Peace Agreement.
• In early January 1973, Nixon White House
convinced the Thieu-Ky government in
Saigon that they would not abandon the
GVN if they sign onto the peace accord.
• January 23, the final draft was initialed,
ending open hostilities between the U.S
and the DRV.
Continued.
• Paris Peace Agreement didn’t end the
conflict in Vietnam, but the Thieu-Ky
government continued to battle
Communist forces.
• From March 1973 until the fall of Saigon
on April 30, 1975, ARVN forces tried to
save the South from a military and political
collapse.
• The end finally came, but , the DRV tanks rolled
south along the National Highway One.
• On the morning of April 30, Communist forces
captured the presidential palace in Saigon,
ending the Second Indochina War.