U.S. History/Mr. DeNardo
Vietnam War Exam: 50 multiple choice questions
The Vietnam War, the New Left &
the Counterculture Study Guide
1. What country colonized Indochina/Vietnam during the period 1870-1940? What country took over during
World War II?
2. What happened in Vietnam after World War II ended and what ultimately happened at Dien Bien Phu?
3. What was done to the map of Indochina at the end of the First Vietnam War? How did that lead to the
Second Vietnam War (that involved the U.S.)?
4. What did the war in Vietnam have to do with the domino theory?
5. What was Lyndon Baines Johnson’s background?
6. What incident happened at the Gulf of Tonkin and what did the Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed by Congress
do?
7. What conditions did Americans have to fight under and what advantages did the Vietcong/North
Vietnamese have?
8. What was General Westmoreland’s main strategy to win the war, and why did his strategy fail so badly?
9. When historians say Vietnam was the first “living room war,” what do they mean and how did that affect
the war?
10. What role did the Ho Chi Minh Trail play in the war?
11. In what way was the war a guerilla war, and what role did tunnels and booby traps play in the war?
12. What was Operation Rolling Thunder and why didn’t it work?
13. What are napalm and Agent Orange and why was their use so controversial?
14. Why was it so difficult for American GIs to tell who was friend and who was foe?
15. What happened at My Lai in 1967 and why did it happen?
16. Why was the Vietnam War known as a “poor person’s war?”
17. What happened during the Tet Offensive and why was it a turning point of the war?
18. What impact did the Tet Offensive have on Pres. Johnson’s re-election campaign?
19. What does the “credibility gap” refer to?
20. What thoughts and attitudes were reflected in the music of the 1960s?
21. Why weren’t the Americans able to gain the support of the Vietnamese civilians, to “win the hearts and
minds” of the Vietnamese people?
22. In the 1968 presidential election, Nixon promised a “Vietnamization” of the war. What did that mean?
23. Why exactly did Nixon order the invasion of Cambodia and what effect did it have?
24. Why did students at Kent State protest and what happened there?
25. What exactly did the Pentagon papers show and what effect did they have?
26. What was agreed to as part of the ceasefire agreement of 1973?
27. What happened on April 29-30, 1975 in Saigon, and what happened to Vietnam after that?
28. How many Americans were killed in Vietnam? Americans wounded? How many Vietnamese were killed?
29. What was the 26th Amendment and why was it passed toward the end of the Vietnam War?
30. Why was the War Powers Act passed toward the end of the war and what exactly did it do?
31. What are three reasons why the U.S. lost the Vietnam War?
32. What exactly was the “New Left?”
33. Who and what was SDS and according to their Port Huron mission statement, what kind of society were
they seeking to create?
34. What was the Berkeley Free Speech Movement about and what was the most famous event of that
movement?
35. What caused the emergence of the counterculture, what were the hippies looking for and how did they try to
get it?
36. What values did hippies hold? How did their clothing and music set them apart?
37. What are four reasons why the year 1968 has come to be known as a turning point year, a “year of tumult?”
38. What were the major political, economic, and social costs of the Vietnam War?
39. What was the goal of President Johnson’s “Great Society” programs?
40. Identify three specific examples of Great Society programs started during the 1960s and describe the
purpose of each.
41. How did the Vietnam War affect the Great Society programs?