Vietnam War
From French Colonialism to the
American involvement to the killing
fields of Cambodia
The French Colonize Indochina
• French involvement started when French
missionaries landed in Vietnam in the late 1700s.
• During the 1800s, the French established a colony in
Southeast Asia, known as Indochina. By the 1890s,
all of Vietnam was under French control.
• Indochina is composed of the modern nations of
Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
• The French exploited the Vietnamese by forcing
each village to buy alcohol and opium. Many
peasants worked in slave-like conditions on French
plantations.
• In short, the French treated the Vietnamese poorly
Colonized Vietnam
Vietnamese Nationalism
• To administer their colony, the French had supported
the development of a Vietnamese Western education
middle-class.
• Many upper-class Vietnamese studied in French
schools; they eventually got involved in nationalistic
movements protesting French discrimination.
• During the 1920s, a clandestine Vietnamese
Nationalistic Party(Vietnamese Quoc Dan Dong or
VNQDD) was formed - it was committed to a violent
overthrow of the French colonizers.
• The group was violently suppressed by the French
secret police, the Sûreté.
• The VNQDD crushed, led an opening to its rival, the
Communist Party of Vietnam, led by Nguyen Ai
Quoc, later known as Ho Chi Minh.
The War of Liberation Against the French
• Ho Chi Minh was disillusioned by Vietnam’s
denial of a hearing for Vietnamese
independence at the Paris Peace
Conference at the end of WW1. - Ho
dedicated his life to driving the French from
Indochina.
• The Japanese invasion of Indochina in 1941
weakened the French and set the stage for
the communists to advance their struggle for
national liberation.
• The communist nationalist movement, called
the Viet Minh, put their efforts in land reform
and mass education
Ho Chi Minh
The War of Liberation against the French
• Using guerrilla tactics devised by Mao
Zedong of China, the Viet Minh were able to
win control of northern Vietnam and establish
an independent state in August, 1945.
• After WWII, France wanted to regain colonial
control of Vietnam - in March, 1946, the
French reoccupied Saigon and much of
southern Vietnam. They denounced
Vietnamese independence and worked to
regain control.
• However, the French lost a major battle at
Dien Bien Phu and an international
conference in Geneva promised the
Vietnamese elections to decide who should
govern Vietnam.
Viet Minh victory at Dien Bien Phu
Vietnam’s War Against the United States
• The promise at Geneva that free elections would occur in
Vietnam was never kept.
• Vietnam had become entangled in the cold war saber rattling
between the USA and the USSR.
• The U.S., fearful of communist movements, put a puppet leader
Ngo Dinh Diem in control in the south.
• Diem, with the backing of America, worked to exterminate the
communists in southern Vietnam - called the Viet Cong.
• The communists in the north began to support the south with
weapons and advisors.
• When Diem proved ineffective, the U.S. authorized the South
Vietnamese military to overthrow him and take direct charge of
the war. The U.S. also stepped up its military intervention.
Vietnam’s War Against the United States - p.2
• The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution ordered American bombing of
Vietnam based on false reports of a torpedo attack against the
U.S.S. Mattox.
• Despite the fact that America’s growing intervention in Vietnam
resulted in a force of over 500,000 men and that more bombs
were dropped on Vietnam than all the theaters in WWII; the
U.S. lost the war.
• Nearly 60,000 Americans lost their lives and millions of
Vietnamese perished as well
• America lost because the Vietnamese saw America as another
imperial force there to exploit Vietnam. They were fighting for
their independence.
• America negotiated a withdrawal and by 1975, the U.S. was
out of Vietnam and the South Vietnam government fell to the
communists. Saigon is today known as Ho Chi Minh City.
Napalm Attack
Political Cartoon - My Lai
Massacre
Vietnam - Huey Helicopters
Grieving mother over the loss
of her child
Vietnamese judicial system
Buddhist monk protesting the
war by self-immolation
Anti-war protestors in
Philadelphia
Fall of Saigon
Vietnam: Epilogue
• Since the end of the war, America has
worked to normalize relations with Vietnam.
Initially, American corporations established
contact with Vietnam to use its cheap labor
for manufacturing(such as G.E.)
• You and I can go there as tourists today;
although it is still has a communist
government.
The Vietnam Memorial
Cambodia - The Killing Fields
• During the mid-1970s, the United
States was losing the war in Vietnam.
• One of the reasons was that China(a
traditional adversary of Vietnam),
started to give the North Vietnamese
Communists material support. The
supplies(food, weapons) were coming
through a route that was known as the
Ho Chi Minh Trail.
• The Ho Chi Minh Trail straddled the
border between Vietnam and Cambodia
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.
Cambodia - p.2
• President Nixon, committing what some
people view as a far greater crime than
Watergate, ordered the secret and illegal
carpet bombing of Cambodia in an effort to
stop the flow of war materials to the Viet
Cong.
• This action dramatically destabilized the
region.
• Meanwhile, a band of radical Maoists were
biding their time in the jungle, surviving on
bugs and roots, and slowing going insane.
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It was time for the Khmer Rouge to strike.
The Khmer Rouge
• The leader of the Khmer Rouge led his army out of the
mountains of Cambodia (also known as Kampuchea)
and had the entire population relocate to the
countryside for “re-education.”
• The capital city of Phnom Penh was completely
evacuated.
• The Khmer Rouge declared it was year “0.” If a person
could read, write, drive a car, or wear eyeglasses - they
were executed. The old, the weak, and the young were
executed if they could not stand up to the rigors of hard
labor. Ethnic Thais, Vietnamese, Christians, and
Buddhists were executed. The Khmer Rouge army was
mainly made up of young adults and children.
• Pol Pot’s “diabolical disregard for human life” resulted in
1.7 million Cambodians dying. Roughly, 21% of the
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population.
Aftermath
• Ironically, what saved Cambodia from complete
self-destruction was that a newly united Vietnam
invaded Cambodia, and stopped the killing.
• The United States were against this invasion and
expressed its sympathies for the Khmer
Rouge(politics makes for strange bedfellows).
• Unfortunately, Cambodia is still not right today.
And many parts of the world are still
experiencing the horror of genocide.
• Examples from the 20th Century: Armenian; Nazi
Germany; East Timor; Guatemala, Yugoslavia,
Rwanda.
• Examples from today’s headlines: South Sudan,
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Congo, Syria.
Sources
• If you have an interest to look into the
atrocities in Cambodia and elsewhere,
check out Yale University’s Genocide
Studies Program.
• Also, the World Without Genocide
organization as part of the William
Mitchell College of Law is a valuable
resource.
• Additionally, the Oscar winning film, The
Killing Fields is highly recommended.
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Rows of Skulls
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Pol Pot
Cambodian Victim
To add to the horror, the Khmer Rouge
recorded and catalogued their
murders. This young girl is being
photographed just prior to her death.
Mass Grave in Cambodia