Vietnam War: The early years

French Rule in Vietnam  From the late 1800’s until WWII  Took much of the land from the peasants  The Vietnamese staged several revolts and strikes during the 1930’s  Indochinese Communist Party

Ho Chi Minh  The French had condemned him to death for his rebellious activity, he fled Vietnam  Vietminh  Group sought Vietnam’s independence from foreign rule

France Battles the Vietminh  Ho Chi Minh vowed to fight from the North to liberate the South from French control  The United States paid for much of France’s war  During WWII:  United States had forged an alliance with Ho Chi Minh  Supplying him with aid to resist the Japanese  The U.S. now saw their one time ally (Ho Chi Minh) as a Communist aggressor

The Vietminh drive out the French  Domino Theory  Likened the countries on the brink of communism to a row of dominoes  May of 1954  The Vietminh overran the French outpost at Dien Bien Phu  The Geneva Accords temporarily divided Vietnam along the 17 th parallel

Diem Cancels Elections  South Vietnam’s president Ngo Dinh Diem, a strong anti-communist, refused to take part in the countrywide election of 1956  Corrupt Government  Restricting Buddhist practices  Communist opposition group in the South known as the Vietcong had begun attacks on Diem government  Ho Chi Minh began supplying arms to the Vietcong via a network of paths along the border of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (Ho Chi Minh Trail)

Ho Chi Minh Trail

Kennedy and Vietnam  Increased financial aid to Diem’s teetering regime and sent thousands of military advisers to help train South Vietnamese troops strategic hamlet program which meant moving all villagers to protected areas  Diem administration initiated the strategic hamlet program which meant moving all villagers to protected areas  Diem also intensified his attack on Buddhism

Kennedy and Vietnam  To protest, several Buddhist monks and nuns publically burned themselves to death  November 1, 1963, a U.S. supported military coup topped Diem’s regime  Against Kennedy’s wishes, Diem was executed

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution  August 2, 1964  North Vietnamese patrol boat fired a torpedo at an American destroyer, the U.S.S. Maddox  The alleged attack on the U.S. ships prompted Johnson to launch bombing strikes on the North Vietnam

The Tonkin Gulf resolution  August 7, congress adopted the Tonkin Gulf Resolution  Not a declaration of war  Granted Johnson broad military powers in Vietnam  February 1965  Operation Rolling Thunder  The first sustained bombing of North Vietnam  By June more than 50,000 U.S. soldiers were battling the Vietcong

Strong support for containment  Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara  Secretary of State Dean Rusk  President Johnson began dispatching tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers to fight in Vietnam

Strong support for containment General William Westmoreland continued to request more troops  The American commander in South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland continued to request more troops  By 1967 the numbers of U.S. troops in Vietnam had climbed to about 500,000

A war in the Jungle  The Vietcong lacked the high-powered weaponry of the American Forces  Used hit-and-run and ambush tactics as well as a keen knowledge of the jungle terrain  The enemy laced the terrain with countless booby traps and land mines tunnels that allowed the Vietcong to launch surprise attacks then disappear quickly  A network of elaborate tunnels that allowed the Vietcong to launch surprise attacks then disappear quickly

War of Attrition  Westmoreland’s strategy destroy their morale through a war of attrition or gradual wearing down of the enemy  Westmoreland’s strategy for defeating the Vietcong was to destroy their morale through a war of attrition or gradual wearing down of the enemy  Continuous harassment  The Vietcong had no intention of quitting their fight

Battle for “Hearts and Minds”  Keep the Vietcong from winning the support of South Vietnam’s rural population  Some of the tactics Americans used to battle the Vietcong also harmed the rural population  U.S. planes dropped napalm, a gasoline based bomb that set fire to the jungle  Sprayed Agent Orange a leaf killing toxic chemical that devastated the landscape  Search and destroy missions

The early war at home  In August of 1967 Johnson asked for a tax increased to help fund the war and to keep inflation in check  Receiving a $6 billion reduction in funding for the Great Society programs

Living Room War  Footage of combat appeared nightly on the news in millions of homes  Repeated television images of Americans in body bags  A credibility gap