Gulf of Tonkin In early August 1964, two U.S. destroyers stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam radioed that they had been fired upon by North Vietnamese forces. In response to these reported incidents, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested permission from the U.S. Congress to increase the U.S. military presence in Indochina. On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. This resolution became the legal basis for the Johnson and Nixon Administrations prosecution of the Vietnam War.

Operation Rolling Thunder: 1965-1968 The name given to America’s sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Operation Rolling Thunder was a demonstration of America’s near total air supremacy during the Vietnam War. It was started in an effort to demoralize the North Vietnamese people and to undermine the capacity of the government in North Vietnam to govern. Operation Rolling Thunder failed on both accounts. On March 2, 1965, the USAF began a systematic bombing campaign against North Vietnam. Planners hoped to provide a morale boost to South Vietnamese forces, interdict the flow of supplies going south, and discourage North Vietnamese aggression.

Tet Offensive On January 31, 1968, some 70,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched the Tet Offensive (named for the lunar new year holiday called Tet), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam. Though U.S. and South Vietnamese forces managed to hold off the Communist attacks, news coverage of the offensive shocked and dismayed the American public and further eroded support for the war effort. Despite heavy casualties, North Vietnam achieved a strategic victory with the Tet Offensive, as the attacks marked a turning point in the Vietnam War and the beginning of the slow, painful American withdrawal from the region.

Easter Offensive With the majority of U.S. troops out of South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese sensed an opportunity to end the war with a conventional invasion. On March 30, 1972, North Vietnam launched the Easter Offensive -- a large, three-pronged drive into South Vietnam using heavy tanks and mobile units. U.S. airpower played an essential role in stopping the attack. Airpower not only supplied materiel to the encircled ground forces, but also destroyed nearly all of the North Vietnamese tanks and artillery. When the Easter Offensive came to a halt, however, North Vietnam controlled much of South Vietnam near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), along with a strip of land along South Vietnam's border with Laos and Cambodia. North Vietnamese accomplished two important goals: they had gained valuable territory within South Vietnam from which to launch future offensives and they had obtained a better bargaining position at the peace negotiations being conducted in Paris.

A Difficult War Not only were the U.S. troops limited in what they could do strategically by President Johnson, the jungles of Vietnam proved a difficult place to fight a war. It was very difficult to find the enemy in the jungles and also difficult to determine who was the enemy. The troops had to deal with booby traps and constant ambushes from people they thought they were fighting for.

The U.S. Exits the War When Richard Nixon became president he decided to end U.S. involvement in the war He first began removing troops from Vietnam in July of 1969; On January 27, 1973 a peace fire was negotiated. A few months later in March the final US troops were removed from Vietnam; In April of 1975 South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam. Soon the country became officially unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Vietnam was now a communist country. The U.S. had lost the Vietnam War and also taken a major blow in the Cold War.

Facts about the Vietnam War The Viet Cong were Vietnamese rebels in the South who fought against the Southern Vietnam government and the United States North and South Vietnam were divided at the 17th Parallel Ho Chi Minh died during the war in 1969. The city of Saigon was later renamed to Ho Chi Minh City in his honor. The U.S. chosen president of South Vietnam was not a good leader; he was hated by many Vietnamese and was executed in November of 1963. 58,220 U.S. soldiers died in the Vietnam War. It is estimated that millions of Vietnamese died either in battle or as civilians caught in the crossfire.

At Home…. The movement against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War began small–among peace activists and leftist intellectuals on college campuses–but gained national prominence in 1965, after the United States began bombing North Vietnam in earnest. Anti-war marches and other protests, such as the ones organized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), attracted a widening base of support over the next three years, peaking in early 1968 after the successful Tet Offensive by North Vietnamese troops proved that war’s end was nowhere in sight.

Woodstock On the weekend of August 15, 16 and 17, 1969, over 500,000 people from all over the U.S. traveled to Woodstock, in upstate New York, for what would become the most famous music festival ever. Woodstock was a stridently antiwar spectacle. Woodstock featured some of the more memorable acts of the Rock & Roll era––Richie Havens, Joan Baez, John Sebastian, Arlo Guthrie, Santana, Mountain, Canned Heat, CCR, Janis Joplin, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, Sha Na Na, The Band, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, CSNY, and Country Joe and the Fish and Jimi Hendrix The festival was billed as "three days of peace and love," in contrast to the war and hatred in Vietnam. Festival organizers pointed out that anyone buying a ticket was contributing to a united front against the Vietnam War. Scores of acts played and made antiwar speeches

Movies to Watch….. Apocalypse Now Full Metal Jacket Platoon The Deer Hunter Good Morning Vietnam Forrest Gump We Were Soldiers ****ALL OF THESE MOVIES ARE RATED R….THEY ARE RATED R DUE TO VIOLENCE, LANGUAGE, SEXUALITY, AND SEVERE WAR SCENES. BEFORE WATCHING ANY OF THE FOLLOWING MOVIES GET APPROVAL BY A PARENT/GUARDIAN. **** If you watch one of the following movies and submit a 2- page reflection about the movie and what it meant to you or how the movie made you feel by May 30th, you will earn extra credit.