Southeast Asia

Cold War in Southeast Asia U.S. supported independence of colonial people. U.S. feared the spread of communism Southeast Asian countries lack experience in self-government

Let’s take a closer look at the War! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0t-YBemwzs

Vietnam Two Battles First Battle 1946-1954 Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese communist, resist the Japanese invasion. Controlled Northern Vietnam French tried to maintain control of Indochina (peninsula of SEAsia) With peasant support and guerrilla fighters he forced the French out.

Ho Chi Minh Viet Cong

A Divided Vietnam Struggle in Cold War 1954 conference in Geneva, Switzerland, western and communist powers agreed to a temporary division of Vietnam North Vietnam= Communist South Vietnam= noncommunist, led by Ngo Dinh Diem Cambodia and Laos became independent

South Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem

Reunite Vietnam 1956 agreement called for elections to reunite Vietnam. Domino Theory: U.S. was afraid that if election were held that south Vietnam would fall to communism that would sweep across Asia. U.S. sent military to help Diem

American Involvement Second Battle 1959-1975 Ho Chi Minh wanted to unite Vietnam under communist rule. He supported the Viet Cong, communist rebels in the South who are trying to overthrow Diem. U.S. President Kennedy and Johnson sent 500,000 American troops by 1969. Soviet Union and China only sent aid no troops

Ho Chi Minh Trail

South could not defeat the north President Nixon arranged for a cease-fire 1973 U.S. troops start to withdraw Two years later Vietnam reunited under communist rule.

What effects of the Vietnam war can still be seen today, even in America?

Cambodia North Vietnam sent the Viet Cong supplies through Cambodia. U.S. bombed that route and invaded Cambodia. The communist guerrillas in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, overthrew the government.

Pol Pot Leader of the Khmer Rouge Led a reign of terror The name Khmer Rouge, which means "Red Khmers," was given to a left-wing Cambodian group in the 1950s. Led by Pol Pot, it gained control of Cambodia in 1975. And then began one of the century's greatest massacres. In 1979 Vietnam invaded and Pol Pot retreated. 1993 UN peace keepers supervised elections.

The enormity of what Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge party did in the latter half of the 1970s can be defined as a genocide. The death toll: certainly more than a million, perhaps twice that amount. Among the first evidence of the horror, this "killing field" was uncovered in 1980.

Massacres took place in this Phnom Penh high school which turned into its headquarters, renamed S-21. Thousands were tortured and executed in former classrooms.

Pol Pot declared "Year Zero" and began a radical program to create an idealized agrarian communist society. He crushed social institutions such as banking and religion and emptied cities of their inhabitants. Intellectuals and anyone else seen as standing in the way of the new social order were mercilessly killed, while many of those who escaped execution died from overwork and starvation.

"To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss." The Khmer Rouge was ousted from power by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979. But it had already caused the deaths of between 1.5 million and 2 million people, according to Western estimates. "To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss."

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