Vietnam War By: Brandon Walters and Derek Hennies

Brief History of Vietnam Lasted from 1959 to Also known as the Second Indochina War Spread all across Vietnam and parts of Laos and Cambodia. The war was escalated due to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Soon there was a total of 553,000 soldiers in Vietnam

Cont. Richard Nixon started a policy know as “Vietnamization”. In June of 1969, Nixon began to pull troops out of Vietnam and started to give the ARVN more responsibility for the war. On April 30, 1975, VPA soldiers overtook Saigon and the Presidential Palace, thus ending the war. 58,159 U.S troops lost their lives during the conflict and 1,176,000 NVA or NLF were either dead or missing.

What is Vietnamization? It was a plan constructed by Richard Nixon and his closest advisors to slowly pull out of Vietnam and train, supply and give more power back to the South Vietnamese. This led to the peace talks in Paris. One advisor told NVA Generals that Nixon hated Communism so much that he would have to resort to nuclear weapons to avoid a humiliating defeat.

Cont. Nixon also established a secret program called the Phoenix Program. They were ARVN troops that were trained by the CIA to eliminate high value targets within the NLF. The program however, did not effect the outcome of the peace talks and the NVA were still intent on taking over the South.

Phoenix Program The Phoenix Program received a reputation as an “assassins” team. In all of their engagements, high priority targets either died in battle or committed suicide. After their engagements were heard throughout Vietnam and the United States, the public was outraged thinking they were executing them instead of putting them on trial.

Cambodian Campaign Since the Phoenix Program failed to end the war, Nixon had U.S troops enter Cambodia to stop the Viet Cong from using that as an escape route and to try to bring the war to even terms.

Fall of Saigon From 1972 to 1975, Nixon started to order mass amounts of soldiers from Vietnam and Cambodia. He still offered supplies to the ARVN, but it was useless against a experienced and determined North Vietnamese Army. On April 30, 1975, the NVA surrounded and captured the Presidential Palace and raised the North Vietnamese flag over the capital. Their victory came at the cost of 3 million North Vietnamese wounded or killed.

The End