The Vietnam War

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The Vietnam War

• 1954-1975

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Ho Chi Minh
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Who Supports the Vietminh?
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Who Supports the French back Government?
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Marshall Plan

• US supported 1.2 billion dollars in military aid
  under the Marshall Plan
• The cost of the war had so far been twice what
  they had received from the United States under
  the Marshall Plan

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French-Vietnam War 1945-1954

• Dein Bien Phu

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Video

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vth7tImvzutc

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Dien Bien Phu
Air-supplied base Cut off Viet Minh supply lines
Draw the Viet Minh into a fixed battle Viet
Minh's possession of heavy artillery and
anti-aircraft guns
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Battle of Dien Bien Phu
March 13 May 7 Massive Vietnamese
causalities Airfield eventually destroyed
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Fall of Dien Bien Phu

• Garrison was a tenth of the total French Union
  manpower
• 17,000 dead
• 10,000 Prisoners
• 3,290 repatriated

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French War weariness

• French War weariness
• 1946-1952 90,000 French troops had been killed,
  wounded or captured
• Public dissatisfaction
• Damaged prestige
• 1954 Algerian War starts
• 1956 Moroccan and Tunisian
• independence.
• Sets up Geneva Agreements

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Geneva Agreements 1954

• Cessation of hostilities
• Supported the territorial integrity and
  sovereignty of Indochina
• Laos and Cambodia to be independent
• End of Foreign involvement
• Partitioned 17th Parallel into northern and
  southern zones
• Unification on the basis of internationally
  supervised free elections to be held in July 1956

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Refugee Crisis

• 300,000 leave North
• Secretary of State Dulles Neither the United
  States Government nor the Government of Viet-Nam
  is, of course, a party to the Geneva armistice
  agreements. We did not sign them, and the
  Government of Viet-Nam did not sign them and,
  indeed, protested against them.
• Diem skeptical concerning the possibility of
  fulfilling the conditions of free elections in
  the North. 

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Vietnam War 1954-1963
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Domino theory
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Ngo Dinh Diem

• Authoritarian
• laws by decree
• emergency powers
• Corrupt / Nepotistic

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US support
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Safe Village concept
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Hamlet Protection

• Development of the hamlet model
• Added security protection
• hearts and minds
• Problems
• Working in fields
• Enemy within

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Religious tensions

• Wife clap hands at seeing another monk barbecue
  show
• Religious discrimination against Buddhism

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US response to Coup rumors
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Growing unrest

• Coup attempt 1960
• Assassination attempt 1962
• August 23, 1963 Buddhist strike and raids
• Coup and execution
• USA support

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Lyndon B Johnson Years 1964-1968

• Hey Hey LBJ
• How Many Babies did you kill today
• Anti War Protest chant

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LBJ

• 1964 election ran anti-war
• 1964 Election Ad Daisy Girl (1964)
  http//www.youtube.com/watch?vOKs-bTL-pRg
• Great Society / Civil Rights movement
• Great expansion of US war effort

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Gulf of Tonkin
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave U.S. President
Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a formal
declaration of war by Congress, for the use of
military force in Southeast Asia.
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Declassifed NSA report

• It is not simply that there is a different story
  as to what happened it is that no attack
  happened that night. ... In truth, Hanoi's navy
  was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage
  of two of the boats damaged on 2 August.

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Curtis LaMay

• Strategic bombing campaign (Pacific Theatre) of
  World War II.
• States Strategic Bombing Survey
• 330,000 people killed,
• 476,000 injured,
• 8.5 million people homeless
• theyve got to draw in their horns and stop
  their aggression, or were going to bomb them
  back into the Stone Age.

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Shifting US attitudes

• Causes

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South Vietnamese Government
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Horrors of War
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vEv2dEqrN4i0feature
channel
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Mai Lai
Reading http//www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4
85983/Found-The-monster-My-Lai-massacre.html
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Agent Orange

• 4,000,000 victims of dioxin poisoning (Vietnam
  Government 2006 estimates)
• destroy rice crops (food supply for the Vietcong)
• Destroy Jungle cover (enemy were hiding their
  activities in thick jungle canopy)

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Agent Orange
Year Total Gallons Used Total Acres effected US Soldiers in Vietnam
1962 17,171 5,724 502
1963 74,760 24,920
1964 281,607 93,869
1965 664,657 221,552 180,000
1966 2,535,788 845,263 350,000
1967 5,123,353 1,707,784 389,000
1968 5,089,010 1,696,337
1969 4,558,817 1,519,606 540,000
1970 758,966 252,989 335,000
1971 10,039 3,346 160,000
Year Unknown 281,201 93,734
TOTAL 19,395,369 6,465,123
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Agent Orange

• Dr. Huong ushered me into a large room, perhaps
  twenty-five feet long by fifteen feet wide, its
  walls covered with floor to ceiling shelves.
  Everywhere were two-and-a-half gallon,
  formalin-filled Bell jars, in each of which
  floated an aborted or full-term fetus. Many were
  genetic monstrosities twinned or triple
  conjoined, hydrocephalic, some covered with
  cancerous growths, their eyes staring blankly
  through the glass at sights they would never see.
  Dr. Huong, sadly told me, "They're not babies.
  They're monsters." And they were. The genetics of
  one fetus had gone so awry that its genitals were
  growing out of the middle of its face!

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US Draft

• 1950s 600 -1000 advisors
• 1961 16,000
• 1964 23,000
• 1965 165,000
• 1967 500,000

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Tet offensive 1968
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vq1vJqTN-qVI
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Tet offensive
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Loss for North but..,
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Nixon Years and the end of the War

• Détente
• Negotiations
• Vietnamization
• Strength

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Nixon 1968 Campaign Slogans

• Peace with honor
• "new leadership will end the war and win the
  peace in the Pacific."
• Very ambigious / Nixons secret plan
• 1972 "peace is at hand".

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Vietnamization

• gradually building up the strength of the South
  Vietnamese armed forces
• re-equipping it with modern weapons so that they
  could defend their nation on their own.

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Secret Negotiations

• Started in 1968
• Conducted in Paris
• Little progress on key issues
• There was a length debate concerned the table
  to be used at the conference. The North favored a
  circular table, in which all parties, including
  NLF (Vietcong) representatives, would appear to
  be 'equal' in importance. The South Vietnamese
  argued that only a rectangular table was
  acceptable, for only a rectangle could show two
  distinct sides to the conflict. Eventually a
  compromise was reached, in which representatives
  of the northern and southern governments would
  sit at a circular table, with members
  representing all other parties sitting on
  individual square tables around them.

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Henry Kissinger

• To achieve its full effect on Hanoi's thinking,
  the action must be brutal."

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Negotiation with strength
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Problem Ho Chi Minh trail
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Problem Tunnels

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vw-eWJHsFscA

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Expansion of War (March1969) Bombing and
invasion (April 1970) of Cambodia and Laos
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Expansion of the war
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Peace / Anti War Movement

• Songs from the era http//www.jwsrockgarden.com/jw
  02vvaw.htm

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Universities Strikes / Kent State
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1972 Events

• Escalation and Peace Agreement

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Easter or Nguyen Hue Offensive

• Large scale conventional invasion
• Gained territory in 4 Northern Provinces
• North 100,000 casualties and 450 tanks destroyed
  
• Operation Linebacker 198 US Causalities

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Operation Linebacker I
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Operation Linebacker II
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The Paris Peace Accords 1973

• A cease-fire was declared
• All foreign troops withdrawn within 60 days
• U.S. prisoners of war would be released
• Negotiations between the two South Vietnamese
  parties Saigon and the Vietcong towards a
  political settlement
• Reunification of Vietnam was to be "carried out
  step by step through peaceful means."
• Territory respected 17th parallel

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Foreign Assistance Act of 1974

• No further military funding to the South
  Vietnamese army

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Campaign 275 - 1975

• March 10 Limited assault to test resolve of the
  South Vietnam army
• Little resistance and panic
• April 30th Saigon falls

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http//www.youtube.com/watch?v3AiyFF9qOls
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THE COSTS OF WAR
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Cambodias Khmer Rouge Killing Fields

• Khmer Rouge wanted to eliminate anyone suspected
  of "involvement in free-market activities".
  Suspected capitalists encompassed professionals
  and almost everyone with an education, many urban
  dwellers, and people with connections to foreign
  governments

• deaths of an estimated 1.5 million people or 1/5
  of the country's total population

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Cambodias Khmer Rouge Killing Fields

• Kiernan"Pol Pot's revolution would not have won
  power without U.S. economic and military
  destabilisation of Cambodia" and that the U.S.
  carpet bombing "was probably the most significant
  factor in Pol Pot's rise.
• Taylor Owen using a combination of satellite
  mapping, recently unclassified data about the
  extent of bombing activities, and peasant
  testimony, there was a strong correlation
  between villages targeted by U.S. bombing and
  recruitment of peasants by the Khmer Rouge.

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Resources

• The Vietnam Warhttp//www.vietnampix.com/sitemap.
  htm Vietnam Interactive Portfoliohttp//icarus.
  shu.edu/gallery/V_Portfolio/ Vietnam War
  Internet Project http//www.vwip.org/imagetop.htm
  l
• Timelines
• From PBSTimeline of the Vietnam
  Warhttp//www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/timeline
  /