VIETNAM 1946-75

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VIETNAM1946-75
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PHASE 1 - A WAR OF COLONIAL INDEPENDENCE

• Against the French
• the Vietnamese revolutionary leader was Ho Chi
  Minh, a Communist
• Ho received support
• from both the USSR and Red China

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• this colonial war raged from 1946-54, culminating
  in the French defeat at Dienbienphu
• the decision at the conference was to partition
  Vietnam into a communist North led by Ho and a
  democratic South Vietnam led by Ngo Dinh Diem
• the US had come to see South Vietnam as a
  domino that they couldnt afford to lose

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PHASE 2 AMERICAN ESCALATION AND MILITARY
INVOLVEMENT

• this phase originated with
• Ike and JFK but was
• intensified under Lyndon
• Baines Johnson (LBJ)
• The U.S. never formally
• issued a declaration of war, but
• after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident,
• where 2 American destroyers were apparently
  fired upon by the North
• Vietnamese, Congress
• passed the Gulf of Tonkin
• Resolutions (August 1964)
• - here Congress gave LBJ
• their support in sending
• American personnel and materiel

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• in spite of ongoing escalation
• throughout the 1960s, the US
• experienced a lack of success
• against the Vietnamese
• guerrilla forces in S.
• Vietnam (the Vietcong) as the
• US Army was unprepared for
• their tactics and mentality

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• the war definitely turned against the US in 1968,
  the Tet Offensive, a surprise offensive on a
  major Vietnamese holiday that saw attacks all
  over the country, including in Saigon itself
• ongoing US casualties and losses saw an increase
  in antiwar sentiment on the American Home Front

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• Americans saw many atrocities like at My Lai
  (Lieutenant Calley)
• they also witnessed the usage of weapons like
  napalm and Agent Orange, which devastated the
  environment

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• as the Counterculture gathered momentum (Hippies,
  Flower Children, etc.), protests became
  widespread and began to polarize the nation
• this was intensified after the Kent State Massacre

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• Nixon wanted the South Vietnamese to play a
  greater role in the war, a policy he labeled
  Vietnamization
• in spite of that, he orders a secret invasion of
  Cambodia
• the US does manage to extricate itself by Jan.
  27, 1973

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PHASE 3 VIETNAMESE CIVIL WAR, 1973-75

• the NVA easily defeated the South by 1975 the
  South had appealed to Nixon for aid, but by 1975
  Nixon was embroiled in the domestic Watergate
  Crisis