Why we chose to write about The Vietnam War

In this project on the Vietnam War, we will look into how the situation was in the US before, during and after the Vietnam War. We will also see the consequences of the aftermaths.

 

Our group decided to choose the Vietnam War because it was the only war the United States has ever lost. And because they lost so many men. We see reflections from this war, to the war against terror in the Afghanistan. Because the terrain and patriotism is the same. All the people who support the Taliban are willing to sacrifice their lives for them.

 

All tough the US has a bigger success in the Afghanistan than in the Vietnam as the situation are now.

 

 

Introduction to the Vietnam War

The Vietnam War, the United States’, cost fifty-eight thousand American lives. Only the Civil War and the two world wars were deadlier for Americans. During the U.S. military participation in Vietnam beginning in 1964, the U.S. government spent over $140 billion on the war, enough money to make lives in the industry countries be good again. Despite these enormous costs, the United States failed, for the first time in its history, to achieve its stated war aims. The goal was to preserve a separate, independent, non-communist government in South Vietnam, but after April 1975, the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (drv) ruled the entire nation.

 

The initial reasons for U.S. involvement in Vietnam seemed logical and compelling to American leaders. Because of its success in World War II, the United States faced the future with confidence. Any communist anywhere, at home or abroad, was, by definition, an enemy of the United States (as we can see in the terror war that the U.S. is having now).

 

In Vietnam the target of containment was Ho Chi Minh and the Vietminh front he had created in 1941. Ho and his chief lieutenants were communists with long-standing connections to the Soviet Union. They were also nationalists who fought first to rid their country of the Japanese and then, after 1945, to prevent France from re-establishing its former colonial mastery over Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. Harry S. Truman and other American leaders, having no sympathy for French colonialism, favoured Vietnamese independence.

 

President Dwight D. Eisenhower increased the level of aid to the French but continued to avoid military intervention, even when the French experienced a devastating defeat at Dien Bien Phu in the spring of 1954. Following that battle, an international conference at Geneva, Switzerland, arranged a cease-fire and provided for a North-South partition of Vietnam until elections could be held. The United States was not a party to the Geneva Agreements and began to raise a Vietnamese regime in South Vietnam to rival that of Ho in the North. Eisenhower enunciated the "domino theory," which held that, if the communists succeeded in controlling Vietnam, they would progressively dominate all of Southeast Asia. With support from Washington, South Vietnam's autocratic president Ngo Dinh Diem, who took over for Bao Dai in October 1955, resisted holding an election on the reunification of Vietnam. Despite over $1 billion of U.S. aid between 1955 and 1961, the South Vietnamese economy languished and internal security deteriorated. Nation building was failing in the South, and, in 1960, communist cadres created the National Liberation Front ((nlf)), or Vietcong as its enemies called it, to challenge the Diem regime.

 

 

The War

 

Vietnam War

Military struggle fought in Vietnam from 1959 to 1975. It began as a determined attempt by Communist guerrillas (the so-called Vietcong) in the South, backed by Communist North Vietnam, to overthrow the government of South Vietnam. The struggle widened into a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam and ultimately into a limited international conflict. The United States and some 40 other countries supported South Vietnam by supplying troops and munitions, and the USSR and the People's Republic of China furnished munitions to North Vietnam and the Vietcong. On both sides, however, the burden of the war fell mainly on the civilians.

The war also engulfed Laos, where the Communist Pathet Lao fought the government from 1965 to 1973 and succeeded in abolishing the monarchy in 1975; and Cambodia, where the government surrendered in 1973 to the Communist Khmer Rouge.

This article is concerned primarily with the military aspects of the war; for further discussion of the historical and political issues involved.

 

Vietnam

(1945-54). The war developed as a sequel to the struggle (1946-54) between the French, who were the rulers of Indochina before World War II, and the Communist-led Vietminh, or League for the Independence of Vietnam, founded and headed by the revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh. Having emerged as the strongest of the nationalist groups that fought the Japanese occupation of French Indochina during World War II, the league was determined to resist the reestablishment of French colonial rule and to implement political and social changes.

 

Following the surrender of Japan to the Allies in August 1945, Vietminh guerrillas seized the capital city of Hanoi and forced the abdication of Emperor Bao Dai. On September 2 they declared Vietnam to be independent and announced the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, commonly called North Vietnam, with Ho Chi Minh as president. France officially recognised the new state, but the subsequent inability of the Vietminh and France to reach satisfactory political and economic agreements led to armed conflict beginning in December 1946. With French backing Bao Dai set up the state of Vietnam, commonly called South Vietnam, on July 1, 1949, and established a new capital at Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City).

The following year, the U.S. officially recognised the Saigon government, and to assist it, U.S. President Harry S. Truman dispatched a military assistance advisory group to train South Vietnam in the use of U.S. weapons. In the meantime, the two main adversaries in Vietnam—France and the Vietminh—were steadily building up their forces. The decisive battle of the war developed in the spring of 1954 as the Vietminh attacked the French fortress of Diem Biên in northern Vietnam. On May 8, 1954, after a 55-day siege, the French surrendered.

 

On the same day, both North and South Vietnamese delegates met with those of France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, Communist China, and the two other Indochinese states, Laos and Cambodia, in Geneva, to discuss the future of all of Indochina. Under accords drawn up at the conference, France and North Vietnam agreed to a truce. It was further agreed to partition the country temporarily along the 17th parallel, with the north going to the Communists and the south placed under the control of the Saigon government. The agreement stipulated that elections for reunification of the country would be held in 1956.

 

Neither the U.S. nor the Saigon government agreed to the Geneva accords, but the U.S. announced it would do nothing to undermine the agreement. Once the French had withdrawn from Vietnam, the U.S. moved to bolster the Saigon government militarily and, as asserted by some observers, engaged in covert activities against the Hanoi government. On October 24, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower offered South Vietnam direct economic aid, and the following February, U.S. military advisers were dispatched to train South Vietnamese forces. American support for the Saigon government continued even after Bao Dai was deposed, in a referendum on October 23, 1955, and South Vietnam was made a republic, with Ngo Dinh Diem as president. One of Diem's first acts was to announce that his government would refuse to hold reunification elections, on the grounds that the people of North Vietnam would not be free to express their will and because of the probability of falsified votes (although Diem and other South Vietnamese officials were also accused of fraudulent election practices).

 

The New War Begins

The position taken by Diem won the backing of the U.S. The Communist government in Hanoi, however, indicated its determination to reunify the nation under Hanoi. The truce arranged at Geneva began to crumble and by January 1957, the International Control Commission set up to implement the Geneva accords was reporting armistice violations by both North and South Vietnam. Throughout the rest of the year, Communist sympathisers who had gone north after partition began returning south in increasing numbers. Called Vietcong, they began launching attacks on U.S. military installations that had been established, and in 1959 began their guerrilla attacks on the Diem government.

 

The attacks were intensified in 1960, the year in which North Vietnam proclaimed its intention “to liberate South Vietnam from the ruling yoke of the U.S. imperialists and their henchmen.” The statement served to reinforce the belief that Hanoi was directing the Vietcong. On November 10, the Saigon government charged that regular North Vietnamese troops were taking a direct part in Vietcong attacks in South Vietnam. To show that the guerrilla movement was independent, however, the Vietcong set up their own political arm, known as the National Liberation Front (NLF), with its headquarters in Hanoi.

 

Social and Political Turbulence in South Vietnam

In the face of the deteriorating situation, the U.S. restated its support for Saigon. In April 1961, a treaty of amity and economic relations was signed with South Vietnam, and in December, President John F. Kennedy pledged to help South Vietnam maintain its independence. Subsequently, U.S. economic and military assistance to the Diem government increased significantly. In December 1961, the first U.S. troops, consisting of 400 uniformed army personnel, arrived in Saigon in order to operate two helicopter companies; the U.S. proclaimed, however, that the troops were not combat units as such. A year later, U.S. military strength in Vietnam stood at 11,200.

 

The Diem government, meanwhile, proved unable to defeat the Communists or to cope with growing unrest among South Vietnamese Buddhists and other religious groups. Antigovernment agitation among the Buddhists was especially strong, with many burning themselves to death as a sign of protest. Still others were placed under arrest, the government charging that politically hostile persons, including Communists had infiltrate the Buddhist groups. Although this contention was supported by outside observers, including an U.S. fact-finding team, religious friction between the Buddhists and the Catholic-led government was at least as powerful a force as political conflict.

 

On November 1, 1963, the Diem regime was overthrown in a military coup. Diem and his brother and political adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were executed. The circumstances surrounding the coup was not fully clear at the time. In the summer of 1971, however, with the publication by the U.S. press of a secret Pentagon study of the war (see Controversy in the U.S. below), it was revealed that the coup had been known to be imminent and that the U.S. was prepared to support a successor government.

 

The government that replaced the Diem regime was a revolutionary council headed by Brigadier General Duong Van Minh. A series of other coups followed, and in the 18 months after Diem's overthrow South Vietnam had ten different governments. None of these proved capable of dealing effectively with the country's military situation. A military council under General Nguyen Van Thieu and General Nguyen Cao Ky was finally created in 1965, and it restored basic political order. Later, in September 1967, elections were held and Thieu became president of South Vietnam.

 

Deepening U.S. Involvement

Unlike conventional wars, the war in Vietnam had no defined front lines. Much of it consisted of hit-and-run attacks, with the guerrillas striking at government outposts and retreating into the jungle. In the early 1960s some North Vietnamese troops, however, began to infiltrate into South Vietnam to help the Vietcong, and supplies sent to Hanoi from the USSR and China were sent south down the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail. The war began to escalate in the first week of August 1964, when North Vietnamese torpedo boats were reported to have attacked two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Acting on the resolution passed on August 7 by the U.S. Senate (the so-called Tonkin Gulf Resolution), authorising increased military involvement, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered jets to South Vietnam and the retaliatory bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. From 1964 to 1968 General William C. Westmoreland was commander of U.S. forces in South Vietnam; General Creighton Abrams replaced him in 1968.

 

In February 1965, U.S. planes began regular bombing raids over North Vietnam. A halt was ordered in May in the hope of initiating peace talks, but when North Vietnam rejected all negotiations, the bombings were resumed. In the meantime, the U.S. continued to build up its troop strength in South Vietnam. On March 6, 1965, a brigade of American marines landed at Dà Nang, south of the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that had originally been set up at the time of partition. The marines, the first U.S. combat ground-force units to serve in the country, brought the number in the U.S. military forces in Vietnam to some 27,000. By year's end American combat strength was nearly 200,000.

 

While continuing the military build-up in Vietnam, the United States made another attempt to end the war. In December 1965, President Johnson again halted the bombing of North Vietnam in an effort to achieve a peaceful settlement. Again he was unsuccessful, and the raids were resumed. In June 1966, U.S. planes began bombing major installations near Hanoi and the neighbouring port of Haiphong, both of which had heretofore been spared.

 

In October 1966, government representatives from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, South Korea, and the Philippines—all of which had contributed troops to South Vietnam—met in Manila and pledged their withdrawal within six months after North Vietnam abandoned the war. North Vietnam rejected the offer. In June 1967, President Johnson met with Soviet Premier Aleksey N. Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey, and sought his help in bringing Hanoi to the peace table. The war, however, dragged on.

 

Two months after the Glassboro meeting, President Johnson announced that U.S. forces in Vietnam would be further increased to 525,000 by 1968. At the same time, U.S. planes extended their bombings of North Vietnam to within 16-km (10 miles) of the Chinese border. Shortly thereafter, President Johnson again offered to stop the bombardment of North Vietnam provided peace talks would follow. As in the past, Hanoi rejected the offer.

 

The war continued, and casualty figures rose. In November 1967, the Pentagon announced that total U.S. casualties in Vietnam since the beginning of 1961 had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. The mounting toll was accompanied by a growing sentiment within the U.S. for an end to the war, the cost of which, apart from the loss of life, was estimated by the president at $25 billion per year. The demand for peace became increasingly vocal in many segments of American society.

 

Vietnamization of the War (1969-71)

In 1969, within a few months after taking office, Johnson's successor, President Richard M. Nixon, announced that 25,000 U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Vietnam by August 1969. Another cut of 65,000 troops was ordered by the end of the year. The program, known as Vietnamization of the war, came into effect, as President Nixon emphasised additional responsibilities of the South Vietnamese. Neither the U.S. troop reduction, however, nor the death of North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh, on September 3, 1969, served to break the stalemate in Paris; the North Vietnamese delegates continued to insist upon complete U.S. withdrawal as a condition for peace.

 

In April 1970, U.S. combat troops entered Cambodia following the occurrence there of a political coup. Within three months, the U.S. campaign in Cambodia ended, but air attacks on North Vietnam were renewed.

 

By 1971 South Vietnamese forces were playing an increasing role in the war, fighting in both Cambodia and Laos as well as in South Vietnam. At this point, however, the Paris talks and the war itself were overshadowed by the presidential election in South Vietnam. The chief contestants were Nguyen Van Thieu, who was running for reelection, Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, and General Duong Van Minh. Both Ky and Minh, after charging that the election had been rigged, withdrew, and Thieu won another 4-year term.

 

Through the later months of 1971, American withdrawal continued. It coincided, however, with a new military buildup in North Vietnam, thought to be in preparation for a major drive down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into Laos and Cambodia. Heavy U.S. air attacks followed throughout the Indochina war sector. On the ground, meanwhile, Vietnamese Communist forces had launched massive effective attacks against government forces in South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. It was feared also that Hanoi might launch a major offensive in South Vietnam's central highlands, timing the operating for the Tet observance.

 

Casualty figures in 1971 reflected the intensification of South Vietnam's own fighting efforts against the Communists. While U.S. deaths in Vietnam declined dramatically to 1380, compared to 4221 in 1970, the Saigon forces, on the other hand, suffered about 21,500 dead, some in Cambodia and Laos but the majority in South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese claimed the enemy death toll to be 97,000.

Controversy in the U.S.

 

Before troop withdrawal, U.S. military strength in South Vietnam had peaked at over 541,000 in 1969. In the United States itself, as military involvement increased, the war issue increasingly became highly controversial. A peace movement developed and gathered momentum, organising marches and moratoriums against the war in major U.S. cities (see Pacifism). Accelerating this movement was the issue of atrocities committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam. One widely publicised case was the massacre of unarmed civilians at the village of My Lai in 1968. Lieutenant William L. Calley, charged with responsibility for their deaths, was found guilty by a military jury in 1971.

 

A major reinterpretation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was spurred by the controversial publication in 1971 in the New York Times and other newspapers of the so-called Pentagon Papers—a collection of classified U.S. government documents concerning the Vietnamese situation. The papers cast a new, and to many, a dismaying, light on the U.S. handling of the war and of the peace negotiations through the 1960s.

 

Negotiation Impasses

On January 25, 1972, President Nixon publicly recounted the many proposals that the administration had secretly put before the North Vietnamese during the last two and one-half years. At the same time, he unveiled a new eight-point plan for peace in Vietnam, including a new presidential election to be held in South Vietnam.

 

The Nixon plan was followed by a revised version of a peace plan submitted by the Vietcong in July 1971. The new version called for the immediate resignation of President Thieu, to be followed by negotiations with the Saigon administration once it had abandoned what the Vietcong described as its policies of waging war and repression. The same insistence on the immediate resignation of the South Vietnamese president was voiced by Hanoi through the North Vietnamese delegation in Paris, which announced that U.S. prisoners of war would be released only when the U.S. had withdrawn its support from the Thieu administration and the war was brought to an end.

 

South Vietnamese forces, meanwhile, conducted three drives into Cambodia during February 1972. The U.S. announced that it would no longer disclose the number of planes involved in raids over North Vietnam. Peace talks were broken off on March 23.

 

Quang Tri Offensive

The tide of the war took an ominous turn for the worse one week later. On March 30 North Vietnam launched a massive offensive south across the DMZ into Quang Tri Province. In April, the U.S. retaliated with the first deep-penetration bombing raids over the north since 1967.

 

On May 8 President Nixon ordered the mining of major ports of North Vietnam, notably Haiphong, to destroy enemy supply routes. Air strikes were directed against North Vietnamese railroad lines, causing, as a Hanoi newspaper admitted, serious economic problems. Quang Tri City, after being held by the Communists for four and one-half months, was recaptured by South Vietnamese forces on September 15.

 

Temporary Peace

Despite the stepping up of U.S. bombing, both sides appeared anxious to salvage the progress made in negotiation. On December 29, the U.S. announced a halt to the bombing above the 20th parallel, effective the next day.

 

With the new year came the resumption of the secret peace meetings in Paris. Sensing progress in the first days, President Nixon ordered a halt to all bombing, mining, and artillery fire in North Vietnam. After six days of conferring, Kissinger and Tho met once again on January 23, 1973, and, on that evening, President Nixon announced over nationwide television that agreement on all terms for a formal cease-fire had finally been reached.

 

On January 27, in Paris, delegations representing the United States, South Vietnam, North Vietnam, and the Provisional Revolutionary Communist Government of South Vietnam signed an Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam. The cease-fire officially went into effect on January 28. Both the U.S. and North Vietnam asserted that there were no secret peace terms.

 

The peace accord called for complete cessation of hostilities; withdrawal of all U.S. and allied forces from South Vietnam within 60 days of the signing; return of all captured military personnel by both sides at 15-day intervals within 60 days; recognition of the DMZ as “only provisional and not a political or territorial boundary”; an international control commission (composed of representatives of Canada, Hungary, Indonesia, and Poland) to oversee implementation of the peace; and provision for an international conference to be held within 30 days. The accord allowed some 145,000 North Vietnamese troops to remain in South Vietnam, but with limitation on their future replacement and supplies.

 

Cease-Fire Aftermath

By the end of March 1973, all U.S. fighting forces had been withdrawn. Although President Nixon had apparently assured the Thieu government that U.S. forces would step in to support them in the event of a major treaty violation, further military assistance to South Vietnam became politically impossible. One of the reasons for this was the concurrent outbreak of the Watergate scandal.

 

Fighting between Vietnamese antagonists died down shortly after the cease-fire, only to be renewed as each side attempted to hold or expand its military positions. During 1974 fighting escalated, with major engagements occurring throughout the year. In December the North Vietnamese and their southern allies launched a major offensive that quickly resulted in unprecedented success. The government of South Vietnam lost control of numerous important cities; and by the time that Hue was captured in mid-March 1975, the war had become a rout. On April 30, the capital city of Saigon was captured, and the Republic of Vietnam surrendered unconditionally to the Provisional Revolutionary Government.

 

 

The war itself

 

The year is 1965 the US has gone ashore the Vietnam, the rumor among the officers was that this would only be another exercise, another said it was the real thing. The date is April 9th . And the expectations to arrive to an «hot» beach were big. So when the troops arrived and did not even see a Vietnam fish the relief was enormous. And the preparations of setting up camp began.

 

April 10th. The sea was calm as more ships with more troopers arrived. They went ashore and searched for enemies, not a single one was seen before Private Ogden of the US marines discovered a blur of some men come towards them, the army troopers stood ready to fire, but a command from the superior officer said: hold your fire! As the men come closer, they could see it was not enemies, but reporters from the mainland.

- How is the Vietnam war so far, a reporter asked? There is fighting everywhere she said, but at night…

 

The Vietnam War had started, and what made it so hard to fight in this war, was that the Vietnamese soldiers knew there way around the territory and they had underground passes so they could move from one place to another without getting hurt or noticed. And since the enemy did this, the American soldiers did not know where they were. And all the fighting was at night. This was a tactical move from both sides, because at night it was hard to see the others and sneaking around was simple or less dangerous.

Even though the American troops came in great numbers, they did not manage to conquer the Vietnam. American troops lost many men, and a lot of wives did loose their husband during this war. And the number of soldiers who were paralyzed was big.

And all the hills and the terrain were a big reason why the Americans lost so many men.

 

The assignment for most of the privates who was there was to patrol the lines and watch out for Vietnamese troops. This could be a dangerous job for the untrained privates.

Enormous amounts of resources were put into this war, and many American wives were widowed. What was so peculiar was that in almost all battles in this war it needed two or three men from the US to overpower a Vietnamese man.

 

But it was not US themselves who fought this war, it was the South Vietnam. The United States was only an ally to South Vietnam. Although the US lost almost 60 000 men and over 300 000 men where wounded. So their participation was significant. But these numbers are not in the way for the veterans to say that they would most likely agree to go out in a new war just the same as the Vietnam war again. Actually 74% of the Veterans would serve again even knowing the outcome.

 

 

Why the U.S. Lost the War and the Aftermaths

Why did the United States lose the war? Some post-mortems singled out media criticism of the war and antiwar activism in America as undermining the will of the U.S. government to continue fighting. Others cited the restrictions placed by civilian politicians on the military's operations or, conversely, blamed U.S. military chiefs for not providing civilian leaders with a sound strategy for victory. These so-called win arguments assume that victory was possible, but they overlook the flawed reasons for U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Washington had sought to contain international communism, but this global strategic concern masked the reality that the appeal of the communists in Vietnam derived from local economic, social, and historical conditions. The U.S. response to Vietnamese communism was essentially to apply a military solution to an internal political problem. America's enormous destruction on Vietnam served only to discredit politically the Vietnamese that the United States sought to assist. For the Vietnamese communists, the struggle was a total war for their own and their cause's survival. For the United States, it was a limited war. Despite U.S. concern about global credibility, Vietnam was a peripheral theatre of the cold war. For many Americans, the ultimate issue in Vietnam was not a question of winning or losing. Rather, they came to believe that the rising level of expenditure of lives and dollars was unacceptable in pursuit of a marginal national objective.

 

The domestic consequences of the war were equally profound. From Truman to Nixon, the war demonstrated the increasing dominance of the presidency within the federal government. Congress essentially defaulted to the "imperial presidency" in the conduct of foreign affairs. Vietnam also destroyed credibility within the American political process. The public did no longer trust their leaders, and many officials distrusted the public. In May 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen killed four Kent State University students during a protest over U.S. troops invading Cambodia. Many Americans were outraged while others defended the Ohio authorities. As this tragic example reveals, the war rent the fabric of trust that traditionally clothed the American polity. Vietnam figured prominently in inflation, unfulfilled Great Society programs, and the generation gap. The Vietnam War brought an end to the domestic consensus that had sustained U.S. cold war policies since World War II and that had formed the basis for the federal government's authority since the sweeping expansion of that authority under Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

 

After The War

The Vietnam War killed 58.000 Americans and over 3 millions Vietnamese people. This war made enormous damages on the material and social life. There where thrown more bombs at Vietnam in this last war than it was thrown in the whole 2. World War, this shows us a little picture of the damages made to this country. Over half of the south Vietnamese fields where destroyed because USA used Chemical weapons in the war, and today these fields are still not usable. Vietnam changed from a Rice nation which exported to other countries into a nation which imported rice, they had to import between 500.000 and 700.000 tons of rice each year because of the damages these chemicals made to their fields.

 

The social repercussion where also catastrophic, 10 years after the war had ended women in south still gave birth to deformed children, the occurrence of cancer where also extremely high at this time as a consequence of USA’s warfare against Vietnam.

 

Vietnam has received as much as nothing in help from USA and other Western countries after the war to fight all problems made by the war, they where promised 3,25 billions dollars from USA, the never saw a penny. Even though this was nothing compared to those money spent on bombing Vietnam.

 

 

 

What can we learn from this war?

Well, what can we learn, there is so much to learn from this war. First let’s talk about what the US really wanted to accomplish by fighting Vietnam? Well first of all, Indochina is one of the world’s richest areas with thin, rubber, rice, and other important materials. This in fact was what the war really was about. Therefore it was a good thing that the US lost this war, if they had won it would have been yet another place for American companies to move to, and many American workers would have lost their job because of this action.

 

But why did so many soldiers want to fight this war if it really was a war about resources?

Well, the US leaders where so smart that they told everyone that this was a war against communism, while this war really was a fight for money.

 

You might wonder why they lost this war. Well, North Vietnamese soldiers fought magnificently while the South Vietnamese soldiers fought more and more poorly, they also had a lot of desertions. The US army started to be more and more unreliable. Killing of US officers became more and more usual and desertions multiplied. This was the first time in US history that people started to fight their own army.

 

 

 

Time Line

Dates:

Events:

1945       1946       1947       1949     1950     1953   1954         1955         1956   1958           1959     1960         1961   1962       1963     1964     1965     1966     1967 1968

Ho Chi Minh creates provisional government First American dies in Vietnam Roosevelt dies US drops atomic bomb on Japan French Vietnimh reach accord Negotiations between French and Vietnimh breakdown Idochina War Begins Marshall Plan Announced Vietnimh move north of Hanoi Valluy fails to defeat Vietnimh Jackie Robinson signs with Brooklyn Dodgers Marshall Plan Announced Alysee Agreement signed NATO formed Volkswagen introduced in US Chinese and Soviets offer weapons to Vietnimh US pledges $15M to aid French Truman commits U.S. troops to Korea Vietnimh Forces push into Laos "Playboy" Magazine introduced Battle of Dien Bien Phu begins French defeat the Dien Bien Phu Geneva Convention begins Geneva Convention Agreements announced Eisenhower sites "Domino Theory" regarding Southeast Asia Diem rejects condition of Geneva Accord China and Soviet Union pledges additional financial support to Hanoi Diem urged to negotiate with North Diem becomes president of the Republic of Vietnam Ford introduces Thunderbird French leave Vietnam US Training South Vietnamese Communists Insurgency into South Vietnam Terrorist bombings rock Saigon Soviets launch Sputnik I Communist forces settle along Mekong Delta Brooklyn Dodgers move to Los Angeles First U.S. Earth satellite launched Weapons moving along Ho Chi Minh Trail U.S. Service Men killed in Geurilla attack Diem orders crackdown on Communists North Vietnam imposes Universal Military Conscription Diem survives Coup attempt Vietcong formed Soviets shoot down U.S. Spy Plane Kennedy elected President Battle of Kienhoa Province Kennedy authorizes Green Berets US Military employs Agent Orange Diem Palace bombed in Coup attempt Mansfeild voices Doubt of Vietnam policy U.S. and Soviet planes shot down over Cuban Missal Crisis Battle of Ap Bac Buddhist protest against Diem Kennedy assassinated in Dallas General Ngeyun Knahn seizes power in Saigon Gulf of Tonkin Incident Vietcong attack Bienhoa Air Base Operation Rolling Thunder deployed Marines arrive at Danang Heavy fight at La Drang Valley B-52’s bomb North Vietnam Government troop take Hue and Danang Veterans stage Anti-War Rally Martin Luther King speaks out against war Sihanouk allows pursuit of Vietcong into Cambodia North Vietnamese launch Tet Offensive Battle of Hue Westmoreland requests 206,000 more troops My Lai Massacre Paris Peace Talks begin

 

 

Sources

 

http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.htm

 

http://www.geocities.com/capitolHill/Lobby/1738/

 

http://www.vwam.com/vets/americans.html

 

http://www.vwam.com/vets/briefhis.htm

 

http://www.vietnampics.com/life.htm

 

http://servercc.oakton.edu/~wittman/warlinks.htm

 

http://www.vwam.com/vets/cauky.html

 

Encyclopedias

 

Encarta encyclopedia 1997