Vietnam War.

Presentation Transcript

Izabella Morales.

What was Vietnam ?

Second Indochina War – 1954-1975.
Result of a long conflict between

France
Vietnam

July 1954 – France was forced to leave Vietnam.

The Geneva Peace Accords

Signed by France and Vietnam

Summer of 1945.

It represented the worst possible future for the war-torn Vietnam.

Continued.

Vietnam's delegates and the Geneva Conference agreed to a temporary separation of their nation at the seventeenth parallel to allow France a face-saving defeat
Vietnam would hold national elections in 1956 to reunify the country.

17th Parallel.

Temporary separation without cultural guide would vanish with the elections.
John Foster Dulles, didn’t support the Geneva Accords because he thought they granted to much power to the Communist part of Vietnam.

Dulles and Eisenhower agreed on the creation of a country-revolutionary alternative south of the 17th parallel.

U.S supported this effort through a series of multilateral agreements that created the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. (SEATO)

SEATO was used to political cover , the Eisenhower administration helped create a new nation from dust in southern Vietnam.

1955 – Government of the Republic of Vietnam ( GVN or South Vietnam) was born through the help of

American Military
Political
Economic aid.

Under Ngo Dinh Diem.

Following year Ngo Dinh Diem – an anti-communist figure from the South , won president of GVN.
Diem claimed that his newly created government was being attacked by the communist in the north.

Diem argued that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) wanted to take South Vietnam by force.

In the late 1957, with American military, Diem began to counterattack with the help of the American Central Intelligence Agency to identify those who tried to bring down his government and arrest thousands.
Diem passed a series of acts known as Law 10/59 – made it legal to hold someone in jail if he/she was a alliance to the communist without any formal charges.

Diem passed a series of acts known as Law 10/59 – made it legal to hold someone in jail if he/she was a alliance to the communist without any formal charges.

Citizens such as : Buddhist monks, nuns, students, business people, intellectuals, and peasants in resistance to the dishonest rule of Diem.

1956-1960,

Communist Party of Vietnam desired to reunify the country though political means alone.
Accepting S.U political struggle , Communist Party tried and failed to cause Diem’s collapse by exerting tremendous internal political pressure.

After Diem’s attacks on suspected Communist in the South. Southern Communist convince the Party to adopt more violent tactics to guarantee Diem’s defeat.

15th Party Plenum.

January 1959 Communist Party finally approved the usage of revolutionary violence and the combination of political and armed struggle movements
Result

creation of broad-based united front to help mobilize southerners in disagreement to the GVN.

National Liberation Front.

United front had long and historic roots in Vietnam.
Used earlier in the century to organize anti-French forces, the united front brought together Communist in an umbrella organization.

December 20, 1960.

National Liberation Front (NLF) was born.
Anyone can join as long as the opposed Diem and wanted a reunified Vietnam.

NFL Continued.

Its relationship to the Communist in Hanoi has cause a great debate between scholars, anti-war activists, and policymakers.
Since the birth of NLF, government officials in Washington claimed that Hanoi directed the NLFs violent attacks against Saigon system.

In a series of government “White Paper” Washington insiders denounced the NLF, saying :

It was a mere puppet of Hanoi.
Non-Communist essentials were Communist tricks.

NLF argued that it was independent of the Communist in Hanoi, and that it was mostly made up of Non-Communist.

Many anti-war activists supported the NLFs claims.

Washington continued to dishonor the NLF, but, calling it the “Viet Cong” a derogatory and slang term meaning : Vietnamese Communist.

White Paper.

December 1961, President Kennedy sent a team to Vietnam to report all conditions in the South to evaluate future American aid necessities.
Report ( December 1961, White Paper) argued for an increase in military, technical, economic aid, and American advisors to help settle the Diem control and defeat the NLF.

Kennedy’s fashion.

Sought limited agreement with Diem.
U.S would increase the level of its military involvement in South Vietnam through :

More machinery.
More advisers.

but would not get involved with troops.
This arrangement was doomed from the start.
Soon reports from Vietnam came into Washington to prove further NLF successes.

To counteract the NLF’s success in the countryside.

Washington and Saigon launched an ambitious and deadly military effort in the country areas.

Strategic Hamlet Program.

Counter insurgency plan rounded up villagers and placed them in “safe hamlets” constructed by the GVN.
Idea – isolate the NLF from villagers, its base of support.
Produced limited results and further separated the peasants from the Saigon government.

Countryside Vietnamese viewed GVN as a distant annoyance.

Strategic Hamlet Program brought the GVN to the countryside.
Saigon government reactive policies ironically produced more cadres for the NLF.

Military Coup.

Summer of 1963, because of NLF victories and its own failures, it was clear that GVN was on the edge of political collapse.
Diem’s brother Ngo, had invaded the Buddhist pagodas of South Vietnam.
Claiming they had docked the Communist that were creating the political instability.

Result – massive protests in the streets of Saigon.

Late September, Buddhist protest had created a disruption in the south that the Kennedy administration supported the coup.
1963, some of Diem’s own generals in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARV) approached the American Embassy in Saigon with plans to defeat Diem.

With Washington’s implied approval, on November 1,1963, Diem and his brother were captured and later killed.

Three weeks later President Kennedy was assassinated in the streets of Dallas.
Kennedy’s administration had managed to run the war from Washington without bringing and interference with American combat troops.

Political problems still continued in Saigon. This convinced the new president Lyndon Baines Johnson that more aggressive action was needed.

Perhaps Johnson was more interested in military intervention or maybe events in Vietnam had forced the president’s view to direct action.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

In August 1964 launched a local and controlled attack against C. Turner Joy and the U.S.S Maddox.

Two American ships.

A second attack was issued on August 4, Vo Nguyen Giap (DRV’s leading military figure) and Johnson’s Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara confirmed that there was no second attack.

Johnson administration used the August 4 attack as a political cover for a Congressional resolution that gave the president broad war powers.

This was known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

Throughout the fall and into the winter of 1964, the Johnson administration argued over the correct strategy in Vietnam.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to expand the war over he DRV to help stabilize the Saigon government.
Only Undersecretary of State George Ball disagreed and claimed the Johnsons Vietnam policy was too provocative for its limited results.

1965

NLF attacked two U.S army installations in South Vietnam, as a result Johnson ordered to sustained bombing missions over DRV that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had long supported.

The bombing missions, also known as OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER caused the Communist Party to reassess its own war strategy.

1960-1964 Communist Party believe it could win a military victory in the south.
With new American military commitment, confirmed in March 1965 when Johnson sent the first combat troops.

War in America.

Johnson administration wanted to fight this war in “cold blood”.
This meant that America would go to war in Vietnam to the accuracy of a surgeon with little noticeable impact on domestic culture.

A limited war called for limited mobilization of resources, material and human, and caused little disruption.

Vietnam war did have a major impact on everyday life in America, and Johnson administration was forced to consider domestic consequences of its decisions everyday.
Protest erupted on college campuses and in major cities at first, but by 1968 mostly every corner of the country seemed to felt the wars impact.

One of the most famous event in the anti-war movement was the police riot in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Tet Offensive

By 1968 things went from bad to worse for the Johnson administration.
In late January, the DRV and the NLF launched coordinated attacks against the major southern cities.
These attacks were known as the Tet Offensive.
Designed to force the Johnson administration to negotiate.

Communist party correctly believed that the American people were growing war-weary and that its continued successes tipped the balance of forces in it favor.

In late March 1968, a disgraced Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek the Democratic Party’s re-nomination for president.
He would go and negotiate with the Communist to end the war.

Paris Peace Agreement.

In early January 1973, Nixon White House convinced the Thieu-Ky government in Saigon that they would not abandon the GVN if they sign onto the peace accord.
January 23, the final draft was initialed, ending open hostilities between the U.S and the DRV.

Continued.

Paris Peace Agreement didn’t end the conflict in Vietnam, but the Thieu-Ky government continued to battle Communist forces.
From March 1973 until the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, ARVN forces tried to save the South from a military and political collapse.