Vietnam War

Communism

• Economic system• Government control of property

and resources • Single political leader • No individual rights

• American leaders believed that if the communists captured one country, nearby nations would also fall to communism, like dominoes falling

The idea that America should keep communism

“contained” and not allow it to spread to any more areas

in the world

• France had controlled Vietnam since 1858

• The colony became known as Indochina

• Vietnamese fiercely resisted French control, demanding independence

Indochina consisted of

Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia

• May 6, 1954• French forces waited in the fortress of

Dien Bien Phu• Vietnamese forces surrounded the

compound and began raining artillery • Eventually the French surrendered

(similar to the Alamo)

Dien Bien Phu

• May, 1954• After the French defeat at Dien Bien

Phu, world leaders met at Geneva, Switzerland

• Agreed to divide Vietnam at the 17th parallel

• Ho Chi Minh would be the president of the communist North

• Ngo Dinh Diem would be the president of the non-communist south.

• Elections were to be held in 1956 on the issue of unification.

• However, the South refused to hold elections, claiming that the communists would not play fair.

• DRVN• Democratic Republic of Vietnam

• Communist dominated • President - Ho Chi Minh

• Capital city - Hanoi

• RVN• Republic of Vietnam

• Anti-communist• President - Ngo Dinh Diem

• Capital city - Saigon• America backs South Vietnam to

prevent a communist takeover

• Leader of the League for the Independence of Vietnam

• He combined many of the goals of communism with his desire to end the exploitation of Vietnam by outside countries

Ho Chi Minh

League for the Independence of Vietnam. Vietnamese who

supported the liberation of Vietnam from French control and unification

of Vietnam

• South Vietnamese rebels who organized to remove Diem from power and re-unite Vietnam as one nation

• Carried out assassinations of Diem’s officers

Flag of the National Liberation Front

• Our name for the Communist military wing of the National Liberation Front

• A major difficulty throughout the war was to identify and eliminate Vietcong in South Vietnam

Vietcong Prisoner 1966

A Vietcong Prisoner

Saigon police chief murders a VC in 1968

• President Eisenhower sends the first military advisors to Vietnam in the 1950s to provide on the ground intelligence to Washington D.C.

• America also gives the French $25 million because they were our ally

• Looks like the U.S. supports colonialism

• 34th President• 1953 – 1961• Republican• New York

• Military Assistance Advisory Group• Advised U.S. leaders that it would

be unwise to get involved in Vietnam for these reasons:

1) The conflict was more about nationalism than communism since 80% of the Vietminh were NOT communists

2) The Vietminh were extremely popular

3) U.S. soldiers were not trained for guerilla warfare in jungles

Aerial view of the jungle canopy in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam

How many soldiers can

you find hidden in the

jungle?

• Elected President in 1960• Increased spending on RVN’s efforts to

repel the Vietminh • Increased U.S. military involvement in

Vietnam• Wanted to prove to his critics in the U.S.

that he was not weak on fighting the communists

• But he was reluctant to become deeply involved in Vietnam

• Top ranking military leaders advised him that the situation in Vietnam was growing worse daily - it was only a matter of time before the RVN fell to communist control

• Reluctantly, the U.S. military engaged in training RVN forces to be able to defend their own country against the communist forces

• January 2, 1963• Ap Bac was a village 40 miles southwest

of Saigon in the Mekong Delta• RVN (South Vietnam) forces

outnumbered the Viet Cong 4:1• The Viet Cong were well-supplied with

captured American M-1 rifles and 30 caliber machine guns

• RVN was poorly led and unprepared

• 5 U.S. helicopters were shot down• 3 U.S. advisors were killed and 8 wounded• First major victory for Viet Cong• VC used the victory for propaganda purposes• VC began to plan for full scale war against

the RVN• U.S. realized we would need to send

additional support for the RVN

Downed chopper at

Ap Bac

January 2, 1963

Ap Bac

January 2, 1963

Downed choppers (flying bananas)

January 2, 1963

Ap Bac (January 2, 1963)

Ap Bac Casualties

• 1954 -appointed prime minister of RVN• He was seen as a U.S. puppet leader • This alienated many South Vietnamese • He refused some basic land reforms• He seized peasant land and gave it to

friends/family• He was Catholic• He persecuted the Buddhists

• U.S. advisors stated that even the non-communists preferred Ho Chi Minh

• By 1963, we learned that Diem had been secretly trying to create a coalition government that would include the communists

• U.S. helped to arrange a coup (the overthrow of a government)

• May 8, 1963• On Buddha’s birthday, Diem banned

the display of religious flags • Buddhists raised their prayer flags to

celebrate anyway • Diem orders RVN troops to disperse

the crowd

Buddhist Prayer Flags

Buddhist Prayer Flags

• 8 Buddhist monks were killed • On June 11, the first of seven monks

sets himself on fire in the street of Saigon to protest Diem’s leadership.

• This becomes the symbol of Diem’s leadership to the American public.

T. Quang Duc

First Buddhist Monk to

commit self-immolation

June 11, 1963

Warning:

Graphic disturbing images follow. Look away if you might be offended.

Douses himself with gasoline and sits calmly in the lotus position

Ignites the flame

The remains are carried away

The unburned heart is

displayed in a Buddhist Temple

• Nov. 1, 1963, RVN forces overthrew Diem’s leadership

• He and his family were supposed to be exiled to France

• RVN army executed Diem and his brother

• Kennedy had approved the assassination

• Created chaos in RVN and instability in the government

• 12 governments in 18 months

Diem and his brother found murdered in the back of a van in Saigon

• 36th President• 1963 – 1969• Democrat• Texas• Became President

when Kennedy was assassinated

• Substantially increased U.S. involvement in Vietnam

Sworn in on Air Force One by Judge Sarah T. Hughes

• American general in charge of U.S. forces in Vietnam

• Continually pushed for increasing troop levels in Vietnam

• August 4, 1964• U.S. patrol ships off the coast of

Vietnam claimed to have been attacked by DRVN torpedo boats.

• President Johnson addressed the nation about the attacks and ordered retaliatory air strikes for the “unprovoked attack.”

Gulf of Tonkin

• August 7, 1964• Legislation that allowed LBJ to take “all

necessary measures to prevent further aggression” in Vietnam

• Basically gave the President the power to declare war; violated the principle of Separation of Powers

LBJ signs the Tonkin Gulf Resolution

• Increasing military pressure on an enemy’s forces

• By 1967, we had over 470,000 troops in Vietnam.

• February, 1965• A U.S. Army base in RVN was mortared

while National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy visited

• 9 Americans died, and 126 more injured • It showed how unstable the situation was:

we couldn’t even protect our high-ranking officials.

Pleiku, 1965

Pleiku airfield in 1967

• McGeorge Bundy: “Pleikus are like street cars.” (If you wait a while, another one will come along.)

• LBJ responded by authorizing bombings of North Vietnam.

Aerial bombings of North Vietnam which began in

March of 1965

The U.S. wished to avoid a ground war in the mountainous

jungle terrain of Vietnam

Gen. William Momyer, 7th Air Force commander, meets with President Johnson

LBJ boasted, “I won’t let those Air Force generals bomb the

smallest outhouse without checking with me.”

Boeing B-52 Stratofortress

– some able to carry 30 tons of bombs at a time

B-52 Bomb

Bay

May, 1965 – Bomber carrying 1000 pound bomb

• Lead Sled, Thud• Flew 75 % of the strikes and took more

losses over North Vietnam than any other kind of aircraft

• When Rolling Thunder ended, more than half of the Air Force’s F-105s were gone.

At first, bombing missions were not

allowed in areas around

Hanoi or Haiphong

“Rolling North”

Bombing raids

authorized farther north later in 1965

and 1966

• Policy of wearing away an enemy’s forces until they cannot continue to fight

• The U.S. strategy in Vietnam • We would bomb the VC until they could

not continue replacing their casualties; then they would surrender

• November 1965• First major battle between VC and

U.S. troops• The U.S. 7th Cavalry delivered a

substantial defeat to a VC unit • 2000 North Vietnamese killed• 300 American troops killed