Friday, March 7, 2008

Chapter 30 The Vietnam War Years (1954-1975)

Chapter 30: The Vietnam War Years, 1954-1975
Section 1: Cold War Roots of the Conflict
Main Idea: The United States entered the Vietnam War to stop the spread of
communism. From the late 1800s until World War II, Vietnam was part of the colony of French Indochina. Beginning in the 1930s, rebel leader Ho Chi Minh led the fight for Vietnamese independence from France. Ho Chi Minh wanted a Communist government.
During World War II, the Japanese took over Vietnam. After Japan surrendered to the Allies, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam’s independence. However, France tried to regain
control of Vietnam. As a result, France and Ho Chi Minh’s forces went to war in 1946.
The United States did not want Vietnam to turn Communist and backed France. U.S. leaders thought that if one nation in Southeast Asia fell to communism, nearby nations also would fall. This belief was known as the domino theory. In 1954, the French surrendered to Ho Chi Minh’s forces. The peace agreement divided Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh and the Communists controlled North Vietnam. Ngo Dinh Diem, an anti-Communist, became president of South Vietnam. The agreement also called for an election to unify the country. However, Diem feared that he would lose so he cancelled the election in 1956. Opposition grew to Diem’s government, which was corrupt and cruel. As a result, people began to oppose him. One group, the Viet Cong, sought to overthrow the Diem government and reunite the country with the North under Communist rule. North Vietnam supported the Viet Cong, sending supplies and weapons along a network of paths known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. President John F. Kennedy was elected in 1961. Several Cold War crises made him fear the spread of communism. The first was the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, when Cuban exiles trained by the United States invaded Cuba. They hoped to overthrow the country’s Communist leader, Fidel Castro, but were easily defeated. Then, in June 1961, the Soviet Union and East Germany built a wall to divide West Berlin from Communist East Berlin and East Germany. The Berlin Wall made it harder for East Germans to escape. The most serious crisis happened in October 1962, when the United States learned that the Soviets had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. At first, the Soviets refused to remove them, bringing the two super powers close to war. Finally, the Soviets backed down and removed the missiles. The Cuban missile crisis raised Americans’ fears of communism. U.S. leaders increased their support for the Diem government, but a group of Vietnamese military officers overthrew Diem’s government and killed him in November 1963. South Vietnam grew weaker and more unstable. Three weeks after Diem’s death, President Kennedy was
assassinated.
Section 2: War Expands in Vietnam
Main Idea: America sent ground troops to Vietnam expecting victory, but soldiers soon
grew frustrated. With Kennedy’s assassination, Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson became president in November 1963. In August 1964, his administration claimed that North Vietnamese forces had attacked an American ship off the coast of North Vietnam. Johnson asked Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving the president the power to use military force in Vietnam. In the spring of 1965, Johnson started to bomb North Vietnam and sent the first combat ground troops there. Their number grew from about 75,000 to 164,000 by the end of 1965. This growing military involvement in Vietnam was known as escalation. The commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam was General William Westmoreland. Although the United States had more advanced weapons than the Viet Cong, most U.S. soldiers were young and inexperienced. In addition, the Viet Cong effectively used guerrilla warfare, or surprise attacks by small bands of fighters. Finally, the Viet Cong believed in their cause and fought long and hard. U.S. troops sought to destroy jungle hideouts of the Viet Cong. American planes dropped napalm, a jellied gasoline that burns violently. They also sprayed the weed killer Agent
Orange over jungles and farmland, thereby destroying the landscape. American soldiers
went on search-and-destroy missions, during which they burned or bombed villages
thought to be sheltering Viet Cong. In January 1968, the communists launched the Tet offensive, a surprise attack on U.S. air bases and more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam. The attack stunned Americans, whose leaders began to think that the price for winning might be too high. The Tet offensive led President Johnson to halt the build-up of American troops in Vietnam. In March 1968, Johnson said that he would begin to seek peace. He also announced that he would not run for reelection.
Section 3: The Vietnam War Ends
Main Idea: The Vietnam War divided Americans and had lasting effects in the United
States and Southeast Asia. As the Vietnam War dragged on, antiwar feeling grew among Americans at home. Some protesters believed that the United States should have stayed out of another country’s civil war. Some believed that the methods of fighting were immoral. Some believed that the costs to society were too high. College students and others protested the draft. One reason was that wealthier youths could delay being drafted by enrolling in college. Also, early in the war, a higher share of African Americans were called to serve. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the war an “enemy of the poor.” By 1967, the war had divided Americans into two camps—the doves, who opposed the war, and the hawks, who supported it. In 1968, violence broke out at the Democratic convention in Chicago, as police and antiwar protesters clashed. The trouble helped
Republican candidate Richard Nixon win the presidency, for he had promised to end
America’s involvement in Vietnam. In July 1969, Nixon announced his plan of Vietnamization—a gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces. The South Vietnamese would take over the fighting. However, Nixon also began secret bombing raids on Cambodia, a country bordering Vietnam. Nixon wanted to stop North Vietnamese troops from crossing into Cambodia for shelter and supplies. This angered many Americans.
In 1972, Nixon won reelection by promising that peace was near. In January 1973, the
United States agreed to withdraw its troops. North Vietnam agreed not to invade South
Vietnam. On March 29, the last U.S. troops left Vietnam. For the Vietnamese, however, the war continued. In 1975, North Vietnam launched a huge invasion of South Vietnam. Communist forces captured Saigon in April and united the country under Communist rule. More than 1.5 million North and South Vietnamese died in the Vietnam War. The war ruined the Vietnamese economy, caused lasting damage to farmland and forests, and
created many refugees. More than 58,000 Americans died. Another 300,000 were wounded. Many returning soldiers were disabled physically or emotionally. To make things worse, the public often treated them coldly. The war had far-reaching political effects in the United States. In 1971, the Twenty-sixth Amendment lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. Its supporters had argued that anyone old enough to be drafted should be allowed to vote. In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act, which limits the president’s war-making powers. Finally, the war made many Americans distrust government leaders.