6.6 – US IN VIETNAM Unit 6 – The Cold War and Changes at Home

Section 6 – Vietnam

Learning Targets & Key Words

The Students Will Be Able

To (TSWBAT):

• Understand the causes

of the Vietnam War

• Understand why the US

got involved in Vietnam

• Understand the effects of

US involvement and the

growth of the Anti-War

movement

Key Words:

Domino Theory

Containment

Vietcong

Draft

Doves vs. Hawks

Vietnamization

Gulf of Tonkin

EQ: Why did the US go

to war in Vietnam? How

did media shape public

opinion of the war in the

United States?

Prior Knowledge

• What do you already know about Vietnam?

• Was this a popular war?

• How did Americans at home feel about it?

• How did it contribute to a new counter-culture? (HIPPIES!)

I. BACKGROUND

(1945-1954)

France & Vietnam (1945-1953)

• Indochina (later Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) was a French colony • After WWII, they wanted to be

free

• France denied the Vietnamese independence, so they fought back

• Viet Minh • Vietnamese freedom fighters

led by Ho Chi Minh

• Communist

The US & Vietnam • US doesn’t get involved in the conflict until 1949-

1950

• US did not support French colonialism, but they were against Ho Chi Minh’s communism

• Two events caused the US to support France: • China becomes communist in 1949

• The Korean War

• President Truman & Eisenhower believed in the Domino Theory:

• Refers mostly to Asia

• Idea that if one country in a region became communist, then the rest would fall

http://www.history.com/topics/c

old-war/domino-theory/videos

France Falls

(1954-1956)

• France could not defeat the

resistance

• Vietminh guerilla war tactics

were too difficult to defend

against

• Dien Bien Phu (1954)

• Battle where the French were

badly beaten by the Vietminh

• This loss convinced the

French to leave Vietnam

Geneva Accords (1954)

• Agreement to end fighting between

French and Vietminh

• Divided Indochina into 3 countries:

• Vietnam

• Cambodia

• Laos

• Also divided Vietnam into 2

sections:

• Communist north led by Ho Chi Minh

• Pro-Western south led by Ngo Dinh

Diem

II. ESCALATION

(1961-1965)

Vietcong

• Newly organized N.

Vietnamese Guerilla

Army that was based in

S. Vietnam

• Difficult to defeat, so

Diem began to look to

US for more help fighting

the Vietcong (VC)

JFK Becomes

President

• JFK needed to appear tough on communism, so he increased aid and advisors to Vietnam

• Urged Diem to make democratic reforms (had little effect) • Refused to have elections

because he knew he would lose

Diem’s

Unpopularity

• Diem was Catholic and persecuted the Buddhists

• As a response, some Buddhist monks committed self-immolation

Diem’s Downfall

• With US approval, he was overthrown and executed by his generals on November 2, 1963

• Severely weakened the S. Vietnamese gov’t and forced the US to get more involved to help

• JFK was assassinated a few weeks later (November 22, 1963) • Lyndon B. Johnson replaced JFK as

president

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

• August 2nd and 4th, 1964

• Pres. LBJ tells the nation that

Vietnamese ships have fired

upon US destroyers

• He asked Congress to

authorize the use of force to

defend American forces

• In 2005, a declassified study

stated that the second incident

never happened

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

•August 7, 1964

•Authorized the president to “take all necessary measure to repel any armed attack against the forces of the US and to prevent further aggression.”

US Goes to War

•US increases troops

from 1964-66

•US supremely

confident this would

be an easy win

• Majority of public

opinion supported the

war at the beginning

American Leadership in the War

Leading U.S. officials during the war were:

• Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and

• U.S. commander General William Westmoreland

VC Tactics

• Blended in with general

population by not

wearing uniforms

• Who is friend?

• Who is foe?

• Ambushes, booby

traps, guerilla warfare

US Responds to VC

U.S. dropped thousands of bombs on North Vietnam to get rid of VC cover, some which had:

• Napalm • Jellied gasoline that exploded and

left large areas in flames

• Agent Orange • Herbicide used to kill plants & the

enemy’s food supply, but was later found to cause cancer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUZA0GAMmfI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER5rztRzOaM

http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-

war-history/videos/vietnam-war-tactics

Increasing Difficulties

• VC did not surrender • They were not giving up their homeland easily and they were willing to accept massive amounts of casualties

• The US also refused to invade N. Vietnam (didn’t want a full scale war with China) • This made it very difficult to win

Ho Chi Minh Trail

• The N. Vietnamese’s

series of jungle supply

paths

• Passed through Laos

and Cambodia

• Because Laos and

Cambodia weren’t in the

war, LBJ refused to bomb

the trail

III. VIETNAM: 1965-1968

Post Gulf of Tonkin

• Many of the president’s advisors supported an expansion of the war effort

• Robert McNamara (Sec. of Defense)

• March 1965 – Operation Rolling Thunder

• Johnson expanded the war by continuously bombing N. Vietnam

• Goal was to overwhelm the N. Vietnamese and convince them to stop supplying the VC

Television War

• At the beginning of the war,

General William

Westmoreland kept

declaring that the enemy is

on the brink of defeat

• The TV news reports a

different story

• Every night Americans saw

young men dying and wounded

and began to doubt the gov’t

reports

Television War, cont.

• A Credibility Gap developed

• It was hard to believe the rosy

gov’t reports

• Vietnam was the first

Television War because

footage of combat was

shown nightly

• This helped lead to an anti-

war movement

Anti-War Movement • Heavily influenced by Civil

Rights Movement

• Teach-Ins

• Students and teachers across US

colleges abandoned their classes

to discuss Vietnam and to protest

• Burning Draft Cards

• Young men who didn’t want to

fight did this to protest

Hawks and Doves

• By 1968, polls showed that

the country was almost split

down the middle on support

for the war

• Doves

• Americans who wanted to

withdraw from Vietnam

• Hawks

• Americans who wanted to stay

in Vietnam

1968 – Boom Goes the Dynamite

• 1968: One of the most violent

years in US history

Tet Offensive

• Year started with a Vietcong

surprise attack on US troops

• VC managed to attack almost all

major US airbases and many S.

Vietnamese cities (Tet Offensive)

• Huge military failure for VC, but

still shocked Americans

• How could an enemy so close to defeat

launch an attack of that size? http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-

war/vietnam-war-history/videos/tet-offensive

1968, cont.

• My Lai Massacre

• March 16, 1968

• US soldiers killed 347 to 504

unarmed citizens in S. Vietnam

• According to US gov’t only 347,

According to Vietnam it was 504

• Negatively affected public

opinion

• When the incident became public

knowledge in 1969, it prompted

widespread outrage around the

world. The massacre also reduced

support at home for the Vietnam

War.

Famous

Tet

Photo

1968, cont.

• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Assassinated

• Killed in Memphis by James Earl Ray

• Robert Kennedy Assassinated

• JFK’s younger brother and Democratic

presidential candidate killed by Sirhan Sirhan

• Riots in Chicago

• At the Democratic National Convention

• Police vs. protestors, highly publicized http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/chicago-seven/videos

1968, cont.

• Johnson does not run for re-election • Unpopularity of Vietnam

1968, cont.

Election of 1968

• Nixon (Republican) v. Hubert Humphrey (Dem) v. George Wallace (American Independent)

• Nixon wins election of 1968

• 37th president

• Terms: 1969-1974

• Party: Republican

• Nixon wins and promises to “Bring Us Together,” and also end the war

Nixon and ‘Nam

• Vietnamization

• Nixon’s strategy for “peace with honor”

• Gradual withdrawal of US troops

• Turn control of the war over to the S.

Vietnamese

• Invasion of Cambodia (1970)

• Nixon expanded war into Cambodia to stop

VC

• Sparked protests

• Kent State University Protests

• Response to Cambodian invasion

• College protestors killed by National Guard

(May 4, 1970)

http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-

war/vietnam-war-history/videos/a-soldiers-story-

fighting-in-cambodia

Nixon on Kent State:

http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/kent-

state/videos/nixon-on-kent-state-tragedy

Nixon and ‘Nam, cont.

• Paris Peace

Accords

• January 19, 1973

• US and N. Vietnam

reach peace

• US pulls out of the

war

• South Vietnam

falls 1975

Legacy of ‘Nam • Cost: $150 billion

• Deaths:

• Over 58,000 Americans

• Over 3 million total Vietnamese

(Civilian and military)

• Considered by many to be a US

defeat

• Disrespect of troops returning

home • “That was the feeling in the air, that we

were unclean.” – Jan Scruggs, founder of

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Legacy of ‘Nam, cont.

• Americans became more distrustful of government • Pentagon Papers: Secret

study of US involvement in Vietnam that was leaked to the NY Times

• Revealed that American leaders lied to Congress and the American people regarding Vietnam

• War Powers Act • Limited President’s power, had

to get consent from Congress before sending out troops

The Vietnam War in the Movies

• Forrest Gump

• Apocalypse Now

• Good Morning, Vietnam

• Rescue Dawn

• Born on the Fourth of July

• Full Metal Jacket

• Platoon

• Casualties of War

• We Were Soldiers

Vietnam War Illustrated Timeline

•EQ: What were the major turning

points of the Vietnam War?

•Follow the directions! You must focus

on 10 events.

•Write complete sentences and draw a

picture for each. Do not forgot the

name of the event and the date!

Vietnam War Music Analysis

EQ: How did music of the 1960s and 1970s

represent public opinion of the Vietnam War?

• Music was used as a tool for protestors during

Vietnam. Some of the most iconic music in

American history came from this era.

• We will be listening to several songs and

analyzing them in the context of the Vietnam War.