Unit 2 History

Ms Impagnatiello

http://vietnam.vassar.edu/abstracts/index.html

- add in some more primary source analysis???

Vietnam War Part 2

The ‘Bringer of Light’Nguyen That ThanhBorn 1890Died 1969Worked in London, America, Paris – influence?Joined French Socialist Part 1919Co-Founded the French Communist Party

Ho Chi Minh

Became an expert in colonial affairs1922 studies Marxism in Moscow – what was

happening in Russia at this time?1922 based in ChinaFrom the Vietnamese-Chinese border, helped

organise the ‘Vietnamese Revolutionary League’

1941 formed the Vietnam Doc Lap Minh OR League for the independence of Vietnam – Viet Minh

Minh

He married nationalism to communism and perfected the deadly art of guerrilla warfare.

Time.

Ho Chi Minh

The French decided not to fight as Paris was already occupied by Germany Revolutionaries saw this as an opportunity to

pounceUnder the military leadership of Vo Nguyen

Giap, started a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese

Vietminh received weapons + supplies from the Soviet Union AND after the bombing of Pearl Harbour from the USA!

Japanese Invasion

The French continued to supply the Japanese with food and supplies, while the Vietnamese starved to death (2mil.)

Within 3 mths against the Japanese, Ho set up national organisations with the educated and middle classes, as well as the farmers + peasants – important, shows he appealed to all types

USA + VIETMINH = COOPERATION. WHY?

Japanese control

1945 Minh declared Vietnam independent – August Revolution

Textbook p. 63 – Independence Task

Declaration of Independence

After WWII, France attempted to re-establish control over Vietnam.

In January 1946, Britain agreed to remove her troops and later that year, China left Vietnam in exchange for a promise from France that she would give up her rights to territory in China.

France refused to recognise the Democratic Republic of Vietnam that had been declared by Ho Chi Minh and fighting soon broke out between the Vietminh and the French troops.

At first, the Vietminh under General Giap, had great difficulty in coping with the better trained and equipped French forces.

The situation improved in 1949 after Mao and his communist army defeated Kai-Shek in China. The Vietminh now had a safe-base where they could take

their wounded and train new soldiers.

French War

By 1953 the Vietminh controlled large areas of North Vietnam.

The French south – Bo Dai, the former Vietnamese Emperor, as the Chief of State.

French tried to negotiate a deal They offered to help set-up a national

government and promised they would eventually grant Vietnam its independence.

French public opinion continued to move against the war: (1) Between 1946 and 1952 90,000 French troops

had been killed, wounded or captured; (2) France was attempting to build up her economy

after the devastation of WWII. The cost of the war had so far been twice what they had received from the US under the Marshall Plan;

(3) The war had lasted seven years and there was still no sign of an outright French victory;

(4) A growing number of people in France had reached the conclusion that their country did not have any moral justification for being in Vietnam.

French anti-war protest

Giap tactics won the Vietminh some ground against a large French offensive, also due to Chinese weapons

Giap launched a successful offensiveFrench surrender May 7th 1954Geneva Conference

Giap Defensive + Offensive

Ho argued that both should form opposition against the proposed Geneva government but instead was advised (after visits to the Sth.) that unless the north encouraged armed resistance, a united Vietnam would never occur

Le Duan 1959 became influential in the role as first secretary

when the ‘peoples war’ was declared. Was able to use the Sino-Soviet split and Vietnam war as a means to extract aid with no strings attached

After Hồ's death in 1969, assumed formal leadership of Nth Vietnam's gov. After the communist takeover of Sth Vietnam in 1975, Lê Duẩn became leader of a unified Vietnamese state. He then instituted a purge of Sth Vietnamese American allies, with up to 400,000 people consigned to prison camps

How differently did the North + South operate prior to foreign involvement?

Read and note P. 65 of text

North Vs. South

According to Mao Zedong, the peasants were the sea in which the guerrillas needed to swim: "without the constant and active

support of the peasants... failure is inevitable."

Guerilla Warfare

Three months after being elected president in 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson launched Operation Rolling Thunder.

The plan was to destroy the North Vietnam economy and to force her to stop helping the guerrilla fighters in the south.

Bombing was also directed against territory controlled by the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam.

***The plan was for Operation Rolling Thunder to last for eight weeks but it lasted for the next three years. In that time, the US dropped 1 million tonnes of bombs on Vietnam.

USA’s Involvement

USA’s InvolvementDilemma – if they withdraw they would not be seen as

superpower and they had already invested a lot of money into Vietnam

Supposed attack on US intelligence ship legitimised America entering the war – Mannox + Gulf of Tonkin

On August 2, 1964 – actual fighting occurred and proved.

The second Tonkin Gulf incident was originally claimed by the U.S. National Security Agency to have occurred on August 4, 1964, as a naval battle, but instead may have involved the "Tonkin Ghosts" and no actual NVN Torpedo Boat attacks. The outcome of this second incident was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by "communist aggression". Vietnam.

Text P. 69 learning activity

The National Liberation Front

The united front had long and historic roots in Vietnam. Used earlier in the century by the Communists to

mobilize anti-French forces, the united front brought together Communists and non-Communists in an umbrella organization

December 20, 1960 Anyone could join this front as long as they opposed

Diem. Many non-Communists who did join the Front may not

have realized that the Party would ultimately dissolve the NLF and limit non-Communist representation in a unified government.

From the birth of the NLF in 1960, government officials in Washington claimed that Hanoi directed the NLF's violent attacks against the Saigon government.

NLFIn a series of government “white papers,"

Washington insiders denounced the NLF, claiming that it was merely a puppet of Hanoi.

The NLF, in contrast, argued that it was autonomous and independent of the Communists in Hanoi and that it was made up mostly of non-Communists. Many anti-war activists supported the NLF's claims.

Washington continued to discredit the NLF, however, calling it the "Viet Cong," a derogatory and slang term meaning Vietnamese Communist.

December 1961 White Paper In 1961, President Kennedy sent a team to Vietnam to report on conditions

in South Vietnam and to assess future American aid requirements. Argued for an increase in military, technical, and economic aid, and the

introduction of large-scale American advisers to help stabilize Diem's government and crush the NLF.

As Kennedy weighed the merits of these recommendations, some of his other advisers urged the president to withdraw from Vietnam altogether, claiming that it was a "dead-end alley."

In typical Kennedy fashion, the president chose a middle route.

Instead, Kennedy sought a limited partnership with Diem. The US would increase the level of its military involvement in South

Vietnam through more machinery and advisers, only. Soon reports from Vietnam indicated that the NLF was increasing its

control in the countryside. To counteract the NLF's success , Washington and Saigon launched an

ambitious and deadly military effort in the rural areas. Called the Strategic Hamlet Program, the new counterinsurgency plan rounded up villagers and placed them in hamlets constructed by South Vietnamese soldiers.

The idea was to isolate the NLF from villagers, its base of support - produced limited results. According to interviews conducted by U. S. advisers in the field, the strategic hamlet program had a negative impact on relations between peasants and the Saigon government.

Diem’s Collapse Summer of 1963, because of NLF successes and its own

failures, it was clear that Diem's government was on the verge of political collapse.

Diem's brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, had raided the Buddhist pagodas of South Vietnam, claiming that they had harboured the Communists that were creating the political instability. The result was a massive protest on the streets of Saigon that

led one Buddhist monk to self-immolation. The picture of the monk engulfed in flames made world headlines and caused considerable consternation in Washington.

By late September, the Buddhist protest had created such dislocation in the South that the Kennedy administration supported a general's coup. In 1963, some of Diem's own generals in the Army of the

Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) approached the American Embassy in Saigon with plans to overthrow Diem. With Washington's tacit approval, on November 1, 1963, Diem and his brother were captured and later assassinated.

Three weeks later, President Kennedy was murdered on the streets of Dallas.

Groups Involved – how do they link together?

Diem – Sth.

North – Ho Chi MinhUSA

National Liberation Front

Vietcong