Vietnam War

From French Colonialism to the American involvement to the killing

fields of Cambodia

The French Colonize Indochina• French involvement started when French

missionaries landed in Vietnam in the late 1700s.

• During the 1800s, the French established a colony in Southeast Asia, known as Indochina. By the 1890s, all of Vietnam was under French control.

• Indochina is composed of the modern nations of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

• The French exploited the Vietnamese by forcing each village to buy alcohol and opium. Many peasants worked in slave-like conditions on French plantations.

• In short, the French treated the Vietnamese poorly

Colonized Vietnam

Vietnamese Nationalism• To administer their colony, the French had supported

the development of a Vietnamese Western education middle-class.

• Many upper-class Vietnamese studied in French schools; they eventually got involved in nationalistic movements protesting French discrimination.

• During the 1920s, a clandestine Vietnamese Nationalistic Party(Vietnamese Quoc Dan Dong or VNQDD) was formed - it was committed to a violent overthrow of the French colonizers.

• The group was violently suppressed by the French secret police, the Sûreté.

• The VNQDD crushed, led an opening to its rival, the Communist Party of Vietnam, led by Nguyen Ai Quoc, later known as Ho Chi Minh.

The War of Liberation Against the French

• Ho Chi Minh was disillusioned by Vietnam’s denial of a hearing for Vietnamese independence at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of WW1. - Ho dedicated his life to driving the French from Indochina.

• The Japanese invasion of Indochina in 1941 weakened the French and set the stage for the communists to advance their struggle for national liberation.

• The communist nationalist movement, called the Viet Minh, put their efforts in land reform and mass education

Ho Chi Minh

The War of Liberation against the French

• Using guerrilla tactics devised by Mao Zedong of China, the Viet Minh were able to win control of northern Vietnam and establish an independent state in August, 1945.

• After WWII, France wanted to regain colonial control of Vietnam - in March, 1946, the French reoccupied Saigon and much of southern Vietnam. They denounced Vietnamese independence and worked to regain control.

• However, the French lost a major battle at Dien Bien Phu and an international conference in Geneva promised the Vietnamese elections to decide who should govern Vietnam.

Viet Minh victory at Dien Bien Phu

Vietnam’s War Against the United States• The promise at Geneva that free elections would occur in

Vietnam was never kept.

• Vietnam had become entangled in the cold war saber rattling between the USA and the USSR.

• The U.S., fearful of communist movements, put a puppet leader Ngo Dinh Diem in control in the south.

• Diem, with the backing of America, worked to exterminate the communists in southern Vietnam - called the Viet Cong.

• The communists in the north began to support the south with weapons and advisors.

• When Diem proved ineffective, the U.S. authorized the South Vietnamese military to overthrow him and take direct charge of the war. The U.S. also stepped up its military intervention.

Vietnam’s War Against the United States - p.2

• The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution ordered American bombing of Vietnam based on false reports of a torpedo attack against the U.S.S. Mattox.

• Despite the fact that America’s growing intervention in Vietnam resulted in a force of over 500,000 men and that more bombs were dropped on Vietnam than all the theaters in WWII; the U.S. lost the war.

• Nearly 60,000 Americans lost their lives and millions of Vietnamese perished as well

• America lost because the Vietnamese saw America as another imperial force there to exploit Vietnam. They were fighting for their independence.

• America negotiated a withdrawal and by 1975, the U.S. was out of Vietnam and the South Vietnam government fell to the communists. Saigon is today known as Ho Chi Minh City.

Napalm Attack

Political Cartoon - My Lai Massacre

Vietnam - Huey Helicopters

Grieving mother over the loss of her child

Vietnamese judicial system

Buddhist monk protesting the war by self-immolation

Anti-war protestors in Philadelphia

Fall of Saigon

Vietnam: Epilogue

• Since the end of the war, America has worked to normalize relations with Vietnam. Initially, American corporations established contact with Vietnam to use its cheap labor for manufacturing(such as G.E.)

• You and I can go there as tourists today; although it is still has a communist government.

The Vietnam Memorial

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Cambodia - The Killing Fields• During the mid-1970s, the United

States was losing the war in Vietnam.• One of the reasons was that China(a

traditional adversary of Vietnam), started to give the North Vietnamese Communists material support. The supplies(food, weapons) were coming through a route that was known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

• The Ho Chi Minh Trail straddled the border between Vietnam and Cambodia .

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Cambodia - p.2• President Nixon, committing what some

people view as a far greater crime than Watergate, ordered the secret and illegal carpet bombing of Cambodia in an effort to stop the flow of war materials to the Viet Cong.

• This action dramatically destabilized the region.

• Meanwhile, a band of radical Maoists were biding their time in the jungle, surviving on bugs and roots, and slowing going insane. It was time for the Khmer Rouge to strike.2

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The Khmer Rouge• The leader of the Khmer Rouge led his army out of the

mountains of Cambodia (also known as Kampuchea) and had the entire population relocate to the countryside for “re-education.”

• The capital city of Phnom Penh was completely evacuated.

• The Khmer Rouge declared it was year “0.” If a person could read, write, drive a car, or wear eyeglasses - they were executed. The old, the weak, and the young were executed if they could not stand up to the rigors of hard labor. Ethnic Thais, Vietnamese, Christians, and Buddhists were executed. The Khmer Rouge army was mainly made up of young adults and children.

• Pol Pot’s “diabolical disregard for human life” resulted in 1.7 million Cambodians dying. Roughly, 21% of the population.

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Aftermath• Ironically, what saved Cambodia from complete

self-destruction was that a newly united Vietnam invaded Cambodia, and stopped the killing.

• The United States were against this invasion and expressed its sympathies for the Khmer Rouge(politics makes for strange bedfellows).

• Unfortunately, Cambodia is still not right today. And many parts of the world are still experiencing the horror of genocide.

• Examples from the 20th Century: Armenian; Nazi Germany; East Timor; Guatemala, Yugoslavia, Rwanda.

• Examples from today’s headlines: South Sudan, Congo, Syria.

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Sources• If you have an interest to look into the

atrocities in Cambodia and elsewhere, check out Yale University’s Genocide Studies Program.

• Also, the World Without Genocide organization as part of the William Mitchell College of Law is a valuable resource.

• Additionally, the Oscar winning film, The Killing Fields is highly recommended. 2

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Rows of Skulls

Pol Pot

Cambodian Victim

To add to the horror, the Khmer Rouge recorded and catalogued their murders. This young girl is being photographed just prior to her death.

Mass Grave in Cambodia