Vietnam War-PowerPoint 3

Gulf of

Tonkin Resolution

August 2nd, 1964

• The USS Maddox, on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam’s coast, supposedly fired upon several torpedo boat that became severely damaged.– A second attack was reported two days later on

the USS Turner Joy and Maddox in the same areas.

The Second Attack

• The second attack led to retaliatory airstrikes.– Encouraged the Congress to approve the Gulf of

Tonkin Resolution.

The fall and winter-1964

• The Johnson administration debated the correct strategy for Vietnam.

– The Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to expand the air war.

– The civilians in the Pentagon wanted to apply steady pressure to the Communist Party with restricted and careful bombings.

1965

• In 1965, the NLF attacked two United States army installations in South Vietnam.– As a result, Johnson ordered the sustained

bombing missions over the DRV that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had long advocated.

– Bombing missions known as:

–OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER

THEWAR

INAmerica

• The Johnson Administration wanted to fight the Vietnam War in “cold blood.”

– This meant That America would go to war in Vietnam with the accuracy of a surgeon with little noticeable impact on domestic culture.

Draft

• Eventually, there were not enough volunteers to go to war, so the government had to organize a draft.

• Americans continued to leave for Southeast Asia, the Johnson administration was met with the full weight of American anti-war sentiments.

• Protests erupted on college campuses, but by 1968, every corner of the country felt the war's impact.

– Most famous event: police riot in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

THE

TET

OFFENSIVE

1968

• In 1968, things had gone from bad to worse for the Johnson administration.

• January 1968, the DVR and NLF launched coordinate attacks against major southern cities.– Attacks known as TET OFFENSIVE

Tet Offensive

• The Tet Offensive was designed to make the Johnson administration go to the bargaining table.– The Communist Party believed that the American

people were growing war-weary and that its continued successes in the countryside had “tipped the balance” of forces in its favor.

March 1968

• March 1968, Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek the Democratic Party's re-nomination for president and implied that he would go to the bargaining table with the Communists to end the war.

The Nixon

Years

in

• Secret Negotiations began in the Spring of 1968 in Paris.

– Nixon claimed he had a secret plan to end the war.

Nixon’s Secret Plan

• Nixon’s secret plan involved borrowing a deliberate move from Lyndon Johnson's last year in office.

Vietnamization

• Nixon continued a development called Vietnamization.

– It was a brutal term that implied that Vietnamese were not fighting and dying in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

– This strategy brought American troops home while it increased the air war over the DRV and relying more on the ARVN for ground attacks.

• Nixon years also saw expanding the war into Laos and Cambodia.– This would be violating the international rights of

these countries in secret campaigns. (Laos was granted neutral earlier in the war.)

• The expanded air war did not put off the Communist Party, and it continued to make hard demands in Paris.

• Nixon's Vietnamization plan briefly quieted domestic critics.

December 1972

• The Nixon administration unleashed a series of deadly bombing raids against targets in the DRV's largest cities, Hanoi and Haiphong.

– Bombings known as the “Christmas Bombings.”

The Paris Peace Agreement/ The Exit of the Americans- 1973-1975

• In January 1973, the Nixon White House persuaded the Thieu-Ky regime in Saigon that they would not desert the GVN if they signed onto the peace accord.

January 23rd, 1973

• On January 23rd, 1973 the final draft was initialed, which ended hostilities between the U.S. and the DVR.

March-April 1973

• From March 1973 until the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, ARVN forces tried greatly to save the South from political and military collapse.

The End of the War

• The end of the war finally came, as DRV tanks rolled south along National Highway One.

• On the morning of April 30, Communist forces captured the presidential palace in Saigon, which ended the Vietnam War.