"Why did the USA send combat troops into Vietnam"?

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James Carpenter        Page         20/12/2004                                                20/12/2004                                        

“Why did the USA send combat troops into Vietnam”?

        At the beginning of World War 2 Vietnam, a small country to the south of China, was under the control of the French. However, The Chinese had control before the war. The Chinese rule had influenced the Vietnamese who based their everyday lives on the Chinese ways of life. E.g. Language, as the French took power Vietnam had to take a dramatic change in the way that they lived. They had to become Catholic, like the French, which was not very popular as they had already become Buddhist and were not ready to change their religion. The Vietnamese started to attack the Catholic priests to try and keep Vietnam as a Buddhist country. As a result to the actions taken by the Vietnamese the French, in 1847, retaliated by attacking Danang to even the battle with the Vietnamese people. The French had a man called Dong Kanh lined up to be the emperor of Vietnam.

        

        Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890 and throughout his childhood through to adolescence had lived in Britain, France, USA and briefly visited Russia (U.S.S.R) in 1924 where he studied communism in depth. Ho Chi Minh grew up to lead the resistance against the French. His power and determination influenced the Vietnamese to fight for an independent Vietnam and eliminate all French rule. The Japanese saw this battle as a prime opportunity to invade Vietnam and take control. So, during World War 2 Japan invaded Indochina and The French had decided that they couldn’t help Vietnam due to the German occupation of Paris. This meant that the French would rather fight for country instead of empire. So, The Japanese had no other opposition and eventually overwhelmed the Vietnamese and were in control. Once again the new rule in Vietnam was very unpopular and so the VIETNAM REVOLUTIONARY LEAGUE, a very strong resistance, was set up. Ho Chi Minh, the leader, founded the INDOCHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY in 1930. This provided the influence and inspiration to make the Vietnamese fight without the aid and support of the French. Instead Vietnam had the support of the USA and China. This became too much for Japan so they surrendered to the allies at the end of the Second World War.

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        In 1946 the French had started a full-scale war. The USA began to see that Ho was a puppet to Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese communists. The USA then backed the French by supplying them with arms and money. However, despite all the support from one of the most powerful countries in the world the French were defeated by Vietnam and China. Almost immediately some of the major world powers ha a meeting to try to discuss and solve the problem without the need to fight. So, eventually they had made the Geneva Convention, which said that Vietnam ...

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