Why did America join Vietnam
The Vietnam conflict began in the late nineteenth century as a result of France conquering Vietnam and making it a protectorate. Vietnam had not experienced settled peace for nearly forty years. Viet Minh, the League for the Independence of Vietnam was formed in 1941, in an effort the reclaim independence from France. In September, 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed it independent of France. The French opposed their independence from 1945 to 1954 and the first representatives of de Gaulle's government landed by parachute in Saigon and Hanoi on 23rd August, 1945. France wanted to re-establish their rule over Vietnam but they were defeated at the battle of Dien Bien Phu on 7th May, 1954. The French Expeditionary Force tried to prevent the Viet Minh from entering Laos and Dien Bien Phu was the place chosen to do so. The French were not very careful and this allowed the Viet Minh cut off their airway to Hanoi. The French surrendered after a siege that had lasted for fifty five days. Ho Chi Minh led the war against France and won. After the war against France a conference was held in Geneva where Vietnam was split up into two parts. North Vietnam was mainly Communist and supported Ho Chi Minh, while the United States and the French supported the south was based there. There were still some Communists who rebelled in the South part of Vietnam. These were known as the Viet Cong. The
The Vietnam Conflict and its Effects
The Vietnam Conflict and its Effects The Vietnam conflict began in the late nineteenth century. The French conquered Vietnam and made it a protectorate. For nearly forty years, Vietnam had not experienced settled peace. The League for the Independence of Vietnam ( Viet Minh ) was formed in 1941, seeking independence from the French. On September 2nd,1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed it independent of France. The French opposed their independence from 1945 to 1954. The first representatives of de Gualle's government landed by parachute in Saigon and Hanoi on August 23rd, 1945. The French wanted to reestablish their rule in Vietnam but were beaten at the battle of Dien Bien Phu on May 7th, 1954. The French Expeditionary Force tried to prevent the Viet Minh from entering Laos and Dien Bien Phu was the place chosen to do so. The French were not very careful and this allowed the Viet Minh to cut off their airway to Hanoi. After a siege that had lasted for fifty - five days, the French surrendered. Ho Chi Minh led the war against France and won. After the war there was a conference in Geneva where Vietnam was divided into two parts along the seventeenth parallel. North Vietnam was mainly Communist and supported Ho Chi Minh, while the south was supported by the United States and the French were based there. There was still some Communist rebels
Explain how the USA became involved in Vietnam and why the US Army experienced problems in Vietnam by 1968.
Transfer-Encoding: chunked Explain how the USA became involved in Vietnam and why the US Army experienced problems in Vietnam by 1968. The USA was interested in Vietnam long before the Vietnam War broke out, due to the 1947 Truman Doctrine. After China fell to communism in 1949 and signed a Friendship Treaty with the USSR in 1950, the Americans were gravely concerned about communism in Asia. Vietnam had been part of the French empire of Indo-China until the communist Ho Chi Minh attempted to seize control. France were defeated at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and Vietnam was divided along the 17th Parallel, despite $1.4 billion of US support. North Vietnam was led by Ho Chi Minh and was communist. South Vietnam was led by Diem and was capitalist. The Americans feared that the Dominion Theory would become a reality – they were concerned that countries such as Laos and Japan would be the next to fall. In the words of General MacArthur, “Asia is where the communists are making their play for world domination.” Therefore the USA got increasingly involved between 1954 and 1965. The capitalist South Vietnam faced trouble from Communist guerrillas called the Viet Cong, who were led by Ho Chi Minh and wanted a united communist Vietnam. The USA initially sent more than $3 billion of financial aid and by 1960 there were over 16,000 American advisors in South Vietnam.
Why did the USA become involved in Vietnam in the 1950’s and 1960’s?
David Gray Why did the USA become involved in Vietnam in the 1950's and 1960's? The USA became involved in Vietnam in the '50s and '60s because of their fear of communism. On of the underlying theories that supported their belief was the domino theory. This was stated by President Eisenhower in 1954, 'You have a row of dominoes set up. You knock over the first one. What will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. Asia has already lost some 450 millions of its peoples to communist dictatorship. We simply cant afford greater losses.' This was re-iterated by President Kennedy in 1956, 'Vietnam represents the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia, the keystone to the arch, the finger in the dike. Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the red tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam'. The USA wanted to maintain a policy of containment, trying to contain Communism and prevent it spreading. Before the 1940's, the US had followed a policy of isolation. However in March 1945, Roosevelt said, 'From now on every Communist action would meet an American reaction'. The Cold War between the USA and USSR could not have existed without these two powerful blocs with opposing political viewpoints. During the 1800's, the growing empires of Western
Why did the USA become involvedin Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s?
Question 1: Why did the USA become involved in Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s? Before the Second World War, Indo-China was occupied by the French, however, during the war; South-East Asia was under Japanese control. In 1945, the French decided that they wanted Indo-China back. The Vietminh (a Vietnamese communist group) decided they would rather have independence, so they tried to drive out the French. In 1954, the Vietminh surrounded and wiped out the French army at Dien Bien Phu. The French realised that they needed help, and over the next two decades, America was dragged into a costly and disastrous war in Vietnam. The first reason that the USA got involved in Vietnam was because of the USA's fear of communism. After the Second World War, there was an emergence of two superpower countries, America and Russia. America was a capitalist country, and Russia was communist. America hated the idea of communism because they knew that it would change their whole way of life if the USA became a communist country. The citizens of America, especially the rich, did not want communism at all. Henceforth, America and the Soviet Union went to war. However, the two countries did not physically fight each other, because they new they were equally powerful, and therefore undefeatable. Instead they started the 'Cold War'. It was more of a competition between the two countries, Russia was
Explain Why The United States Became Increasingly Involved In The War In Vietnam
Explain Why The United States Became Increasingly Involved In The War In Vietnam There were many reasons why the US became increasingly involved in the Vietnam War, and when all linked together they explain why. In this essay I will explain all aspects of why the US got involved and then I will summarise all the points at the end. Since the 1880's, France had controlled an area of eastern Asia called Indo-China, which consisted of Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. In 1940, France was at war with Germany and was losing disastrously. This meant that Vietnam was left vulnerable as France was given funding by America to protect Vietnam. Japan, who were Germany's allies, then took over. They established control over Vietnam with a resistance to make North Vietnam independent, lead by Ho Chi Minh (a communist). He formed a resistance organisation called the Vietminh. In 1946, the Vietminh started a Guerrilla War against the French, who were trying to regain control of Vietnam. The US first got concerned when its national interest was strongly threatened by the countries around Vietnam, a country albeit 9000 miles away from them, and so they felt they had to be involved in a war there. The reason why was the Government's fear of the spread of communism at the time. China becoming communist in 1949; after the US had spent $2 billion supporting anti-communists, the Korean War and
The origin of American involvement in Vietnam.
Middle/High School Level America first became involved in what would become Vietnam during World War II (French Indochina then). When the French fell to the Germans in 1941 in Europe, its colonies in Indochina were taken over by Japan. Japan allowed the France to keep control over Indochina's government. With the U.S. fighting the Japanese but Japan took control of the mineral resources and ports for their own uses. Because the U.S were at war with the Japanese, there was an occasional plane shot down and as the French were peace with the Japanese there the only organization that these downed American flyers could look to for help was a non-governmental organization called the Viet Minh, lead by a man called Ho Chi Minh. During the war, the Viet Minh helped the U.S. fight the Japanese and helped rescue a number of American flyers. The U.S. thought so much of the Viet Minh's help, even though Ho Chi Minh was a communist, help that they sent them a lot of military supplies and a number of OSS agents to teach the Viet Minh how to use the equipment they were receiving. When the war ended, Ho Chi Minh really thought that the U.S. would back his desire to have Vietnam become an independent country, and not stay a colony of France. President Roosevelt said that all of the European superpowers should return all of the colonies that were outside the original country. Roosevelt's
Compare the tactics of the two sides in the Vietnam War.
Vietnam Question 2. USA Tactics The US had several tactics in the war including napalm, Agent Orange, search and destroy, bombing and rolling thunder. Napalm was a sticky substance witch stuck to all surfaces it was a bright orange explosion dropped from a plane as a normal bomb, whatever this substance of chemicals stuck to would burn it, through it and on it for example if the substance were to get stuck on your skin it would burn and peal the layer of your skin of, this substance also could not be washed of the only way to get it off your skin if it was stuck on you was to peal if that layer of skin. This was an effect military tactic was useful because if the cause of the explosion didn't kill the Vietnam then the heat and the flames of the napalm would most likely burn them alive. Agent Orange was a chemical used to strip the trees of all their leaves and green so that the Americans could see where the Vietcong or any persons using the ho chi minh trail. This was extremely useful for finding the Vietcong alone their way to coming into the south or Vietnam but the only problem was that when they found the route they were using the North Vietnam Vietcong would just move the trail which was very easy considering they were all on bikes. Search and destroy was a tactic used by the US it was were the US pick certain villages which may have or may have not been a threat to
Explain why the United States became increasingly involved in the war in Vietnam
Explain why the United States became increasingly involved in the war in Vietnam Vietnam lies in South East Asia; it is bordered by Laos and Cambodia to the West and China to the North. Its two major cities are Hanoi in the North and Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in the South. Vietnam is a mainly agricultural country and most of the population is Buddhist. The history of modern Vietnam starts in the 1870s and 1880s when France annexed Vietnam (known then as French-Indo-China) into their colonial empire. From then until the start of World War two in 1939, France imported their culture, architecture and language. Some Vietnamese adopted the French way of life, but others resisted French rule and were ruthlessly put down by the authorities. At the start of the Second World War, Vietnam was ruled only in name Emperor Boa Dia, it was still a French colony however. The defeat of France by Germany in Europe made it impossible for her to protect much of her overseas empire. When the Japanese made a "request" to move troops into French-Indo-China in July 1941, the French were too weak to refuse. Five months later, when Asia and the Pacific were at war, a rebel leader, Ho Chi Minh, came back to Vietnam. He joined with other Communist and National groups to fight against the Japanese. In 1941 Ho Chi Minh founded a resistance group known as "Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi". The Vietminh
'Explain why the United States became increasingly involved in the war in Vietnam'.
History Coursework - Vietnam (Question 1) 'Explain why the United States became increasingly involved in the war in Vietnam' In 1954 Vietnam was divided into two countries, North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam became a communist republic under Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh's group of communists, the 'Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi' or 'Vietminh' were supported by China and Russia, also communist countries. South Vietnam became a dictatorship under Emperor Bao Dai. Elections were scheduled, elections Ho Chi Minh was confident he would win. However, Emperor Bao Dai appointed Ngo Dinh Diem as Prime Minister of South Vietnam. Diem then ousted Bao Dai and appointed himself President. President Diem refused elections and remained in South Vietnam. Diem was anti-communist and was supported by the US government whose aim was to eradicate communism. Ho Chi Minh's support in South Vietnam would have won him the election, turning Vietnam as a whole into a communist country. The US government's 'Domino Theory' stated that if communism spread from North Vietnam to South Vietnam, neighbouring countries would fall to communism like dominoes. This had already happened in Eastern Europe as countries freed from Nazi control by the Russians such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland became communist countries influenced by Russia. This made the Domino Theory important to America. In March 1947,
