The History Of The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a terrible war fought between the years of 1945 to 1975. Even though the war started in 1945, America did not enter the war until 1961. During 1945 World War II was nearing an end, the Japanese invaded Vietnam, kicked out the French colonial government, and seized control of Vietnam by controlling Bao Dai, the emperor of Vietnam. The history of Vietnam is filled with information, a few of those things would be: how it started, how the United States (U.S.) got involved, the different things that happened during the war, and how the war ended.

On September 2, 1945, a scrawny man in a plain khaki tunic spoke before a crowd of half a million people at Ba Dinh square in Hanoi, Vietnam. That day, shops, offices, and schools had been closed for the occasion. Red flags and banners bearing nationalist slogans hung from city buildings as people crowded the streets chanting for a man walking towards the middle of the town to speak. The man, a Communist leader who had taken the name Ho Chi Minh (“he who enlightens”), declared Vietnam to be independent both of Japan and of France. His speech began with the words, “We hold truths that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”(Leone 15)

These phrases borrowed from the Declaration of Independence were one of several references to the United States on that day on that day. The band playing for the revelry played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Several Americans, members of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) who had cooperated with Ho Chi Minh and his forces in fighting the Japanese, stood on the reviewing stand with General Vo Nguyen Giap, the head of the army of the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Vietminh). In an address following Ho’s speech, Giap said, “We regard the U.S. as a good friend.”(Leone 16)

This celebration, the culmination of the “August Revolution” in which the Vietminh had seized power in most of Vietnam’s provinces, was part of a long history of history of independence efforts in Vietnam. Roughly one thousand years before, Vietnam had first won independence from China after centuries of foreign rule. Ho himself had been involved in independence struggles for most of his life. In the early 1930s, his Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) had unsuccessfully rebelled against French rule. From 1941 to 1945, the Vietminh, a coalition of nationalist groups, created by Ho and led by members of the ICP, had waged guerrilla warfare against the Japanese, who had displaced the French during World War II.(Leone 16) The Vietminh had also created a network of political associations and organizations in Vietnamese cities and villages. The success of the 1945 revolution was a result of the work of the Vietminh and the popular support it had attracted, but it was also a product of timing. Japan had been defeated in World War II, and France had yet to send soldiers and personnel back to Vietnam to retake its lost colony.(Schoenbrun 20)

Most people in the United States were unaware of these developments in Vietnam, a country more than eight thousand miles away on the other side of the world. On the day Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence; Americans were instead celebrating the news that the Japanese had formally signed surrender terms, finally bringing World War II to a close.(Leone 16)

In 1946, Ho Chi Minh went to France and attempted to negotiate independence from French rule, which failed to produce a full agreement. In November, the French shelling of Haiphong Harbor, which killed over six thousand Vietnamese civilians, ignites open war between France and the Vietminh. In 1949, the Communist takeover of China helps convince the Truman administration to move toward greater involvement in defending French interests in Indochina.(Schoenbrun 26)

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On January 14, 1950, Ho Chi Minh declares that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) is the only legal government. It is recognized by the Soviet Union and China, but also establishes democratic relations with Marshal Tito’s Yugoslavia, prompting some American officials to suggest that Ho is not a Soviet “puppet.” Chinese Communists begin to provide modern weapons to the Vietminh as they start to post themselves on the Vietnamese border.(Schoenbrun 33) Meanwhile back in the U.S., President Truman, without consulting Congress, commits American troops to the Korean War under United Nations (UN) support. Truman also signs legislation fifteen million dollars in military aid to the French for the war in Indochina.(Karnow 43) On December 23, 1950, a Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement is signed by the United States, Vietnam, France, Cambodia, and Laos; around the end of the Truman administration the United States was bearing one-half of the cost of the French of the French war effort in Vietnam.(Leone 34)

On July 27, 1953, the Korean War ends with an armistice signed after Dwight D. Eisenhower replaces Truman as president. As the war goes on, the Vietnamese regime started to need money for the war. Their emperor, Bao Dai, asked the U.S. for money to help out the war. On September 30, 1953, President Eisenhower approves 785 million dollars for military aid to Bao Dai’s regime.(Leone 37)

In 1954, a gathering was held in Switzerland known as the Geneva Accord. During the accord, Vietnam was temporarily divided at the seventeenth parallel, giving Ho Chi Minh’s regime control of North Vietnam and Bao Dai’s regime control of South Vietnam, the elections for the reunification of Vietnam were scheduled for July of 1956. Bao Dai’s government denounces the Geneva agreement and the U.S. refuses to sign it, but the American representative, Walter Bedell Smith, declares that the U.S. will refrain from either threatening or using force to prevent its implementation. In October, President Eisenhower sends a letter to Ngo Dinh Diem, the prime minister of Vietnam at the time, pledging U.S. support to Diem’s government and military forces.(Leone 42)

In 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem, after beating Bao Dai in a rigged election, proclaims the existence of the Republic of Vietnam with himself as president. The government is recognized by the United States and its allies, including France.(Karnow 231) On April 28, 1956, the last French troops leave Vietnam and the United States assumes full responsibility for the training of South Vietnam’s military forces. As the deadline for the Geneva reunification elections passes, a choice made by Diem, the United States chooses to support the decision in his refusal to hold them.(Karnow 233)

As 1957 rolls around, President Diem makes a visit to the United States to address a joint session of Congress and, in turn, received a declaration of support from President Eisenhower. In October of 1957, Vietminh soldiers hiding in South Vietnam start to become hostile towards Diem’s military personnel. In 1959, North Vietnam took steps to increase the infiltration of troops and supplies into South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh trail, a secret path through the jungle that crossed the border into South Vietnam. During this time U.S. advisers were assigned to the regimental level of the Army of the Republic of (South) Vietnam (ARVN). In 1960, the National Liberation Front (NLF), along with North Vietnam’s help, was formed in South Vietnam to overthrow Diem’s government. In turn, Diem called the NLF the “Vietcong”.(Karnow 237)

The U.S. really got involved in the Vietnam War in 1961 as a result of the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s announcement of his support for “wars of national liberation”, which was announced around the world. Khrushchev’s pronouncement influenced the incoming administration of President John F. Kennedy to block the Communist advances in Vietnam. In May of 1961, Kennedy approved the sending of Special Forces troops into South Vietnam and authorized covert warfare against North Vietnam, including operations in Laos.(Schoenbrun 49) In June, Kennedy and Khrushchev met in Vienna and agreed to a neutral and independent Laos. A similar offer was made by Khrushchev for Vietnam but, Kennedy rejected it thinking that he could defeat North Vietnam without having to make it neutral.(Leone 41) In October of 1961, Kennedy dispatched General Maxwell Taylor and foreign- policy adviser Walt Rostow to South Vietnam who, after ascertaining the situation and figuring how many troops they would need, recommended sending an eight-thousand-man “logistical task force” to assist in the guerrilla war against North Vietnam.(Leone 54)

In December, the U.S. State Department claimed in a public report that South Vietnam was threatened by a “clear and present danger” of Communist aggression. On December 31, 1961, the number of U.S. military personnel serving in South Vietnam had increased from nine hundred to 3,205 over the preceding year.(Barr 20) On February 8, 1962, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was established in Saigon. In February the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam had reached four thousand. By December of 1962, the number of American military personnel in Vietnam had already reached nine thousand.(Barr 23)

In November of 1963, South Vietnamese generals, led by Tran Van Don and Duong Van Minh, and with the fore knowledge and encouragement of the United States, staged a military coup that overthrew the Diem government. Shortly afterward, Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were captured and executed. On November 24, 1963, two days after the assassination of President Kennedy, new U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson confirmed American support for the government of South Vietnam. By the end of 1963, 16,500 American soldiers are stationed in Vietnam.(Karnow 282)

In 1964, President Johnson approved the use of covert military operations against North Vietnam, which were carried out by South Vietnamese and Asian mercenaries. In August, the North Vietnamese had begun a series of attacks on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.(Barr 25) When President Johnson heard of these attacks he immediately went to Congress and asked them to authorize “all necessary measures” to repel armed attacks against American forces in that area. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed almost unanimously by Congress on August 7.(Karnow 345)

In 1965, the North Vietnamese attacks on American bases in South Vietnam lead to the retaliatory American air strikes against North Vietnam. Since the North Vietnamese continued to attack the American bases, President Johnson authorized a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam that would begin on March 2, 1965, and would continue until October 31, 1968.(Karnow 452) On March 8, 1965, thirty-five hundred American Marines landed at the city of Da Nang, these were the first U.S. combat troops sent to Vietnam. During the month of April in 1965, President Johnson authorized U.S. military personnel in Vietnam to undertake offensives in support of ARVN operations. Back home in the U.S., on April 17, 1965, the first major antiwar march on Washington took place. In June of 1965, the U.S. State Department publicly authorized American troops in Vietnam to participate in combat.(Leone 118)

In July of 1965, President Johnson made several decisions that escalated American involvement in Vietnam, which included sending fifty thousand soldiers to Vietnam, with the promise additional increases if they were needed, expanding the air war against North Vietnam, and raised draft calls to thirty-five thousand per month. In October, the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam sponsored nationwide demonstrations against the war back in the United States. By December 31, 1965, the number of U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam had grown from 23,000 to 184,000 since January of 1965.(Leone 180)

After a thirty-seven-day pause, President Johnson announced the resumption of the bombing of North Vietnam on January 31, 1966, after it failed to lead to peace negotiations. In May of 1966, four housewives in San Jose, California, obstructed shipments of napalm, a jelly-like substance made of gasoline, benzene, and polystyrene used in bombs during the Vietnam War to wipe out whole sections of jungle at a time, to protest its use in Vietnam. In June of 1966, the Black Anti-Draft Union and Afro-Americans Against the War in Vietnam were organized by black activists all over the U.S. Also during June, President Johnson approved a force level of 431,000 troops, which were to be reached by mid-1967. In the United States, the Student Mobilization Committee, the first national student antiwar coalition, is formed in December of 1966. By the end of the year 1966, the number of U.S. military personnel in Vietnam had reached 385,000.(Leone 129)

On January 8-26, 1967, during Operation Cedar Falls, the largest American offensive of the Vietnam War to date, sixteen thousand U.S. troops attempted to disrupt Vietcong operations northeast of Saigon. More than one hundred thousand people in New York and San Francisco demonstrated against the war in Vietnam, including civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. on April 15, 1967. On June 1, 1967, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War was formed. In September, elections in South Vietnam brought to power President Nguyen Van Thieu, who remained in power until 1975, and Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky. During the month of October, 1967, nationwide antiwar demonstrations were held, including a large march on the Pentagon. Also during October, President Johnson’s approval rating for his handling of the war fell to 28 percent. By the end of 1967, there were more than half a million American troops in Vietnam.(Karnow 439)

On January 30, 1968, Communist forces launched massive and coordinated surprise attacks on South Vietnamese cities in what was know as the Tet Offensive.(Leone 125) One secret that was kept from the public happened on March 16, 1968, which involved two platoons of American soldiers, known as the My Lai incident. These two platoons went through a dozen camps killing hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese citizens, because this was such scandal, know one knew about it until it was released by the Pentagon on November 13, 1969.(Prados 184) On March 31, President Johnson, in a television address, announced a partial halt to the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, a call to North Vietnam to begin peace talks. On May 13, formal peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam were openly held in Paris.(Karnow 523) In August, Richard Nixon was nominated for the presidency by the Republican Party. On October 31, 1968, President Johnson announced a complete halt to the bombing of North Vietnam. On November 5, Nixon is elected President with Gerald Ford as his vice-president.(Leone 138)

On March 15, 1969, Nixon found out that the Vietcong were hiding in Cambodia, so he ordered the immediate bombing of these sanctuaries, but because he was bombing sanctuaries, it was never released to the American public.(Prados 193) In May of 1969, American soldier commitment was at its peak at 543,000, also during May, President Nixon announced his first major troop withdrawal and pledged to replace the Selective Service Act with a lottery. In June Nixon announced that twenty-five thousand U.S. troops would be withdrawn and replaced by South Vietnamese soldiers. (Leone 143)

On September 23, 1969, back in the United States, eight radical activist leaders went on trial in Chicago for their part in organizing the August 1968 antiwar demonstrations in that city. On October 15, more than a million people participated in antiwar demonstrations in cities across the United States in the October Moratorium.(Karnow 527) November 13, 1969, the public learned of the My Lai incident after the Pentagon released it, when the public acquired the information, they were shocked and outraged that our men were over in Vietnam killing innocent people.(Prados 184) At the end of 1969, U.S. troop levels in Vietnam stood at 479,000.(Leone 195)

In April of 1970, U.S. troops invaded Cambodia to attack North Vietnamese and Vietcong sanctuaries. In June of 1970, the Senate repealed the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution by a vote of 82-1. By the end of 1970, 335,000 U.S. military personnel still remained in South Vietnam. (Leone 157)

On January 1, 1971, Congress forbade the use of U.S. troops in Cambodia or Laos. In May of 1971, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger secretly promised North Vietnam that the United States would withdraw all troops within six months if, and only if, American POWs were returned.(Karnow 635) In June of 1971, the New York Times began the publication of leaked portions of the Pentagon Papers, the forty-seven volume Pentagon analysis of United States policy in Vietnam through 1969.(Karnow 633) at the end of 1971, the number of military personnel in Vietnam had fallen to under 157,000.(Leone 168)

In March of 1972, North Vietnam had begun a major invasion of South Vietnam at a time when only ninety-five thousand United States military personnel were still remaining in Vietnam. As a result, America increased their bombing of North Vietnam to support the South Vietnamese. In May of 1972, President Nixon continued B-52 bombing raids on North Vietnam and ordered the mining of North Vietnam and a naval blockade of Haiphong Harbor.(Leone 214) By the end of 1972, twenty-four thousand United States military personnel still remain in Vietnam. (Leone 217)

On January 27, 1973, the Paris Peace Accords went into effect, the United States had promised to pull out their remaining twenty-two thousand troops within sixty days, and the draft ends. From February 12-27, American POWs began coming home.(Karnow 655) On March 29, 1973, North Vietnam released sixty American prisoners of war, who left Vietnam along with the last remaining U.S. troops aside from Defense Attaché units and Marine embassy guards. On June 4, 1973, Congress blocked all funds for continuing U.S. activities in Indochina. The last bombing operation in Cambodia ends on August 15.(Leone 225)