AMST 3100 The 1960s Vietnam Chronology

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AMST 3100 The 1960sVietnam Chronology

• Powerpoint 8
• Read Chafe Chapter 9, FDRs Atlantic Charter, Ho
  Chi Minhs Declaration of Independence, and Hos
  Letter to President Truman requesting that he
  honor the Atlantic Charter.

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Post-1954 region after division into two regions,
North Vietnam and South Vietnam, with a
demilitarized zone (DMZ) in the middle. The
Vietnamese nationalists never accepted this
division as permanent, despite the American
intention to make it so.
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Please click this link for the PBS web-companion
to its Vietnam A Television History program.
Begin with the timeline, followed by Whos Who,
etc.Please click this link to examine some of
the key people and issues involved in the Vietnam
War.Please click this link for a comprehensive
listing of documents related to the Vietnam
War.Please click this link to examine FDRs
1941 Atlantic Charter declaring U.S. support for
national sovereignty across the globe. Click this
link to examine Ho Chi Minhs Declaration of
Independence (1945), and click this link to
examine Hos letter to President Truman asking
the U.S. to honor its Atlantic Charter principles
(1946).Please click this link to examine the
Vietnam War from a conservative-ideology
perspective in order to get a fuller view of the
conflict. My view leans toward the progressive
rather than the conservative perspective, but I
am open to all perspectives and would like you to
decide for yourself how you view this experience
after reviewing as much information as
possible.Please click this link to briefly
examine some of the lessons learned from the
Vietnam experience from different perspectives.
These discussions occurred in 1985.Please click
this link to examine the relevant battles.
Vietnam War Web Resource Page
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1946-54 The Indochina War

• Indochina War
• Americans support the French with weapons and
  money
• Ho Chi Minh effectively fights a guerrilla war

The French Indochina War pitted the French
against the Vietnamese in Frances effort to
re-install colonialism in Vietnam. The Americans
provided money and supplies to the French,
including the American plane you see in the
background of this photo.
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1954

• French lose at the battle of Dien Bien Phu
• Geneva Accords
• Vietnam to be temporarily divided into 2 regions,
  North and South.
• National referendum to be held in 2 years to
  resolve how to unify the country. All likelihood
  was that Ho Chi Minh would have emerged as the
  leader of all of Vietnam by 1956.
• U.S. installs a puppet dictator, Ngo Dinh Diem,
  and proceeds in nation-building to create a
  permanent South Vietnam, despite the Geneva
  Accords.

The caption beneath this photo says Supplies for
the beleaguered French garrison in Dien Bien Phu
are parachuted in. The Vietnamese occupied the
high ground.
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1954-63

• Viet Cong form in the South Vietnam to resist
  U.S. nation-building efforts.
• Diem claims electoral victory in South Vietnam in
  1956 in a rigged election that violated the
  Geneva Accords. No national referendum was ever
  held in 1956 the two Vietnams remained divided,
  just as the Americans desired.
• Diem fails to provide significant reforms while
  favoring Catholics over Buddhists in a country
  that is mainly Buddhist.
• Diems brother, Nhu, brutally represses political
  dissent. South Vietnam was essentially a
  right-wing dictatorship supported by the U.S.,
  while North Vietnam was essentially a left-wing
  communist state supported by China and Russia.

President Eisenhower, seen here with John Foster
Dulles next to him, chose Ngo Diem to be his
puppet leader in South Vietnam. The U.S.
fabricated what appeared to be a legitimate
election to give him credibility to outside
observers. Diem was never popular among the South
Vietnamese.
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1960-63

• JFK elected. Proceeds to increase advisors in
  South Vietnam while trying to keep his options
  open.
• 16,000 advisors by 63.
• S.Vietnamese Buddhist monks burn themselves in
  protest of Diems pro-Catholic policies in 1963.
  Much world coverage, and the Diem regime is seen
  to be clearly unpopular in South Vietnam. JFK is
  frustrated with Diems stubborn refusal to allow
  popular reforms. The Diem regime is overthrown in
  late 63 as Diem is assassinated in a
  U.S.-approved political coup. South Vietnam falls
  into political chaos.
• JFK is assassinated two weeks later, on Nov. 22,
  1963, leaving Vietnam policy in disarray for LBJ
  to sort out.

A Buddhist monk commits public suicide in 1963 to
draw world attention to the anti-Buddhist
policies of Ngo Diem, the American-supported
dictator of South Vietnam. Diem did not consider
himself a puppet of the U.S., despite being
propped up by the U.S.. He heeded some, but not
all, of the advice given to him by the Americans
and was therefore frustrating.
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1964

• LBJ rejects any exit strategy and commits to win
  in Vietnam. He is a Cold Warrior who sees South
  Vietnam as an American commitment and as a test
  of U.S. anti-communist resolve in a key region of
  the globe. He, like Truman, Eisenhower, and
  Kennedy before him, subscribes to the domino
  theory and the National Security Council Report
  68 (NSC 68, 1950) that advises against passive
  containment and advocates an aggressive
  rolling back of communism. Click here for a
  good site to examine, including a 1950s map
  showing the fear of communist expansion that lies
  behind NSC 68.
• Gulf of Tonkin incident leads to a Congressional
  resolution giving LBJ a green light to escalate
  the war. This resolution gave LBJ war-making
  powers. It was later withdrawn by Congress as one
  of the lessons of Vietnam after Vietnam became a
  quagmire.
• LBJ increases advisors in S. Vietnam to 20,000
  with private plans for a dramatic increase if the
  generals seek this. This is an election year,
  however, so he cant be too openly aggressive. At
  this time, LBJ is mostly focused on domestic
  policy, and most Americans - including the
  mainstream commercial press - know little about
  Vietnam and American policy there.

The domino theory suggested that if Vietnam fell,
then all of Southeast Asia would also fall to the
communists, and this would threaten the entire
free world.
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1965

• First combat troops arrive.
• Troop numbers increase to 175,000.
• Operation Rolling Thunder.
• Sustained and massive air bombings.
• The draft is escalated (draft age was 19), thus
  politicizing the war and aggravating the youth
  culture.
• First major war protest occurs, with 15,000
  attending.

Welcome to Vietnam. Troops arrived mostly by
plane but the military wanted this image,
reminiscent of WWII, as an icon. There was no
enemy firing upon U.S. soldiers as they landed in
this photo.
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1966

• Troop strength increased to 380,000.
• First B-52 raids on North Vietnam.
• Heaviest air bombings of the war.
• U.S. commercial media coverage is biased toward
  LBJs spin on the war.
• U.S. uses conventional military strategy against
  an enemy using a guerrilla strategy.
• U.S. is failing to win over the hearts and minds
  of the indigenous population of South Vietnam.
  GIs cannot tell friend from foe.

B-52 dropping 500 pound bombs and the damage
caused by such bombing raids.
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1967

• U.S. troop strength reaches nearly 500,000.
• Massive anti-war demonstrations, yet LBJ ignores
  them, committed to a victory he has yet to
  clearly define. Privately he suspects the war may
  be un-winnable. Yet he is afraid of being labeled
  soft by Republican hawks and feels he cannot
  afford to lose Vietnam. Publicly he maintains a
  confident face.
• M. L. King, Jr comes out against the war.
• U.S. commercial media coverage is still generally
  slanted toward LBJs spin. Most Americans still
  support the war, but attitudes are changing.
• 9,342 troops killed this year.
• Little sign of progress toward victory.

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1968

• Tet offensive in January exposes a credibility
  gap for LBJ and the generals.
• The turning point in the war.
• McCarthy and RFK antiwar platform.
• Massive antiwar protests as the country is deeply
  polarized.
• Walter Cronkite and mainstream media shift toward
  anti-war slant.
• LBJ announces in March he will not run for
  re-election.
• MLK and RFK, both peace advocates, are
  assassinated in April and June, throwing liberal
  reformers in turmoil. Kings death results in
  100 riots.
• Troop strength increased to 530,000. Gen.
  Westmorland wants more troops.
• My Lai massacre occurs but is covered up. The
  story broke much later.
• Nixon is elected, ending the idealistic liberal
  reform era of JFK and LBJ.

The Tet offensive began in late January, 1968 and
involved attacks all across South Vietnam. While
the U.S. eventually succeeded in pushing back the
attackers militarily, this offensive revealed
that the U.S. did not have as much control in the
war as they had maintained. It was a political
disaster for LBJ and contributed to Americans
turning against a war in which they were
frequently told victory was just over the
horizon.
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1969

• Nixon secretly bombs Cambodia.
• Nixon begins troop withdrawal in his
  Vietnamization policy.
• Troop numbers down to 475,000.
• A massive Peace Moratorium March is held across
  the country.
• Ho Chi Minh dies.
• The counterculture is increasingly radicalized
  and fractured as the liberal reform era
  collapses.
• Many Silent Majority mainstream Americans,
  seeking stability, are getting fed up with the
  counterculture.

The Peace Moratorium March brought out 250,000
people in Washington DC and more than 2 million
people overall.
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1970

• Troop strength decreases to 284,000 under Nixons
  Vietnamization policy.
• Nixon invades Cambodia, arousing the anti-war
  counterculture from a brief lull.
• Four dead in Ohio Four Kent State students are
  killed by the National Guard during a protest
  against Nixons widening of the war into
  Cambodia.
• Nixons Peace with Honor policies, in effect,
  are prolonging the war because Nixon cannot get
  the North Vietnamese to bargain. Nixon views it
  as a matter of U.S. honor and commitment to get
  some kind of a treaty with North Vietnam, lest
  the U.S. lose face. Besides invading Cambodia
  (and Laos) he relies mostly on heavy bombing,
  hoping to drive them to the table, and this
  angers the antiwar movement.

This is a photo of the Kent State shooting. Angry
students across college campuses protested the
invasion of Cambodia, exposing tensions with the
police and national guard. The Kent State
shooting by the Ohio National Guard left four
students dead. Several weeks later, in
Mississippi, the police opened fire on students
at Jackson State College, killing two. These
killings led many colleges to close up for the
semester to avoid a repeat of such violence.
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1971

• Nixon invades Laos with the ARVN.
• Nixons military strategy is to hit the enemy
  hard with air power to try to bring them to peace
  talks. He is frustrated the North Vietnamese
  dont play along.
• Troop strength down to 160,000.

This is a photo of unmarked CIA planes being
armed to attack Laos. The U.S. had been secretly
bombing Laos since 1964. In 1971, Nixon
authorized the ARVN to openly attack Laos to
demonstrate the success of his Vietnamization
policy in producing a South Vietnamese army
capable of defending itself. However, the Laos
invasion was a disaster and the ARVN were routed.
The defeat demonstrated the failure of
Vietnamization and spurred increased communism
and anger at the U.S. in Laos. By 1975 a
communist government was established in Laos.
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1972

• Nixon visits China, accepting an invitation by
  China to open up diplomatic ties. Under Nixons
  triangulation policy, Nixon played China and the
  Soviet Union off each other. This is perhaps
  Nixons most significant foreign policy
  achievement. With such diplomacy Nixon succeeded
  in reducing Soviet military aid to North Vietnam,
  and this may have helped drive North Vietnam to
  the bargaining table as they began to run out of
  Soviet-supplied SAM missiles.
• U.S. mines Haiphong harbor.
• Nixon is increasingly bombing North Vietnam to
  get them to the peace talks.
• Secret peace talks begin.
• By now, only 20 GIs are killed each week.

Nixon and Chou En Lai toast to friendship.
Nixons visit to China was a bit ironic because
it was hawks like himself who helped drive U.S.
foreign policy to take such a hard line
anti-diplomacy position against communism to
begin with. Of course, there were also hawks in
the Chinese and Soviet leadership. This visit was
enabled by a new breed of Chinese leader, Chou En
Lai, who favored increased Chinese diplomacy with
the world.
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1973

• Peace agreement is finally reached. The Paris
  Peace Accords were carried out by negotiators
  Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho.
• Recognized the 1954 Geneva Accords that
  established all of Vietnam as one country (a
  victory for the nationalists because the U.S. had
  been trying to build South Vietnam).
• Established a temporary peace to allow the U.S.
  to withdraw from Vietnam and recognized the North
  Vietnamese army in all of their locations across
  Vietnam.
• Allowed for the release of U.S. prisoners of war.
• In effect, the North Vietnamese had won the war,
  but it was not a military defeat for the U.S. so
  much as it was a political victory for those
  seeking national unification, albeit under
  communism. The U.S. had decided by as early as
  1968 that it was not worth the price to continue
  their nation-building efforts. What strikes many
  doves is how long it took the U.S. to withdraw
  after this realization. What strikes many hawks
  is how Nixon managed to save face by securing a
  treaty, albeit at the cost of more than 15,000
  American soldiers.

Operation Homecoming, 1973. Former American POWs
celebrate after their plane takes off from
Vietnam to fly them home. Approximately 591 POWs
were released.
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1975

• Last of U.S. troops leave Saigon as the communist
  nationalists enter the city in triumph.
• By now the U.S. had left only skeleton troops to
  manage the final withdrawal.
• Mass evacuation created a boat people refugee
  problem for those fleeing.
• Southeast Asia has been rendered unstable by the
  Vietnam conflict, and the murderous regime of Pol
  Pot emerges in Cambodia. See the movie The
  Killing Fields for a dramatic portrayal of
  events that were unfolding there.

Vietnamese civilians flee from a Saigon rooftop
as North Vietnamese troops enter the city. Most
of these people had civil service or other
connections with the South Vietnamese government
and feared communist reprisals.
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AMST 3100
End