Vietnam War Survey 1. Since the 19th century, Vietnam had been under French colonial rule. During World War II, the country was taken over by Japanese control. Following the Japanese defeat in the war, Vietnam was back in the hands of the French; however, France was short of troops to occupy the nation. This led to the Nationalist Chinese forces occupying North Vietnam and British troops landing in the South to help the French (Hickman). Taking advantage of the split, Ho Chi Minh established a Communist organization with goals to defeat the French. Ho’s communist forces took over North Vietnam, which caused France to want to regain control of the North. This meant that Ho Chi Minh and his supporters would have to fight for the area. After hearing of this conflict in the U.S., President John F. Kennedy feared the dreaded “domino theory,” which meant that if one Southeast Asian country became communist, then many others would follow the same track. The U.S. military presence in Vietnam, slowly but surely, increased from 800 troops …show more content…
During the Vietnam War, many types of works were created to express society's opinions on the war. “Fortunate Son,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, served as a powerful anti-war song that demonstrated society’s bitterness toward the violence of the war. The song makes a clear distinction between the “fortunate sons” that would never have to serve in the war and the “unfortunate sons” that would be drafted into the war (Shmoop Editorial Team). The novel, “Paco’s Story” by Larry Heinemann deals with the emotional trauma of returning back to normal life after witnessing so many deaths in war. Paco, the main character, survived the war, but he had to watch as the people around him were killed (Lindsay). Curtis Bennett is a well-known poet who wrote a variety of poems dealing with the war. In these poems, he did not criticize the soldiers, rather he criticized the trauma of the war. (“Anti-War Poetry of Curtis Bennett / Read by Ed
Vietnam has a very rich and cultural diverse background dating all the way back to 1066 when William the Conqueror invaded and paved the way for English colonization. The French had been colonizing since the 19th century. The French role in Vietnams history is critical; they started out by bringing these simple peasants to the latest technology of farming and hunting (Yancey 37). The French helped these people out greatly in the beginning, but like all stories of occupation go they just got worse. They started forcing rules and laws on the people of Vietnam. Thus started the First Vietnam War, also known as the Indochina War between France and Vietnam. "The French possessed military superiority, but the Vietnamese had already the hearts and minds of the country. (38). Even from the beginning the Vietnamese had the odds to there favor. The French looked at the wars in numbers and how many lost on each side. They gathered from all the battles that they were winning because the Vietnamese casualties far outweighed the French; nonetheless they were wrong. To a certain point the French were fighting a game that they could not win at any cost. The French had the military superiority but the Vietnamese had the manpower and the Guerilla tactics. The Indochina War ended with French loosing terrible at Dienbienphu, where a whole French garrison was wiped out.
The Vietnam War was a war over communism that started in 1950, when Ho Chi Minh, the national leader of Vietnam, introduced a communist government into North Vietnam. In 1954 it was decided to split the country at the 17th parallel, and was ruled under opposing governments, Bao Dai leading the south and Ho Chi Mihn the north. North Vietnam went to war with South Vietnam with the north being supported by Russia and China, as they were also Communist countries, and the south being supported by Britain and the USA.
The Vietnam War was the longest war in America's history of involvement. Twenty years of hell, land mines, cross-fire, and death. Vietnam was divided by the Geneva Accord. The north being communist run by Ho Chi Minh. The south being anti-Communist run by Ngo Dinh Diem. Before Vietnam was separated, it was run by France. France had ruled most of Indochina since the late 1800s. The Vietnamese were unhappy with the way the French were controlling, therefore, many of them took refuge in China. When in China, they began to follow the lead of Ho Chi Minh, who wanted to model the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence as that of the U.S. version. In the 1940s, Japan had taken over Vietnam which upset Ho Chi Minh and his revolutionaries when they had returned a year later.
It all started with the French fighting a war against all of Indochina, and the U.S providing aid to the French in the late 1940’s. Even with the aid of America, Ho Chi Minh defeated the French in 1954, but America decided to become officially involved in an attempt to defeat the North Vietnamese communists. Eisenhower, addressed the United States with what he called the “Domino Effect,” basically stating that if we allow communism it will spread all over the world.
North Vietnam was brutally suppressing South Vietnam, trying to impose Communism upon unwilling citizens. The United States—who after World War II made it their duty to protect free peoples against dictatorships—made it a priority to protect South Vietnam from invasion, and supplied them with food and weapons. President Eisenhower hypothesized the Domino Theory, declaring that one Communist state would begin attacking adjacent countries and continue in a domino effect until world domination. Used as justification, the Domino Theory was irrational, because North Vietnam only intended to reunite the country under Communism. Full-scale fighting by the US began in 1964 based on the Anti-Communist hysteria that existed at the time.
The French eventually gained back some control over parts of Vietnam. In early 1946, the French began a series of dual negotiations with the Chinese and Viet Minh over the future of Vietnam. After failed negotiations with the French over the future of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh retreated into remote parts of the countryside to fight a small-scale insurgency against the French. (The History Place, Beginner’s Guide)
The United States involved themselves in Vietnam for four main reasons: they wanted to contain communism, prevent the domino effect, support a very weak South Vietnam, and get retaliation for being attacked. After seeing China fall to communism in 1949, Lyndon Johnson did not want to watch the same thing happen in Vietnam. He decided that the United States must fight to contain communism in Vietnam and prevent the domino theory. The domino theory simply stated that if one country fell to communism, neighboring countries would soon follow suit, falling like a set of dominos. Essentially, Americans believed that if South Vietnam fell, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand would follow. Also, South Vietnam could not stand against the Vietcong alone because they were too weak and ill-equipped to fight. The United States believed that with good government, a large scale and ...
The conflict in Vietnam for the United States started when President Dwight D. Eisenhower went along with the domino theory and sent in military advisors in South Vietnam to stop the communist movement from taking place in South Vietnam. The Vietnam conflict was between the communist’s and the United States. North Vietnam was led by Ho Chi Minh, and Ho Chi Minh led the Viet Cong, a guerilla group to help spread communism. The United States were supporters of the South Vietnam because they wanted them to maintain their government rather than falling to the domino theory of communism. After Eisenhower’s term ended, John F. Kennedy became president and took control of the situation in Vietnam.
Without any intent of taking in Vietnam as an American colony, Kennedy was intent on protecting South Vietnamese democracy and American safety. Guided by ideas of anti-communism and the Domino Theory, these factors influenced America’s overwhelming presence in Vietnam, exhibited through imperialist dynamics. As a nation grounded in independence and revolution, American presidents carried this ideology into the sixties. In particular, Kennedy subscribed to the Domino Theory which asserted that when one country fell under communism, others would follow suit in succession, like dominoes (Morgan 134). If South Vietnam fell under communism, other countries in Southeast Asia would then follow suit.
North Vietnam came under the control of the Vietnamese Communists who had opposed France and aimed for a unified Vietnam under Communist rule. Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French controlled the South. For this reason the United States became involved in Vietnam because it believed that if all of the country fell under a Communist government, Communism would spread throughout Southeast Asia and further. This belief is known as the domino theory. The decision to enter Vietnam reflected Americas idea of its global role - the U.S. could not recoil from world leadership.
Throughout the Vietnam War, the public was filled with aggressive and passionate feelings when participating in countless protests or oppositions towards to concept of war. The United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War derived from the fear of the “domino effect,” which can be described as the fear of falling into a communist economy shortly after surrounding countries become communist as well. In the Truman Doctrine, the United States proposed to assist any countries resisting communism, in effort to suppress the spread of communism. Subsequently, the US aided South Vietnam in defending North Vietnam’s desire to conquer and eventually develop yet another communist nation. This was a controversial decision because the spread of communism
The Vietnam War started in 1954, and grew out of the Indochina War with Ho Chi Minh forming the Viet Minh, or the League for the Independence of Vietnam. The Viet Minh fought both the Japanese and French colonial administrations
American involvement sparked protest in the US, catalyzing a global youth movement. Nationalism in Vietnam not only united the people to fight the Japanese, French and Americans, but also cultivated communist leanings which caused U.S. intervention (Hunt 128). Ho Chi Minh, the leader in Vietnam, was first and foremost a nationalist revolutionary who used communism to rally the people. Harnessing anti-Japanese sentiment, and backed by the allies, he formed the Indochinese Communist Party to drive out the Japanese and implement land reform in the North Vietnam (Hunt 122). Ho Chi Minh used communist ideals to get support from China and the USSR, but was primarily a nationalist domestically. This connection was key to Cold War political tension because the United States got involved in Vietnam to prevent communism, mistaking it for nationalism. Robert McNamara, U.S. secretary of defence during the Vietnam War, reflected in this confusion by writing, “we also totally underestimated the nationalist aspect of Ho Chi Minh 's movement. We saw him first as a Communist and only second as a Vietnamese nationalist” (McNamara). Because of the confusion between nationalism and communism in Vietnam the United States got involved in an extensive conflict that would turn the country against its leadership and begin an anti-war youth movement in the 1960s that became a catalyst for youth movements in France, Mexico and Prague (Hunt 185). Through this succession from nationalism to communism and outside intervention, Vietnamese nationalism shifted global political realities during the cold
Vietnam was a struggle which, in all honesty, the United States should never have been involved in. North Vietnam was battling for ownership of South Vietnam, so that they would be a unified communist nation. To prevent the domino effect and the further spread of communism, the U.S. held on to the Truman Doctrine and stood behind the South Vietnamese leader, Diem.
The Vietnam War began in 1954 after North Vietnam’s victory over the French colonial administration of Vietnam. North Vietnam’s goal was to unify the entire country by establishing a central Communist administration with support from the Soviet Union, China, and other Communist allies. By 1957, the Communist Vietnamese, known as the Viet Cong, utilized guerrilla war tactics against all those who were opposed them in the region. The United States government sought to guard against a Communist bloc in SE Asia and seized the opportunity to prevent the unification of the inevitable Communist rule of Vietnam by conducting strategic bombing methods in North Vietnam and surrounding areas suspected of housing the Viet Cong. President John F. Kennedy was a supporter of Dwight Eisenhower’s Domino Theory, which states that a communist victory in one country would cause a chain reaction of Communist rule in neighboring states.