France takes over Indochina French Indochina French Rubber

France takes over Indochina

French Indochina

French Rubber Plantation

Literacy declines, landlessness grows under French rule • By 1925 one schoolage child in ten was receiving schooling. • Millions of peasants became landless, working for French plantations and mines

Vietnamese opium den

Justice could be harsh

Indochina and Vietnam Spans 5 presidents and 30+ years of history of involvement • Truman • Eisenhower • Kennedy • LBJ (Lyndon B. Johnson) • Nixon WHY? The Truman Doctrine Eisenhower Doctrine Containment Policy

Brief history of Vietnam’s Historical Struggle for Freedom • 1946 -1954 - French Indochina War- Ho Chi Minh leads a guerrilla war against the French. 75% of the war is funded by America to aid in the containment of communism. • Embarrassing defeat for the French @ Dien Bien Phu • Geneva Accords • Peace treaty to end war • Split Vietnam @ 17 th Parallel • National unification election scheduled for 1956

Growing crisis in Southeast Asia • US public mostly unaware • US foreign policy…DOMINATED by Indochina • After the French loss, Americans believe they can form and support a strong noncommunist govt. in the South. • Help place Ngo Dinh Diem in power "If Indochina goes, several things happen right away. The Malayan peninsula, the last little bit of the end hanging on down there, would be scarcely defensible … all of India would be outflanked. Burma would certainly, in its weakened condition, be no defense. “ –Dwight D. Eisenhower

Domino Theory • The fear that if one country in Southeast Asia fell to communism, they would all fall like dominoes.

Three U. S. Presidents during the Vietnam era discussing the Domino Theory “If we withdrew from Vietnam the Communists would control Vietnam. Pretty soon, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia would go. ” President Kennedy, 1960 -63 “If this little nation goes down the drain and can’t maintain their independence, ask yourself what is going to happen to all the other little nations. ” Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963 -68 “If the U. S. now were to throw in the towel and go home, and the Communists took over South Vietnam, then all over Southeast Asia, all over the Pacific, in the Mid east, in Europe, in the world, the U. S. would suffer a blow. And peace, because we are the great peacekeeping nation in the world today because of our power, would suffer a blow from which it might not recover. ” President Nixon, 1968 -74

America gets involved in Vietnam • Truman Doctrine- We will aid countries resisting communism (1949) • Containment- Only allowing communism to exist where it currently existed (no spread) • Domino Theory- If Vietnam falls to communism other Asian countries would follow & possibly the world • In 1955, Eisenhower sends first advisors to Vietnam to train South Vietnam Soldiers • Kennedy- Supports containment • By 1963 there are 16, 000 advisors

The Vietminh and The Vietcong • Vietminh rebels who defeated the French begin fighting against South Vietnamese and Diem. • The National Liberation Front is formed, becomes The Vietcong (Vietnamese Communist) goal of over throwing Diem and expelling US. • Both groups consisted of nonprofessional fighters, men, women, old and young. • Ho Chi Minh saw many similarities between Vietnam and American’s Revolution. (both were for freedom) • Do you?

MLK Jr talks to press outside Riverside Church

https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v= OC 1 Ru 2 p 8 Of. U

Diem and the Buddhists • Ho Chi Minh looked like he was going to win the Geneva elections, so Diem with US approval, blocked the elections • US supports Ngo Dinh Diem, the non-communist leader in South Vietnam • Diem is seen as corrupt • He is a Catholic in a Buddhist majority country • Doesn’t make good on promised social & economic reforms • Repressive tactics against enemies • Civil Turmoil- Verge of Vietnamese Civil War • Buddhists, knowing Americans are watching began protesting Diem’s government and unite the country against him (and the US).

LBJ-ultimately a tragic figure • “I knew from the start if I left the woman I really loved – the Great Society – in order to fight this bitch of a war (Vietnam) on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs. All my hopes…All my dreams. ”

Gulf of Tonkin Incident and Resolution • Gulf of Tonkin Incident- US ship is said to have been attacked • Gulf of Tonkin Resolution- Allowed LBJ to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the US. • Enables the escalation of the War- • • • Send more troops and bombs to Vietnam Bomb North Vietnam Americanizing the War- March 8, 1965 first US combat troops enter Vietnam

US build up & the draft • To help win the war the US begins drafting young men to train and fight in Vietnam. • Overwhelming numbers of poor are draft. College kids could get deferments and not have to go to war. • By 1968, there are more than 500, 000 American troops in Vietnam.

• American Strategies in Vietnam Rolling Thunder- Relentless bombing of North Vietnam. Sought to stop support flowing into South Vietnam. More bombs dropped on N. Vietnam than in Europe (WW 2) • Search and Destroy- American strategy of finding and killing NVA and VC • Agent Orange- Chemical sprayed on the dense jungles of Vietnam. Meant to kill the jungle and push peasants into the cities.

Ho Chi Minh Trail • Path through Cambodia and Laos used by North Vietnam to bring supplies to Viet Cong in South Vietnam. • Although mostly in Laos and Cambodia the US • Bombed and attacked the supply route

Meanwhile in Laos • Turned out the U. S. had been bombing heavily for years to stop supplies from reaching the Vietcong and NVA. • In fact, Laos is the most heavily bombed nation per capita in the history of the world! The U. S dropped as many as 4 times the amount of explosives in Indochina as in all of World War II

Laos: The bombing http: //www. motherjones. com/po litics/2014/03/laos-vietnam-warus-bombing-uxo The U. S. made nearly 600, 000 bombing runs over Laos 19641973 and dropped 2. 5 million tons of explosives—more than the U. S. dropped on Germany and Japan in WWII. About a ton for every man, woman and child in Laos

• The war turned against the US in 1968, when the NVA began the Tet Offensive, a surprise offensive on a major Vietnamese holiday that saw attacks all over the country, including in Saigon itself • Continuing US dead and wounded increased antiwar sentiment on the American Home Front, in large part because Vietnam was a TV War where American audiences saw the brutality of war firsthand. Execution of a suspected Viet Cong by the Chief of Police of Saigon.

• Attack by ~ 70, 000 NVA and VC troops. • Saigon and 75% of provincial capitals assaulted • VC Commandos reach the U. S. embassy in Saigon • Major attack on Khe Sanh base was a diversion • Largest battle is in the city of Hue

Major fighting in Saigon, Tan Son Nhut airbase, U. S. embassy hit, widespread destruction

Tet: both sides “won” and “lost” • • United States Gen. Westmoreland’s assurances that the war was going well proved untrue U. S. public turns against the war, people Contributes to LBJ withdrawing from the presidential race U. S. inflicts huge casualties on NVA and VC North Vietnam + Viet Cong • ARVN troops fought well • Suffered huge casualties • There was not a general uprising of the South Vietnamese people

• https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=392 w. Gn h. YIj. U

Lt. Calley

Operation Phoenix • 1968 -1972 Widespread assassination, torture, and interrogation program developed by the CIA, using US and South Vietnamese special forces, paramilitaries. Purpose: wipe out the Viet Cong political structure • Brutal but effective, 80, 000 VC operatives “eliminated”: torture and execution was widely used

• This included the My Lai Massacre in which Americans killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians • The use of weapons like napalm and Agent Orange, a defoliant which devastated the environment and caused huge numbers of birth defects

Dissent and the end of the Vietnam War-tabletop discussions • What were some of the influences on the anti-war movement? • Why did the anti-war protest movement emerge on campuses? What tactics did they use? Why did they grow? What was the reaction of mainstream America to this? • What were some of the methods of draft resistance? • What was “Vietnamization? ” Was it really a new tactic? Have the U. S. tried this tactic again? • What were the Pentagon Papers and what was the effect of its publication • Why did the U. S. invade Cambodia? What was the reaction to the invasion? • What happened at Kent State on May 4, 1970? What was the public reaction to it? • What are some of the long-term legacies of Vietnam?

Johnson decides not to run for reelection • Increasingly the American people came to have a “Credibility Gap”, i. e. they no longer believed that LBJ was telling them the truth about the war § In March 1968, LBJ withdrew from the presidential race after winning the New Hampshire Primary by only a small margin.

1968 --Democratic Party is torn apart June 1968: Robert Kennedy was a leading presidential contender when he was killed August 1968, antiwar protests erupt into violence, with running clashes between demonstrators and the police in the streets of Chicago

• https: //en. wikipedia. or g/wiki/Weather_Under ground • http: //diyzine. com/wea therundergroundarticle 3. html

November 1968, Republican Richard Nixon defeats VP Hubert Humphrey • Nixon was elected on a platform of “Peace with Honor”

Nixon appealed to the “Great Silent Majority” to counter the growing antiwar movement

The Weather Underground (Weathermen) • Founded in 1969 at University of Michigan, radicals who demanded direct, often violent action against the U. S. government and U. S. corporate interests. Carried out a series of bombings in the early 1970 s. Took their name from “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. ” from Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues • https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Y 8 An. F 2 Rk. MV 8 • https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Tf d. J 3 Fi. Sva 4 •

October 15, 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam

2 million participated—the largest demonstrations in US history

Vietnam Vets and GI Resistance • https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=iydq 2 QS 35 i. Q • Operation Dewey Canyon III, April 1971 https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=4 P 1 z. Xc. Q 3 ZGw

• Nixon wanted the South Vietnamese to play a greater role in the war, a policy he labeled Vietnamization • But he continued carpet bombing Hanoi & ordered an invasion of neighboring Cambodia and Laos • He relied on the diplomacy of Henry Kissinger to achieve peace and/or an American withdrawal • Kissinger-”A Decent Interval” https: //millercenter. org/thepresidency/educationalresources/nixon-kissinger-andthe-decent-interval • The US does manage to extricate itself by Jan. 27, 1973, signing the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam

But not before the war expanded • US invades Cambodia in 1970, sparking a major civil war between Cambodian Gov’t and communists guerrillas in Cambodia, called the Khmer Rouge

• Anti-war protests against the Cambodian invasion became widespread… Kent State, May 1970 – National Guardsmen opened fire on students in Ohio protesting the spread of the war to Cambodia, killing four.

PHASE 3 – VIETNAMESE CIVIL WAR, 1973 -75 • The NVA easily defeated the South in 1975; the South had appealed to Nixon for aid, Nixon was embroiled in the domestic Watergate Crisis, and he was in essence a “lame duck” • 1975 – the US abandoned its embassy in Saigon, which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in the newly unified and communist Vietnam

Legacies of the 10, 000 Day War French Phase 1946 -1954 • Dead 600, 000 -800, 000, including 75, 000 French soldiers

Legacies of the 10, 000 Day War • As many as 4 million Vietnamese: 2+ million civilians + 1. 1 million Viet Cong and NVA killed

Legacies of 10, 000 Day War • 11 million Vietnamese became refugees

The Sorrow of War Bao Ninh served in the Glorious 27 th Youth Brigade – of the 500 who set out in 1967, he was one of only ten survivors. He wrote The Sorrow of War, an extremely moving—and controversial---account of the Indochina War from the point of view of a North Vietnamese soldier. Bao Ninh was one of the soldiers who attacked Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon on the day the former capital of South Vietnam fell.

Legacies of the 10, 000 Day War American Phase • 200, 000 -250, 000 South Vietnamese military dead • 58, 000 Americans dead • More than 5, 000 South Koreans, Australians, New Zealanders and others dead

Legacies of the 10, 000 Day War “Operation Ranch Hand” • Between 1962 and 1971, the U. S. sprayed more than 19 million gallons of herbicides over 4. 5 million acres in Vietnam, devastating the environment, killing or maiming hundreds of thousands and causing large numbers of birth defects. • 4. 5 million Vietnamese exposed to defoliants

Agent Orange, manufactured by Dow Chemical and Monsanto

Death, disease and deformities Vietnamese Red Cross estimates 1 million Vietnamese affected, including 150 -500, 000 children born with birth defects

2. 6 million U. S. personnel exposed

Legacies of 10, 000 Day War American Phase • Drug use: US military estimated in 1971 that 10 -15% of soldiers were using heroin.

Legacies of Vietnam— Mental and Physical Health

Bombing • Bomb craters filled with water = mosquito breeding ground = malaria and other diseases • 800 million unexploded bombs in Laos alone

Other legacies • Increasing restrictions on press • Volunteer army

Legacies of the 10, 000 Day War Cambodia • 300, 000 dead 19701975 • In April 1975 the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot take control of Cambodia, leading to a genocide that resulted in the deaths of up to an estimated 2 million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979

Vietnam Historiographical Schools Neo-Marxist - - School depicts the United States as a global hegemony, concerned primarily with its own economic expansion, and reflexively opposed to communism, indigenous revolution, or any other challenge to its authority. School typically assert that American intervention in Vietnam was the predictable consequence of the US drive for world dominance. This school puts the war in communist vs. capitalist terms, and asserts the U. S. political economy's need for raw materials, investment outlets, and capitalistic dominance created an inevitable collision course with revolutionary nationalist currents throughout the entire Third World. School has a tendency to romanticize Ho Chi Minh, and downplay the brutality of the Vietcong and the NVA Liberal Realists - - School emerges quickly after war, and is still the dominant academic school. Asserts American policymakers foolishly exaggerated Vietnam's importance to the United States and greater Cold War conflict. Argues US failed to recognize revolutionary spirit in Vietnam or the nature of the military conflict, and also continuously used conventional war strategies a nonconventional war. Primary assertion is that Vietnam was an unwinnable war and a tragedy that could have been avoided. Robert Mc. Namara joins this school with his quintessential 1995 book In Retrospect. Conservative Revisionist - - - School led by books of three former U. S. Army officers and veterans of the war. Vehemently criticizes US policy and asserts that military and civilian leaders failed to develop realistic plans for achieving American politico-military objectives in Vietnam, and failed to carry out what was needed to achieve success. FOR EXAMPLE, they claim the coup and assassination of Diem in 1963 destabilized the South Vietnamese government and actually hurt the military successes that had been achieved. Essentially called attention to fundamental shortcomings in the American approach to warfare in Southeast Asia. Some conservative revisionists insist that real benefits accrued to the non. Communist nations of Southeast Asia as a result of U. S. intervention, and argued that the "pacification" campaign pursued by the United States could have succeeded. Reject that Vietnam was an unwinnable war.

• Rolling Stones https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=pq. KJ 9 S 2 GXs • Santana Soul Sacrifice https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Aq. Zce. AQSJvc Woodstock https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=G 3 Lc 1 w. QYu. M M Country Joe and the Fish https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=8 q. PUJhy 0 Dz 4 https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=d. Uwb. Z 9 Al. SPI

How Vietnam Was Lost • https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Bz. VWf. Zp. Q 4 TI&t=18 s • http: //www. history. com/topics/vietnam-war/agent-orange • https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=R 8 M 8 R 835 Ck 4 • Traffic • https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Qr 6 NOslu. HYg • https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=wat. O_IRfz 4 w The Doors, The End at the Hollywood Bowl 7/5/70 • http: //blogs. weta. org/boundarystones/2016/06/09/1973 grateful-dead-and-allman-brothers-mega-concert

1968 Slide Presentation Democratic Convention Assassination of Martin Luther King/Riots Assassination of Robert Kennedy New Hampshire Primary and Johnson’s withdrawal Prague Spring My Lai Massacre Tet Offensive Capture of the USS Pueblo Apollo 8 mission 1968 Olympics/Tommie Smith & John Carlos/hundreds killed by police in Mexico City • Jimi Hendrix reaches the peak of his career • Election of 1968 • • •

• • • • • • Layla Derek and the Dominoes A Day in the Life The Beatles Symphony for the Devil The Rolling Stones Soul Sacrifice Santana China Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rider, The Grateful Dead Stage Fright, The Band A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall, Bob Dylan Suite Judy Blue Eyes, CSNY Pusherman Curtis Mayfield If 6 was 9 or All Along the Watchtower Jimi Hendrix Love Reign O’er Me The Who Ball and Chain Janis Joplin One Way Out The Allman Brothers Eight Miles High The Byrds Pancho and Lefty Townes Van Zandt Low Spark of High Heel Boys, Traffic Van Morrison Led Zepplin The Doors Mercy, Mercy Me/What’s Going On Marvin Gaye