The US became involved in Vietnam following World War 2 to contain the spread of communism. Under Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, the US escalated its military involvement despite growing domestic opposition. Heavy US bombing and the deployment of over 500,000 US troops failed to defeat the Viet Cong. The 1968 Tet Offensive shocked Americans and turned public opinion against the war. Protests and draft resistance intensified. President Nixon began withdrawing US troops as part of his Vietnamization policy while bombing Cambodia and Laos. The US withdrew from Vietnam in 1973 following the Paris Peace Accords, having suffered over 58,000 US deaths without achieving its objectives.

1. Why did US get in and out of
vietnam?

2. Intro
• After ww2, Vietminh led by Ho Chi Minh
defeat Japan and declare Democratic
Republic of Vietnam (DRV)
• America Support French. both in NATO,
needed to support ally
• Vietminh supported by communist China

3. Truman
• following Korea, reluctant, gradual
involvement

4. Eisenhower
• 1954 US paying 80% of France's war costs
• Sents advisors
• Seen as a Cold war issue, contain communism
• Domino Theory
• Geneva Accords, divide vietnam temporarily
• US prevent elections, 80% SV favour unity
• Ngo Dinh Diem

5. JFK
• Green berets, 1961 400 to help ARVN defeat
NLF (VC)
• Over $1Billion in aid, largest recipient of US
aid
• Ngo Dinh Diem, opposed colonial rule
• French described him as 'incapable' and
'mad'.
• refused to be puppet and introduce reforms
JFK urged.
• unpopular dictator

6. Buddist protests

7. • monks ritual suicide gets world attention
• brings into question US policy in
supporting Diem.
• threaten US objective, making SV proUS
• Diem murdered, US knew/encouraged it,
at least did nothing to prevent it
• weeks later jfk assassinated, SV slipping
to VC

8. LBJ
no FP experience, turned to secretary of
defence Robert McNamara and Secretary
of State Dean Rusk
• US prestige at stake, increase advisors
30%
• election 'im not going to lose vietnam. I am
not going to be the President who saw
South-East Asia go the way of China'
• Anti war, Great Society. did want war with
'that raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country'
to take resources from domestic reform

9. limited war
• force NV to peace talks, preserve SV
• pin pricks, secret US led assults, to stablise until election
over, candidate for peace.
• Rejected more aggressive advisors, any move that might
bring in china or soviets (limits on Operation Rolling
Thunder, not next chinese boarder or areas where soviet
engineers suspected)
• Tolkin incident
• Tolkin Resolution, congress give president power to take
'all necessary steps' to defend us forces and its allies'
• gradual involvement
• airstrikes, no declaration of war. 85% public support

10. OP. Rolling Thunder
• OP. Rolling Thunder, feb 1965. 8 weeks, lasts 3
years. 100 bombing raids a month in 1965,
12,000 by sept 1966, tonnage dropped more
than that dropped by the allies during ww2
• bombing prohibited within 40km of chinese
boarder and 16km of Hanoi.
• airbases not targeted for fear of killing soviet
engineers operating anti-aircraft SAM missile
sites.
• only stiffened NV will to fight, propaganda victory
for NV, 50,000 civilians killed.

11. first troops
• VC see it as declaration of war, attack US
airbase at Da Nang, if time US troops targeted.
• Gen. westmoreland calls for troops march 1965.
• granted, gradual increase.
• 200,000 by end of 1965
• over 500,000 by 1968. 40% drafted 1 year.
• birthday lotto, unfair, wealthy avoid, go uni, join
national guard, bill clinton and george bush jr
avoid draft
• majority troops working-class whites, blacks or
hispanic

12. New type of war
after some early large scale battles result in
heavy losses for the VC they switch to
geurilla warfare, hit and run tactics.
Supplies via Ho Chi Minh trail
tunnels
booby traps
unseen enemy. VC moved like fish in water

13. US Tactics
• straegic hamlets
• free fire zones
• search and destroy missions
• nalpalm
• agent orange 10%
• bombing
• US Tactics are unpopular: ''if they we're
VC before we got there they sure were
when we left''

14. How measure success: Body count
• 'If he's dead and he's
vietnamese, he's VC'

15. Problem: the troops
• most young, little training, 6 months in Tigerland
• 40% drafted for 1 year, many were timeservers
• Fragging, 600 officers murdered by own troops
• no direct enemy to fight in harsh, humid
dangerous climate.
• Desertion, AWOL, at height of the war one every
3 minutes.
• Drugs, 30% hard drugs, cocaine/heroin. 60%
marijuana
• VC sell marijuana cigarettes laced with heroin
• Race issues. gun battles. % of black deaths too
high (poverty issue in truth)

16. Tet Offensive
• LBJ tells americans they are winning and
war will be over soon
• national holiday, unofficial ceasefire for
two days
• massive assault by vietcong on cities in
the South
• VC attack US embassy in Siagon
• total military failure for NV 70%, 60,000
killed but massive political success
• TV broadcast it into the homes of
americans

17. Effect of Media/ Credibility Gap
• first televised war. no censorship
• Cronkite. View LBJ lied to people
• LBJ, 'if ive lost Cronkite ive lost america'

18. • On February 1,
1968, a suspected
NLF officer was
summarily
executed by
General Nguyen
Ngoc Loan, a South
Vietnamese
National Police
Chief. Loan shot
the suspect in the
head on a public
street in front of
journalists

20. Peace movement
• Started small in universities
• reasons (listed in book)
• teach-ins
• rallies
• draft-card burnings
• 'hell no we wont go!'

21. Draft card burnings
• In late July 1965, Johnson doubled the
number of young men to be drafted per
month from 17,000 to 35,000, and on
August 31, signed a law making it a crime
to burn a draft card.
• On October 15, 1965 the student-run
National Coordinating Committee to End
the War in Vietnam in New York staged
the first draft card burning to result in an
arrest under the new law

22. • Two anti-war activists set themselves on
fire in November
• 32 year old Norman Morrison at the
Pentagon
• 22 year old Roger Allen LaPorte at the UN
headquarters in NYC

23. • On October 15, 1969, hundreds of
thousands of people took part in National
Moratorium anti-war demonstrations
across the United States; the
demonstrations prompted many workers
to call in sick from their jobs and
adolescents nationwide engaged in
truancy from school. However, the
proportion of individuals doing either who
actually participated in the demonstrations
is uncertain

25. Anti-war slogans
• Common slogans and chants
• "Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids have
you killed today?"
• The chant "One, two, three, four! We
don't want your fucking war!" was
chanted repeatedly at demonstrations
throughout the U.S. in the late 1960s and
early 1970s.
• "Draft Beer, not boys", "Hell no, we
won't go", "Make love, not war",
"Eighteen today, dead tomorrow",

26. growing opposition
• hippies, generation gap.
• music. woodstock.
• popular people: Martin luther king, jane
fonda, Muhammad Ali, Stript of title, no
visa, 'no Vietcong ever called me nigger'
• devisions in democratic party: Senators
doubt LBJ, 'how do you know he is lying?
his lips are moving'
• McNamara retires.

27. Effect on Truman
• Stressed. hated the war. almost losses
democratic primary election to Eugene
Mccarthy. Unusual for Pres. to be
opposed.
• 'Hey, Hey LBJ how many kids did you kill
today'
• poor health.
• withdraws from Presidential election
• Calls off rolling thunder, enters peace
talks, march 1968

28. LBJ and Vietnam asseassment
• LBJ presidency fatally damaged by vietnam
• 220,000 US troops killed or wounded on his
watch
• couldnt end it by negotiations (70 times) or
military means.
• it diverted resources from his great soiety
program (domestic reform) at home.
• he refused to raise taxes to pay for war which
created inflation that took years to control.
• ultimately led to his resignation.

29. Nixon and Vietnamization
• 1968, claimed to have a secret way out of
the war. aim: exit stratagy with US
prestige intact
• Vietnamization, strenghten ARVN to take
up the fight and phased withdrawal, starts
in 1969, 543,000 by 1972 69,000.
• Bombed Ho CHi Minh trail in neutral Laos
and Cambodia

30. Anti-war movement
• Vietnamization weaken anti-war
movement. people happy troops coming
home.
• Small amount of extremists luanch a wave
of bombing in Us
• Nixon uses this to discredit anti-war
movement, as pro-communist and anti-american.
Nixon argued the silent majority
supported the war. polls show slim
majority against it

31. Kent State
• extension of war into Cambodia outraged
anti-war movement and gave it a new
lease of life

32. My Lai Massacre 1971
• US tactics shock public
• 'in order to save a village it was necessary
to destroy it'
• March 1968, 347 men, women and
children murdered.
• Lt William Calley

33. • The explosive news of the massacre
fuelled the outrage of the antiwar
movement, which demanded the
withdrawal of American troops from
Vietnam. It also led more potential
draftees to file for conscientious objector
status. Those who had always argued
against the war felt vindicated; those on
the fringes of the movement became more
vocal.

35. Vietnam veterans against the war
• Winter soldier hearings
• John Kerry speaks at congress
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–
1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States
Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in
Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers were discovered and released by Daniel
Ellsberg, and first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New
York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon
Papers "demonstrated, among other things, that the Lyndon Baines Johnson
Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress,
about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance"

36. end
• 1972 North attack South, south defeat offensive.
• OP. Linebacker, heaviest bombing campaign
ever. 41,500 attacks. B52 bombers bomb Hanoi
and main port Haiphong
• 27 Jan 1973 Paris peace accords. ceasefire, 60
days to get out, NV remain in south (control
40%)
• March/april 1975 North Defeat south. Siagon
now Ho Chi Minh city

37. Results
• 2.5 million Vietnamese death, 58,000 US
• $112Billion
• Containment failed, domino theory proved
true. Indochina, Laos and Cambodia
(Khmer Rouge/Pol Pot/killing fields)
became communist also.
• US military morale low
• divided US, esp. youth
• weakened Democrats, rise of Republicans