VIETNAM

REGION; SOUTH EAST ASIA

CAPITAL: Ha Noi
CLIMATE: TROPIKAL
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GOVERNMENT: Communist
HEAD OF STATE: President
RELIGIONS: Buddhist
LANGUAGE:Vietnamese, French
CURRENCY: Dong
Vietnam
War
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1955 - 1975
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 Indochina War
 1950-54
 Indochina used to be a French Colony
 Indochina made up for vietnam, Camboja and Laos
 The French were suported by the US
 The war ended with the Genova Conference
 It devided Vietnam in two separated
countries
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 North Vietnam
 Communist
 Capital Hanoi
 Aided by the USSR
 Leaded by Ho Chi Minh
 Vietnam People's Army

 South Vietnam
 Capitalist
 Capital Saigon
 Leaded by Ngo Dinh Diem
 Aided by the US
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 Domino Theory
 if one state in a region came under the
influence of communism, then the
surrounding countries would follow in a
domino effect.
 President Eisenhower
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 Ho Chi Minh
 Communist Leader
 Lived in the US, UK, France and USSR
 Na intelectual
 Resposable for the brutal land reform
of North Vietnam
 The Land lords would be killed
 “If the USA wants to make war for twenty
years then we shall make war for twenty
years. If they want to make peace, we shall
make peace and invite them to afternoon
tea."
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 Ngo Dinh Diem

 Catholic
 Radical anti-communist
 Killed 12,000 suspected oponents to
his government between 1955-57
 Persection of other religions
 Specially buddhists
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 The Vietcong
 National Liberation Front
 NLF
 Communist guerrillas operating in
the south
 Lightly armed
 Greatest fear of the americans
 But also their greatest victins
 Specialized in traps and tunnels
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 Kennedy
 I promess to "pay any price, bear
any burden, meet any hardship,
support any friend, oppose any foe,
in order to assure the survival and
success of liberty.“
 A government focussed in the Cold
War
 Failure of the bay of pigs
 Construction of the Berlin wall
 "Now we have a problem making our
power credible and Vietnam looks like
the place."
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 Kennedy Plan
 At first it would be only economical aid
 The Diem forces should defeat the guerrillas by themselvs
 Bad leadership, corruption, and political promotions led Diem’s army fall
donw
 Kennedy decided to invest man
 By 1963, there were 16,000
American military personnel in
South Vietnam, up from
Eisenhower's 900 advisors
 The assassination of Diem
 The CIA overthrowed and
executed Diem, along with his
brother, on 2 November 1963.
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 Lyndon Johnson
 Sends 10,000 more men
 Two american ships are attacked
and demaged in 1964
 The congress signs the Gulf of
Tonkin Resolution
 Giving the president war power
 In that year, 850,000 to nearly a
million men were sent to Vietnam
 An undated NSA publication declassified in
2005, however, revealed that there was no
attack on 4 August
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 TET Offensive
 Fighting in regions less populated
 Suposed to be a good thing for the
americans
 Now they could unleash all thei firepower
 Unfortunately it showed to be just lack
of information; large cities existed in
that area
 3,000 civilians were killed
 The public opinion turned against the
 americans
 The americans had to face the combined
firepower of the vietcongs, the northern army and
civilians
 TET was a total failure
 "it became necessary to destroy the
village in order to save it"
 Major Booris of 9th Infantry Division
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 Public Opinion Turns against the war

 by 1970 only a third of Americans believed that the U.S. had not
made a mistake by sending troops to fight in Vietnam
 Forced drafts
 Kids as young as 16
 Birthday role call on TV
 Hippies
 1968 student protests
 fatal shooting of four
students at Kent State
University in 1970 led to
nation-wide university
protests
 Vietnam Veterans Against
the War
 “ Let me say finally that I
oppose the war in Vietnam
because I love America. I
speak out against this war,
not in anger, but with anxiety
and sorrow in my heart, and,
above all, with a passionate
desire to see our beloved
country stand as the moral
example of the world.”
 In 1967, Muhammad Ali
was convicted of violating
the Selective Service Act
for refusing to go to the
Vietnam War. His famous
quote:

“I ain’t got no quarrel with

them Viet Cong. They never
called me ‘nigger.”
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 Richard Nixon
 Vietnamization
 Bring home american soldiers
 Let the vietnamize fight their onw wars
 My Lai Massacre
 504 unarmed civilians were brutally killed and raped in 1968
 Nuclear Threaten
 On 10 October 1969, Nixon
ordered a squadron loaded with
nuclear weapons to race to the
border of Soviet airspace to
convince the Soviet Union that
he was capable of anything to
end the Vietnam War.
 Ho Chi Minh dies
 In 1969
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 Paris Peace Accords of 1973

 between North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Lê Ð ức Th ọ and U.S.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
 It would put na end to the war of vietnam
 The country would
remain with the same
borders as in the Genova
Conference
 It also called for free
elections
 The americans leave
Vietnam
 A long retreat
 1973-75
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 Final North Vietnamese offensive

 The north vietnamese attack and conquer
Saigon
 1975
 Thieu resigned on the same day, declaring
that the United States had betrayed South
Vietnam.
 2 million vietnamese civilians died during
this war
 1,170,000 vietnamese soldiers died
 58,220 American soldiers died
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Napalm
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Agent Orange
“The defoliants, which were distributed in drums marked with color-coded bands,
included the "Rainbow Herbicides"—Agent Pink, Agent Green, Agent Purple, Agent
Blue, Agent White, and, most famously, Agent Orange, which included dioxin as a
by-product of its manufacture. About 12 million gallons (45,000,000 L) of Agent
Orange were sprayed over Southeast Asia during the American involvement.

In 1961 and 1962, the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemicals to
destroy rice crops. Between 1961 and 1967, the U.S. Air Force sprayed 20 million
U.S. gallons (75,700,000 L) of concentrated herbicides over 6 million acres
(24,000 km2) of crops and trees, affecting an estimated 13% of South Vietnam's
land. In 1965, 42% of all herbicide was sprayed over food crops. Another purpose
of herbicide use was to drive civilian populations into RVN-controlled areas.
As of 2006, the Vietnamese government estimates that there are over 4,000,000
victims of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam, although the United States government
denies any conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the Vietnamese
victims of dioxin poisoning. In some areas of southern Vietnam, dioxin levels remain
at over 100 times the accepted international standard.

The U.S. Veterans Administration has listed prostate cancer, respiratory

cancers, multiple myeloma, Diabetes mellitus type 2, B-cell lymphomas, soft-tissue
sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea tarda, peripheral neuropathy, and spina
bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

Although there has been much discussion over whether the use of these defoliants
constituted a violation of the laws of war, the defoliants were not considered
weapons, since exposure to them did not lead to immediate death or
incapacitation.
“The forms of torture used by the US military
are wild. They consist mainly in rape, gang
rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects,
and rape followed by murder; electric shock
(‘the Bell Telephone Hour’) rendered by
attaching wires to the genitals or other
sensitive parts of the body, like the tongue;
the ‘water treatment’; the ‘airplane’ in which
the prisoner’s arms were tied behind the back,
and the rope looped over a hook on the
ceiling, suspending the prisoner in midair,
after which he or she was beaten; beatings
with rubber hoses and whips; the use of police
dogs to maul prisoners.”
“The use of the insertion of the 6-inch
dowel into the canal of one of my
detainee’s ears, and the tapping through
the brain until dead. The starvation to
death (in a cage), of a Vietnamese
woman who was suspected of being part
of the local political education cadre in
one of the local villages … The use of
electronic gear such as sealed
telephones attached to … both the
women’s vaginas and men’s testicles
[to] shock them into submission.”