The military condition deteriorated, and by 1963 South Vietnam had lost the fertile Mekong Delta to the Vietcong. In 1965, Johnson escalated the war, commencing air strikes on North Vietnam and committing ground forces, which numbered 536,000 in 1968. The 1968 Tet Offensive by the North Vietnamese turned many Americans against the war. The next president, Richard Nixon, advocated Vietnamization, withdrawing American troops and giving South Vietnam greater responsibility for fighting the war. His attempt to slow the flow of North Vietnamese soldiers and supplies into South Vietnam by sending American forces to destroy Communist supply bases in Cambodia in 1970 in violation of Cambodian neutrality provoked antiwar protests on the nation’s college campuses.
The United States and the South Vietnamese army tried to stop them but failed. The Vietnam War was actually the second phase of fighting in Vietnam. During the first phase, which began in 1946, the Vietnamese fought France for control of Vietnam. At that time, Vietnam was part of the colony of French Indochina. The United States sent France about $2½ billion in military equipment, but the Vietnamese defeated the French in 1954.
During this difficult period, the communists returned to protracted guerrilla warfare and political struggle. Morale declined among communist sympathizers and Saigon government supporters alike. In elections held in South Vietnam in September 1967, former generals Nguyen Van Thieu and Nguyen Cao Ky were elected president and vice president, respectively. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, pledged to honor Kennedy’s commitments but hoped to keep U.S. involvement in Vietnam to a minimum. After North Vietnamese forces allegedly attacked U.S. Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, however, Johnson was given carte blanche in the form of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and began to send U.S. troops to Vietnam.
The government they set up was failing so in 1965 the United States send in troops to prevent collapse of it. The horrible tactics of the Diem government eventually led to opposition within South Vietnam. Ngo Dinh diem’s government represented a minority of Vietnamese who were mostly businessmen, Roman Catholics, large landowners, and others who had fought with the French against the Vietnamese. The United States first tried to help the Southern Vietnamese government with military advisers and financial assistance, but more involvement was needed to keep it from collapsing. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave President Johnson permission to escalate the war in Vietnam.
How effective were the US tactics of ‘search and destroy’ and ‘defoliation’ in the Vietnam War As North Vietnam came to communism the USofA soar this as a threat agent’s capitalism. And if Vietnam “fell” in to communism then the hole of Asia could become communist this is called the “domino effect”. In this time President Kennedy had ‘advisers’. The US were fully involved in Vietnam in 1964 the 4th of august when the NN North torpedoed the USS Maddox in the gulf of Tonkin and the Paris treaty in 1973 followed by the fall of Saigon 1975. Due to the Vietcong’s strategies the US decided to bomb the north into surrendering.
The War That Changed The Nation: The True Reflection The Vietnam War started on November 1, 1955 and ended on April 30, 1975 (Wikepedia 1). The cause of the war revolved around the simple belief help by America that communism was threatening to expand all over the South-East Asia region (Wikepedia 2). The North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong viewed the conflict as the colonial war, fought against France and the United States back them up, and later against Vietnam. However, the Case Church Amendment was passed in 1973. The capture of Saigon by the Vietnam People’s Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war (Wikepedia 3).
The Civil War On April 10, 1861, knowing that resupplies were on their way from the North to the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, provisional Confederate forces in the city demanded the fort’s surrender. The fort’s commander, Major Robert Anderson, refused. On April 12, the Confederates opened fire with cannon. At 2:30 p.m. the following day, Major Anderson surrendered. On April 15, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the Southern rebellion, a move that prompted Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina to reverse themselves and vote in favor of secession.
Throughout the early years of the war, the American commander in South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, reported that the enemy was on the brink of defeat. -In 1967 he confidently declared that the “enemy’s hopes are bankrupt” and added, “we have reached an important point where the end begins to come into view.” -However, day after day, millions of Americans saw images of wounded and dead Americans and began to doubt government reports. -In the view of many, a credibility gap had developed, meaning it was hard to believe what the Johnson administration said about the war. -Beginning in January 1966, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held “educational” hearings on Vietnam, calling in Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other policy makers to explain the administration’s war program. B.
For many people, the Battle of the Somme was the battle that symbolised the horrors of warfare in World War One; this one battle had a marked effect on overall casualty figures and seemed to epitomise the futility of trench warfare. The Battle of the Somme claimed the biggest loss of soldiers in a single day of fighting ever recorded by the British army. Despite this, there were some positives
Fearing communism the United States government committed their troops to defend South Vietnam. Still, North Vietnam overpowered the South and the United States ended up having to send in more and more troops to fight South Vietnams battle. The U.S. troops had no choice but to view the Viet Cong and North Vietnam as their enemy in order to survive helping the South Vietnamese. The length of the war and the high number of casualties turned many United States citizens against the war. Finally, defining who the enemy was in the Vietnam War completely depends on who you ask.