The Vietnam War: A Very Brief History

---

The effective, bloody attacks shock U. This week records the highest number of U. The massacre happens amid a campaign of U. President Johnson halts bombing in Vietnam north of the 20th parallel. Facing backlash about the war, Johnson announces he will not run for reelection. Nixon wins the U. The Nixon administration gradually reduces the number of U.

B bombers target suspected communist base camps and supply zones in Cambodia. The bombings are kept under wraps by Nixon and his administration since Cambodia is officially neutral in the war, although The New York Times would reveal the operation on May 9, They are forced to retreat and suffer heavy losses. The New York Times publishes a series of articles detailing leaked Defense Department documents about the war, known as the Pentagon Papers. The report reveals the U. President Nixon orders the launch of the most intense air offense of the war in Operation Linebacker.

The attacks, concentrated between Hanoi and Haiphong, drop roughly 20, tons of bombs over densely populated regions. Former President Johnson dies in Texas at age The Selective Service announces the end to the draft and institutes an all-volunteer military. The North Vietnamese accept a cease fire. North Vietnam returns American prisoners of war including future U. President Nixon resigns in the face of likely impeachment after the Watergate Scandal is revealed. President Ford rules out any further U.

In the Fall of Saigon , the capital of South Vietnam is seized by communist forces and the government of South Vietnam surrenders. North and South Vietnam are formally unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under hardline communist rule. By the end of the war, more than 58, Americans lose their lives. Vietnam would later release estimates that 1. An Intimate History , by Geoffrey C. The Buddhist Crisis, Time. Buddhists — The Crisis, GlobalSecurity.

Statistical information about casualties of the Vietnam War, U. Department of State, Office of the Historian. We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States.

From air power to infantry to chemicals, the weapons used in the Vietnam War were more devastating than those of any previous conflict. United States and South Vietnamese forces relied heavily on their superior air power, including B bombers and other aircraft that dropped Vietnamization was a strategy that aimed to reduce American involvement in the Vietnam War by transferring all military responsibilities to South Vietnam. The increasingly unpopular war had created deep rifts in American society.

President Nixon believed his Vietnamization Nearly all of them were volunteers, and 90 percent served as The movement against U. Anti-war marches and other protests, Of the nearly 1 million Americans who served on active duty in the U. Armed Forces during the Vietnam War era , many were or went on to become famous in diverse fields such as politics, entertainment, sports and journalism. The young Navy pilot John McCain, son of a The proclamation paraphrased the U. Westmoreland on the Vietnam War. Adlai Stevenson on Vietnam War. The administration was caught by surprise, however, when Diem was murdered during the coup, which was led by General Duong Van Minh.

This began a series of destabilizing changes in government leadership.

Roots of the Vietnam War

That same month, Kennedy himself was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. His successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, inherited the Vietnam situation. His political party, the Democrats, had been blamed for China falling to communism; withdrawing from Vietnam could hurt them in the elections. On the other hand, Congress had never declared war and so the president was limited in what he could do in Southeast Asia. That changed in August The pilot of an F-8E Crusader did not see any ships in the area where the enemy was reported, and years later crew members said they never saw attacking craft.

Congress swiftly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that removed most restrictions from the president in regards to Vietnam.

Though a congressional investigative committee the previous year had warned that America could find itself slipping into in a morass that would require more and more military participation in Vietnam, Johnson began a steady escalation of the war, hoping to bring it to a quick conclusion. Ironically, the leadership of North Vietnam came to a similar conclusion: On September 30, , the first large-scale antiwar demonstration took place in America, on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. The war became the central rallying point of a burgeoning youth counterculture, and the coming years would see many such demonstrations, dividing generations and families..

This would be a war without a front or a rear; it would involve full-scale combat units and individuals carrying out terrorist activities such as the Brink Hotel bombing. In previous war, progress and setbacks could be shown on maps; large enemy units could be engaged and destroyed. Guerrilla warfare asymmetrical warfare does not permit such clear-cut data. Westmoreland with a thorny challenge: Westmoreland adopted a search-and-destroy policy to find and engage the enemy and use superior firepower to destroy him. Every major engagement between U.

The body count policy fell into disfavor and was not employed in future American wars; in Vietnam it led officers to inflate enemy casualties. The VC and NVA dragged off as many of their dead and wounded as possible, sometimes impressing villagers into performing this task during battles, so determining their casualties was guesswork based on such things as the number of blood trails. On the other side, the same thing was occurring, with even more inflated numbers—vastly more. Both sides were fighting a war of attrition, so communist commanders sent Hanoi battle reports that often were pure fantasy.

Marines—near Van Truong, from the VC point of view. On February 7, , the U. Air Force began bombing selected sites in North Vietnam. This grew into the operation known as Rolling Thunder that began on March 2, , and continued to November 2, Its primary goal was to demoralize the North Vietnamese and diminish their manufacturing and transportation abilities. An air war was the most that could be done north of the 17th parallel, because the use of ground troops had been ruled out. On July 9, , China had announced it would step in if the U.

North Vietnamese officers, after the war, said the only thing they feared was an American-led invasion of the north, but the U. By the end of , there were , American troops in Vietnam, and the military draft was set to call up , young men in the coming year, an increase of 72, over But the war news was hopeful. The South Vietnamese Army was showing improvement, winning 37 of their last 45 major engagements. American troops had won every major battle they fought, and General Nguyen Van Thieu had come to power in South Vietnam in September; he would remain in office until , bringing a new measure of stability to the government, though he could not end its endemic corruption.

Antiwar protests continued across America and in many other countries, but on April 28, , Gen. Westmoreland became the first battlefield commander ever to address a joint session of Congress in wartime, and Time magazine named him Man of the Year. In an interview he was asked if there was light at the end of the tunnel, and he responded that the U. They struck at least 30 provincial capitals and the major cities of Saigon and Hue.

American intelligence knew an attack was coming, though the Army had downplayed a New York Times report of large communist troop movements heading south. The VC was effectively finished; it would not field more than 25,—40, troops at any time for the remainder of the war. The NVA had to take over. It was one of the most resounding defeats in all of military history—until it became a victory. News footage showed the fighting in Saigon and Hue. The Tet Offensive shocked Americans at home, who thought the war was nearing victory. Initially, however, homefront support for the war effort grew, but by March Americans, perceiving no change in strategy that would bring the war to a conclusion, became increasingly disillusioned.

In a February 27, , broadcast he summed up what he had found during his return trip to the war zone. He closed by saying:. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Tensions between blacks and whites had been intensifying for years as African Americans sought to change centuries-old racial policies. That disparity would decline before the war ended, but the racial tensions at home began to insert themselves into the military in Vietnam, damaging unit morale. Even white troops were beginning to protest. One day in October , fifteen members of the Americal Division wore black armbands while they were on patrol, the symbol antiwar protestors wore in the states. Earlier, in March , the Americal Division had been involved in what became known as the My Lai Massacre, in which over men, women and children were killed.

Vietnam War Articles

Similar, even larger, atrocities were conducted by VC and NVA units—such as an NVA attack on a Buddhist orphanage at An Hoa in September or the execution of 5, people at Hue during the Tet Offensive—but the concept of American soldiers killing civilians in cold blood was more than many Americans could bear. Support for the war eroded further. Some antiwar protestors blamed the men and women who served in Vietnam, taunting them and spitting on them when they came home.

Military personnel, including nurses, were warned not to wear their uniforms in the States. However, polls consistently showed the majority of Americans supported the war. Republican Richard Nixon won the presidency in the fall elections. Security was improving even as American forces were in the process of withdrawing.

Then, on March 30, , the North Vietnamese attacked across the 17th parallel with 14 divisions and additional individual regiments. Better armed than ever before, thanks to increased aid from the Soviet Union, they employed tanks for the first time. The ARVN bent but did not break.

By June they had stalled the invasion, with the help of American airpower. The NVA suffered some , casualties. American drawdown continued, with only 43, personnel left in-country by mid-August. In retaliation for the invasion, and in hopes of forcing Hanoi to negotiate in good faith, Nixon ordered Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam to be mined and he intensified bombing of North Vietnam. Hanoi offered to restart peace talks, yet remained intransigent in its demands. On January 27, , peace accords were signed between North Vietnam and the U. North Vietnam spent two years rebuilding its military; South Vietnam was hamstrung in its responses by a fear the U.

Congress would cut off all aid if it took military action against communist buildup. Its army lacked reserves, while the NVA was growing. On March 5, , the NVA invaded again. ARVN divisions in the north were surrounded and routed. To its own surprise, Hanoi found its forces advancing rapidly toward Saigon, realized victory was at hand, and renamed the operation the Ho Chi Minh Offensive. On April 30, their tanks entered Saigon.

American helicopters rescued members of its embassy and flew some South Vietnamese to safety, but most were left behind.

The domino fell but did not take down any of those around it. Nguyen Ngoc Loan about to pull the trigger of a pistol pointed at the head of a bound VC prisoner; of a naked young girl running crying down a road after an American napalm strike that left her badly burned—these images and others became seared into the minds of Americans on the homefront, and in those of civilians in allied nations such as Australia. Never before or since have journalists been given such complete access to cover a war.

Such images pack tremendous emotional punch but often lack context. The photo of the South Vietnamese police chief, for example, cannot by itself explain he had just seen the dead body of a close friend minutes before; even Eddie Adams, the photojournalist who snapped the photo felt it unfairly maligned Lt. He has written that he was prepared for a year war; he realized he did not have to achieve military victory; he only had to avoid losing. Yet, to say the media cost America victory in Vietnam is vastly oversimplifying a very complex situation.

As noted above, a number of sources warned U. The Vietnam War remains a very controversial subject. It is unlikely historians will ever agree on whether it was necessary or what benefits derived from it. Karl Marlantes went to war in as a year-old lieutenant and led a Marine rifle platoon through months of intense combat.

One of the greatest tests of character is telling the truth when it hurts the teller. The Vietnam War will be infamous for the way those who perpetrated it lied to those who fought and paid for it. Lies in the Vietnam War were more prevalent because that war was fought without meaning. Death, destruction, and sorrow need to be constantly justified in the absence of some overarching meaning for the suffering. Lack of this overarching meaning encourages making things up, lying, to fill the gap in meaning. They lie in business, they lie in universities, they lie in marriages, and they lie in the military.

Lying, however, is usually considered not normal, an exception. In Vietnam lying became the norm and I did my part. Prairie Dog, or, more often, P-Dog, was an year-old black machine gunner from one of our eastern seaboard ghettos. He and I had been in the same platoon. P-Dog got his name saving a squad that was pinned down in the DMZ. He took off on his own at a rapid crawl, cradling the heavy and cumbersome M machine gun in his arms.

Elbows and knees flying, he outflanked the enemy and blasted them with his machine gun, freeing the pinned squad. Such a maneuver, under heavy fire, takes more than just raw courage. P-Dog had about 10 days to go before he was due to rotate back to the States. Three of our guys had been picked up smoking marijuana. Could the duty officer come over and take them into custody? Smoking dope in those days meant a mandatory court-martial and dishonorable discharge. Any kid with a dishonorable discharge would lose his GI Bill benefits, and typically this meant also losing any chances for further education.

In addition he would never be able to join a union and would therefore never be able to get a decent job. In short, these three kids were had. So much for serving their nation. I left the duty NCO, a career gunnery sergeant, in charge and took the sergeant E-5 who was in charge of the battalion office and a driver along with me.

Vietnam War

When P-Dog saw me he turned his head away. He would look only at the floor. I began shaking inside, knowing the consequences that were going to have to follow. Applying military justice to strangers is a lot easier than applying it to a friend. He was giving me an out.

I ordered the three of them into the jeep and took off. We all three walked away from the jeep and stood in the dark with our backs to it. After about a minute or two of muffled scrambling and whispers from the three in the jeep, we all turned around and climbed back in. We arrived at battalion headquarters, which like most headquarters never shuts down. In full view of the entire staff I ordered the three of them searched.

Vietnam Background: Uneasy French Rule

All three were grinning. They started turning their pockets inside out on their own. P-Dog, ever the showman, flipped open his last pocket with great gusto—and a joint fell out onto the floor. He handed it to me. No one said a word. Everyone just looked at me.

I was representing the commanding officer, conducting an investigation of what was considered a serious criminal offense that had been recorded in the logs of two battalions. In front of at least a dozen witnesses P-Dog had popped a joint out of his pocket. All I could think of was mandatory court-martial and dishonorable discharge. I told the other two kids to get out. They looked at P-Dog, frightened for him, really saying good-bye, and then scrambled out the door.

Vietnam War Timeline

He was a lifer. These men are the core of the system. They love it, and they maintain it with pride, often savagely. He was also a man I respected immensely. I looked him in the eye as square as a young lieutenant can look at a man with 20 more years in the Corps than he. He was with me in the bush. I handed him the joint. He held the joint up in front of him. He handed it back to me. When I saw P-Dog later that night I expected some thanks. Lying, in rare cases, can actually exhibit good character.

I used the lie as a weapon on other occasions.

• The Nutcracker. Scene No. 12B. Divertissement. Coffee (Arab Dance)
• 66 Festive and Famous Chorales for Band
• Help In Daily Living
• My Brothers Wife : An Old-School Soap
• Il segreto di Lady Audley (Italian Edition)
• #2383 CHILDS PLAY SUIT VINTAGE KNITTING PATTERN
• ABCTE Mathematics Exam Flashcard Study System: ABCTE Test Practice Questions & Review for the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence Exam