Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Vietnam War
- Reasons for Involvement
- Poor Leadership of Diem
- Nepotistic
- He prosecuted Buddhists (80% of population)
- Loses support of the South Vietnamese (these people weren't yet communist)
- They start to support the Vietcong
- Domino Theory
- If Vietnam falls, so will Laos and Cambodia
- Containment
- Military Industrial Alliance
- US Industry and army knew war would generate wealth for US
- they put pressure on the government to get involved
- Gulf of Tonkin 1964
- US Maddox (ship) reports it has been attacked by N. Vietnam whilst in the Gulf of Tonkin
- Johnson asks Congress for permission to send combat troops
- Congress agrees
- Reasons for failure
- Poor US tactics
- Tactics ineffective
- Causing S. Vietnamese peasants to support VC
- Poorly equipped
- Guns didn't work in the climate
- Backpacks too heavy
- Boots rotted away due to the water
- Named missions
- Strategic Hamlet
- Upset peasants because it moved them away from their homes and ancestors
- Search and Destroy
- My Lai massacre
- US soldiers vulnerable to ambush
- Didn't know their enemy
- Rolling Thunder
- Horrific damage to land and people
- Effective VC tactics
- Guerilla Warfare
- Knew the jungle
- Booby traps e.g. punji sticks
- No uniform - unidentifiable
- Used tunnels and Ho Chi Minh Trail
- Media
- Made US people against the war
- Live coverage of the execution of an unarmed V.C. suspect in Saigon
- Shocked America
- Photo of Kim Phuc after the Trang Bang bombings
- Front of a magazine
- Walter Cronkite (celebrity) said that the war was unwinnable live on TV
- Government realised it had lost the support of the US public, so couldn't maintain war effort
- Protest Movement
- Pressurises government to take America out of the war
- Convinces Johnson that US needs to withdraw
- He doesn't stand for re-election in 1968
- Cost
- HUGE COST
- Needed to help tackle poverty in US at the time
- Civil Rights movement happens
- Americans refuse to pay taxes, as a protest, because these pay for the
war
- Tet Offensive 1968
- US thinks its winning war as VC had suffered great loses
- Believed that open combat would ensure a win
- VC attack US bases and S.V cities as a SURPRISE
- Initial VC success - make it to Saigon
- Shown on live TV
- Failure to US because army realise they can't won because VC have an 'inexhaustible' supply of troops
- Army generals tell Johnson they won't win
- How they withdrew (1968-73)
- Nixon's policy
- Steps up Rolling Thunder in North Vietnam
- Wants to intimidate
- Includes Ho Chi Minh trail
- Heavily criticised by other countries for bombing Laos and Cambodia
- Trained and equipped South Vietnamese troops
- They could then continue to fight
- Gradually reduce no. of US troops
- Last troops withdrawn in 1973
- FAILS - Saigon falls in 1975