US involvement in the Vietnam war

> During the second world war, America and the USSR had been allies fighting against Nazi Germany. However after the war was over they got into a despute over where Germany should be split.

> Also both countries had very different ideological views meaing they were disputing over the following: Individual freedom vs state run, individual wealth vs collective wealth and democracy and dictatorship.

>They started a cold war between each other over these reasons.

> Also America were unhappy with the USSR flaunting their atomic weapons in a threatening manner. 

> The Korean war began when North Korea invaded South Korea.The United Nations, with the United States as the principal force, came to the aid of South Korea. China came to the aid of North Korea, and the Soviet Union gave some assistance.

>  On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. 

> Throughout 1949 and 1950, the Soviets continued arming North Korea. 

> America aided the south because they were captalist, and China and the USSR aided the North because they were communist. 

Firstly, the war ended in a stalemate because of Chinese involvement.  The Chinese had a huge army that was able to balance out the UN forces and push them back down the peninsula after they had made it as far as the Yalu River which was the border with China.

A second possible reason is that the US did not want to pursue an all-out war against China.  Douglas MacArthur, for example, wanted to attack China directly, possibly using nuclear weapons.  President Truman, though, did not want to bring on a major war by doing this.  The US's desire to keep the war limited in scope is another reason why the war ended in a deadlock.

> The effects of Korean war has divided Korea into North Korea and South Korea. Many Korean families were split with relatives on either sides of the border due to different kind of thoughts, either communism or non-communism.

> The Korean War was one of the most destructive of the 20^th century. Perhaps as many as 4 million Koreans died throughout the peninsula, two-thirds of them civilians. 

> The Korean War also brought social damage to Korea, “especially in the North, where three years of bombing left hardly a modern building standing.

> 10%of the entire Korean population was reported killed, missing or wounded. 

> 

> From the late 1800's to 1954, Vietnam was part of a French colony called French Indochina. When theFrench first became interested in Indochina French missionaries sought to convert the Vietnamese to Catholicism, the religion of France.

> After WW2, the French wanted to regain control of their former colonies in Asia after the embarressment of the Nazi's taking over France in under 6 weeks. 

> They were fighting agianst the Vietminh from the North who were fighting for their independence and agianst capatalism as they were communist. 

> The First Indochina War (called the Indochina War in France and the French War in Vietnam) began after the end of World War II in 1945 and lasted until the French defeat in 1954

> In 1954,the French were outnumbered, outsmarted and defeated at Dien Bien Phu, sparking conversation at the Geneva Agreement. China managed to persuade the French into agreeing to a split Vietnam down the 17th parallel. A ceasefire was declared. 

> After French forces occupied the Dien Bien Phu valley in late 1953, Viet Minh commander Vo Nguyen Giap amassed troops and placed heavy artillery in caves of the mountains overlooking the French camp. Boosted by Chinese aid, Giap mounted assaults on the opposition’s strong points beginning in March 1954, eliminating use of the French airfield. Viet Minh forces overran the base in early May, prompting the French government to seek an end to the fighting with the signing of the Geneva Accords of 1954.

> The French withdrawal from Vietnam, leaving the Republic of Vietnam regime fighting a communist insurgency with USA aid. During this period, North Vietnam recovered from the wounds of war, rebuilt nationally, and accrued to prepare for the anticipated war. In South Vietnam, Ngô Đình Diệm consolidated power and encouraged anti-communism. This period was marked by U.S. support to South Vietnam before Gulf of Tonkin, as well as communist infrastructure-building.

> The leader of the south however was very unpopular as he was a catholic leading an almost completely Buddhist country. 

> America were in full support of the southern leader. 

> It was obvious the South Vietnamese could not resist communist infiltration by the Vietcong without help.

> In 1963, the American commander reported that the ARVN - the South Vietnamese army - were ll-equipped local militia who more often than not were killed asleep in their defensive positions.USadvisers believed that good government and an efficient, large-scale war would defeat the Vietcong.

> The North Vietnamese had attacked the USS Maddox in August 1964, and then killed US soldiers in February 1965. Johnson became convinced that action in South Vietnam alone would never win the war. 

> Americans believed that, if South Vietnam fell to communism, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand - and then Burma and India - would follow.

> Guerilla tactics- The Vietcong used tactics where they used their terrain to sneak up on the enemy instead of using textbook war techniques.

> Punji traps- Traps were created in the ground and then covered in leaves to capture and kill unexpecting US soldiers. 

> Ho Chi Minh Trail- The Ho Chi Minh Trail was used throughout the war as a constnat way of supplying men and soldiers and weapons to the Vietcong. 

> Hanging onto belts- This is where the Vietcong stayed so close to the Americans that it would be impossible to bomb them without killing their own men. 

> Vietcong Tunnels-The tunnels gave the Vietcong a chance to stay out of sight of the American spotters meaing it was a safer place than out in the open.  

> Search and destroy- This is where the Americans went into villages and brutally killed anyone they suspected to be part of the Vietcong. 

> Agent Orange- This was a chemical that was used to clear areas of forest and jungle so the enemy was easier to see. 

> Operation rolling thunder- Between 1965 and 1968 a constant flow of bombs were dropped daily on the Vietcong, trying to stop their supply chain. 

> Hi tech war- America used modern technology such as B52 bombers and helocopters frequently through the war. 

> Strategic Hamlets- Peasants were forced to leave Vietcong protected areas. 

> During the war many things made it had for America including the moral in the troops being really low and the fact that soldiers were untrained and unwilling to fight.

> Also the Vietcong were on home land meaning they knew the terrain and used it to their advantage, using guerilla tactics against the textbook war the Americans were trying to fight.

> Also the Vietcong were being supplied weapons from China and the USSR whilst America were trying to fight a war from 8,000 miles away.  

The Tet Offensive was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam.The name of the offensive comes from the Tết holiday, the Vietnamese New Year, when the first major attacks took place.

The North Vietnamese launched a wave of attacks in the late night hours of 30 January in the I and II Corps Tactical Zones of South Vietnam. This early attack did not lead to widespread defensive measures. When the main North Vietnamese operation began the next morning the offensive was countrywide and well coordinated, eventually more than 80,000 North Vietnamese troops striking more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 of 44 provincial capitals, five of the six autonomous cities, 72 of 245 district towns, and the southern capital.The offensive was the largest military operation conducted by either side up to that point in the war.

> Vietnamization of the war was a policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnam's forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops.

> The Cambodian Campaign (also known as the Cambodian Incursion and the Cambodian Invasion) was a series of military operations conducted in eastern Cambodia during 1970 by the United States and the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) during the Vietnam War. These invasions were a result of the policy of President Richard Nixon. A total of 13 major operations were conducted by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) between 29 April and 22 July and by US forces between 1 May and 30 June.

The objective of the campaign was the defeat of the approximately 40,000 troops of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF)

> Watergate was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s, following a break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. in 1972 and President Richard Nixon’s administration’s attempted cover-up of its involvement. When the conspiracy was discovered and investigated by the U.S. Congress, the Nixon administration’s resistance to its probes led to a constitutional crisis. In August 1974, after his role in the Watergate conspiracy had finally come to light, the president resigned.

• In 1968, the US president, Lyndon B. Johnson, ordered an end to American bombing of North Vietnam.
• There were increasing problems in the American army in Vietnam.
• There was increasing opposition to the war in America.
• Richard Nixon, who became US president in 1969, began Vietnamisation - pulling US troops out but giving financial support to the South Vietnamese army (the ARVN).
• On occasions, the US escalated the war, launching attacks into Cambodia (1970) and Laos (1971) to pursue the Vietcong who were hiding there.

• > In April 1975 the South Vietnamese regime collapsed and Vietnam was united.
• > The North Vietnamese army - the NVA - massacred thousands of South Vietnamese after the Americans had left.
• > Vietnam was ruined - its infrastructure was destroyed, thousands of its people had been killed, and its farmland was polluted by American chemical warfare. It remains one of the poorest countries in the world.
• > 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam.
• The war had cost so much that President Johnson's Great Society programme of social reform had to be cancelled.
• > Long lasting health probelms that are generational are present in many Vietnamese people from the use of horrible pestidicdes and the health issues they've caused.