Vietnam War

Saad Bhutta

U.S. History II

Professor: Clark

12 May 2005

Vietnam War

From the 1880s until World War II (1939-1945), France governed Vietnam as part of French Indochina. (Indochina also included Cambodia and Laos, and was ruled by the emperor Bao Dai). During this time, the nations of Indochina fought for their sovereignty. In 1940, the Japanese troops invaded and occupied French Indochina, (causing the United States to step in and demand Japan to leave). In December of that year, Vietnamese nationalists established the League for the Independence of Vietnam, (or Viet Minh), using the turmoil of the war as an opportunity for resistance to French colonial rule. When Japan would not cooperate, the U.S. and Viet Minh formed an alliance against them. The U.S. sent in militia, and the Viet Minh began guerrilla warfare. The Viet Minh troops rescued downed U.S. pilots, located Japanese prison camps, helped U.S. prisoners to escape, and provided valuable intelligence to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ho Chi Minh, the principal leader of the Viet Minh, was even made a special OSS agent. Eventually, the Japanese signed their formal surrender (on September 2, 1945), and Ho Chi Minh used the occasion to declare the independence of Vietnam, which he called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). However, although Emperor Bao Dai resigned the throne, the French refused to acknowledge Vietnam’s independence, and later that year drove the Viet Minh into the north of the country.

Ho Chi Minh wrote over eight letters to Truman (while he was president) asking him for the U.S support. However, after the Cold War, the United States and Truman feared support of communism in any form. The United States and Truman therefore condemned Ho Chi Minh as an agent of international Communism and offered to assist the French in recapturing Vietnam.

In 1946 United States warships ferried elite French troops to Vietnam where they quickly regained control of the major cities, including Hanoi, Haiphong, Hue, and Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), while the Viet Minh controlled the countryside. (Although the Viet Minh had only 2000 troops at first, the recruiting increased after the arrival of French troops, and by the late 1940s, the Viet Minh had hundreds of thousands of soldiers). In 1949 the French set up a government to rival Ho Chi Minh’s, installing Bao Dai as head of state. In May 1954 the Viet Minh mounted a massive assault on the French fortress at Dien Bien, in Northwestern Vietnam. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu resulted in perhaps the most humiliating defeat in French military history.

Already tired of war, the French public forced their government to reach a peace agreement at the Geneva Conference. During this meeting (in Geneva, Switzerland, from May 8 to July 21, 1954), diplomats from France, the United Kingdom, the USSR, China, and the United States, (as well as representatives from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) drafted a set of agreements called the Geneva Accords. These agreements provided for the withdraw of French troops to the south of Vietnam until they could be safely removed from the country. However, as an affect of these agreements, Vietnam became a separated nation. Divided by the 17th parallel (an invisible border), Ho Chi Minh maintained control of North Vietnam, or the DRV, while Emperor Bao Dai remained head of South Vietnam.

After the division of Vietnam, elections were planned to take place, in order to reunite the nation under one ruler. However, under the United States’ encouragement, Ngo Dinh Diem (who was chosen to replace Bao Dai) refused to participate in the planned national elections, which Ho Chi Minh and the Lao Dong, or Workers’ Party, were favored to win. Instead, Diem held elections only in South Vietnam, (an action that violated the Geneva Accords). Diem won the elections with 98.2 percent of the vote, but many historians believe these elections were rigged, since 200,000 more people voted in Saigon than were registered. Diem then declared South Vietnam to be an independent nation called the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), with Saigon as its capital. Vietnamese Communists and many non-Communist Vietnamese nationalists saw the creation of the RVN as an effort by the United States to interfere with the independence promised at Geneva.

Succeeding to the presidency after Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, Lyndon B Johnson felt he had to take a forceful stance on Vietnam so that other Communist countries would not think that the United States lacked resolve. Kennedy had begun to consider the possibility of withdraw from Vietnam and had even ordered the removal of 1000 advisors