![]() ![]() Congress soon passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave Johnson broad war-making powers, and U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson ordered the retaliatory bombing of military targets in North Vietnam. ![]() In August of 1964, after DRV torpedo boats attacked two U.S. Johnson, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to further increase U.S. The ensuing political instability in South Vietnam persuaded Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Though the NLF claimed to be autonomous and that most of its members were not communists, many in Washington assumed it was a puppet of Hanoi.Ī coup by some of his own generals succeeded in toppling and killing Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, in November 1963, three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. In December 1960, Diem’s many opponents within South Vietnam-both communist and non-communist-formed the National Liberation Front (NLF) to organize resistance to the regime. With training and equipment from American military and the CIA, Diem’s security forces cracked down on Viet Minh sympathizers in the south, whom he derisively called Viet Cong (or Vietnamese Communist), arresting some 100,000 people, many of whom were brutally tortured and executed.īy 1957, the Viet Cong and other opponents of Diem’s repressive regime began fighting back with attacks on government officials and other targets, and by 1959 they had begun engaging the South Vietnamese army in firefights. Eisenhower had pledged his firm support to Diem and South Vietnam. With the Cold War intensifying worldwide, the United States hardened its policies against any allies of the Soviet Union, and by 1955 President Dwight D. But while Ho and his supporters wanted a nation modeled after other communist countries, Bao and many others wanted a Vietnam with close economic and cultural ties to the West.ĭid you know? According to a survey by the Veterans Administration, some 500,000 of the 3 million troops who served in Vietnam suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and rates of divorce, suicide, alcoholism and drug addiction were markedly higher among veterans. Seeking to regain control of the region, France backed Emperor Bao and set up the state of Vietnam in July 1949, with the city of Saigon as its capital.īoth sides wanted the same thing: a unified Vietnam. Seeing an opportunity to seize control, Ho’s Viet Minh forces immediately rose up, taking over the northern city of Hanoi and declaring a Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) with Ho as president. To fight off both Japanese occupiers and the French colonial administration, political leader Ho Chi Minh-inspired by Chinese and Soviet communism-formed the Viet Minh, or the League for the Independence of Vietnam.įollowing its 1945 defeat in World War II, Japan withdrew its forces from Vietnam, leaving the French-educated Emperor Bao Dai in control. Vietnam, a nation in Southeast Asia on the eastern edge of the Indochinese peninsula, had been under French colonial rule since the 19th century.ĭuring World War II, Japanese forces invaded Vietnam.
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