Vietnam War in the 1960s

Date October, 1957-April 30, 1975

The United States’ greatest overseas conflict of the 1960’s and 1970’s. The Vietnam War is the longest war in which the nation has been involved and one of the most domestically wrenching, costly, and widely reported and analyzed events in U.S. history.

Origins and History

After the French were defeated in 1954 in their attempt to retain imperial control of Vietnam, the country was divided into the independent nations of North (communist) and South (anticommunist) Vietnam. Based on President Harry S Truman’s Cold War policy (the United States must help any nation threatened by communists) and out of a fear of the validity of the domino theory (if one Southeast Asian nation fell to the communists, the others would also fall, one after the other), the next three U.S. presidentsDwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson sent increasing amounts of money, men, and materials to South Vietnam, resulting in a concomitant escalation of the war.

Early Chronology

Vietnam seems always to have been the object of attempted domination by foreigners first the Chinese, then the French, followed by the Japanese, and again the French, who were finally thwarted in their bid to reassert imperial authority by Ho Chi Minh, a Vietnamese patriot, communist, and leader of the National Liberation. In May, 1954, the Vietminh (members of Ho’s Revolutionary League for Vietnamese Independence) annihilated French forces at Dien Bien Phu, and in July, the two sides signed peace agreements, known as the Geneva Accords, at Geneva, Switzerland. Vietnam was temporarily divided into North Vietnam and South Vietnam at the Seventeenth Parallel, with national elections set for 1956 to reunify the country. Ho Chi Minh established a communist government in the North and Ngo Dinh Diem became president of South Vietnam in 1955. Diem, who had done little to relieve the hardships of peasant life in rural South Vietnam and therefore had become unpopular, feared a communist sweep of the planned nationwide elections and therefore refused to allow them to take place. However, he was able to persuade President Eisenhower to continue to funnel aid directly to Saigon (capital of South Vietnam) and to train the South Vietnamese army. As early as 1954, General J. Lawton Collins, Eisenhower’s special envoy, had arrived in Saigon with the promise of one hundred million dollars in aid to affirm U.S. support for Diem.

In October, 1957, members of the Vietminh who had stayed in South Vietnam rebelled against Diem’s rule in accord with the decision reached in Hanoi (capital of North Vietnam) that thirty-seven armed companies be organized in the Mekong Delta region in the South. In 1959, North Vietnam began infiltrating regular troops and sending weapons into the South along a supply route known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The communist insurgents began shifting from hit-and-run, small-scale operations to full-scale military action against government-controlled villages in the South. Two U.S. military advisers, Major Dale Buis and Sergeant Chester Ovnand, became the first Americans killed in what would be called the Vietnam era.

In 1960, communist leaders in Hanoi formed the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam. Diem dubbed them Viet Cong, meaning communist Vietnamese. By 1961, with discontent over the Diem regime mounting and more than ten thousand Viet Cong soldiers attacking South Vietnamese army bases, President Kennedy began to expand military aid to South Vietnam. Between 1961 and 1963, he increased the number of U.S. military advisers and troops from nine hundred to more than sixteen thousand. The American Military Assistance Command, the so-called “MAC-V,” was created in South Vietnam in 1962.

Against a backdrop of mounting turmoil and intensifying protests against Diem in 1963, Kennedy supported a group of South Vietnamese generals who opposed Diem’s policies. On November 1, 1963, the generals staged a coup, but against Kennedy’s wishes, they also assassinated Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, the next day. Tragically, Kennedy survived the brothers by only twenty days, being assassinated on November 22 in Dallas.

Policy Changes: Tonkin to Tet

Escalation of the war effort characterized the years from 1964 through 1968, with U.S. troop strength reaching its apex of 543,000 in early 1969. On August 4, 1964, President Johnson announced that the U.S. destroyer Maddox had been attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2 and that a second incident had followed. The president ordered immediate air strikes against the North. Although some people doubted the veracity of at least the second reported attack, the U.S. Congress responded by passing the Tonkin Gulf Resolution on August 7, giving the president extraordinary powers to act in Southeast Asia. Though war was not officially declared, Johnson used the resolution as the legal basis for escalating the conflict.

The Viet Cong began staging attacks against U.S. military installations at Pleiku on February 7, 1965. Within seventeen days, Operation Rolling Thunder sustained U.S. bombing of North Vietnam was initiated. In March, 1965, in order to defend Danang airfield, Johnson sent the U.S. Marines to Vietnam, making them the first official ground combat forces to enter the war.

Johnson also approved the request of General William Westmoreland (field commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam) for forty-four additional combat battalions. By December, 1965, U.S. troop strength reached nearly 200,000. The following two years witnessed additional troop build-ups. Between 1965 and 1967, the United States relied mainly on saturation bombing of North Vietnam and search-and-destroy ground missions in the South to achieve its objectives. However, due to the iron will and troop strength of the North Vietnamese communists, the opposing sides fought to a destructive draw.

The year 1968 was a turning point in the Vietnam War. On January 31, the start of Tet (Vietnamese New Year celebration), a massive new coordinated offensive was unleashed by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers. They attacked South Vietnamese cities and towns with great fury. The Tet Offensive stunned Americans, and many began doubting the validity of the cause in light of the cost, in terms of both money and men. Domestic protests against the war rose significantly. Tet also forced changes in U.S. military policy a decrease in the bombing of North Vietnam, a rejection of Westmoreland’s request for an additional 206,000 troops, and the replacement of Westmoreland as field commander by General Creighton Abrams. President Johnson called for peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese government and publicly announced he would not seek reelection.

Protest and Tragedy

The 1969 inauguration of newly elected President Richard M. Nixon was greeted by the Viet Cong with a series of brutal attacks on South Vietnamese villages. Seeing the need to reduce U.S. participation in the war, Nixon announced on June 8, 1969, the new policy of Vietnamization, the gradual takeover of the war effort by the South Vietnamese army and a concomitant withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. At year’s end, U.S. troop strength had been reduced by 60,000, but not before massive antiwar demonstrations were held in Washington, D.C., in the fall.

The years 1970 through 1972 saw a continuation of intense antiwar protests across the United States in addition to ongoing reductions in U.S. troop strength in Vietnam. Increasing widespread opposition to the war can be linked directly to television. Some of the most shocking and tragic images of this period occurred on May 4, 1970, during an antiwar protest at Kent State University in Ohio. National Guardsmen fired their weapons into a crowd of demonstrators and killed four students while wounding nine others. Soon thereafter, the Senate voted to repeal the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The nation was again shocked when, on November 12, 1970, Lieutenant William L. Calley, Jr., went on trial at Fort Benning, Georgia, for his role in the 1968 civilian massacres at My Lai, a small hamlet in South Vietnam. In March, 1971, Calley was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to a ten-year prison term, prosecutors having proven his army unit guilty of murdering between one hundred and two hundred noncombatants in a premeditated fashion.

Public abhorrence of the war and distrust of U.S. officials deepened in 1971 when The New York Times published a series of documents called the Pentagon Papers, which described secret decisions and actions of U.S. leaders regarding the conduct of the war. Unfortunately, North Vietnam initiated a major invasion of the South in March, 1972, and President Nixon responded by ordering the mining of Haiphong harbor and the intensified bombing of all North Vietnam. These actions halted the invasion and led to peace talks, conducted primarily by Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s chief foreign policy adviser, and Le Du Tho of North Vietnam. On January 27, 1973, a cease-fire agreement was signed in Paris by the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the Viet Cong. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird soon announced the end of the military draft in the United States, and the last U.S. ground forces left Vietnam on March 29, 1973. By mid-year, Congress began sharply reducing aid to South Vietnam. This encouraged the Viet Cong to renew the fighting, and by March, 1975, South Vietnamese troops were forced to retreat from strategic areas of their country. Still, President Gerald R. Ford Nixon’s successor would declare in a speech delivered on April 23 that the war was finished. That month Congress approved three hundred million dollars in emergency aid for Vietnam, which proved to be mainly for the evacuation of Americans from Saigon. The war effectively ended when North Vietnam captured Saigon and the South surrendered to the communist North.

Impact

Certain aspects of the Vietnam War can be quantified. About 58,000 Americans were killed between 1961 and 1975, and approximately 365,000 were wounded. Total loss of human life in both North and South Vietnam ran to some 2.1 million persons. The United States Air Force dropped 6.7 million tons of bombs on Southeast Asia, which was two and one-half times the amount dropped on Germany during World War II. Almost 5.2 million acres of forest and crop land were sprayed with nineteen million gallons of defoliant to aid U.S. forces in their prosecution of the war. The landscapes of North and South Vietnam were literally changed, and crop lands as well as plant and animal life were permanently damaged. U.S. air strikes destroyed much of North Vietnam’s industrial and transportation systems. But the South, where most of the fighting occurred, ended up with approximately ten million homeless inhabitants half the population. In addition, the United States spent between $150 billion and $170 billion on the war.

Other aspects of the Vietnam War and its effects on the American people cannot be so easily measured. The psychological costs of the war were tremendous. It was the first foreign conflict in which the U.S. military failed to achieve its objectives. It damaged the pride, confidence, and spirit of hope of many Americans. It was the nation’s first televised war, and uncensored scenes of horror were brought directly into the homes of ordinary people on a daily basis. These horrific scenes left viewers with bitter and painful memories. Most affected were the 2.7 million men and women who fought in the war and their families. Some veterans were irreparably scarred, physically and psychologically. They suffered from high rates of divorce, drug and alcohol abuse, and homelessness. Returning veterans of previous wars had been welcomed home as heros; however, Vietnam veterans were criticized, mocked, abused, or ignored. In an attempt to heal some of the social wounds and rifts persisting in the United States as a result of the sharp divisions over the Vietnam War, President Jimmy Carter, a one-time professional military officer, officially pardoned most of the ten thousand wartime draft evaders on January 21, 1977 (the day after his inauguration).

As a result of the Vietnam War, Congress and the public became more vocal in openly challenging the president on U.S. military and foreign policy issues. Though Americans disagree on the lessons of the Vietnam War, careful review of possible U.S. involvement in overseas conflicts seems to have been one of its legacies. Many Americans questioned the validity of a U.S. obligation to police the globe.

Additional Information

The classic complete history of the Vietnam War, which has also been made into a documentary television series, is Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam A History (1983). More specific treatments of the United States’ role in Vietnam are found in George C. Herring’s America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 (1979), Guenter Lewy’s America in Vietnam (1978), and George Donelson Moss’s Vietnam, an American Ordeal (1990).