Vietnam War Vocab March 3-17

Ho Chi Minh (leader of Vietnam)

(19 May 1890 - 2 September 1969) Vietnamese Communist revolutionary leader. Born Nguyễn Sinh Cung. As a young child, Cung studied with his father before more formal classes with a scholar named Vuong Thuc Do. Thành's father was eligible to serve in the imperial bureaucracy but refused because it meant serving the French. This exposed Thành to rebellion at a young age and seemed to be the norm for the province where Thành came of age. Thành received a French education, attended lycée in Huế. In 1941, Ho returned to Vietnam to lead the Viet Minh independence movement. The Japanese occupation of Indochina that year, the first step toward invasion of the rest of Southeast Asia, created an opportunity for patriotic Vietnamese. The "men in black" were a 10,000 member guerrilla force that operated with the Viet Minh. He oversaw many successful military actions against the Vichy French and Japanese occupation of Vietnam during World War II, supported closely but clandestinely by the United States Office of Strategic Services, and later against the French bid to reoccupy the country (1946-54). He was jailed in China by Chiang Kai-shek's local authorities before being rescued by Chinese Communists. Following his release in 1943, he returned to Vietnam.On 2 September 1945, following Emperor Bảo Đại's abdication, Ho read the Declaration of Independence of Vietnam, under the name of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In Saigon, with violence between rival Vietnamese factions and French forces increasing, the British commander, General Sir Douglas Gracey, declared martial law. On 24 September, the Viet Minh leaders responded with a call for a general strike. The 1954 Geneva Accords concluded between France and the Viet Minh, allowing the latter's forces to regroup in the North whilst anti-communist groups settled in the South. Ho's Democratic Republic of Vietnam relocated to Hanoi and became the government of North Vietnam, a communist-led one-party state. Between 1953 and 1956, the North Vietnamese government instituted various agrarian reforms, including "rent reduction" and "land reform", which resulted in significant political oppression. During the land reform, testimony from North Vietnamese witnesses suggested a ratio of one execution for every 160 village residents, which extrapolated nationwide would indicate nearly 100,000 executions. As fighting escalated, widespread aerial and artillery bombardment all over North Vietnam by the U.S. Air Force and Navy begin with Operation Rolling Thunder. In July 1967, Ho and most of the Politburo of Workers Party of Vietnam met in a high-profile conference where they all concluded the war had fallen into a stalemate, since the United States Army presence forced the People's Army of Vietnam to expend the majority of their resources maintaining the Ho Chi Minh trail instead of reinforcing their comrade's ranks in the South. With Ho's permission, the Viet Cong planned to execute the Tet Offensive to begin on 31 January 1968, gambling on taking the South by force and defeating the U.S. military. The offensive came at great cost and with heavy casualties on NLF's political branches and armed forces. He was prime minister (1945-55) and president (1945-69) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). He was a key figure in the foundation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, as well as the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Việt Cộng (NLF or VC) during the Vietnam War.He led the Việt Minh independence movement from 1941 onward, establishing the Communist-ruled Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and defeating the French Union in 1954 at the battle of Điện Biên Phủ. He officially stepped down from power in 1965 due to health problems, but remained a highly visible figurehead and inspiration for those Vietnamese fighting for his cause—a united, communist Vietnam—until his death. After the war, Saigon, the former capital of the Republic of Vietnam, was renamed Hồ Chí Minh City.

General Vo Nguyen Giap

(25 August 1911 - 4 October 2013) General in the Vietnam People's Army and a politician. Giap's father and mother, Võ Quang Nghiêm and Nguyễn Thị Kiên, worked the land, rented some to neighbors, and lived a relatively comfortable lifestyle. Giap's father was both a minor official and a committed Vietnamese nationalist, having played a part in the Cần Vương movement in the 1880s. He was arrested for subversive activities by the French colonial authorities in 1919 and died in prison a few weeks later. Giap had two sisters and one brother, and soon after his father's incarceration, one of his sisters was also arrested. Although she was not held for long, the privations of prison life made her ill and she too died a few weeks after being released. Giap was taught at home by his father before going to the village school. His precocious intelligence meant that he was soon transferred to the district school and in 1924, at the age of thirteen, he left home to attend the "National Academy" Giap is considered one of the greatest military strategists of the 20th century. He first grew to prominence during World War II, where he served as the military leader of the Viet Minh resistance against the Japanese occupation of Vietnam. Giap was a principal commander in two wars: the First Indochina War (1946-54) and the Vietnam War (1960-75). He participated in the following historically significant battles: Lạng Sơn (1950), Hòa Bình (1951-52), Điện Biên Phủ (1954), the Tết Offensive (1968), the Easter Offensive (1972), and the final Ho Chi Minh Campaign (1975). Giap was also a journalist, an interior minister in President Hồ Chí Minh's Việt Minh government, the military commander of the Viet Minh, the commander of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), and defense minister. He also served as a member of the Politburo of the Vietnam Workers' Party, which in 1976 became the Communist Party of Vietnam. He was the most prominent military commander, beside Ho Chi Minh, during the Vietnam War, and was responsible for major operations and leadership until the war ended. Soon after the fall of Saigon, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was established. In the new government, Giáp maintained his position as Minister of National Defense and he was made Deputy Prime Minister in July 1976. In December 1978 he oversaw the successful Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia which drove the Khmer Rouge from power and ended the Cambodian genocide. In retaliation, Cambodia's ally China responded by invading the Cao Bang province of Vietnam in January 1979 and once again Giap was in overall responsibility for the response, which drove the Chinese out after a few months. He finally retired from his post at the Defense Ministry in 1981 and retired from the Politburo in 1982. He remained on the Central Committee and Deputy Prime Minister until he retired in 1991. Giap wrote extensively on military theory and strategy.

President Lyndon B Johnson

(August 27, 1908 - January 22, 1973) American politician. Johnson was born near Stonewall, Texas, in a small farmhouse on the Pedernales River, the oldest of five children. n school, Johnson was an awkward, talkative youth and was elected president of his 11th-grade class. He graduated from Johnson City High School (1924). He taught in Pearsall High School in Pearsall, Texas, and afterward took a position as teacher of public speaking at Sam Houston High School in Houston. He served as the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, assuming the office after serving as the Vice President of the United States under President John F. Kennedy, from 1961 to 1963. Johnson was a Democrat from Texas, who served as a United States Representative from 1937 to 1949 and as a United States Senator from 1949 to 1961. He spent six years as Senate Majority Leader, two as Senate Minority Leader, and two as Senate Majority Whip. Johnson ran for the Democratic nomination in the 1960 presidential election. Although unsuccessful, he was chosen by Senator John F. Kennedy to be his running mate. They went on to win a close election over Nixon. Johnson was sworn in as Vice President on January 20, 1961. Two years and ten months later, on November 22, 1963, Johnson succeeded Kennedy as President following the latter's assassination. He ran for a full term in the 1964 election, winning by a landslide over Republican opponent Barry Goldwater. He is one of only four people who have served as President, Vice President, Senator, and Representative. Johnson designed the "Great Society" legislation upholding civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to education, the arts, urban and rural development, public services, and his "War on Poverty". Assisted in part by a growing economy, the War on Poverty helped millions of Americans rise above the poverty line during Johnson's presidency. Civil rights bills signed by Johnson banned racial discrimination in public facilities, interstate commerce, the workplace, and housing; and the Voting Rights Act banned certain requirements in southern states used to disenfranchise African Americans. With the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the country's immigration system was reformed and all racial origin quotas were removed (replaced by national origin quotas). Johnson escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted Johnson the power to use military force in Southeast Asia without having to ask for an official declaration of war. The number of American military personnel in Vietnam increased dramatically, from 16,000 advisors in non-combat roles in 1963, to 550,000 in early 1968, many in combat roles. American casualties soared and the peace process bogged down. Growing unease with the war stimulated a large, angry antiwar movement based especially on university campuses in the U.S. and abroad. Johnson faced further troubles when summer riots broke out in most major cities after 1965, and crime rates soared, as his opponents raised demands for "law and order" policies. While he began his presidency with widespread approval, support for Johnson declined as the public became upset with both the war and the growing violence at home. In 1968, the Democratic Party factionalized as antiwar elements denounced Johnson; he ended his bid for renomination after a disappointing finish in the New Hampshire primary. Republican Richard Nixon was elected to succeed him. Historians argue that Johnson's presidency marked the peak of modern liberalism in the United States after the New Deal era. Johnson is ranked favorably by some historians because of his domestic policies and the passage of many major laws, affecting civil rights, gun control, wilderness preservation, and Social Security.

President R Nixon

(January 9, 1913 - April 22, 1994) American politician who served as the 37th President of the United States from 1969 until 1974, when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office. He had previously served as a U.S. Representative and Senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. After completing his undergraduate studies at Whittier College, he graduated from Duke University School of Law in 1937 and returned to California to practice law. He and his wife Pat moved to Washington in 1942 to work for the federal government. He subsequently served on active duty in the U.S. Navy Reserve during World War II. Nixon was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and to the Senate in 1950. His pursuit of the Hiss Case established his reputation as a leading anti-communist, and elevated him to national prominence. He was the running mate of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party presidential nominee in the 1952 election. Nixon served for eight years as vice president. He waged an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1960, narrowly losing to John F. Kennedy, and lost a race for Governor of California to Pat Brown in 1962. In 1968, he ran for the presidency again and was elected by defeating incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Nixon ended American involvement in the war in Vietnam in 1973 and brought the American POWs home, and ended the military draft. Nixon's visit to the People's Republic of China in 1972 opened diplomatic relations between the two nations, and he initiated détente and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union the same year. His administration generally transferred power from Washington D.C. to the states. He imposed wage and price controls for a period of ninety days, enforced desegregation of Southern schools and established the Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon also presided over the Apollo 11 moon landing, which signaled the end of the moon race. He was reelected in one of the largest electoral landslides in U.S. history in 1972, when he defeated George McGovern. The year 1973 saw an Arab oil embargo, gasoline rationing, and a continuing series of revelations about the Watergate scandal. The scandal escalated, costing Nixon much of his political support, and on August 9, 1974, he resigned in the face of almost certain impeachment and removal from office. After his resignation, he was issued a pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford. In retirement, Nixon's work writing several books and undertaking of many foreign trips helped to rehabilitate his image. He suffered a debilitating stroke on April 18, 1994, and died four days later at the age of 81.

Kent State University

The Kent State shootings were the shooting of unarmed Vietnam War protesters at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, by members of the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970. Twenty-nine guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 to 60 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis. Some of the students who were shot had been protesting the Cambodian Campaign, which President Richard Nixon announced during a television address on April 30. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance. There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of 4 million students, and the event further affected public opinion, at an already socially contentious time, over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War. Photographs of the dead and wounded at Kent State that were distributed in newspapers and periodicals worldwide amplified sentiment against the United States' invasion of Cambodia and the Vietnam War in general. In particular, the camera of Kent State photojournalism student John Filo captured a 14-year-old runaway, Mary Ann Vecchio, screaming over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller, who had been shot in the mouth. The photograph, which won a Pulitzer Prize, became the most enduring image of the events, and one of the more enduring images of the anti-Vietnam War movement. President Nixon and his administration's public reaction to the shootings was perceived by many in the anti-war movement as callous. Three days before the shootings, Nixon had talked of "bums" who were antiwar protestors on United States campuses, to which the father of Allison Krause stated on national TV "My child was not a bum."

Paris Peace Talks (Accords)

The Paris Peace Accords, officially titled the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam, was a peace treaty signed on January 27, 1973 to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War. The treaty included the governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), and the United States, as well as the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) that represented indigenous South Vietnamese revolutionaries. It ended direct U.S. military combat, and temporarily stopped the fighting between North and South Vietnam. However, the agreement was not ratified by the United States Senate. The negotiations that led to the accord began in 1968, after various lengthy delays. As a result of the accord, the International Control Commission (ICC) was replaced by the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) to fulfill the agreement. The main negotiators of the agreement were United States National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and Vietnamese politburo member Lê Đức Thọ; the two men were awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts, although Lê Đức Thọ refused to accept it.

1973 Peace Treaty

The Peace Treaty effectively removed the U.S. from the conflict in Vietnam. However, the agreement's provisions were routinely flouted by both the North Vietnamese and the Saigon government, eliciting no response from the United States, and ultimately resulting in the communists enlarging the area under their control by the end of 1973. North Vietnamese military forces gradually built up their military infrastructure in the areas they controlled, and two years later were in position to launch the successful offensive that ended South Vietnam's status as an independent country. Nixon had secretly promised Thiệu that he would use airpower to support the Saigon government should it be necessary. During his confirmation hearings in June 1973, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger was sharply criticized by some senators after he stated that he would recommend resumption of U.S. bombing in North Vietnam if North Vietnam launched a major offensive against South Vietnam, but by August 15, 1973, 95% of American troops and their allies had left Vietnam (both North and South) as well as Cambodia and Laos under the Case-Church Amendment. The amendment, which was approved by the U.S. Congress in June 1973, prohibited further U.S. military activity in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia unless the president secured Congressional approval in advance. However, during this time, Nixon was being driven from office due to the Watergate scandal, which led to his resignation in 1974. When the North Vietnamese began their final offensive early in 1975, U.S. Congress refused to appropriate additional military assistance for South Vietnam, citing strong opposition to the war by Americans and the loss of American equipment to the North by retreating Southern forces. Thiệu subsequently resigned, accusing the U.S. of betrayal in a TV and radio address

Tunnels of Cu Chi

The tunnels of Củ Chi are an immense network of connecting underground tunnels located in the Củ Chi District of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam, and are part of a much larger network of tunnels that underlie much of the country. The Củ Chi tunnels were the location of several military campaigns during the Vietnam War, and were the Viet Cong's base of operations for the Tết Offensive in 1968. The tunnels were used by Viet Cong soldiers as hiding spots during combat, as well as serving as communication and supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon caches and living quarters for numerous North Vietnamese fighters. The tunnel systems were of great importance to the Viet Cong in their resistance to American forces, and helped to counter the growing American military effort. The tunnels of Củ Chi did not go unnoticed by U.S. officials. They recognized the advantages that the Viet Cong held with the tunnels, and accordingly launched several major campaigns to search out and destroy the tunnel system. Among the most important of these were Operation Crimp and Operation Cedar Falls. Throughout the course of the war, the tunnels in and around Củ Chi proved to be a source of frustration for the U.S. military in Saigon. The Viet Cong had been so well entrenched in the area by 1965 that they were in the unique position of locally being able to control where and when battles would take place. By helping to covertly move supplies and house troops, the tunnels of Củ Chi allowed North Vietnamese fighters in their area of South Vietnam to survive, help prolong the war and increase American costs and casualties until their eventual withdrawal in 1972, and the final defeat of South Vietnam in 1975.

My Lai (aka Son My) Massacre

Vietnam War mass killing of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968. It was committed by U.S. Army soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division. Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated. Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest. The massacre, which was later called "the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War", took place in two hamlets of Sơn Mỹ village in Quảng Ngãi Province. These hamlets were marked on the U.S. Army topographic maps as My Lai and My Khe. The U.S. Army slang name for the hamlets and sub-hamlets in that area was Pinkville, and the carnage was initially referred to as the Pinkville Massacre. Later, when the U.S. Army started its investigation, the media changed it to the Massacre at Songmy. Currently, the event is referred to as the My Lai Massacre in the United States and called the Sơn Mỹ Massacre in Vietnam. The incident prompted global outrage when it became public knowledge in November 1969. The My Lai massacre increased to some extent domestic opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War when the scope of killing and cover-up attempts were exposed. Initially, three U.S. servicemen who had tried to halt the massacre and rescue the hiding civilians were shunned, and even denounced as traitors by several U.S. Congressmen, including Mendel Rivers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Only after thirty years were they recognized and decorated, one posthumously, by the U.S. Army for shielding non-combatants from harm in a war zone. Along with the No Gun Ri massacre in Korea eighteen years earlier, My Lai was one of the largest single massacres of civilians by U.S. forces in the 20th century.

"Donut Dolly"

Women who volunteered for the Clubmobiles were popularly referred to as "donut dollies," since one of their biggest tasks was making doughnuts for the servicemen. he Clubmobile was conceived by Harvey D. Gibson, a prominent New York banker and American Red Cross Commissioner to Great Britain, as a way to reach servicemen in airfields, camps and other theaters of war. All of the services provided by the Clubmobile were free, although some Clubmobiles began charging for food after 1942. The original Clubmobiles operated from late 1942 until 1946, traveling all throughout Great Britain and Europe. The first Clubmobiles were remodeled London Green Line buses driven by an English driver and operated by three American women. The Red Cross required the Clubmobile volunteers to be between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, have some college education and work experience, and to be "healthy, physically hardy, sociable and attractive." Each Clubmobile was fitted with a kitchen consisting of a built-in doughnut machine and a primus stove for heating water for coffee. One side of the kitchen opened out for serving food and drinks, while the rear of the Clubmobile consisted of a "lounge" area with built-in benches that also doubled as sleeping bunks. The lounge also contained a Victrola with loud speakers, current music records, books, candy, gum and cigarettes.

Tet Offensive

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. Though initial attacks stunned both the US and South Vietnamese armies, causing them to temporarily lose control of several cities, they quickly regrouped, beat back the attacks, and inflicted heavy casualties on North Vietnamese forces. During the Battle of Huế, intense fighting lasted for a month, resulting in the destruction of the city. During their occupation, the North Vietnamese executed thousands of people in the Massacre at Huế. Around the US combat base at Khe Sanh fighting continued for two more months. Although the offensive was a military defeat for North Vietnam, it had a profound effect on the US government and shocked the US public, which had been led to believe by its political and military leaders that the North Vietnamese were being defeated and incapable of launching such an ambitious military operation, whereupon the U.S. public support for the war declined and the U.S. sought negotiations to end the war

Agent Orange

Agent Orange is a herbicide and defoliant chemical. It is widely known for its use by the U.S. military as part of its herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. It was a mixture of equal parts of two herbicides, 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D. The chemical damaged the health of people who came in in contact with it as well as extensively contaminated the environment. During the Vietnam War, between 1962 and 1971, the United States military sprayed nearly 20,000,000 U.S. gallons of various chemicals - the "rainbow herbicides" and defoliants - in Vietnam, eastern Laos, and parts of Cambodia as part of the aerial defoliation program known as Operation Ranch Hand, reaching its peak from 1967 to 1969. Like the British did in Malaya, the goal was to defoliate rural/forested land, depriving guerrillas of food and cover and clearing sensitive areas such as around base perimeters. The program was also a part of a general policy of forced draft urbanization, which aimed to destroy the ability of peasants to support themselves in the countryside, forcing them to flee to the U.S. dominated cities, depriving the guerrillas of their rural support base. The U.S. military began targeting food crops in October 1962, primarily using Agent Blue; the American public was not made aware of the crop destruction programs until 1965 (and it was then believed that crop spraying had begun that spring). In 1965, 42 percent of all herbicide spraying was dedicated to food crops. The first official acknowledgement of the programs came from the State Department in March 1966. The government of Vietnam says that 4 million of its citizens were exposed to Agent Orange, and as many as 3 million have suffered illnesses because of it; these figures include their children who were exposed. The Red Cross of Vietnam estimates that up to 1 million people are disabled or have health problems due to contaminated Agent Orange. The United States government has challenged these figures as being unreliable. According to a study by Dr. Nguyen Viet Nhan, children in the areas where Agent Orange was used have been affected and have multiple health problems, including cleft palate, mental disabilities, hernias, and extra fingers and toes. The extensive environmental damage that resulted from the herbicide prompted the United Nations to pass Resolution 31/72 and ratify the Environmental Modification Convention. Many states do not regard this as a complete ban on the use of herbicides and defoliants in warfare but it does require case-by-case consideration. In the Conference on Disarmament, Article 2(4) Protocol III of the weaponry convention contains "The Jungle Exception", which prohibits states from attacking forests or jungles "except if such natural elements are used to cover, conceal or camouflage combatants or military objectives or are military objectives themselves". This exception voids any protection of any military and civilian personnel from a napalm attack or something like Agent Orange and is clear that it was designed to cover situations like U.S. tactics in Vietnam.

ARVN

The Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), also known as the South Vietnamese Army (SVA), were the ground forces of the Republic of Vietnam Military Forces, the armed forces of South Vietnam, which existed from 1955 until the Fall of Saigon in 1975. It is estimated to have suffered 1,394,000 casualties (killed and wounded) during the Vietnam War. Early on, the focus of the army was the guerrilla fighters of the Vietnam National Liberation Front (NLF), formed to oppose the Diệm administration. The United States, under President John F. Kennedy sent advisors and a great deal of financial support to aid the ARVN in combating the insurgents. A major campaign, developed by Ngô Đình Nhu and later resurrected under another name was the "Strategic Hamlet Program" which was regarded as unsuccessful by Western media because it was "inhumane" to move villagers from the countryside to fortified villages. ARVN leaders and President Diệm were criticized by the foreign press when the troops were used to crush armed anti-government religious groups like the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo as well as to raid Buddhist temples, which according to Diệm, were harboring NLF guerrillas. The most notorious of these attacks occurred on the night of August 21, 1963, during the Xá Lợi Pagoda raids conducted by the Special Forces, which caused a death toll estimated to range into the hundreds. Although the American news media has often portrayed the Vietnam War as a primarily American and North Vietnamese conflict, the ARVN carried the brunt of the fight before and after large-scale American involvement, and participated in many major operations with American troops. ARVN troops pioneered the use of the M113 armored personnel carrier as an infantry fighting vehicle by fighting mounted rather than as a "battle taxi" as originally designed, and the armored cavalry (ACAV) modifications were adopted based on ARVN experience. Starting in 1968, South Vietnam began calling up every available man for service in the ARVN, reaching a strength of one million soldiers by 1972. In 1970 they performed well in the Cambodian Incursion and were executing three times as many operations as they had during the American war period. However, the ARVN equipment continued to be of lower standards than their American and South Korean allies, even as the U.S. tried to upgrade ARVN technology. However, the officer corps was still the biggest problem. Leaders were too often poorly trained, corrupt, lacking morale and inept. However, forced to carry the burden left by the Americans, the South Vietnamese Army actually started to perform rather well, though with continued American air support. After the fall of Saigon to the invading North Vietnamese Army (NVA), the ARVN was dissolved. While some high-ranking officers had fled the country to the United States or elsewhere, thousands of former ARVN officers were sent to reeducation camps by the communist government of the new, unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The years after the war were not kind to some ARVN soldiers. Many were sent for years to special "reeducation camps", which consisted of forced labor and political indoctrination. The Americans and South Vietnamese had laid large minefields during the war, and former ARVN soldiers were made to clear them. Thousands died from sickness and starvation and were buried in unmarked graves. The South Vietnamese military cemetery at Biên Hòa was vandalized and abandoned, and a mass grave of ARVN soldiers was made nearby.

French Indochina War

The First Indochina War began in French Indochina on 19 December 1946 and lasted until 1 August 1954. Fighting between French forces and their Viet Minh opponents in the South dated from September 1945. The conflict pitted a range of forces, including the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps, led by France and supported by Emperor Bảo Đại's Vietnamese National Army against the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh and its People's Army of Vietnam led by Vo Nguyen Giap. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in Southern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia. At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the Combined Chiefs of Staff decided that Indochina south of latitude 16° North was to be included in the Southeast Asia Command under British Admiral Mountbatten. Japanese forces located south of that line surrendered to him and those to the north surrendered to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. In September 1945, Chinese forces entered Tonkin and a small British task force landed at Saigon. The Chinese accepted the Vietnamese government under Ho Chi Minh, then in power in Hanoi. The British refused to do likewise in Saigon, and deferred to the French there from the outset, against the ostensible support of the Viet Minh authorities by American OSS representatives. On V-J Day, September 2, Ho Chi Minh had proclaimed in Hanoi the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). The DRV ruled as the only civil government in all of Vietnam for a period of about 20 days, after the abdication of Emperor Bảo Đại, who had governed under Japanese rule and thus was considered a "Japanese puppet" by the Viet Minh. On 23 September 1945, with the knowledge of the British Commander in Saigon, French forces overthrew the local DRV government, and declared French authority restored in Cochinchina. Guerrilla warfare began around Saigon immediately. The first few years of the war involved a low-level rural insurgency against the French. However, after the Chinese communists reached the northern border of Vietnam in 1949, the conflict turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons supplied by the United States and the Soviet Union. French Union forces included colonial troops from the whole former empire (Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Laotian, Cambodian, and Vietnamese ethnic minorities), French professional troops and units of the French Foreign Legion. The use of metropolitan recruits was forbidden by the government to prevent the war from becoming even more unpopular at home. The strategy of pushing the Viet Minh into attacking well-defended bases in remote parts of the country at the end of their logistical trails was validated at the Battle of Nà Sản. However, this base was relatively weak because of a lack of concrete and steel. French efforts were made more difficult due to the limited usefulness of armored tanks in a jungle environment, lack of strong air forces for air cover and carpet bombing, and use of foreign recruits from other French colonies (mainly from Algeria, Morocco and even Vietnam), caused by the unpopularity of this war in France which proscribed the use of regular French recruits. On the other hand, Võ Nguyên Giáp used efficient and novel tactics of direct fire artillery, convoy ambushes and amassed anti-aircraft guns to impede land or air supply deliveries together with a strategy based on recruiting a sizable regular army facilitated by wide popular support, a guerrilla warfare doctrine and instruction developed in China and the use of simple and reliable war material provided by the Soviet Union. This combination proved fatal for this base defenses, culminating in a decisive French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. At the International Geneva Conference on July 21, 1954, the new socialist French government and the Viet Minh made an agreement that was denounced by the State of Vietnam and by the United States, but which effectively gave the Viet Minh control of North Vietnam above the 17th parallel. The south continued under Emperor Bảo Đại. A year later, Bảo Đại would be deposed by his prime minister, Ngô Đình Diệm, creating the Republic of Vietnam. Soon an insurgency, backed by the North, developed against Diệm's government. The conflict gradually escalated into the Vietnam War.

Domino Theory

The domino theory was a theory prominent from the 1950s to the 1980s, that speculated that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. The domino theory was used by successive United States administrations during the Cold War to justify the need for American intervention around the world. Though he never used the precise term "domino theory", U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower described the theory during an April 7, 1954, news conference, when referring to communism in Indochina, "Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences." The primary evidence for the domino theory is the spread of communist rule in three Southeast Asian countries in 1975, following the communist takeover of Vietnam: South Vietnam (by the Viet Cong), Laos (by the Pathet Lao), and Cambodia (by the Khmer Rouge). It can further be argued that before they finished taking Vietnam prior to the 1950s, the communist campaigns did not succeed in Southeast Asia. Note the Malayan Emergency, the Hukbalahap Rebellion in the Philippines, and the increasing involvement with Communists by Sukarno of Indonesia from the late 1950s until he was deposed in 1967. All of these were unsuccessful Communist attempts to take over Southeast Asian countries which stalled when communist forces were still focused in Vietnam. Walt Whitman Rostow and the then Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew have argued that the U.S. intervention in Indochina, by giving the nations of ASEAN time to consolidate and engage in economic growth, prevented a wider domino effect. Meeting with President Ford and Henry Kissinger in 1975 Lee Kuan Yew argued that "there is a tendency in the U.S. Congress not to want to export jobs. But we have to have the jobs if we are to stop Communism. We have done that, moving from simple to more complex skilled labor. If we stop this process, it will do more harm that you can ever repair with aid. Don't cut off imports from Southeast Asia." McGeorge Bundy argued that the prospects for a domino effect, though high in the 1950s and early 1960s, were weakened in 1965 when the Indonesian Communist Party was destroyed via CIA-supported death squads in the Indonesian Genocide. However, proponents believe that the efforts during the containment (i.e. Domino Theory) period ultimately led to the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Some supporters of the domino theory note the history of communist governments supplying aid to communist revolutionaries in neighboring countries. For instance, China supplied the Viet Minh, the North Vietnamese army, with troops and supplies, and the Soviet Union supplied them with tanks and heavy weapons. The fact that the Pathet Lao and Khmer Rouge were both originally part of the Vietminh, not to mention Hanoi's support for both in conjunction with the Viet Cong, also give credence to the theory. The Soviet Union also heavily supplied Sukarno with military supplies and advisors from the time of the Guided Democracy in Indonesia, especially during and after the 1958 civil war in Sumatra.

Operation Rolling Thunder

The title of a gradual and sustained aerial bombardment campaign conducted by the U.S. 2nd Air Division, U.S. Navy, and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) from 2 March 1965 until 2 November 1968, during the Vietnam War. In August 1964, as a result of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, in which U.S. naval vessels claimed to have been attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats, President Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes (Operation Pierce Arrow) launched against the north. This did not, however, satisfy the military chiefs, who demanded a wider and more aggressive campaign. For a time, no overt action was taken, and the plans continued to evolve. A further refinement of the plan was developed by William and McGeorge Bundy on 29 November 1964, with a more moderate target list, which the Joint Chiefs opposed. No action was taken while these, and other, plans were considered. But matters came to a head with the attack on Camp Holloway on 7 February 1965, which demanded immediate action, and resulted in a reprisal raid known as Operation Flaming Dart. A sapper raid against an American enlisted men's billet at Qui Nhon on the 10th led to Flaming Dart II. These small-scale operations were launched against the southern region of the country, where the bulk of North Vietnam's ground forces and supply dumps were located.It was believed that selective pressure, controlled by Washington, combined with diplomatic overtures, would prevail and compel Hanoi to end its aggression. The military was still not satisfied, since, for the time being, the bombing campaign was to be limited to targets below the 19th parallel, each of which would have to be cleared individually by the President and McNamara. The four objectives of the operation were to boost the sagging morale of the Saigon regime in the Republic of Vietnam, to persuade North Vietnam to cease its support for the communist insurgency in South Vietnam without actually taking any ground forces into communist North Vietnam, to destroy North Vietnam's transportation system, industrial base, and air defenses, and to halt the flow of men and material into South Vietnam. Attainment of these objectives was made difficult by both the restraints imposed upon the U.S. and its allies by Cold War exigencies and by the military aid and assistance received by North Vietnam from its communist allies, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC). The operation became the most intense air/ground battle waged during the Cold War period; it was the most difficult such campaign fought by the U.S. Air Force since the aerial bombardment of Germany during World War II. Supported by communist allies, North Vietnam fielded a potent mixture of sophisticated air-to-air and surface-to-air weapons that created one of the most effective air defenses ever faced by American military aviators.

Vietnamization

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." Brought on by the Viet Cong's Tet Offensive, the policy referred to U.S. combat troops specifically in the ground combat role, but did not reject combat by the U.S. Air Force, as well as the support to South Vietnam, consistent with the policies of U.S. foreign military assistance organizations. U.S. citizens' mistrust of their government that had begun after the offensive worsened with the release of news about U.S. soldiers massacring civilians at My Lai (1968), the invasion of Cambodia (1970), and the leaking of the Pentagon Papers (1971). The name "Vietnamization" came about accidentally. At a January 28, 1969 meeting of the National Security Council, General Andrew Goodpaster, deputy to General Creighton Abrams and commander of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, stated that the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) had been steadily improving, and the point at which the war could be "de-Americanized" was close. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird agreed with the point, but not with the language: "What we need is a term like 'Vietnamizing' to put the emphasis on the right issues." Nixon immediately liked Laird's word. Vietnamization fit into the broader détente policy of the Nixon administration, in which the United States no longer regarded its fundamental strategy as the containment of communism but as a cooperative world order, in which Nixon and his chief adviser Henry Kissinger were focused on the broader constellation of forces and the bigger world powers. Nixon had ordered Kissinger to negotiate diplomatic policies with Soviet statesman Anatoly Dobrynin. Nixon also opened high-level contact with China. U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and China were of higher priority than South Vietnam. Nixon said Vietnamization had two components. The first was "strengthening the armed force of the South Vietnamese in numbers, equipment, leadership and combat skills", while the second was "the extension of the pacification program in South Vietnam." To achieve the first goal, U.S. helicopters would fly in support; however, helicopter operations were too much part of ground operations to involve U.S. personnel. Thus, ARVN candidates were enrolled in U.S. helicopter schools to take over the operations. As observed by Lieutenant Dave Palmer, to qualify an ARVN candidate for U.S. helicopter school, he first needed to learn English; this, in addition to the months-long training and practice in the field, made adding new capabilities to the ARVN take at least two years. Palmer did not disagree that the first component, given time and resources, was achievable. However: "Pacification, the second component, presented the real challenge...it was benevolent government action in areas where the government should always have been benevolently active...doing both was necessary if Vietnamization were to work."

Vietminh

a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó on May 19, 1941. The Việt Nam Độc Lập Đồng Minh Hội had previously formed in Nanjing, China, at some point between August 1935 and early 1936 when the non-communist Vietnamese Nationalist or other Vietnamese nationalist parties formed an anti-imperialist united front. This organization soon lapsed into inactivity, only to be revived by the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) and Hồ Chí Minh in 1941. The Việt Minh established itself as the only organized anti-French and anti-Japanese resistance group. The Việt Minh initially formed to seek independence for Vietnam from the French Empire. The United States supported France. When the Japanese occupation began, the Việt Minh opposed Japan with support from the United States and the Republic of China. After World War II, the Việt Minh opposed the re-occupation of Vietnam by France and later opposed South Vietnam and the United States in the Vietnam War. During World War II, Japan occupied French Indochina. As well as fighting the French, the Việt Minh started a campaign against the Japanese. As of the end of 1944, the Việt Minh claimed a membership of 500,000, of which 200,000 were in Tonkin, 150,000 in Annam, and 150,000 in Cochinchina. Due to their opposition to the Japanese, the Việt Minh received funding from the United States, the Soviet Union and the Republic of China . When Japan surrendered in August 1945, the Japanese handed over control of some public buildings and weapons requisitioned from the French army to the Việt Minh, now led by Hồ Chí Minh, after turning in the Vietnamese nationalist leaders of the Việt Minh to the French colonialists. The Việt Minh also recruited more than 600 of the Japanese soldiers, who fought in the war against France until 1954. After the nationalist organizations proclaimed the independence of Việt Nam, Hồ proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1945. The Việt Minh, who were short on modern military knowledge, created a military school in Quảng Ngãi Province in June 1946. More than 400 Vietnamese were trained by Japanese defectors in this school. These soldiers were considered to be students of the Japanese. Later, some of them fought as generals against the United States in the Vietnam War or, to the Vietnamese, the American War. French General Jean-Étienne Valluy quickly pushed the Việt Minh out of Hanoi. His French infantry with armored units went through Hanoi, fighting small battles against isolated Việt Minh groups. The French encircled the Việt Minh base, Việt Bắc, in 1947, but failed to defeat the Việt Minh forces, and had to retreat soon after. The campaign is now widely considered a Việt Minh victory over the well-equipped French force. The Việt Minh continued fighting against the French until 1949, when the border of China and Vietnam was linked together as a result of the campaign called Chiến dịch Biên giới ("Borderland Campaign"). The newly communist People's Republic of China gave the Việt Minh both sheltered bases and heavy weapons with which to fight the French. With the additional weapons, the Việt Minh were able to take control over many rural areas of the country. Soon after that, they began to advance towards the French-occupied areas.he Geneva Accords promised elections in 1956 to determine a national government for a united Vietnam. Neither the United States government nor Ngô Đình Diệm's State of Vietnam signed anything at the 1954 Geneva Conference. With respect to the question of reunification, the non-communist Vietnamese delegation objected strenuously to any division of Vietnam, but lost out when the French accepted the proposal of Việt Minh delegate Phạm Văn Đồng, who proposed that Vietnam eventually be united by elections under the supervision of "local commissions". The United States countered with what became known as the "American Plan", with the support of South Vietnam and the United Kingdom. It provided for unification elections under the supervision of the United Nations, but was rejected by the Soviet delegation.From his home in France, Vietnamese Emperor Bảo Đại appointed Ngô Đình Diệm as Prime Minister of South Vietnam. With American support, in 1955 Diệm used a referendum to remove the former Emperor and declare himself the president of the Republic of Vietnam. When the elections failed to occur, Việt Minh cadres who stayed behind in South Vietnam were activated and started to fight the government. North Vietnam also occupied portions of Laos to assist in supplying the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) in South Vietnam. The war gradually escalated into the Second Indochina War, more commonly known as the "Vietnam War" in the West and the "American War" in Vietnam.

Ngo Dinh Diem

(3 January 1901 - 2 November 1963) South Vietnamese politician. His family originated in the Phú Cam district, a (formerly) Catholic district in Huế city. His clan had been among Vietnam's earliest Catholic converts in the 17th century. According to Moyar, Diệm's personality was too independent to discipline himself in the church. He also inherited his father's antagonism toward the French colonialists who occupied his country. At the end of his secondary schooling in Lycée Quốc học, his very high examination results at the French lycée in Huế saw him offered a scholarship to Paris, but he declined and enrolled to study at the prestigious School of Public Administration and Law in Hanoi, a French school that educated Vietnamese bureaucrats in 1918. A former mandarin of the Nguyễn dynasty, he was named Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam by Head of State Bảo Đại in 1954. In October 1955, after winning a heavily rigged referendum, he deposed Bảo Đại and established the first Republic of Vietnam (RVN), with himself as president. He was a leader of the Catholic element and was opposed by Buddhists. In November 1963, after constant Buddhist protests and non-violent resistance, Diệm was assassinated, along with his brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, by Nguyễn Văn Nhung, the aide of the leader of the Army of Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) General Dương Văn Minh during a coup d'état.The assassination led to the end of the U.S.-Diệm alliance and the collapse of his regime as well as the first Republic of Vietnam. Diệm has been a controversial historical figure in historiography on Vietnam War scholarship. Some historians portrayed him as a tool of the U.S. policymakers, some considered him as an avatar of Vietnamese tradition. Nevertheless, some recent studies have portrayed Diệm from a more Vietnamese-centered perspective as a competent leader with his own vision on nation building and modernisation of South Vietnam.

Lieutenant William L Calley Jr.

(June 8, 1943 - present) Former United States Army officer convicted by court-martial of murdering 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War. William L. "Rusty" Calley Jr. was born in Miami, Florida. His father was a United States Navy veteran of World War II. Calley graduated from Miami Edison High School in Miami and then attended Palm Beach Junior College in 1963. He dropped out in 1964 after receiving unsatisfactory grades. Calley underwent eight weeks of basic combat training at Fort Bliss, Texas, followed by eight weeks of advanced individual training as a company clerk at Fort Lewis, Washington. Having scored high enough on his Armed Forces Qualification tests, he applied for and was subsequently accepted into Officer Candidate School (OCS). Calley's evaluations described him as "average" as an officer. Later, as the My Lai investigation progressed, a more negative picture emerged. Men in his platoon reported to army investigators that Calley lacked common sense and could not read a map or compass properly. A number of men assigned under Calley claimed that because he was so disliked, some secretly discussed fragging him. While not technically exonerated, after three and a half years of house arrest, Calley was released after a ruling by federal judge J. Robert Elliott who found that Calley's trial had been prejudiced by pre-trial publicity, denial of subpoenas of certain defense witnesses, refusal of the United States House of Representatives to release testimony taken in executive session of its My Lai investigation, and inadequate notice of the charges. His initial conviction faced widespread public opposition both due to the campaign circumstances of civilian embedded Viet Cong, and due to Calley being singled-out as the sole convicted officer in relation to the massacre.

General William Westmoreland

(March 26, 1914 - July 18, 2005) United States Army general, who most notably commanded U.S. forces during the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968. Westmoreland was born in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, to Eugenia Talley Childs and James Ripley Westmoreland. His upper middle class family was involved in the local banking and textile industries. After spending a year at The Citadel in 1932 he was appointed to attend the United States Military Academy. His motive for entering West Point was "to see the world". He was a member of a distinguished West Point class that also included Creighton Abrams and Benjamin O. Davis Jr. Westmoreland graduated as first captain—the highest cadet rank—and received the Pershing Sword, which is "presented to cadet with highest level of military proficiency". Westmoreland also served as the superintendent of the Protestant Sunday School Teachers. In World War II he saw combat in Tunisia, Sicily, France and Germany. He reached the temporary wartime rank of colonel, and on October 13, 1944, was appointed the chief of staff of the 9th Infantry Division. He commanded the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team in operations in Korea from 1952 to 1953. After returning to the United States, Westmoreland was deputy assistant chief of staff, G-1, for manpower control on the Army staff from 1953 to 1955. In 1954 he completed a three-month management program at Harvard Business School. From Westmoreland's arrival in South Vietnam in January 1964, his brief was to achieve outright victory over the Northern-backed Viet Cong, with minimal US casualties, without provoking the Chinese by attacks on the North. These demands were clearly contradictory, as even some of his critics acknowledged, and when casualties inevitably mounted, he was accused of pursuing a war of attrition. During his period of command, both the Battle of Ia Drang (Nov. 1965) and the Tet Offensive (Jan. 1968) were technically US victories, but public support for the war was diminished. By the time he was re-assigned as Army Chief of Staff, US military forces in Vietnam had reached a peak of 535,000. Westmoreland's strategy, based on artillery and air power, was tactically successful but politically unsuccessful, as it resulted in large-scale casualties among non-combatants, which eroded American support for the war.

Henry Kissinger

(September 22, 1973 - January 20, 1977) American diplomat and political scientist. Born in Germany, Kissinger was a Jewish refugee who fled the Nazi regime with his family in 1938. He spent his high school years in the Washington Heights section of upper Manhattan as part of the German Jewish immigrant community that resided there at the time. Following high school, Kissinger enrolled in the City College of New York, studying accounting. He excelled academically as a part-time student, continuing to work while enrolled. His studies were interrupted in early 1943, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He became National Security Advisor and later concurrently United States Secretary of State in the administrations of presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. For his actions negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam, Kissinger received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize under controversial circumstances, with two members of the committee resigning in protest. Kissinger later sought, unsuccessfully, to return the prize after the ceasefire failed. After his term, his advice has been sought by world leaders including subsequent U.S. presidents. A proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a prominent role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. During this period, he pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated the opening of relations with the People's Republic of China, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, ending American involvement in the Vietnam War. Kissinger has also been associated with such controversial policies as CIA involvement in Chile and U.S. support for Pakistan, despite the genocide during the Bangladesh War. He is the founder and chairman of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm. Kissinger has been a prolific author of books on diplomatic history and international relations with over one dozen books authored. General opinion of Henry Kissinger is strongly divided. Several scholars have ranked him as the most effective U.S. Secretary of State since 1965, while some journalists, activists, and human rights lawyers have condemned him as a war criminal.

Ho Chi Minh Trail

A logistical system that ran from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) to the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) through the neighboring kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia. The system provided support, in the form of manpower and materiel, to the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (called the Vietcong or "VC" by its opponents) and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), or North Vietnamese Army, during the Vietnam War. It was named by the Americans after North Vietnamese president Hồ Chí Minh. Although the trail was mostly in Laos, the communists called it the Trường Sơn Strategic Supply Route (Đường Trường Sơn), after the Vietnamese name for the Annamite Range mountains in central Vietnam. According to the United States National Security Agency's official history of the war, the Trail system was "one of the great achievements of military engineering of the 20th century." Early in 1969, the pipeline crossed the Laotian frontier through the Mu Gia Pass and, by 1970, it reached the approaches to the A Shau Valley in South Vietnam. The plastic pipeline, assisted by numerous small pumping stations, managed to transfer diesel fuel, gasoline, and kerosene all through the same pipe. Due to the efforts of the PAVN 592nd Pipelaying Regiment, the number of pipelines entering Laos increased to six that year. These supplies traveled in convoys from North Vietnam in relays, with trucks shuttling from only one way-station to the next. The vehicles were then unloaded and reloaded onto "fresh" trucks at each station. If a truck was disabled or destroyed, it was replaced from the assets of the next northern station and so on until it was replaced by a new one in North Vietnam. Eventually, the last commo-liaison station in Laos or Cambodia was reached and the vehicles were unloaded. The supplies were then cached, loaded onto watercraft, or man-portered into South Vietnam. Due to the increased effectiveness of "Commando Hunt", North Vietnamese transportation units usually took to the roads only at dusk with the peak in traffic coming in the early hours of the morning. As American aircraft came on station, traffic would subside until just before dawn, when fixed-wing gunships and night bombers returned to their bases. The trucks then began rolling again, reaching another peak in traffic around 06:00 as drivers hurried to get into truck parks before sunrise and the arrival of the morning waves of U.S. fighter bombers.

Conscientious Objector

An "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service "on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. In general, conscientious objector status is considered only in the context of military conscription and is not applicable to volunteer military forces. Arguments like "The army is senseless," "It is not just to wage wars," or opposition to involvement in a specific war (The Vietnam War) will hardly ever be accepted. He has only, and convincingly, to show that his conscience does not allow participation in an organization which is intended to use violence. In some countries, conscientious objectors are assigned to an alternative civilian service as a substitute for conscription or military service. Some conscientious objectors consider themselves pacifist, non-interventionist, non-resistant, non-aggressionist, or antimilitarist. On March 8, 1995 the United Nations Commission on Human Rights resolution 1995/83 stated that "persons performing military service should not be excluded from the right to have conscientious objections to military service." This was re-affirmed in 1998, when resolution 1998/77 recognized that "persons [already] performing military service may develop conscientious objections." A number of organizations around the world celebrate the principle on May 15 as International Conscientious Objectors Day. The term has also been extended to objecting to working for the military-industrial complex due to a crisis of conscience.

Carpet Bombing

Carpet bombing, also known as saturation bombing, is a large aerial bombing done in a progressive manner to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land. The phrase evokes the image of explosions completely covering an area, in the same way that a carpet covers a floor. Carpet bombing is usually achieved by dropping many unguided bombs. The term obliteration bombing is sometimes used to describe especially intensified bombing with the intention of destroying a city or a large part of the city. The term area bombing refers to indiscriminate bombing of an area, and also encompasses cases of carpet bombing, including obliteration bombing. It was used in that sense especially during World War II. Carpet bombing of cities, towns, villages, or other areas containing a concentration of civilians is considered a war crime as of the 1977 Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions. During the Vietnam War, with the escalating situation in Southeast Asia, twenty-eight B-52Fs were fitted with external racks for twenty-four 750-pound bombs under project South Bay in June 1964; an additional forty-six aircraft received similar modifications under project Sun Bath. In March 1965, the United States commenced Operation Rolling Thunder. The first combat mission, Operation Arc Light, was flown by B-52Fs on 18 June 1965, when 30 bombers of the 9th and 441st Bombardment Squadrons struck a communist stronghold near the Bến Cát District in South Vietnam. Beginning in late 1965, a number of B-52Ds underwent Big Belly modifications to increase bomb capacity for carpet bombings. The zenith of B-52 attacks in Vietnam was Operation Linebacker II (sometimes referred to as the Christmas Bombing) which consisted of waves of B-52s (mostly D models, but some Gs without jamming equipment and with a smaller bomb load). Over 12 days, B-52s flew 729 sorties and dropped 15,237 tons of bombs on Hanoi, Haiphong, and other targets. Originally 42 B-52s were committed to the war; however, numbers were frequently twice this figure.

Draft Dodger

Draft evasion is an intentional decision not to comply with the military conscription policies of one's nation. Such practices that do not involve law breaking or which are based on conscientious objection are sometimes referred to as "draft avoidance." Refusing to submit to the draft is considered a criminal offense in most countries where conscription is in effect. Those who practice draft evasion are sometimes pejoratively referred to as "draft dodgers", a term which was made popular during the Vietnam War. Draft evasion is distinct from desertion in that only an active member of a military service can become a deserter by absenting himself or herself from the army without receiving a valid leave of absence or discharge and without any intention of returning to the army. VA statistics show that U.S. troops in Vietnam represented a much broader cross section of America than is commonly believed and only 25% of troops deployed to the combat zone were draftees (compared to 66% during World War II). A total of 8.615 million men served during the Vietnam era and of them 2.15 million actually served in the Combat Zone. Three-quarters of those deployed were from working families and poor youths were twice as likely to serve there than their more affluent cohorts although the vast majority of them were volunteers. Doctors and draft board members found themselves being pressured by relatives or family friends to exempt potential draftees. Other means included finding, exaggerating, or causing physical and psychological reasons for deferment, whether in the temporary "1-Y" classification, or the permanent "4-F" deferment. Physical reasons such as high blood pressure could get a man exempted. Antiwar psychiatrists could often find dormant mental conditions to be serious enough to warrant exemptions. Draft counselors, and the Selective Service System itself, emphasized that there was no such thing as an "exemption" from the draft, only a "deferment". The better educated and economically advantaged were in a better position to obtain deferments through loopholes or technicalities. They had greater access to expert advice, counseling, psychiatric professionals and attorneys. During the Vietnam War, an active movement of draft resistance also occurred, spearheaded by the Resistance organization, headed by David Harris. The insignia of the organization was the Greek letter omega, Ω, the symbol for ohms—the unit of electrical resistance. Members of the Resistance movement publicly burned their draft cards or refused to register for the draft. Other members deposited their cards into boxes on selected dates and then mailed them to the government. They were then drafted, refused to be inducted, and fought their cases in the federal courts. These draft resisters hoped that their public civil disobedience would help to bring the war and the draft to an end. Many young men went to federal prison as part of this movement. In 1969, in response to criticism of the draft's inequities, the U.S. government adopted a lottery system to determine who was called to serve. At the same time it implemented new standards that greatly restricted the availability of deferments. They were ended for graduate students and limited for undergraduates. Among the prominent political figures whose opponents have accused them of improperly avoiding the Vietnam-era draft were George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Eisenhower, and Bill Clinton.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Enacted August 10, 1964, was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The USS Maddox, a U.S. destroyer, was conducting a DESOTO patrol in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2, 1964, when it reported being attacked by three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats from the 135th Torpedo Squadron, which were attempting to close their range on the Maddox for effective torpedo fire Maddox fired over 280 5-inch shells and the boats expended their 6 torpedoes (all misses) and some machinegun fire. On August 6, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara testified before a joint session of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees. He stated that the Maddox had been "carrying out a routine mission of the type we carry out all over the world at all times" and denied that it had been in any way involved in South Vietnamese patrol boat raids on the offshore islands of Hon Me and Hon Nieu on the nights of July 30 and July 31. On August 6, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara testified before a joint session of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees. He stated that the Maddox had been "carrying out a routine mission of the type we carry out all over the world at all times" and denied that it had been in any way involved in South Vietnamese patrol boat raids on the offshore islands of Hon Me and Hon Nieu on the nights of July 30 and July 31. It is of historical significance because it gave U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a formal declaration of war by Congress, for the use of conventional military force in Southeast Asia. Specifically, the resolution authorized the President to do whatever necessary in order to assist "any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty". This included involving armed forces. It was opposed in the Senate only by Senators Wayne Morse (D-OR) and Ernest Gruening (D-AK). Senator Gruening objected to "sending our American boys into combat in a war in which we have no business, which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly drawn, which is steadily being escalated". The Johnson administration subsequently relied upon the resolution to begin its rapid escalation of U.S. military involvement in South Vietnam and open warfare between North Vietnam and the United States. Mounting public opinion against the war eventually led to the repeal of the resolution, which was attached to the Foreign Military Sales Act that Nixon signed in January 1971. Seeking to restore limits on presidential authority to engage U.S. forces without a formal declaration of war, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973, over Nixon's veto. The War Powers Resolution, which is still in effect, sets forth certain requirements for the President to consult with Congress in regard to decisions that engage U.S. forces in hostilities or imminent hostilities.

War Powers Act

Federal law intended to check the president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. The Resolution was adopted in the form of a United States Congress joint resolution. It provides that the U.S. President can send U.S. Armed Forces into action abroad only by declaration of war by Congress, "statutory authorization," or in case of "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." The War Powers Resolution requires the President to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30-day withdrawal period, without a Congressional authorization for use of military force or a declaration of war by the United States. The resolution was passed by two-thirds of Congress, overriding a presidential veto. During the Korean and Vietnam wars, the United States found itself involved for many years in situations of intense conflict without a declaration of war. Many members of Congress became concerned with the erosion of congressional authority to decide when the United States should become involved in a war or the use of armed forces that might lead to war. It was prompted by news leaking out that President Nixon conducted secret bombings of Cambodia during the Vietnam War without notifying Congress. The War Powers Resolution was passed by both the House of Representatives and Senate but was vetoed by President Richard Nixon. By a two-thirds vote in each house, Congress overrode the veto and enacted the joint resolution into law on November 7, 1973. Richard Nixon resigned six months later. It has been alleged that the War Powers Resolution has been violated in the past - for example, by President Bill Clinton in 1999, during the bombing campaign in Kosovo. Congress has disapproved all such incidents, but none has resulted in any successful legal actions being taken against the president for alleged violations.

Dien Bien Phu

Final confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist-nationalist revolutionaries. It was, from the French view before the event, a set piece battle to draw out the Vietnamese and destroy them with superior firepower. The battle occurred between March and May 1954 and culminated in a comprehensive French defeat that influenced negotiations underway at Geneva among several nations over the future of Indochina. As a result of blunders in French decision-making, the French began an operation to insert, then support the soldiers at Điện Biên Phủ, deep in the hills of northwestern Vietnam. Its purpose was to cut off Viet Minh supply lines into the neighboring Kingdom of Laos, a French ally, and tactically draw the Viet Minh into a major confrontation in order to cripple them. The plan was to resupply the French position by air, and was based on the belief that the Viet Minh had no anti-aircraft capability. The Viet Minh, however, under General Võ Nguyên Giáp, surrounded and besieged the French. The Viet Minh brought in vast amounts of heavy artillery. They moved these weapons through difficult terrain up the rear slopes of the mountains surrounding the French positions, dug tunnels through the mountain, and placed the artillery pieces overlooking the French encampment. This positioning of the artillery made it nearly impervious to French counter-battery fire. The Viet Minh opened fire with a massive artillery bombardment in March. The Viet Minh occupied the highlands around Điện Biên Phủ and bombarded the French positions. Supplies and reinforcements were delivered by air, though as the key French positions were overrun, the French perimeter contracted and the air resupply on which the French had placed their hopes became impossible. As the Viet Minh antiaircraft fire took its toll, fewer and fewer of those supplies reached the French. The garrison was overrun in May after a two-month siege, and most of the French forces surrendered. A few of them escaped to Laos. The French government then resigned, and the new Prime Minister, the left-of-centre Pierre Mendès France, supported French withdrawal from Indochina. The war ended shortly after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and the signing of the 1954 Geneva Accords. France agreed to withdraw its forces from all its colonies in French Indochina, while stipulating that Vietnam would be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel, with control of the north given to the Viet Minh as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, and the south becoming the State of Vietnam, nominally under Emperor Bảo Đại, preventing Ho Chi Minh from gaining control of the entire country. The refusal of Ngô Đình Diệm to allow elections in 1956, as had been stipulated by the Geneva Conference, eventually led to the first phase of the Vietnam War, which was waged largely by the United States after 1963.

Hanoi Hilton

Hỏa Lò Prison was a prison used by the French colonists in Vietnam for political prisoners, and later by North Vietnam for U.S. Prisoners of War during the Vietnam War. During this later period it was sarcastically known to American POWs as the Hanoi Hilton. Beginning in early 1967, a new area of the prison was opened for incoming American POWs; it was dubbed "Little Vegas", and its individual buildings and areas were named after Las Vegas Strip landmarks, such as "Golden Nugget", "Thunderbird", "Stardust", "Riviera", and the "Desert Inn". These names were chosen because many pilots had trained at Nellis Air Force Base, located in proximity to Las Vegas. American pilots were frequently already in bad shape by the time they were captured, injured either during their ejection or in landing on the ground. The Hanoi Hilton was one site used by the North Vietnamese Army to house, torture and interrogate captured servicemen, mostly American pilots shot down during bombing raids. Although North Vietnam was a signatory of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, which demanded "decent and humane treatment" of prisoners of war, severe torture methods were employed, such as rope bindings, irons, beatings, and prolonged solitary confinement. When prisoners of war began to be released from this and other North Vietnamese prisons during the Johnson administration, their testimonies revealed widespread and systematic abuse of prisoners of war. Regarding treatment at Hỏa Lò and other prisons, Communists countered by stating that prisoners were treated well and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. During 1969, they broadcast a series of coerced statements from American prisoners that purported to support this notion. Beginning in late 1969, treatment of the prisoners at Hỏa Lò and other camps became less severe and generally more tolerable. Following the late 1970 attempted rescue operation at Sơn Tây prison camp, most of the POWs at the outlying camps were moved to Hỏa Lò, so that the North Vietnamese had fewer camps to protect. This created the "Camp Unity" communal living area at Hỏa Lò, which greatly reduced the isolation of the POWs and improved their morale. The prison was demolished during the 1990s, though the gatehouse remains as a museum.

Amerasians

In its original meaning, an Amerasian is a person born in Asia, to a U.S. military father and an Asian mother. Several countries have significant populations of Amerasians. These countries include Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and the Philippines. Amerasian should not be interpreted as a fixed racial term relating to a specific mixture of races (such as Mestizo, Mulatto, Eurasian or Afro-Asian). The racial strain of the American parent of one Amerasian may be different from that of another Amerasian; it may be White, Black, Hispanic or even Asian. In the latter case, it is conceivable that the Amerasian could be fathered by a person who shares the same racial background but not the same nationality. While soldiers were stationed in Vietnam, many of these Amerasian children were born. Some of these children were conceived consensually, but others were the result of soldiers raping the local women. In April 1975, Operation Babylift was initiated in South Vietnam to relocate Vietnamese children, many orphans and those of mixed American-Vietnamese parentage (mostly American serviceman father and Vietnamese mother), to the United States and finding American families who would take them in. Over three thousand Amerasians were evacuated from South Vietnam; however, more than twenty thousand Amerasians remained. n 1982, the U.S. passed the Amerasian Immigration Act, giving preferential immigration status to Amerasian children born during the Vietnam Conflict.

Napalm

Napalm is a flammable liquid used in warfare. It is a mixture of a gelling agent and either gasoline (petrol) or a similar fuel. It was initially used as an incendiary device against buildings and later primarily as an anti-personnel weapon, as it sticks to skin and causes severe burns when on fire. Napalm was developed in 1942 in a secret laboratory at Harvard University, by a team led by chemist Louis Fieser. Its first recorded use was in the European theatre of war during World War II. It was used extensively by the US in incendiary attacks on Japanese cities in World War II as well as during the Korean War and Vietnam War. "Napalm" is a portmanteau of the names of two of the constituents of the thickening/gelling agent: co-precipitated aluminium salts of naphthenic and palmitic acids. "Napalm B" is the more modern version of napalm and, although distinctly different in its chemical composition, is often referred to simply as "napalm". Napalm B became an intrinsic element of U.S. military action during the Vietnam War as forces increasingly employed its widespread tactical as well as psychological effects. Reportedly about 388,000 tons of U.S. napalm bombs were dropped in the region between 1963 and 1973, compared to 32,357 tons used over three years in the Korean War, and 16,500 tons dropped on Japan in 1945. The U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy used napalm with great effect against all kinds of targets to include troops, tanks, buildings, jungles, and even railroad tunnels. The effect was not always purely physical as napalm had psychological effects on the enemy as well.

French Vietnam

Officially known as the Indochinese Union after 1887 and the Indochinese Federation after 1947, was a grouping of French colonial territories in Southeast Asia. A grouping of the three Vietnamese regions of Tonkin (north), Annam (centre), and Cochinchina (south) with Cambodia was formed in 1887. Laos was added in 1893 and the leased Chinese territory of Guangzhouwan in 1898. The capital was moved from Saigon (in Cochinchina) to Hanoi (Tonkin) in 1902 and again to Da Lat (Annam) in 1939. In 1945 it was moved back to Hanoi. France-Vietnam relations started as early as the 17th century with the mission of the Jesuit missionary Alexandre de Rhodes. At this time, Vietnam was only just beginning to occupy the Mekong Delta, former territory of the Indianised kingdom of Champa which they had defeated in 1471. European involvement in Vietnam was confined to trade during the 18th century. In 1787, Pierre Pigneau de Behaine, a French Catholic priest, petitioned the French government and organised French military volunteers to aid Nguyễn Ánh in retaking lands his family lost to the Tây Sơn. Pigneau died in Vietnam but his troops fought on until 1802 in the French assistance to Nguyễn Ánh. France obtained control over northern Vietnam following its victory over China in the Sino-French War (1884-85). French Indochina was formed on 17 October 1887 from Annam, Tonkin, Cochinchina (which together form modern Vietnam) and the Kingdom of Cambodia; Laos was added after the Franco-Siamese War in 1893. The federation lasted until 21 July 1954. In the four protectorates, the French formally left the local rulers in power, who were the Emperors of Vietnam, Kings of Cambodia, and Kings of Luang Prabang, but in fact gathered all powers in their hands, the local rulers acting only as figureheads. Territorial conflict in the Indochinese peninsula for the expansion of French Indochina led to the Franco-Siamese War of 1893. In 1893 the French authorities in Indochina used border disputes, followed by the Paknam naval incident, to provoke a crisis. French gunboats appeared at Bangkok, and demanded the cession of Lao territories east of the Mekong River. King Chulalongkorn appealed to the British, but the British minister told the King to settle on whatever terms he could get, and he had no choice but to comply. Britain's only gesture was an agreement with France guaranteeing the integrity of the rest of Siam. In exchange, Siam had to give up its claim to the Thai-speaking Shan region of north-eastern Burma to the British, and cede Laos to France. During World War II, Thailand took the opportunity of French weaknesses to reclaim previously lost territories, resulting in the Franco-Thai War between October 1940 and 9 May 1941. The Thai forces generally did well on the ground, but Thai objectives in the war were limited. In January, Vichy French naval forces decisively defeated Thai naval forces in the Battle of Ko Chang. The war ended in May at the instigation of the Japanese, with the French forced to concede territorial gains for Thailand. On 9 March 1945, with France liberated, Germany in retreat, and the United States ascendant in the Pacific, Japan decided to take complete control of Indochina. On 8 April, the Japanese pressured Lao Crown Prince Sisavang Vatthana to declare the independence of Laos, then launched the Second French Indochina Campaign. The Japanese kept power in Indochina until the news of their government's surrender came through in August. After the World War, France petitioned for the nullification of the 1938 Franco-Siamese Treaty and attempted to reassert itself in the region, but came into conflict with the Viet Minh, a coalition of Communist and Vietnamese nationalists led by Hồ Chí Minh, founder of the Indochinese Communist Party. During World War II, the United States had supported the Viet Minh in resistance against the Japanese; the group had been in control of the countryside since the French gave way in March 1945. In 27 April 1954, the Geneva Conference produced the Geneva Agreements between North Vietnam and France. Provisions included supporting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Indochina, granting it independence from France, declaring the cessation of hostilities and foreign involvement in internal Indochina affairs, and delineating northern and southern zones into which opposing troops were to withdraw. The Agreements mandated unification on the basis of internationally supervised free elections to be held in July 1956.

Vietcong

Political organization with its own army - People's Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam (PLAF) - in South Vietnam and Cambodia, that fought the United States and South Vietnamese governments, eventually emerging on the winning side. It had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized peasants in the territory it controlled. Many soldiers were recruited in South Vietnam, but others were attached to the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), the regular North Vietnamese army. During the war, communists and anti-war spokesmen insisted the Việt Cộng was an insurgency indigenous to the South, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of Hanoi. Although the terminology distinguishes northerners from the southerners, communist forces were under a single command structure set up in 1958. North Vietnam established the National Liberation Front on December 20, 1960, to foment insurgency in the South. Many of the Việt Cộng's core members were volunteer "regroupees", southern Viet Minh who had resettled in the North after the Geneva Accord (1954). Hanoi gave the regroupees military training and sent them back to the South along the Ho Chi Minh trail in the early 1960s. The NLF called for southern Vietnamese to "overthrow the camouflaged colonial regime of the American imperialists" and to make "efforts toward the peaceful unification". The People's Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam (PLAF)'s best-known action was the Tet Offensive, a massive assault on more than 100 South Vietnamese urban centers in 1968, including an attack on the U.S. embassy in Saigon. The offensive riveted the attention of the world's media for weeks, but also overextended the Việt Cộng. Later communist offensives were conducted predominantly by the North Vietnamese. The organisation was dissolved in 1976 when North and South Vietnam were officially unified under a communist government.

Search and Destroy

Search and Destroy, Seek and Destroy, or even simply S&D, refers to a military strategy that became a large component of the Malayan Emergency and the Vietnam War. The idea was to insert ground forces into hostile territory, search out the enemy, destroy them, and withdraw immediately afterward. The strategy was the result of a new technology, the helicopter, which resulted in a new form of warfare, the fielding of air cavalry, and was thought to be ideally suited to counter-guerrilla jungle warfare. The complementary conventional strategy, which entailed attacking and conquering an enemy position, then fortifying and holding it indefinitely, was known as "clear and hold" or "clear and secure." In theory, since the traditional methods of "taking ground" could not be used in this war, a war of attrition would be used, eliminating the enemy by the use of "searching" for them, then "destroying" them, and the "body count" would be the measuring tool to determine the success of the strategy of "search and destroy." It is common practice among military forces to enforce strict rules on a search and destroy mission. Search and destroy became an offensive tool, crucial to General William Westmoreland's second phase during the Vietnam War. In his three phase strategy, the first consisted of slowing down the Viet Cong Forces; the second was to resume the offensive and destroy the enemy; the third was to restore the area under South Vietnamese government control. The Zippo missions were mainly assigned to the second phase around 1966 and 1967, along with "Clear and Secure" operations. Search and destroy missions entailed sending out platoons, companies, or larger detachments of US troops from a fortified position to locate and destroy Vietcong or NVA units in the countryside. These missions most commonly involved hiking out into the "boonies" and setting an ambush in the brush, near a suspected VC trail. The ambush typically involved the use of fixed Claymore Antipersonnel Mines, crossing lines of small arms fire, mortar support, and possibly additional artillery support called in via radio from a nearby firebase.e effectiveness of the missions is also doubtful. In one of the first Search and Destroy missions northwest of Dau Tieng, named Operation Attleboro, a U.S. report states that 155 U.S. soldiers were killed, while the North Vietnamese lost 1,106. In Operation Junction City, the report also states that 282 U.S. soldiers were killed while the Viet Cong lost 1,728 guerrillas. These figures, however, should be considered in light of the methods by which they were obtained. The estimates were almost exclusively gathered by indirect means: sensor readings, sightings of secondary explosions, reports of defectors or POWs, and inference or extrapolation.

Buddhist Monks vs Diem

The Buddhist crisis was a period of political and religious tension in South Vietnam between May and November 1963. In South Vietnam, a country where the Buddhist majority was estimated to comprise between 70 and 90 percent of the population in 1963, President Ngô Đình Diệm's pro-Catholic policies antagonized many Buddhists. A member of the Catholic minority, his government was biased towards Catholics in public service and military promotions, as well as in the allocation of land, business favors and tax concessions. Diem once told a high-ranking officer, forgetting that he was a Buddhist, "Put your Catholic officers in sensitive places. They can be trusted." Many officers in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) converted to Catholicism in the belief that their career prospects depended on it, and many were refused promotion if they did not do so. Additionally, the distribution of firearms to village self-defense militias intended to repel Viet Cong guerrillas was done so that weapons were only given to Catholics. Some Catholic priests ran private armies, and in some areas forced conversions, looting, shelling and demolition of pagodas occurred. Some Buddhist villages converted en masse to receive aid or avoid being forcibly resettled by Diem's regime. The Catholic Church was the largest landowner in the country, and the "private" status that was imposed on Buddhism by the French, which required official permission to conduct public activities, was not repealed by Diem. The land owned by the church was exempt from land reform, and Catholics were also de facto exempt from the corvée labor that the government obliged all other citizens to perform; public spending was disproportionately distributed to Catholic majority villages. Under Diệm, the Catholic Church enjoyed special exemptions in property acquisition, and in 1959, he dedicated the country to the Virgin Mary. The Vatican flag was regularly flown at major public events in South Vietnam. The crisis was characterized by a series of repressive acts by the South Vietnamese government and a campaign of civil resistance, led mainly by Buddhist monks. The crisis was precipitated by the shootings of nine unarmed civilians on May 8 in the central city of Huế who were protesting a ban of the Buddhist flag. The crisis ended with a coup in November 1963 by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, and the arrest and assassination of President Ngô Đình Diệm on November 2, 1963.

Fall of Saigon

The Fall of Saigon, or the Liberation of Saigon, depending on context, was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (also known as the Việt Cộng) on April 30, 1975. The event marked the end of the Vietnam War and the start of a transition period to the formal reunification of Vietnam under the Socialist Republic. North Vietnamese forces, under the command of General Văn Tiến Dũng, began their final attack on Saigon on April 29, 1975, with Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces commanded by General Nguyễn Văn Toàn suffering heavy artillery bombardment. This bombardment at the Tân Sơn Nhất Airport killed the last two American servicemen to die in Vietnam, Charles McMahon and Darwin Judge. By the afternoon of the next day, North Vietnamese troops had occupied the important points of the city and raised their flag over the South Vietnamese presidential palace. The South Vietnamese government capitulated shortly afterward. The city was renamed Hồ Chí Minh City, after the Democratic Republic's late President Hồ Chí Minh. The capture of the city was preceded by the evacuation of almost all the American civilian and military personnel in Saigon, along with tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians associated with the southern regime. The evacuation culminated in Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation in history. In addition to the flight of refugees, the end of the war and institution of new rules by the communists contributed to a decline in the city's population.

Geneva Accords

The Geneva Accords of 1954 arranged a settlement which brought about an end to the First Indochina War. The agreement was reached at the end of the Geneva Conference. A ceasefire was signed and France agreed to withdraw its troops from the region. French Indochina was split into three countries: Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Vietnam was to be temporarily divided along the 17th Parallel until elections could be held to unite the country. These elections were never held; following repeated refusals to hold nationwide elections by Ngo Dinh Diem and his declaration of leadership of a new state, South Vietnam, the Vietminh established a communist state in the North led by Ho Chi Minh. The US gave Diem considerable support in the form of financial aid; due to the corruption evident in his regime, and the question of the depth of support for him in Vietnam, there was a certain amount of reluctance in doing so. Walter Bedell Smith, US representative at the Conference, read a statement on July 21, 1954, in which the US' willingness to abide by the terms of the agreements was implied, and it promised to "refrain from the threat or use of force to disturb" them. Specifically, the statement seemed to promise not only US acquiescence to the mandated elections, but aid in executing them. In the case of nations now divided against their will, we shall continue to seek to achieve unity through free elections. Black propaganda operations by the CIA commenced within ten days of Smith's announcement; the leaflets dropped on Hanoi were so convincing, that Vietminh denouncements of them were believed by even the Communist party faithful to be French trickery. Registration by Vietnamese wanting to go south to French territory increased threefold, and Vietminh currency halved in value, within days of the leaflet drop. Aspects of the Conference that have been the subject of controversy include whether it constituted a partition of Viet Nam, the transfer of responsibility for abiding by the agreement from the French representative for Viet Nam, Bảo Đại, to his largely self-appointed (and US-backed) successor Ngo Dinh Diem, and similarly, the extent of US responsibility for abiding by an agreement it did not sign.