Road+To+Vietnam+War

Jason Carlson

Road To The Vietnam War

The biggest event that led to the Vietnam War was Vietnam declaring its independence from France. During World War II, the United States wanted to stop Japan’s reign in Asia, which included Vietnam. To do so, they gave guns and supplies to a group of Gorilla style fighters named the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, a man who greatly admired the US. After the World War was over, Japan left Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh saw it as an opportunity to declare their independence from France, who had ruled Vietnam for about 100 years. President Truman saw France as an ally. France was a democracy and was also against communism. France wanted to regain parts of Vietnam and when Ho Chi Min asked the United States to help him gain independence, Truman never responded.

When Truman never responded, Ho Chi Min turned to other fellow communists. In 1949, communist Mao Zedong took control of China, which made the US focus more on communism in Asia and the US began to worry about Vietnam. During this time, France was still busy fighting the Viet Minh to regain control over their colonies, sadly for France, both the Soviet Union and China were supporting Vietnam. To help stop the spread of communism, the US gave supplies and support to France. In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower was elected as president. He and his military advisers were scared that if Vietnam became communist that all of Southeast Asia would also.

The French withdrew from the Vietnam War after loosing a very important battle. When this happened, Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel, Ho was the leader of the northern half and, other anti-communist forces had the southern. Since Vietnam still wanted to be united, the agreement that split Vietnam in half also called for an election to take place and unify the nation, but the elections never happened.

The United States began helping the southern part of Vietnam, which was led by Ngo Din Diem. When JFK was elected, the war took a different turn. Kennedy saw South Vietnam as the only way to stop the spread of communism in Asia, so he sent many military advisors to help the South fight the Viet Kong. The United States helped remove Diem from power because they felt that the South Vietnamese couldn’t win with him in power.

In November of 1963, Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson took power. Johnson didn’t want to be soft on communism and believed he shouldn’t withdraw from Vietnam. In August 1964, in the Gulf Of Tunkin, North Vietnam torpedo ships fired upon a US destroyer. This angered Johnson beyond belief, so he ordered air strikes on North Vietnam as a form of revenge. There were many other attacks on American positions by North Vietnam and in retaliation; Johnson put operation Rolling Thunder in affect. Operation rolling thunder is a series of air strikes on North Vietnam to punish them for their aggressive attacks and hoped that it would make them surrender. Since South Vietnam’s army was about to lose, Johnson began sending more and more soldiers into Vietnam, thus truly beginning the Vietnam War.