Vietnam+Path+to+War

Vietnam Path of War

Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890 and was raised by his father as a nationalist and he never learned French. Later, during WWII Japan took over Vietnam, and after the war Ho thought that he would obtain leadership but the Allies already decided that China would get the top half, and Great Britain would get the bottom. France asked for Great Britain's part and got it, also China gave France the upper part because France disclaimed all previously-owned territory in China. Ho was not happy and started a revolution. He was eventually successful mostly because of Chinese help later on. France finally lost control of Vietnam in 1954 when NVA forces took over the command post of Dien Bien Phu. They were going to lose anyway because the French people were angry with the government because they were wasting lots of money and they didn't believe that they should even be in Vietnam. Ngo Dinh Diem was the first president of South Vietnam who led the Republic side against Communism. He was not very popular because of his oppression of the natives and the majority Buddhist population (he was a Roman Catholic). He was assassinated by his own army (ARVN) in 1963. Kennedy's military advisors advise him to send some minor help into South Vietnam, he sent in 3,000 military personnel.

Truman was sending aid to France to keep containment of their colonies in Indochina because he didn't want the colonies to fall to communism. When Kennedy becomes president he does not want to be soft on the matter of communism so at his death there were at least 16000 troops in Vietnam. The Gulf of Tonkin had American ships stationed their and it was questioned why they were their to protect our interest or help the South-Viatnamese but it comes to attention when the ships fire. The Gulf of Tonkinis resolved when president Johnson is allowed to take all necessary measures or basically a blank check. Operation Rolling Thunder was in and it was a plan to drop more bombs on North-Vietnam, even more than dropped on Germany in WWII. Then in 1965 the first United States ground troops were sent into Vietnam.