LITMIR.BIZ

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      About History in an Hour

      Introduction

      The First Indochina War and the End of French Rule

Eisenhower and Vietnam

Building South Vietnam, 1954–63

       JFK and US Escalation

       Lyndon Johnson: From Assassination to Americanization

       The Tet Offensive

       Nixon: Peace with Honour?

       US Military Strategy

       Domestic Opposition to the War

       North Vietnam and the Viet Cong

      Appendix 1: Key Players

      Appendix 2: Timeline of the Vietnam War

      Copyright

      Got Another Hour?

About the Publisher

       Introduction

      The Vietnam War was the most traumatic military experience which the United States has been involved in – in spite of the ongoing engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq. Vietnam was a conflict which cost the US almost 60,000 lives and destroyed two presidencies. It provoked such unrest at home that anti-war protestors were killed on university campuses, and Congress was forced to limit the executive branch from taking future military action without approval from the legislature. The impact on South East Asia was even greater. While the actual number of Vietnamese deaths is disputed, up to four million Vietnamese died during the conflict, and the resulting political and military upheaval triggered communist revolutions in Laos and Cambodia. Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand all provided troops to support the US war effort.

      Vietnam is a narrow, ‘S-shaped’ country running for 2,000 km between China and the Gulf of Tonkin in the north, to the South China Sea in the south; Laos and Cambodia lie to the west. Most of Vietnam is mountainous, with a long chain of forested mountains running down the centre and western side. Large areas of flat and fertile land lies in the south, centred around the capital city Hanoi and in the Mekong Delta in the south. The latter is the food bowl of the nation, producing three rice crops a year.