IGCSE History

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• Introduction to IGCSE
• The Road to Affluence: USA 1917 - 1941 (A9)
  • 1917 - 1929
    • The impact of the First World War
    • Immigration
    • Henry Ford and mass production
    • Farming in the 1920s
    • The Stock Market Boom
  • 1929 - 1941
    • The Wall Street Crash
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    • Reactions to the New Deal
• International Relations 1919-1939 (A8)
  • Collective Security
    • The Versailles Settlement
    • The Foundation of the League of Nations
    • Strengths and weaknesses of the League of Nations
    • Successes and failures of the League of Nations
    • Locarno and the Kellogg-Briand Pact
  • Appeasement
    • Manchuria
    • The Disarmament Conference
    • Abyssinia
    • Hitler and the League
    • Appeasement in action
• Revolution in China 1949 - 1996 (A14)
  • 1949 - 1976
    • China under Mao
    • Reform under Liu and Deng
    • The reasons for the Cultural Revolution
    • The impact of the Cultural Revolution
    • China 1971 - 1976
  • 1976 - 1996
    • The defeat of the Gang of Four
    • China under Deng Xiaoping
    • Reforms of the economy
    • The Democracy Movement
    • China in the 1990s
• South-East Asia 1945 - 1900 (A15)
  • Indo-China
    • The end of the French Empire
    • Vietnam 1954 - 1965
    • US involvement in Vietnam
    • The unification of Vietnam
    • Laos and Cambodia
  • South-East Asia
    • The struggle for control of Malaya
    • The creation of Malaysia
    • Singapore
    • Suharto and Indonesia
    • Sukarno and Pancasila
• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
    • The creation of Israel
    • The impact of the war of 1948 - 1949
    • The Suez Crisis
    • Superpower involvement in the Middle East
    • The Six Day War
  • 1967 - 1996
    • International terrorism
    • The war of Yom Kippur
    • The Palestinian Liberation Organisation
    • Lebanon and the occupied territories
    • Successes and failures from Camp David to Oslo
• The First World War (B4)
  • The Schlieffen Plan
  • Deadlock on the Western Front
  • Gallipoli
  • The Somme and Passchendaele
  • The War at Sea
  • The defeat of Germany
• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • Advertising and consumerism
  • New forms of entertainment
  • Prohibition
  • Gangsterism
  • Hollywood
• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
  • Communist society
  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
  • The Great Leap Forward
• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
  • Unit overview
  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
  • Land warfare
  • Sea and aerial warfare
  • Atomic and nuclear weapons
  • Warfare at the end of the 20th Century
• Links

Vietnam 1954 - 1965

The fate of Vietnam was settled at the Geneva Conference in 1954. Vietnam was divided into two at the 17th parallel. The Vietminh governed the north and a non-communist government was set up in the south. This was a temporary measure. The country would be reunited as soon as possible. General elections were to be held in 1956 to decide who should govern a united Vietnam. The countries of Laos and Cambodia were created out of the rest of French Indo-China.

In the north, Ho Chi Minh wanted to unite all of Vietnam under communist rule. In 1955 he signed an agreement with Communist China. As the North was backed by Communist China, so the South was increasingly backed by the USA. Vietnam came to be seen as a clash between Superpowers and different ideologies.

In 1955 Ngo Dinh Diem seized power in South Vietnam and made himself president and then ruled as a dictator. The elections were not held in 1956 and Diem became increasingly corrupt and violent. Trade unionists, religious leaders and journalists were thrown into jail. Diem was a Catholic in a country where 70% of the population was Buddhist. Increasingly he faced opposition from Buddhists and replied with greater cruelty. Diem’s actions led to opposition groups forming the National Liberation Front and began a guerrilla war against the government of South Vietnam. It was backed by North Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh sent supplies.

Why did the USA become involved in Vietnam?

The USA wanted to prevent areas of the world falling under Communist influence. The Cold War was at its height in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the French appealed to the USA for aid. The US government saw Vietnam as another Korea.
Once the US became involved, it sent more and more aid in an effort to prevent all its investment being lost.

US politicians came to believe in the 'Domino Theory'. This was the belief that if one country fell to communism, its neighbours would follow. In 1956 John Kennedy wrote in a book that he was convinced the South Vietnam was essential to the freedom of the entire region of South East Asia. This was despite the fact the under Diem, South Vietnam was anything but free.

US military advisers began to be sent to help the South Vietnamese army, but did not actually take part in the fighting. Their function was to train the South Vietnamese army. When he became president in 1961, Kennedy increased the number of military advisors from 700 to 15,000. Kennedy had been embarrassed by the failure of the Bay of Pigs and wanted to retaliate for the building of the Berlin Wall.

Kennedy ordered the building of ‘strategic hamlets’. These were heavily defended villages that South Vietnamese people were moved to. The idea was to get them away from the Viet Cong and protected by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).
The Vietnamese opposed the policy, they did not want to leave their villages and many turned to the Viet Cong.

The overthrow of Diem

By 1963 Diem’s rule in South Vietnam was so corrupt that he was facing continuous opposition. Several Buddhist monks burned themselves to death in protest. Kennedy threatened to withdraw military aid and then backed a plot by South Vietnamese generals to arrest Diem. He was murdered just three weeks before Kennedy’s own assassination.

How did US policy change under President Johnson?

Kennedy’s successor, Johnson, visited South Vietnam and went much further in offering military assistance. He increased US support to 23,000 men. But Johnson also became determined to send combat troops to Vietnam. But he needed a convincing excuse to commit US forces to a fighting role.

In August 1964 the USA claimed that US warships had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin.  In January 1965 the CIA staged a landing of North Vietnamese troops.

Johnson was able to use this as an excuse to start ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’. This was the beginning of heavy aerial bombing of North Vietnam. Johnson hoped that saturation bombing would force the North Vietnamese to give up. Three weeks later Johnson sent the first US combat troops to Vietnam. Over the next few years the numbers of Americans in South Vietnam increased to more than 50,000. It is now believed that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was probably invented by the US government to justify US intervention in Vietnam.

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