- In 1954, the Geneva Accords put an end to the Indochina War but worsened the situation in Vietnam:it was then divided between the Communist North supported by the USSR:the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, presided over by Ho Chi Minh; and the pro-American South:the Republic of Vietnam, presided over by Ngô Dinh Diêm.
- An insurrectionary opposition movement was quickly created in the South:the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (FNL), supported by the army of North Vietnam, the Viet Cong. The country is in the midst of a civil war.
- In 1961, as the situation worsened, US President Kennedy sent military advisers to support Diem's regime. They are responsible for training the army of South Vietnam. But in June 1963, several Buddhist monks set themselves on fire to protest against the Diêm regime; and Ngô Dinh Diêm was assassinated on November 2, 1963 during a coup organized by the generals of South Vietnam.
1964 - 1973
Characters
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Lyndon Baines Johnson
Richard Nixon
Nguyen Sinh Cung aka Ho Chi Minh
Jean-Baptiste Ngô Dinh Diem
Procedure
In August 1964, US President Lyndon Baines Johnson launched the first raids against Communist positions in South Vietnam and obtained US Congressional authorization for a war against North Vietnam.
From 1965, American and Vietnamese troops bombarded the North and tried to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail linking North to South, without success. From 1966, they bombed the cities of the North.
From 1967, the first American marines landed in South Vietnam:it was no longer just advisers who were hired. They numbered 500,000 in 1968, with around 70,000 South Vietnamese and Anglo-Saxon allies. The Viet Cong has double that.
The war is also psychologically exhausting:the Viet Cong use guerrilla techniques, and the South carries out systematic attacks on villages in order to eliminate any potential threat.
Laos and Cambodia are involved despite themselves in the conflict. On these three countries are dropped three times more bombs than during the whole of the Second World War.
It is also the first time that chemical weapons have been used on a large scale:Agent Orange (herbicide released by aircraft and causing serious illnesses) and napalm (incendiary bomb used to burn villages).
On January 30, 1968, the Viet Cong launched the Tet offensive:during a national holiday, they launched a simultaneous assault on a hundred cities in the South. A military failure, this offensive followed live by American cameras rekindled the protest in the United States.
In 1969, the revelation of the massacre of hundreds of villagers in My Lai by American troops launched a furious protest in the United States:250,000 people demonstrated in Washington. They are 500,000 the following year.
In 1970, President Nixon launched the disengagement, which resulted 3 years later in the Paris Peace Accords on January 27, 1973.
But the war continued until 1975, with the victory of North Vietnam.
Consequences
- On July 2, 1976, the new state took the name of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
- US troops count 58,000 dead and 350,000 wounded; Vietnam, for its part, deplores 3.8 million civilian and military deaths, or 8% of its population.
- Agent Orange continues to cause disability and death.
- This conflict, costly and highly publicized, is causing a deep moral crisis in the United States. The challenge has awakened there, while the power of the country is contested in the Western bloc. The Vietnam War is the first conflict lost by the United States.