The Vietnam Story

Part I

Note: This info is brought to you courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

The League for the Independence of Vietnam, generally known as the Viet Minh, was organized in 1941 as a nationalistic party seeking Vietnamese independence from France. It became openly communist only in the mid-1950s. On Sept. 2, 1945, less than a month after the Japanese surrendered in World War II, Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Viet Minh, formally declared Vietnam's independence. The Viet Minh had a strong base of popular support in northern Vietnam.

The French wanted to reassert control in Indochina, however, and would recognize Vietnam only as a free state within the French Union. Fighting between the French and the Viet Minh broke out in 1946 and continued until 1954, when the French were badly defeated in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. An international conference in Geneva in 1954 negotiated a cease-fire. To separate the warring forces, the conferees decided that the French and the Vietnamese fighting under French command would move south of the 17th parallel and the Viet Minh would go north of the 17th parallel, which was established as a military demarcation line surrounded by a demilitarized zone (DMZ). Thousands of people accordingly moved north or south away from their homes, and the French began their final departure from Vietnam. The agreement left the communist-led Viet Minh in control of the northern half of Vietnam, which came to be known as North Vietnam, while the noncommunist southern half became South Vietnam. Ngo Dinh Diem became South Vietnam's prime minister during the armistice negotiations.

The Geneva Accords stipulated that free elections be held throughout Vietnam in 1956 under the supervision of an International Control Committee with the aim of reunifying North and South Vietnam under a single popularly elected government. North Vietnam expected to win this election thanks to the broad political organization that it had built up in both parts of Vietnam. But Diem, who had solidified his control over South Vietnam, refused in 1956 to hold the scheduled elections. The United States supported his position. In response, the North Vietnamese decided to unify South with North Vietnam through military force rather than by political means.

U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, fearing the spread of communism in Asia, persuaded the U.S. government to provide economic and military assistance to the Diem regime, which became increasingly unpopular with the people of South Vietnam. Diem replaced the traditionally elected village councils with Saigon-appointed administrators. He also aroused the ire of the Buddhists by selecting his fellow Roman Catholics (most of whom had moved to South Vietnam from the North) for top government positions.

Guerrilla warfare spread as Viet Minh soldiers who were trained and armed in the North--the Viet Cong--returned to their homes in the South to assassinate, ambush, sabotage, and proselytize. The Diem government asked for and received more American military advisers and matériel to build up the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and the police force, but it could not halt the growing presence of the South Vietnamese communist forces, or Viet Cong. U.S. President John F. Kennedy sent more noncombat military personnel after the North Vietnamese unified the South Vietnamese communist insurgents in an organization called the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam (NLF) in December 1960. By the end of 1962 the number of U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam had increased from 900 (in 1960) to 11,000, and Kennedy authorized them to fight if they were fired upon.

Popular dissatisfaction with Diem continued to grow, even within his army, and Diem was assassinated during a military coup on Nov. 1, 1963. The U.S. government had despaired of him and knew about the coup beforehand. A series of unstable administrations followed in quick succession after Diem's death, and the Viet Cong increased their activities while the South Vietnamese were thus politically preoccupied.

On Aug. 2, 1964, North Vietnamese patrol boats fired on the U.S. destroyer Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin, and, after President Lyndon B. Johnson asserted that there had been a second attack on August 4--a claim later shown to be false--the U.S. Congress almost unanimously endorsed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing the president to take "all necessary measures to repel attacks . . . and prevent further aggression." The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in effect gave the president the formal authority for full-scale U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War. Johnson retaliated for the attack by ordering U.S. naval planes to bomb North Vietnam.

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