The Vietnam War Sutton Grammar School for Boys越南战争萨顿男子文法学校.pptVIP

The Vietnam War 22 Gia Long St., Saigon, 1975 Maps of French Indochina Vietnam: Historical Background Vietnamese people: resisted Chinese control for a millennium, French colonialism in the 19th and 20th century, and U.S. power in the 20th century French colonial policies violently uprooted Vietnamese society Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969): “father of the Vietnamese revolution,” helped found the French Communist Party, worked for the Communist International in 1920s and 1930s, organized the Vietminh (League for the Independence of Vietnam) in World War II to resist Japanese and French presence, proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 by quoting from the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man [Source: Vietnamese Declaration of Independence] During World War II the Vietminh worked with the Office of Strategic Services to liberate Vietnam from the Japanese: rescuing downed airmen and passing intelligence [Sources: Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Summary and Chapter I and Advising the Viet Minh] The First Indochina War, 1946-1954 1946: outbreak of French-Vietminh war after the French high commissioner in Saigon declared the Republic of Cochinchina a separate state, and after the breakdown of a negotiated compromise agreement between the French and Ho Chi Minh Eight-year guerilla war, including the 1947 French aerial bombing with napalm (jellied gasoline mixture, incendiary weapon), ended with decisive French defeat at Dienbienphu in 1954 Dienbienphu: General Vo Nguyen Giap defeated French garrison with 15,000 soldiers (many elite paratroopers); major military victory of a non-European colonial independence movement against a modern Western occupier; Eisenhower administration refused air strike to break the siege By 1954 U.S. paid about three-quarters of the financial cost of the French war against Ho Chi Minh; between 1950 and 1954 the U.S. gave $3 billion in aid to the French; U.S. sent 300 men a