The 1970s Vietnam Vietnam was a French colony located in a region of Southeast Asia called Indochina During WWII the Japanese pushed the French out of the area The leader of Vietnam Ho Chi Minh was a communist but worked with the US to push Japan out of Vietnam Vietnam then declares themselves independent from France but France refuses to recognize this Between 1945 and 1954 the US helps France attempt to regain control of Vietnam for three reasons they re communists we are allies with France and because Vietnam is close to the Philippines On July 20 1954 France Vietnam Laos and Cambodia sign the Geneva Accords which splits Vietnam across the middle at the 17th parallel North Vietnam remains communist and South Vietnam is controlled by a brutal dictator named Ngo Dinh Diem Because he spoke fluent English and was pro west the US supported him In 1963 Diem demanded that everyone in South Vietnam must follow Catholic doctrines even though most people in the country were Buddhists Under Eisenhower and Kennedy the US becomes increasingly involved in Vietnam By 1963 the US had sent 16 000 troops to Vietnam Minh had organized a group called the National Liberation Front NLF which we referred to as the Vietcong The Vietcong were located in South Vietnam and by 1960 they controlled over 40 of the country The Vietcong build the Ho Chi Minh Trail a highway used to get supplies between North and South Vietnam In 1963 Diem was killed by his own generals so our only ally was suddenly out of the picture Under President Johnson the war quickly escalates He believed it was vital that we stayed in Vietnam because of the domino theory and because his advisors told him that we would be able to win Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 the USS Maddox was anchored in the Gulf of Tonkin It was reported that the ship was attacked by missiles and the public was led to believe that it was an unwarranted unprovoked attack by North Vietnam Following this attack the US officially declared war on Vietnam By the end of 1965 the US had 185 000 troops in Vietnam and by 1967 there were 500 000 troops The Gulf of Tonkin is considered the official beginning of the war There were later reports that the ship was never actually attacked Strategy of Attrition our strategy was to kill so many Vietcong through air strikes that they would lose their will to fight We wanted to destroy their base of operation in South Vietnam and block off the Ho Chi Minh Trail to keep them from getting supplies We dropped more bombs in Vietnam than we did over the entire course of WWII We used napalm to burn their villages but the people would run out of the villages directly into the hands of the Vietcong None of our strategies worked we were never able to cut off their supply and we couldn t break their will to fight Tet Offensive the Tet was a Vietnamese word for their holiday for the lunar New Year On the Tet of 1968 there had planned to be a cease fire for the purpose of the holiday However the Vietcong didn t believed that the US would actually take a break so they planned a secret attack on our troops They attacked us at a city called Saigon but the US was successful in holding off the Vietcong The battle resulted in 5 000 Vietcong deaths Though we won the battle it was a PR disaster in the US For the first time people at home began to see images of the war in Vietnam and they are absolutely horrified Finally Johnson s group of advisors called the Wisemen decide that we wouldn t be able to win the war and that we should withdraw On March 6 1968 Johnson made a televised announcement saying that we would stop bombing North Vietnam we would open peace talks with them and that he would not run for reelection Nixon Peace with Honor Nixon promises to give the South Vietnamese the ability to fight the Vietcong on their own and promises to withdraw the US from the war When he takes office in 1969 there are still 549 000 troops overseas He promises to reduce that number to 60 000 by 1972 Despite his promises Nixon was secretly escalating the war Cambodian Invasion on April 30 1970 Nixon announces that the US plans to attack Cambodia The Vietcong and North Vietnam had camps in Cambodia so we wanted to cut off their supply using massive air raids We dropped over 100 000 tons of bombs in Cambodia These raids angered the people there who were neutral at first and they began to sympathize with the Vietcong the North Vietnamese and the communist group in Cambodia the Khmer Rouge The Khmer Rouge attempted to create a classless agrarian society They killed anyone who wasn t intellectual or professional anyone with ties to French colonialism and anyone who was Christian Muslim Buddhist Thai or Vietnamese Between 1975 and 1979 the US had killed over two million people in Cambodia Pentagon Papers our attack on Cambodia angered the US citizens Journalists at home started investigating what was really happening with the war In 1971 newspapers across the US published copies of the Pentagon Papers which revealed that the government had been lying to the US people about the war Nixon tried to stop the publishing of these papers but the Supreme Court ruled that the media had every right to publish them War Powers Act 1973 requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of troops being deployed abroad and requires that they be withdrawn within 60 days unless Congress specifically approves their continued deployment End of the War In January of 1973 Henry Kissinger negotiates a ceasefire in Vietnam which leaves the Vietcong in control of the areas that they already possessed about half of South Vietnam In exchange the Vietcong agreed to release all US POWs and to never again attempt to force the South to unify with the North In 1975 North Vietnam again invaded South Vietnam The country officially became unified on July 2 1976 and was renamed the Socialist Republic of Vietnam The 30 year war in Vietnam resulted in the deaths of two million civilians one million North Vietnam soldiers 250 000 South Vietnam soldiers and 58 000 US soldiers Stagflation During the 1970s the economy went through stagflation This means that though the economy is not changing inflation is still increasing Americans were making the same amount of money but everything started to cost a little bit more Watergate In the 1972 election Nixon was paranoid and thought that he wouldn t win Five members of his reelection committee broke into the Democratic Party s headquarters located in