History GCSE

BEFORE:

• The time between 1st and 2nd world war was unstable as the Great Depression began around 1930.
• The Great Depresion was an international issue and left most of the world desperate and unemployed.

DURING: (events)

• Most significant period of the 20th Century
• Women's Rights movement
• Civil Rights movement (USA)
• Social changes
• Major leaps in technology

Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the decisive engagement in the first Indochina War --- 1946 - '54

• French forces occupied the Dien Bien Phu valley in late 1953.
• Vo Nguyen Giap (Viet Ming commander) gathered troops and placed heavy artillery in caves of the mountains overlooking the French Camp.
• Ho Chi Minh's Viet forces defeat the French at Dien Bien Phu.
• Hoping to prevent the French from reclaiming their former colonial posession, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independant Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
• Viet Minh fought the effective guerilla war against the French with military and economic assistance from newly communist China.
• USA helped France with military aid.

The Geneva Conference --- April 26th - July 20th, 1954

...was a conference among several nations that took place in Geneva, Switzerland, in order to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War.

• Discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina.
• Included countries that, gave troops to the UN forces in the Korean War, and countries that helped resolve the First Indochina War between France and the Viet Minh.
• The conference in Indochina produced a set of documents known as the Geneva Accords.
• The agreements temporarily separated Vietnam into two zones.
• A Conference Final Declaration was issued by the British chairman of the conference...
• ...provided that a general election was held by July 1956 to create a unified Vietnamese state.
• This document was not accepted by the delegates of either the State of Vietnam or the US.

The theory that a political event in one country will cause similar events in neighbouring countries, like a falling domino causing an entire row of upended dominoes to fall.

• Prominent from the 1950s - 1980s.
• Used by successive US administrations during the Cold War to justify the need for US intervention around the world.
• 1945, Soviet Union brought most of the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Europe into its influence as part of the post-WWII new settlement.
• Winston Churchill was prompted to declare in a speech in 1946.
• In Southeast Asia, the US goverment used the theory to justify its support of a non-communist regime in South Vietnam against the communist goverment of North Vietnam.
• ultimately its increasing involvement in the Vietnam War.

The Gulf of Tonkin and the military involvement of it is of historical significance.

• Gave approval for the extension of the Vietnam War.
• It was to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in Southeast Asia.
• August 7th, 1964 - Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate.
• Gave US President (Lyndon B Johnson) authorization, without formally declaring war by Congress, for the use of conventional military force in Southeast Asia.
• There was open warfare between North Vietnam and the US.
• The Johnson administration subsequently relied on the resolution to begin its rapid escalation of US military involvement in South Vietnam.
• Reports of being attacked by three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats from the 135th Torpedo Squadron.

• Diem's goverment offered some stability and authority but it had repressive actions against Buddhists.
• Permanently cut off popular support, with high probability of victory for the Viet Cong.
• The beginning of the end for Diem can then be traced through events to the regime's violent suppression of a Busshist protest demonstration in Hue.
• US involvement in South Vietnam in support of Diem was that a policy of unreserved commitment to a particular leadership placed US in a weak and manipulatable position on important internal issues.
• November 2nd, 1963 - murder of Ngo Dinh Diem (president of South Vietnam) was a major turrning point in the Vietnam war.
• US had 16,000 troops in South Vietnam training the ARVN forces and even going so far as to accompany them on helicopter raids deep into enemy territory.
•  It was the wake of assassinations - American policy toward the war in Vietnam changed dramatically.

• Diem's goverment offered some stability and authority but it had repressive actions against Buddhists.
• Permanently cut off popular support, with high probability of victory for the Viet Cong.
• The beginning of the end for Diem can then be traced through events to the regime's violent suppression of a Busshist protest demonstration in Hue.
• US involvement in South Vietnam in support of Diem was that a policy of unreserved commitment to a particular leadership placed US in a weak and manipulatable position on important internal issues.
• November 2nd, 1963 - murder of Ngo Dinh Diem (president of South Vietnam) was a major turrning point in the Vietnam war.
• US had 16,000 troops in South Vietnam training the ARVN forces and even going so far as to accompany them on helicopter raids deep into enemy territory.
•  It was the wake of assassinations - American policy toward the war in Vietnam changed dramatically.

MILITARY ADVISORS... are soldiers sent to foreign nations to aid that nation with its military training, organization and other military tasks.

• September, 1950 - US President (Harry Truman) sent Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to Vietnam to assist the French in the First Indochina war.

STRATEGIC HAMLETS... a plan by the goverment of South Vietnam and the US during the Vietnam War to combat the communist insurgency by pacifying the countryside.

• Reduced the influence of the communists among the rural population.
• Aimed to isolate the rural population from contact with and influenced by the National Liberation Front. (Viet Cong)
• Played an important role in the shaping of events in South Vietnam during the late 1950s and early 1960s.