Vietnam Timeline
1858-1884 - France invades Vietnam and makes Vietnam a colony.
October 1930 - Ho Chi Minh helps found the Indochinese Communist Party.
September 1940 - Japan invades Vietnam.
May 1941 - Ho Chi Minh establishes the Viet Minh (League for the Independence of Vietnam).
September 2, 1945 - Ho Chi Minh declares an independent Vietnam, called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The French refuse to acknowledge this and reoccupy Indochina as a colony
January 1950 - The Viet Minh receive military advisors and weapons from China.
July 1950 - The United States pledges $15 million worth of military aid to France to help them fight in Vietnam.
May 7, 1954 - The French suffer a decisive defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
July 21, 1954 - The Geneva Accords creates a cease-fire for the peaceful withdrawal of the French from Vietnam and provides a temporary boundary between North and South Vietnam at the 17th parallel.
October 26, 1955 - South Vietnam declares itself the Republic of Vietnam, with newly elected Ngo Dinh Diem as president. The United States is supportive of Diem because he is Anti-Communist. However, Diem proves to be a harsh leader. Also, the fact that he was Catholic while a majority of Vietnamese people were Buddhist caused conflict.
December 20, 1960 - The National Liberation Front (NLF), also called the Viet Cong, is established in South Vietnam. The Viet Cong was made up of South Vietnamese people who wanted to have North Vietnam take over.
November 2 1963 - South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is executed during a U.S. supported coup. The U.S. wanted a stronger leader in South Vietnam to resist occupation of South Vietnam by the North.
November 22, 1963—U.S. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated. Lyndon Johnson becomes U.S. President.
August 1964 In international waters of the Gulf of Tonkin North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked U.S. naval vessels engaged in surveillance of North Vietnam's coastal defenses. The Americans promptly launched retaliatory air strikes. At the request of President Johnson, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Southeast Asia Resolution—the so-called Gulf of Tonkin Resolution—authorizing all actions necessary to protect American forces and to provide for the defense of the nation's allies in Southeast Asia.
March 2, 1965 - A sustained U.S. aerial bombing campaign of North Vietnam begins (Operation Rolling Thunder).
March 8, 1965 - The first U.S. combat troops arrive in Vietnam.
July, 1965-President Johnson announced plans to deploy additional combat units and to increase American military strength in South Vietnam to 1750,000 by year’s end.
The next 2 ½ years were filled with many battles, and dubious victories. The United States and the South Vietnamese inflicted heavy casualties on the Viet Cong and the Viet Minh (North Vietnamese Army), but the opposition forces continued to fight.
January 30, 1968 - The North Vietnamese join forces with the Viet Cong to launch the Tet Offensive, attacking approximately one hundred South Vietnamese cities and towns.
Combat erupted throughout the entire country. Thirty-six of 44 provincial capitals and 64 of 242 district towns were attacked, as well as 5 of South Vietnam's 6 autonomous cities, among them Hue City and Saigon. Once the shock and confusion wore off, most attacks were crushed in a few days. During those few days, however, the fighting was some of the most violent ever seen in the South or experienced by many ARVN and American units. In some American compounds, cooks, radiomen, and clerks took up arms in their own defense and helicopter gunships were in the air almost continuously, assisting the allied forces
The Viet Cong and NVA had suffered a major military defeat, losing thousands of experienced combatants and seasoned political cadres and seriously weakening the insurgent base in the South.
Americans at home saw a different picture. Dramatic images of the Viet Cong storming the American Embassy in the heart of Saigon and the North Vietnamese Army clinging tenaciously to Hue obscured the assertion that the enemy had been defeated. With almost a half-million U.S. troops already in Vietnam, doubts on the conduct of the war prompted a reassessment of American policy and strategy.
March 16, 1968 - U.S. soldiers kill hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the town of Mai Lai
March 31, 1968 - President Johnson announced his decision not to seek reelection in order to give his full attention to the goal of resolving the conflict. Hanoi had suffered a military defeat in the TET OFFENSIVE, but had won a political and diplomatic victory by shifting American policy toward disengagement.
July 1968 - General William Westmoreland, who had been in charge of the U.S. troops in Vietnam, is replaced by General Creighton Abrams.
November 1968—Richard M. Nixon is elected President of the United States.
December 1968 - U.S. troops in Vietnam reaches 540,000.
July 1969 - The last phase of American involvement in South Vietnam began under a broad policy called Vietnamization. Its main goal was to create strong, largely self-reliant South Vietnamese military forces, an objective consistent with that espoused by U.S. advisers as early as the 1950'S. But Vietnamization also meant the withdrawal of a half-million American soldiers.
President Nixon orders the first of many U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam. The key tenet for the United States was to secure, “Peace with Honor.”
September 3, 1969 - Communist revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh dies at age 79.
November 13, 1969 - The American public learns of the Mai Lai massacre.
April 30, 1970 - President Nixon announces that U.S. troops will attack enemy locations in Cambodia. This news sparks nationwide protests, especially on college campuses.
The most notable protest/violence took place at Kent State University, where 4 students were killed and nine injured by members of the National Guard on May 4, 1970.
June 13, 1971 - Portions of the Pentagon Papers are published in The New York Times. The Pentagon Papers revealed that the government had not been wholly truthful in regard to U.S. involvement in Vietnam. This sparked further protests in the United States.
March 1972 - The North Vietnamese cross the demilitarized zone (DMZ) at the 17th parallel to attack South Vietnam in what became known as the Easter Offensive.
Late October 1972—Nixon’s Chief Security advisor, Henry Kissenger announces, “Peace is at hand” in Vietnam.
November 1972—Richard Nixon is reelected in one of the largest landslides in U.S. Presidential History.
1973
The United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Viet Cong signed an armistice that promised a cease-fire and national reconciliation. Between 1973 and 1975 South Vietnam's military security further declined through a combination of old and new factors. Plagued by poor maintenance and shortages of spare parts, much of the equipment provided Saigon's forces under Vietnamization became inoperable. American military activities in Cambodia and Laos, which had continued after the cease-fire in South Vietnam went into effect, ended in 1973 when Congress cut off funds.
1975
North Vietnam's leaders began planning for a new offensive, still uncertain whether the United States would resume bombing or once again intervene in the South. When no resistance occurred. North Vietnam launches a massive assault on South Vietnam.
April 30, 1975 - South Vietnam surrenders to the communists. (Fall of Saigon)
AFTERMATH
The US paid a high price for its long involvement in South Vietnam. American military deaths exceeded 58,000. The majority of the dead were in the infantry units -- lower ranking enlisted men (E-2 and E-3) were heaviest hit. They were young men, twenty-three years old or younger, of whom approximately 13 percent were black. Most deaths were caused by small-arms fire and gunshot, but a significant portion, almost 30 percent, stemmed from mines, booby traps, and grenades. Artillery, rockets, and bombs accounted for only a small portion of the total fatalities. If not for the unprecedented medical care provided in South Vietnam, the death toll would have been higher yet. Nearly 300,000 Americans were wounded, of whom half required hospitalization. The lives of many seriously injured men, who would have become fatalities in earlier wars, were saved by rapid helicopter evacuation direct to hospitals close to the combat zone. More than a decade after the end of the war, 1,761 American soldiers remained listed as missing in action.
The war-ravaged Vietnamese, North and South, incurred the greatest losses. South Vietnamese military deaths exceeded 200,000. War-related civilian deaths in the South approached a half-million, while the injured and maimed numbered many more. Accurate estimates of enemy casualties run afoul of the difficulty in distinguishing between civilians and combatants, imprecise body counts, and the difficulty of verifying casualties in areas controlled by the enemy. Nevertheless, nearly a million Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers are believed to have perished in combat through the spring of 1975.
The Vietnam war left the United States weary and divided. The loss of the war, in combination with the Watergate Scandal that brought down the Nixon administration left a dark stain on the prestige and psyche of the American people. Many of the returning soldier were treated with hostility, contempt, and disdain. Many soldiers suffered from drug addiction, and severe psychological problems. The Vietnam War remains one of the most controversial and divisive events in our nation’s history.