The Vietnam War: 1954-1975

The End of the War: 1968-1975

Seeking Peace with Honor

The Paris Peace Talks and the Election of

1968.• Begun May 5, 1968.• No results.• Nixon campaign message claimed he had a secret plan to end the war.

• LBJ - not seeking re-election

• Democratic race included:– VP Hubert H. Humphrey

– Sen. Robert F. Kennedy

– Sen. Eugene McCarthy

Republican Richard Nixon won in 1968 - a

political comeback.

• Robert Kennedy assassinated in June.

• McCarthy - outspoken anti-war candidate.

• Democratic National Convention - Chicago riot

• Nixon defeated Humphrey.

• Promised to end the war and sought “peace with honor”.

“Vietnamization” and Peace with Honor

• Plan of removing American troops and replacing them with South Vietnamese soldiers.

• US continued heavy bombing of Vietnam

• US troop strength dropped from 500,000 in 1969 to 24,000 by 1972

Widening the war into Cambodia… to end it.

• Nixon ordered secret bombing of Viet Cong sanctuaries insided Cambodia (1970)

• US and South Vietnamese troops also invaded Cambodia

• Nixon hoped to win concessions at the bargaining table.

Operation LinebackerB-52s to bomb Cambodia

Kent State (Akron, Ohio) 1970

• News of Cambodian invasion set off a new round of campus anti-war protests (May 1970)

• Jackson State (MS), 2 killed, 11 wounded

• Kent State - Ohio National Guard confronted hundreds of protesters -- 4 students killed, 9 wounded

• Hundreds of campuses shut down early due to unrest.

Nixon calls for law and order

• Nixon appealed to the great “silent majority” of Americans.

• “If a vocal minority, however fervent its cause, prevails over

reason and the will of the majoirty, this

nation has no future as a free society.”

“Hard Hat” riots in New York City in support of

Nixon• Over 100,000 construction workers marched.

• Angry at the student anti-war protestors

1972 - “Peace is at Hand”

• Paris Peace talks stalled since 1968. Renewed periodically.

• National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger claimed peace was at hand - just before 1972 election.

• December 1972, new round of bombing - “Christmas bombings” (Nixon - a “mad bomber”)

• Bombed Hanoi, North Vietnam

1973 - Paris Peace Accords

• The United States would withdraw all its forces from South Vietnam within 60 days.

• All prisoners of war would be released.

• All parties to the agreement would end military activities in Laos and Cambodia.

• The 17th parallel would continue to divide North and South Vietnam until the country could be reunited.

South Vietnam falls

• North continued its assault on the South

• Saigon (capital of South) fell to communists in April, 1975

• US evacuates 1,000 remaining Americans and 6,000 Vietnamese to aircraft carriers

• Vietnam united under communist rule

Saigon - 1975: the final days

Southeast Asia after the war.

• “Dominoes” of Laos and Cambodia fell to communism - no other SE Asian countries

• Cambodian Khmer Rouge government seized control under Pol Pot.

• Vietnam - 100,000s of South Vietnamese civilians, soldiers, civil servants, professionals forced into ‘re-education’ camps.

• 1.5 million Vietnamese fled the country (100,000s of Cambodians and Laotians also) to the United States.

Scenes of post-1975 SE Asia

Legacy of the War

• 58,000 Americans dead• 300,000 wounded• 2,500 POWs• $150 billion• More bomb tonnage than in all Axis countries of WWII - combined

• Millions of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed

• 1994 - end of US embargo

• 1995 - formal US recognition of Vietnam

The Vietnam Memorial - The Wall…