Hello and welcome to today's history lesson.

My name is Mr. Merrett and I'll be guiding you through today's lesson.

So let's get started.

By the end of today's lesson, we'll be able to evaluate the USA's changing policy in Vietnam and how it affected public opinion towards the war.

And in order to do that, we need to use some key terms. So our key terms for today are Vietnamisation, Public opinion, and veteran.

Vietnamisation was the US policy of withdrawing troops and transferring responsibility for the war to the government of South Vietnam.

Public opinion refers to the popular view in society about a particular issue, and a veteran is a person who has served in the armed forces.

So now that we're comfortable with those, let's get going with the lesson.

Today's lesson is gonna be split into two different learning cycles, and our first learning cycle is looking at Vietnamisation and the arguments suggest whether there's a success and the counterarguments suggest that it's a failure, and we should be able to make our own decision about that by the end of that particular learning cycle.

So let's get going.

Just a quick recap of what the process of Vietnamisation actually entailed.

It was the withdrawal of US troops, that from a US citizen's perspective, that was the key element of Vietnamisation.

It was all about trying to get US troops outta Vietnam, back home to the US in order to reduce US casualty figures.

This is a really, really key aspect of Vietnamisation.

It was also about the expansion of the South Vietnamese army or the ARVN.

And the purpose for that is that by removing US troops, they would need to be replaced with somebody.

And the whole idea of Vietnamisation is that they'd be replaced with the South Vietnamese army.

So as a result of that, the ARVN expanding dramatically over this particular period, actually expanded the point where the ARVN was the fourth largest army in the world.

One in nine South Vietnamese citizens were a part of the ARVN.

So it was an absolutely huge army especially in relation to the size of the country.

The US would also provide training and equipment.

The ARVN is well.

So the whole idea is that new helicopters, new artillery, kinda the big heavy equipment will be sent over to South Vietnam.

But also obviously more just more conventional weapons like handguns and grenades will be sent over as well.

And that the ARVN members who would designate the special forces would be able to receive training in that particular equipment as well.

So effectively, by the time the US left, the ARVN will not only be a large fighting force, they'll be a very capable fighting force as well.

Richard Nixon introduced the policy of Vietnamisation, was very keen to stress that the withdrawal would be done with honour.

So US troops wouldn't just abandon their South Vietnamese ally, they would leave the country, but do so in an honourable way.

And the kinda the marker for that was that would South Vietnam be able to fight off the communist forces? So that was really kind of the key marker in terms of, if this is an honourable, is this an honourable withdrawal or not? And South Vietnam was to remain an independent, non-communist country.

That was absolutely crucial.

If South Vietnam collapsed as soon as the US left, then effectively the whole Vietnam war was for nothing from an American perspective.

So to justify those 58,000 casualties that the US faced, and of course the millions of casualties across Vietnam itself and the Vietnamese people, South Vietnam had to remain an independent country.

Otherwise, all of this would've been for nothing.

So those there are the key elements of Vietnamisation.

A quick check for understanding to make sure we're happy with that.

So true or false, Vietnamisation meant transferring the majority of the fighting to the South Vietnamese army, to the ARVN.

Is that true or is that false? Decide now.

All right, if you chose true, then congratulations.

That is indeed true.

But let's justify the answer.

Now, why is that true? Is it true because this meant that the US could greatly reduce the number of its troops in Vietnam? Or is it true because this meant that the US did not have to support South Vietnam's government.

So choose a or b now.

All right, if you chose a, then very well done.

That is indeed the reason why Vietnamisation was all about transferring the onus of groundfighting to the South Vietnamese army.

Let's go for our first task now then.

So what I'd like you to do is to plot a graph of Nixon's involvement in Vietnam in order to assess how successful he was in withdrawing America from the war.

So I'm gonna show you the points you need to plot in just a moment, but just give you a little bit more information here.

Need to place the events in chronological order along the horizontal axis, and then decide where on the vertical axis they should go.

So less involvement in the war would be a higher placement and therefore a success, and more involvement in the war will be a lower placement and failure.

So effectively what we are doing here, the horizontal axis is all about what is going on when, so it's your chronological logging of the events.

And then the vertical axis is looking at what, just how successfully was Vietnamisation actually implemented.

So if it was going well, you put your point higher up.

If it was going badly, you put your point lower down.

And when you think about is it going well or not, you need to look at the elements of Vietnamisation we just looked at earlier in the lesson as well.

Once you've completed plotting your graph and then wanting you to use that graph and be able to explain what it tells you about how successful Nixon was in withdrawing the US from involvement in the war.

So plot the graph, does it, are the points effectively mainly towards the top, in which case it could be considered a success, are the points made towards the bottom in which case it could be considered a failure, or is there a bit more to it than that? Is there a pattern that emerges, which you can discuss in your explanation as well? So here are your first five events that you need to plot on your graph.

So you might wanna pause the video and take a note of those.

Here are your second five events that you also plot on your graph.

So once again, you can pause the video, rewind it, and take a note of those.

And here is the graph itself that you need to plot it on.

So pause the video, have a go plotting this graph, and then explain what the graph tells you.

And I'll see you once you've completed that task.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got on fine with that task there.

So I'll show you a graph that I plotted, which may look similar or very different to yours, in a lot of ways, it doesn't necessarily matter how you plotted your graph, what matters is that you can justify how you've plotted your graph.

So if your graph looks very different to mine, don't worry about it.

As long as you can explain why you've placed your points in the placements that you have, that's what I'm looking for here as well.

So from my perspective, I think that Vietnamisation actually started off really well according to what Nixon felt was important, which was removing ground troops and training up the ARVN.

I actually think he did that particularly successfully in the first couple of years of his tenure as president.

However, with the invasion of Cambodia, I kind of feel like that expansion of the war completely flies in the face of what Vietnamisation was supposed to be about.

And so for that reason, I feel like Nixon kind of dropped off a little bit as well.

He does pick it up a little bit, but it comes much more of a mixed bag towards the back end of Nixon's tenure, as with his first term as president there as well.

So from my perspective, the Vietnamisation went particularly well to begin with, kind of fell off a cliff a little bit when he invaded Cambodia and Laos, picked it up again a little bit.

But again, with the more troops that are leaving Vietnam, that's obviously a good aspect of Vietnamisation from Nixon's perspective, but a real, real mixed bag towards the backend of his tenure, first tenure as president.

In terms of my explanation, I said that the graph shows that Nixon was successful in withdrawing the US from the Vietnam War up until the invasion of Cambodia in 1970 when all the work he put him was undone by the expansion of the war.

So I've justified why I've placed my points, or the really key point there, that drop-off when we get to 0.

7.

I've given an explanation for that there as well.

Now next task we are going to do, I want you to give two inferences from the source I'm about to show you about Nixon's reason for Vietnamisation.

So this is part of a speech from President Nixon, which was made on the 3rd of November, 1969.

And it was made to the US public via television after a series of large scale public protests against the war.

And Nixon says, as well as other things, "The defence of freedom is everybody's business not just America's business.

And it is particularly the responsibility of the people whose freedom is threatened.

In the previous administration, we Americanized the war in Vietnam.

In this administration we are Vietnamising the search for peace." So have another read of that source.

Think about the providence as well.

I want to give two inferences from this source and the providence about Nixon's reasons for Vietnamisation.

Pause the video while you're doing that and I'll see you once you completed it.

Okay, welcome back, hopefully you got on fine with that particular task.

So I've got a model answer.

So let's see what my answer looks like.

I said, "One inference from the source is that Nixon wants South Vietnam to take more responsibility for the fighting in the war.

This can be inferred because the sore states, 'it is particularly the responsibility of the people whose freedom is threatened.

' This is a direct reference to South Vietnam whose freedom was threatened by communist North Vietnam.

Another inference is that Nixon blames Johnson for sending too many American troops to Vietnam.

Nixon states, 'In the previous administration, we Americanized the war in Vietnam,' meaning that Nixon thinks the US got too involved in South Vietnam's war." So hopefully they can see that I've pulled out direct quotes from the source in order to make the points or in order to reinforce the point that I'm making, and then I've explained how those quotes actually support the point that I'm making.

So hopefully your answer does something similar as well.

Let's go for our third task for this learning cycle then.

So what I'd like you to do now is to explain why Vietnamisation failed to fully achieve all of its aims. And I'd like you to use following in your answer as well.

So I would like you to discuss the South Vietnamese army, to discuss the ARVN, and also I'd like you to discuss the escalation of the war into Cambodia and Laos.

You'll need to use your own knowledge in order to answer this question successfully.

So pause the video, maybe refer to some notes which you might have, and I'll see you once you completed this task.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you did all right with that task.

Let's look at the answer that I've written then.

So I said, "Vietnamisation did succeed in some respects, but it would be fair to say that it failed to achieve all of its aims. From the perspective of the public in the US, Vietnamisation succeeded fairly well.

One of the main goals was to remove US troops from the fighting to reduce casualties, and this was achieved.

By 1970, nearly 200,000 US troops had left Vietnam.

In their place was an expanded ARVN which was also one of the goals of Vietnamisation.

ARVN expanded to become the fourth largest army in the world.

However, this is where failures start to appear in the policy.

ARVN was supposed to receive equipment and training from the US to make sure they were prepared for battle against the communists.

However, US troops did not always provide ARVN with high-quality training.

Manuals were not translated into Vietnamese, meaning many ARVN soldiers did not know how to work their machinery.

ARVN troops were not battle-ready in other ways either.

Many South Vietnamese were conscripted against their will and deserted whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Although ARVN looked strong on paper, in reality they were far from capable of fighting the communists without us supports.

This was exemplified when the war expanded into Cambodia and Laos, which also went against the principles of Vietnamisation, the goal of which was to reduce American involvement in the war, not increase it.

ARVN received support from US air and ground troops in the invasion of Cambodia and US air support in the invasion of Laos.

In Cambodia, the ARVN were able to successfully push the communists back, although they never strayed too far from US troops.

In Laos, despite US air support, the ARVN were defeated by North Vietnamese counter-attack.

The ultimate goal of Vietnamisation was to create a situation where South Vietnam could stand strong against the communist forces of North Vietnam.

Even before the US had removed all of its troops, it was clear that this situation had not been successfully achieved." So hopefully there, you can see in my model answer that I've used a variety of specific detail to support the points that I'm making.

I've looked at first of all, what were some of the successes of Vietnamisation before I look at the failures, and in that way I've demonstrated to the examiner, whoever's reading this answer, that I understand both aspects of the question.

I can see where it was good and I can also see where it failed.

And in order to do, and by doing so, I'm able to draw a full conclusion.

Hopefully your answer is somewhat similar to mine in that respect.

Right, let's move on then to our second learning cycle for today, which is attitudes towards the war in the US.

So first of all, let's think about who opposed the Vietnam War.

So a lot of student groups opposed the Vietnam War.

Students for a Democratic Society consisted of about 30,000 members across 300 college campuses across the US.

So there's quite a broad amount of support from a variety of different students across the country.

The Black civil rights movement also objected to the war in Vietnam.

They objected to a variety of different things relating to racism in this, in the America at this particular point in time.

And they also felt that there were elements of the Vietnam War which were racist towards Black people as well.

And one of those being that Black people were drafted significantly more than the white counterparts as well.

So about 30% of eligible Black Americans were drafted into the army as opposed to about 19% of eligible white Americans.

So from that perspective, Black civil rights movements leaders have a real problem with the war in Vietnam.

The Women's Liberation Movement also opposed the war in Vietnam and the Peace Movement naturally involved any sort of war, but especially the war in Vietnam as well.

And effectively a lot of these civil rights movements and equal rights movements, they have their own issues that they are fighting for at this particular point in time.

Women, for instance, are trying to gain equality.

Black people are fighting against racism and this is all happening at the same time as the Vietnam War is taking place.

So the demonstrations within their own particular spheres of interest kind of coalesced into this quite a large group of people who are anti-Vietnam war, as well as anti other things about American society as well.

In terms of why they objected specifically, they felt the war was unethical for a number of different reasons.

It was unethical to back, initially, it was unethical to back the dictator of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem.

So he was particularly cruel to a lot of his people and American citizens felt that it was wrong to support somebody like this.

Racism and inequality, we've already discussed that to some extent as well.

The high cost in American lives, as I said before, about 58,000 American soldiers were killed in the war in Vietnam.

And also it was very expensive as well.

The US was spending roughly $20 million, sorry, $20 billion per year on the war in Vietnam, $167 billion in total.

And a lot of people felt that this money could be better spent elsewhere, potentially getting rid of elements of that racism and inequality that we see in America at this point in time as well.

However, it wasn't fair to say that everybody in America was anti-war and certainly anti the Vietnam War.

There were plenty of people that supported the war as well, and that included the older generation, Wall Street office workers, blue-collar workers with the hard hats and conservatives in the South and Midwest.

It's fair to say though, that a lot of this support for the war didn't actually manifest.

It wasn't visible until Richard Nixon came to power and gave his "Silent Majority" speech.

So we can say that there was support for the war, during the 60s however, we can't accurately say the extent to which people supported the Vietnam War.

We certainly know the numbers of people who objected to it 'cause there were plenty of demonstrations in the 1960s against the war in Vietnam.

But we can't accurately state for sure just how many people and exactly who supported the war at this point in time.

After Nixon's "Silent Majority" speech, that becomes a little bit easier because these Vietnam War supporters and Nixon supporters, they become far more visible.

The reasons why they supported the war in Vietnam, they wanted to stop communism from spreading.

It was the whole idea that it was patriotic to support your government and support the army in whatever they were doing.

They did not want the us to look weak.

Vietnam was seen by many people as a kinda a second or even a third-rate power, certainly not capable of standing up and fighting toe to toe with America.

And yet that's exactly what was happening.

North Vietnam was holding its own against the American forces.

If you remember, the Tet Offensive really rocked American confidence in their ability to win the war.

Well, since that point, the North Vietnamese haven't really backed down.

They've kept on pushing, and America felt like, well, many American citizens would've felt a bit humiliated if North Vietnam had defeated them in battle.

So part of the reason for the support now is, is just to kind of save pace, is to save face, is to prevent humiliation, and also just a genuine fear of communism, which is there's nothing new in America and it still exists at this point in time as well.

Right, a quick check for understanding then to make sure we fully understand what we're talking about here.

So choose two groups that supported the war in Vietnam.

So you could choose Black civil rights movements, the blue-collar workers, conservatives in the South and Midwest, or the Women's Liberation Movement.

So choose two of those groups now.

If you chose b and c, then congratulations.

They are indeed two groups that supported the war in Vietnam.

And let's go for our first task for this second learning insights within.

So I've got a graph on the screen in front of you here showing US public support for the Vietnam War.

And you can see that the horizontal line, it's chronological line so we can see the dates of the bottom there.

And the vertical line is the percentage of Americans who supported the war in Vietnam.

So effectively, the higher that line goes, the higher the little green dots are, the more people support the war in Vietnam.

So you can see in August 1965, more than 60% of Americans supported the war in Vietnam.

Now what I would like you to do with this graph is I'd like you to think, when did public opinion change most significantly towards the war in Vietnam? So you can see effectively, what you were looking for is the points in the graph where though that line changes dramatically, it either goes up or it goes down quite significantly.

I'd like you to choose a moment based on the source and then using your own knowledge, explain what was happening and why this affected public opinion so significantly.

So you're gonna need to use your own knowledge to think about what was happening in the Vietnam War at this point in time along the graph to explain why public support is shifting at that point in time.

To help you with that, I've included some key events that are taking place during the Vietnam War just to help you out a little bit and refresh your memory.

So what I'd like you to do then, while you're completing that graph, is to pause the video, answer the question, and I'll see you once you completed that.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got along fine with that task.

I've got an answer on the screen in front of you here and hopefully your answer looks somewhat similar to mine, but let's see what I've got.

"One of the most significant changes in public opinion towards the war in Vietnam happened in March, 1966.

This was when the Buddhist crisis began in South Vietnam.

Buddhists were being repressed by Diem.

So in response they began protests which included acts to just setting themselves on fire.

This shocked many Americans who felt that they should not be supporting a ruler whose people were so unhappy they were willing to die to try and stop government oppression." So hopefully your answer looks somewhat similar to mine.

Obviously there's lots of different points in that graph that you could have chosen or spoke about.

But in terms of how it looks similar, you are talking about some of the events of that particular point in the graph.

You're using details as well and you're using those details to explain why that represents a shift in opinion amongst US citizens towards the Vietnam War.

Okay, so let's go for our next task in this learning cycle then.

So how useful are the two sources for an inquiry into the reasons why people oppose the war in Vietnam? Explain your answer using the sources and your own knowledge.

So we can see the sources we've got here.

Our first source is a written source.

It's by the boxer Muhammad Ali, explaining why he refused the draught in 1967.

And our second source is a victim of napalm dropped by ARVN planes in March, 1964.

So use those two sources to explain and think about how useful they are for an inquiry into the reasons why people oppose the war in Vietnam.

Pause the video while you're doing this and I'll see you once you've finished that.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got along fine with that task.

Let's look at the model answer that I've written for this task as well.

So I said, "The two sources are very useful for explaining the reasons why people oppose the war in Vietnam.

The written source provides an explanation as to why many Black Americans not only oppose the war, but also refuse the draught.

The US at that time was still a deeply divided country in terms of race, and many Black people were unwilling to risk their lives for a country that did not offer them equal rights to white Americans, as shown when Ali states, 'treated like dogs and denied simple human rights.

' Many Black Americans felt that the huge sums of money spent on the war, more than $20 billion per year, could have been better spent on improving the lives of disadvantaged groups like Black people in America.

The picture source shows the human impact of napalm, as the victim pictured is a child.

Many people opposed the war because they thought that it was unethical, in both the reasons for and the way in which America was fighting it.

The use of chemical weapons such as napalm and Agent Orange had profound lasting effects if they came into contact with humans, as evidenced by the horrific burns on the child in the source.

These chemical bombs were imprecise, meaning that civilians were frequently affected by US airstrikes.

Many people in the US would've pointed to this source as proof that the US was doing more harm than good in Vietnam." Okay, so hopefully your answer follows a similar sort of vein to mine.

Obviously, whether you think they're useful or not is subjective, it's down to your own opinion.

But as long as you've explained your reason and you've given evidence to support your reason, your opinion, that is exactly what I'm looking for.

Let's think about our third task on this learning cycle then.

So I've got two interpretations for you coming up and they give different views about the US public opinion towards the war in Vietnam.

The first thing I'd like you to do is explain the difference between these views.

Need to explain your answer using details from both interpretations.

So how are these interpretations different? What are the different points that they're making? Can you identify their two arguments is what I'm looking for here.

So firstly, Jun says, "Roughly 25,000 Vietnam veterans publicly opposed the war.

They wore their uniforms and medals when protesting and called for an end to the war to save American lives." So that's our first interpretation.

Our second interpretation is from Andeep, and he says, "The US sent 2.

7 million Americans to Vietnam, of which less than 1% went on to publicly oppose the war.

Veterans were much more likely to be part of Nixon's 'Silent majority.

'" So pause the video now, have a go answering that question and I'll see you once you finish that.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got along fine with that task.

Let's see the answer that I've got on the screen in front of us here.

I said, "The main difference between the two interpretations is that they disagree over the attitudes of Vietnam veterans towards the war.

The first interpretation states that roughly 25,000 veterans publicly opposed the war, which is a significant number.

However, the second interpretation puts that figure into context by explaining that this was less than 1% of all veterans.

It therefore strongly suggests that most Vietnam veterans supported the war, although they may not have done so publicly." So hopefully your answer follows a similar sort of vein to that, you understand the two opinions that are being expressed on those interpretations there.

So to summarise the lesson then, Nixon attempted a change in policy in Vietnam in order to reduce US involvements.

The change in policy had mixed results and led to an expansion of the war.

And US public opinion towards the war was mixed, although the popularity of the war declined as it went on.

Thank you very much for joining me.

Hopefully you enjoyed yourself.

Hope you've learned something.

Hopefully I'll see you again next time, bye-bye.