Hello and welcome to today's history lesson.

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

Today's lesson is on the opposition to the war, and by the end of today's lesson, you're gonna be able to explain why opposition to the war grew.

In order to do that, we need to use some key terms, and these are unethical, veteran, protests, sit-in and teach-in.

If something is unethical, then it's morally wrong.

A veteran is a person who has served in the armed forces.

A protest is a statement or action expressing disapproval of or objection to something.

A sit-in is a form of protest in which demonstrators occupy a place and refuse to leave until their demands are met.

And a teach-in is an extended meeting usually held on a college campus for lectures, debates, and discussions in order to raise awareness of or express an opinion on a social or political issue.

So now that we understand those key terms, let's get started with the lesson.

Today's lesson is gonna be consisting of two main learning cycles, and our first learning cycle is the reasons for opposition.

So let's get started with that.

So one of the main objections to the Vietnam War in the USA was the heavy cost in American lives.

More than 58,000 US soldiers lost their lives in Vietnam.

Added to that, more than 303,000 were physically wounded and a large number returned from the war, mentally scarred by their experiences, exemplified by the fact that the suicide rate for Vietnam veterans was twice that of regular civilians.

For many Americans, this price was not worth paying to defend a country that few had heard of before the war.

So very quick check for understanding now, how many US soldiers lost their lives in the Vietnam War? Was it A roughly 42,000.

B, roughly 58,000.

or C, roughly 64,000.

Choose now.

Okay, if you chose B roughly 58,000, then congratulations.

That is indeed correct.

Protests against the Vietnam War occurred a point in time when Americans were protesting against a number of social issues, such as equal rights for women and black people.

So these protests just naturally converged.

They naturally joined together.

Black civil rights leaders condemned the war.

As yet another example of racism in America, black men were disproportionately drafted into the forces.

30% of eligible black Americans were drafted compared to just 19% of eligible white Americans.

Part of the reason for this was that men of conscription age who were at college could defer the draught until they had finished their studies.

So if you were, in England would call them a university student.

You could put off joining the army until you've finished your degree.

So for many people, that was a fantastic way not to join the army, go to college instead, get a degree.

You won't have to join the army.

That costs a lot of money though.

And if you are in a community, if you are in a family which does not have a lot of money, then that option is quite simply out of your reach.

At the time, black people were less likely to be able to afford college tuition fees and so were unable to defer.

Another complaint was the cost of the war and how this money could be better spent.

The US government was spending roughly $20 billion per year on the war in Vietnam.

Money which was not being used to address inequalities in America.

Many people, black and white, felt that this money was roughly $167 billion by the end of the war, could have been better spent on supporting poorer communities at home in America.

Right another check for understanding now, so true or false, in total the US government spent $20 billion on the war in Vietnam.

So choose now.

Is that true or is that false? Alright, if you chose false, then congratulations.

That is correct.

But let's justify the answer now why is that a false answer? Is it because the US government spent $20 billion per year on the war in Vietnam? Or is it because the US government spent $20 billion per month on the war in Vietnam? So choose now.

All right, if you chose A then congratulations that is indeed correct.

$20 billion per year was spent on the war in Vietnam by the US government.

Some people had objected to American involvement in Vietnam since the mid 1950s.

It was felt that the US's support for a corrupt dictator in South Vietnam and their acceptance of the cancellation of unifying elections as set up by the Geneva Convention, showed that America was not really as interested in promoting democracy as they said they were.

The tactics used by the US military were also an increasing cause for anger for many Americans.

The use of chemical weapons such as agent orange and napalm cause significant damage to the countryside and horrific injuries and deaths to many Vietnamese civilians.

The search and destroy strategy resulted in atrocities such as the My Lai massacre on the 16th of March, 1968, where more than 500 innocent Vietnamese civilians were murdered by US troops searching for Viet Cong gorillas.

This was a genuinely horrific event.

It wasn't isolated, but it was certainly the most publicised event of this nature.

There was a public outcry when photos of the massacre were published in the USA because US citizens could not believe their soldiers could be responsible for such atrocities.

A trial was held in 1970 of Lieutenant Calley.

Who's on the screen in front of you there, who had commanded the soldiers at My Lai, and he was found guilty.

But the decision divided public opinion for a number of reasons.

Calley was the only person convicted of the My Lai massacre, his superiors and the people who actually conducted the massacre were not put on trial.

And for that reason, many people objected.

And so they'd been made into scapegoats.

Calley's sentence was also reduced by President Nixon.

So instead of spending time in jail, he actually spent just a few years under house arrest and then he was released after that.

So for many people, Calley was not punished enough.

For some people they felt that he should not have been punished in the first place.

And actually everything that would happened was absolutely fine.

This is war, bad things happened, you have to accept that was the response of some people.

So this whole situation was horrendous from beginning to end.

Certainly of course for the people involved in My Lai massacre who were predominantly old people, women, children, and babies were also killed as well Because patrols were accompanied by reporters.

People at home watched US troops burning Vietnamese villages.

There's a famous interview with one particular commanding officer on a search and destroy mission who stated that in order to save the village, it became necessary to destroy it.

And in his view, what he said wasn't an oxymoron.

It made absolute sense, in order to save the village from the Viet Cong, you had to destroy that village.

So the Viet Cong couldn't use it.

Forgetting of course that this is people's livelihoods we're talking about, this is their homes, their families, homes and they're all gone now.

So a lot of people back home were shocked and appalled by what their boys, their fathers, their sons, their brothers were getting up to in Vietnam.

It was a real shock to the American people that they were not necessarily the good guy anymore.

During the war, more than 2 million Vietnamese people were killed.

More than 3 million were injured and 12 million were displaced.

When the war expanded across the border into Cambodia and Lao, these horrifying numbers increased further.

The US dropped 260 million bombs on Lao giving it their dubious honour of being the most bombed country in history.

And all of these reasons, they've many back home to decide that action must be taken to end the war.

When you see pictures like we have in the screen in front of you and there are far more pictures of a similar vein to this as well, it's very difficult to justify the fact that what we are doing is right when the reality is what we are actually doing is we are killing and hurting innocent civilians, including very, very young children as well.

Okay, let's go for a check for understanding now then, so pick out two correct facts about the human cost of the war for the Vietnamese people.

So was it that more than 3 million people were injured.

More than 7 million people died from starvation.

12 million people became refugees or displaced people.

Or 26 million people lost their jobs.

So choose now.

Okay, if you chose A and C, then congratulations.

More than 3 million people were injured.

It's difficult to get an accurate figures for that.

And roughly 12 million people it says they became refugees.

They're actually their internal refugees as well.

So they frequently, they're moving around within their own country, within South Vietnam.

So it's pretty more accurate to say that they would displaced people.

Right, so just a summary then.

So reasons for opposition to the Vietnam War.

There's a high cost in American lives.

The racism element and the inequality element.

The fact that if you could afford to go to college, go to university, then effectively you could afford to not have to join the army.

But if you couldn't afford that, then realistically you haven't got much chance of avoiding that or certainly not much chance of avoiding the draught anyway.

The war itself was very expensive and also a lot of people felt that it was unethical, both the reasons for the war and most significantly the way in which the war was fought.

So let's go for our first task for today then.

So I have a table on the screen in front of you there.

I'd like you to label the following statements, either true or false.

So nice and simple there, so read through the statements and let's write a little T if it's true or an F if it's false.

So pause the video now and I'll see you once you've done that.

Okay, welcome back.

So I hope you got on fine with that task.

Let's go through these statements.

Now then, so Vietnam veterans had a lower suicide rate than regular civilians.

That is false.

It was actually double the rates.

A higher proportion of black Americans was conscripted compared to white Americans.

That is true, as 30% of black Americans were conscripted compared to 90% of eligible white Americans.

The next statement, 500 civilians were murdered by US soldiers in the village of My Lai in March, 1968.

That is indeed very, very sadly true.

And 26 million bombs were dropped on Lao by the US, and that is false, it was 260 million actually as well so significantly higher than that.

Right, let's go for our next task today then.

So on the screen, got to your characters here, they are Jacob and Sam, and they're discussing why people in the US protested against the Vietnam War.

And what I'd like you to do is to read their statements and then add one or ideally two pieces of evidence to support each statement.

So pause the video now and have a go at that task.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got on fine with that task.

So we got an idea about some of the pieces of evidence you could use to support Jacob and Sam's statements here.

To support Jacob's statements.

So by the end of the war, more than 58,000 US soldiers had lost their lives in Vietnam with 303,000 physically wounded and thousands mentally scarred by their experiences.

So they've got some specific details that support the point that he made.

From Sam's perspective, you could say that an estimated two thirds of the Vietnamese casualties were civilians and people who were innocent victims. US bombings and search and destroy missions were responsible for many of these deaths.

So there's our specific evidence to support the points that Sam was making.

Right, let's move on now then to our second and final learning cycle for today.

And we were looking at forms of protest.

So by and large, protests against the war remains predominantly peaceful.

College students formed a significant element of the protest movement.

And the students for a democratic society or the SDS was an anti-war group that had roughly 30,000 members across 300 colleges.

So it is a nationwide organisation, the SDS.

And they organised marches, they organised sit-ins, demonstrations and teach-ins as well.

In May, 1970, the SDS organised a student striking, involving 900 campuses and more than 4 million students in response to Nixon's expansion of the war into Cambodia.

And some campuses saw acts of violence during this strike, the most notorious being at Kent State, Ohio, on the 4th of May in which the National Guard shot at a group of students killing four and injuring nine more.

It's probably worth mentioning that these students were unarmed, although the protest, there's conflicting reports, the protest was predominantly peaceful.

There are reports that suggest that the National Guard were being antagonised, when the national Guardsmen went to trial, their defence was that they felt that they were in fear of their lives and that's why the open fire on the group of students and the jury agreed with their assessments.

So from that perspective, you can't necessarily say it was a peaceful process because the national Guardsmen felt that they potentially could have been killed themselves and that's why they opened fire.

However, there's also conflicting evidence to suggest that perhaps there was no real need for them to have opened fire.

There was no threat to their lives.

And certainly some of the victims had absolutely nothing to do with this.

One of the victims was a girl who was quite simply just walking across campus going from one lecture to another.

She wasn't even involved in the protest whatsoever.

So a genuine tragedy.

Let's go for a check for understanding now then.

So how many students took part in the student strike of May, 1970? Was it roughly 1 million, roughly 2 million, or roughly 4 million.

So decide now.

Alright, if you chose C, roughly 4 million, then congratulations.

That is indeed correct.

So the most visible protest against the war in Vietnam were marches where you go from one predetermined site to another, you just walk very calmly.

Maybe you're carrying banners, maybe you're shouting slogans.

But marches, they are easy to organise, they are easy to take part in, and they are very, very visible as well, especially when you get marches like the march I have on the screen in front of you now as well.

So on the 15th of November, 1969, an estimated 500,000 people attended the Vietnam War moratorium march in Washington DC.

So that's the image I have on the screen in front of you there, an aerial view of half a million people all converging in one place.

However, Nixon was unmoved by these public demonstrations.

He claims to have been watching sports whilst half a million people protested outside of the White House.

So whether that is true or not, we can't say for certain.

We do know that he was very angered by the protests, angry that they were happening, angry at the thought that they would convince him to change policy.

But he also didn't necessarily want that to be shown in public as well.

In public, he wanted to appear very cool, very detached from this whole situation in the hope I suppose, that it would just stop more protests like this from taking place 'cause it would appear as though they have no impact whatsoever.

One formal protest the government did pay a little more attention to though was the burning of draught cards.

So draught dodgers, as they became known, refused to be conscripted with some publicly burning their orders to enlist.

And that's what we can see on the screen in front of you there.

That is somebody, I don't think it's overly clear there, the man standing up in front of you there, he's actually burning his draught card.

So he had his orders to join the army mailed to him, that's his draught card and he's just publicly burning that saying, no I completely refuse.

There were an estimated 570,000 men who were considered draught dodgers.

So this was not an isolated incident.

This was incredibly common.

And it also included high profile personalities such as Muhammad Ali who was the heavyweight champion boxer of the world at the time and arguably still one of the greatest boxers ever to have lived.

Ali was one of only 8,750 draught dodgers to actually be convicted of the crime.

So though we've got well over half a million men performing this action, it was less than 10,000 that were actually convicted of the crime of doing that.

And Ali himself actually almost ended up being one of the 3,250 draught Dodges to be imprisoned for the offence as well.

So an incredibly common offence, it wasn't prosecuted particularly commonly and even less people actually went to jail and served time for committing this offence as well.

But one of them was very nearly Muhammad Ali as well.

Now let's go for a quick check for understanding now, which two of the following were types of protests used by the anti-war movement in the US during the 1960s? Was it eat-ins, sit-ins, teach-ins or walk-ins? So choose two now.

Alright, if you chose B and C then congratulations.

Those are indeed two forms of protest used at this point in time.

Another check for understanding though, is it true or false that Nixon appeared to be unconcerned about public protests against the Vietnam War.

So decided if that's true or false, now.

Okay, if you chose true, then congratulations.

Let's justify that answer.

Is it true because Nixon did not say anything at all about the Vietnam War moratorium rally or is it true because Nixon claimed to be watching sports during the Vietnam War moratorium rally.

So decide your justification now.

Alright, if you chose B then very well done.

That is indeed the story that Nixon himself gave out.

Right, let's go for a task now then.

So what I'd like to do is match the formal protest to the description of how it works.

So simply just match the key term to the key definitions.

So nice and simple there.

It's simple instruction there.

What I'd like you to do then is pause the video and have a go at doing that now.

Okay, so let's go for some answers then.

So a sit-in that is people who occupy a place peacefully and refuse to leave.

Marches are people walking from one place to another, often followed by speeches.

Burning a draught cards is the destruction of evidence of instructions to go and join the army.

And teach-ins are an extended lecture and discussion about an issue.

And hopefully you understand all of those key terms as form a process there.

Let's go for another task now then.

So I would like you to read the quote from Muhammad Ali about why he refused the draught.

This is his reason for why he did not honour his draught card commitments.

So, and what I'd like you to do once you've read it, is explain his reason for protesting in this way.

So I'll read out the extract from the quote now.

So, "Why should they ask me to go put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam? Whilst black Americans in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?' So that's Ali's justification for his actions.

What I'd like you to do is explain that.

So pause the video now and have a go at doing that.

Okay, hopefully you got on fine with that question then.

So hopefully your answer looks something similar to mine here.

And I've said that Muhammad Ali is refusing the draught because he objects to fighting for his country when his country fails to treat black people with respect and equality.

So those are Ali's main reasons for not going and fighting in Vietnam.

And now our final task for today.

So I have a source on the screen in front of you here.

It's a photograph of people taking part in a protest against the Vietnam War in 1967.

And what I would like you to do is think to yourself, how useful is this source in telling us about the reasons why people protested against the Vietnam War? And I'd like you to discuss two examples from the source.

So pick up two specific images or two specific aspects of this image or from the providence and explain why that is useful in telling us about why people protest against the Vietnam War.

So pause the video now and have a go at doing that task.

I see you once you've done.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got on fine with that task.

I've got a model answer up on the screen in front of you here.

So hopefully your answer looks somewhat similar to mine.

Let's just go through it now.

So I said the source has a number of signs being held up with reasons why people are unhappy with the war in Vietnam.

One sign says, "Why die for a dictator?" This is a reference to the leader of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem who failed to introduce democracy to the country.

People in the US thought it was unethical that their government supported Diem, and did not push him to treat hiss own people better.

I then go on to say there are several black protestors in the photo.

The black civil rights movement at this time was campaigning for equal rights for black Americans.

Black Americans are being drafted to fight in Vietnam at a much higher rate than white Americans.

Many black people wanted the Vietnam War to end because they felt that too many black people were being forced to fight in the war against their will.

So there are other things you could have said about that source, but there are two aspects that of the source that I've drawn out to discuss.

So let's summarise the lesson now then.

So Americans protested against the Vietnam War for a variety of reasons.

These reasons included the cost in American lives, racism and inequality, and the expense of the war and how unethical it was.

Protests took a variety of forms such as marches, sit-ins, teach-ins and burning draught cards, but were predominantly peaceful.

Thank you very much for joining me today.

Hopefully you yourself, hope you've learned a lot and hopefully I'll see you again next time.

Bye-Bye.