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, you'll be able to explain the reasons why the US became more involved in Vietnam.

And in order to do that, we're gonna be using two key terms, which are engagements and protests.

Now, in this context, an engagement is a fight or battle between armed forces, and a protest is a statement or action expressing disapproval of or objection to something or other.

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

So today's lesson is the US involvement in Vietnam, and it's gonna be comprised of two main learning cycles.

The first one is increasing levels of engagements.

So let's get going with that.

So America's involvement in Vietnam began as an interesting paradox.

Culturally, Americans were supportive of countries that tried to break away from colonial powers and become self-governing, as this is what America itself had done back in 1776.

However, in the case of Vietnam, this natural inclination was overruled by America's fear of communism.

President Harry Truman provided the French with $2.

6 billion of aid in the war with the Viet Minh, and stated that America would do everything it could to contain the spread of communism.

And then this then set the tone for the actions of later presidents in Vietnam.

Quite importantly, though, Truman sent absolutely no soldiers to Vietnam in order to aid the French.

It was purely a French endeavour.

However, it was significantly supported financially by the US.

By the end of the French engagement in Vietnam, around about 70% of all the money being spent on that war was actually coming from the US.

So it was a major investment, but there were no US soldiers in Vietnam at this point in time.

The next president, Eisenhower, in 1953, he was president when Vietnam was partitioned, and that was in 1954.

So very shortly after Eisenhower came to power that Vietnam was split into north and south, with the understanding that after two years, in 1956, there would be national elections to unify the country under either a communist government or, from the point of view of America, ideally, a democratic government.

And this is Eisenhower in power for this particular point in time.

So Eisenhower believed in a domino theory, and this meant that significant support for South Vietnam was effectively inevitable.

And that's exactly what happened.

Eisenhower provided nearly $2 billion in aid to help the South Vietnamese government, as well as sending around 1,000 military advisors to train the South Vietnamese army, the R-V-N or RVN.

So these 1,000 soldiers, they are there to train.

They are not there to fight themselves.

They're just there in a training and advisory role.

Eisenhower's public support for President Diem, further entrenched America's desire to do everything possible to stop the spread of communism, even if that meant siding with corrupt dictators.

Eisenhower was under no illusion as to the character of Diem.

He knew exactly what sort of person he was.

However, he was a better alternative than communism, from the American perspective.

Moving on to John F.

Kennedy.

Kennedy escalated American involvement even further when he became president in 1961.

16,000 troops, including the Green Berets, the special forces, were sent to Vietnam, once again, as advisors.

They were there to train the RVN.

The Green Berets were there to train peasants out in the countryside to help them defend themselves against the Vietcong.

They weren't there to fight.

There is evidence to suggest that soldiers in Vietnam, American soldiers at this point in time in Vietnam, did go out on patrols.

They did fight.

However, that is not an official order that they were following.

That is not the main reason why they were there.

They were there to train and to advise.

They were not there to fight.

If some of them did, that's off their own back.

It's not Kennedy's orders.

However, Kennedy did increase the American presence in other ways.

For instance, he authorised the use of chemical weapons, such as napalm and Agent Orange, which had devastating impacts on the Vietnamese people and on the Vietnamese countryside.

And these are impacts that are still being felt today.

He also provided RVN with advanced military equipment, such as fighter jets and helicopters.

So really made South Vietnamese army a, for the point in time, a modern fighting force as well.

That's certainly America's goal at this point in time.

Kennedy, however, did support actions against, but not the eventual assassination of, South Vietnamese President Diem.

And this actually ushered in a period of confusion and turmoil within the South Vietnamese government, which kinda stretched out across the whole of the country.

And that forced America to provide more support to prevent the country from turning communist.

So even though Diem was not a very nice man, he did terrible things to his people, he repressed them, he was a deeply unpopular man within South Vietnam, once he left, there's a power vacuum that was filled by a number of different South Vietnamese generals, who were, in turn, kicked out of office.

They were ousted, and they're replaced by other South Vietnamese generals.

And this happened time and time again.

And obviously, if you're only ever in power for a few weeks or months, you've got no time to stabilise the country, to enact your designs for the country itself.

So this made South Vietnam effectively more susceptible to turning communist.

Our final president we're gonna look at today is President Johnson.

And he is the president that is most commonly linked with the Vietnam War in the minds of many Americans, for several reasons.

Firstly, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was passed in 1964.

So this is under Johnson's presidency.

And there are many historians who would argue that this is effectively the start of the Vietnam War.

This is the point which the Vietnam War becomes the Vietnam War.

And the reason being is that because it authorised American soldiers to directly engage with North Vietnam.

Up to this point, there had been no orders to do that.

It had happened, but, again, it wasn't official orders.

Now they have orders to engage with North Vietnam.

It was also the point in time in which Johnson's B strategy, kinda his five-point plan for how to win the war in Vietnam.

It significantly ramped up American involvement in Vietnam, to the extent that by 1968, 548,000 American soldiers were present in Vietnam.

There were more than that who served, but they were, generally speaking, they were on one-year deployments.

And once their year was up, they'd cycle back into the US, and we'd have more draftees, more recruits coming in as well.

So the highest number of troops at any one time from America in Vietnam was 548,000.

I think there's over 3 million, though, who served overall.

Okay, let's go for a quick knowledge check now then.

So true or false, Johnson sent the most troops to Vietnam of any president up to 1968? Is that true or is that false? Choose now.

Okay, if you chose true, then congratulations.

That is indeed correct.

But let's justify this answer now.

Why is that true? So is it true because the Tonkin Gulf Resolution meant Congress granted him permission to do so, or is it true because the second Red Scare meant the American people granted implicit permission to do so? So choose A or B now.

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

That is indeed the reason why Johnson was able to dramatically escalate the war in Vietnam.

All right, let's go for our first task of the day now then.

So what I'd like to do is to create a little table like I'm gonna show you here, or a little graph I'm gonna show you here.

And we're looking at reasons for increasing levels of engagement.

And we're gonna be looking at three different presidents here.

So we're gonna be looking at Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson.

And what I would like you to do is just to write down, underneath the ideas I've already provided for you, different reasons why these presidents increased the US engagement in South Vietnam.

So, for instance, Eisenhower, part of the reason why he increased American engagement was because he wanted to support the French.

For Kennedy, he feared looking weak against the USSR.

He was a very, very young president, a relatively inexperienced president.

And it was feared that the premier of the USSR, Khrushchev, would take advantage of him.

He didn't wanna look weak.

So that's part of the reason why he really pushed to make sure that communism didn't overtake the South Vietnamese.

And for Johnson, he was concerned that the Ho Chi Minh Trail was providing the Viet Cong with significant resources.

So therefore, part of the reason why he escalated was to try and neutralise the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

And also, he wanted to honour JFK's legacy.

So whether he wanted to or not, Kennedy had already given quite a few, quite a significant resource to South Vietnam.

And it was felt by Johnson that if he didn't continue that trend, then effectively he'll be dishonouring the memory of Kennedy.

So write down the examples I've given you.

Try and get one or two more examples for each president.

Pause the video whilst you're doing that, and I'll see you in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

So hopefully you've got some good ideas.

Here's some of the ideas that I've got.

They might be the same as yours, they might be different.

If they are different, get some of these down as well.

It's always good to have a variety of different answers to these sort of questions.

So for Eisenhower, he president from 1953 to 1961, part of the reason why he increased US engagement in South Vietnam was he wanted to support the French, but also because of his theory, of the domino theory.

And he also wanted to contain communism as well.

So that's why the US got more involved in South Vietnam, in the whole of Vietnam, underneath the presidency of Eisenhower.

In regards to Kennedy, was only president from '61 to '63 before he was assassinated, he feared looking weak against the USSR.

He also wanted to show support for Diem's regime as well.

That's part of the reason why he also escalated.

And regards to Johnson, he became president upon JFK's assassination in 1963, and then won a second term.

Well, won his first term, really.

So he was president until 1969.

He wanted to try and neutralise the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

He wanted to honour JFK's legacy.

And also, there's the Gulf of Tonkin incident as well, which meant that Johnson was able to use Congress to grant him the authority to significantly increase US engagement in the war.

So hopefully you've got some of those ideas down or you've got some other ones of your own as well.

So let's move on then to our next task.

So in this task, I've got two images on the screen in front of you there.

And what I'd like you to do is give both of these images a caption that explains how they were linked to escalation of the conflict under Johnson.

And just to kinda give you a helping hand, a little start there, I've just got a couple of little captions which explains what they are.

So in the first one, we've got a Vietnamese guerrilla, and in the second image there, we've got President Johnson signing the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

So that's what they are.

What I want you to do is add in another caption beneath that explains how do we link to escalation? So how is the Vietnamese guerrilla linking to escalation? How is President Johnson's signing of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution linked to escalation? So pause the video now while you do that task, and I'll see you in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

So I've got a couple of captions underneath the images here, and hopefully you've got something similar, or if not, hopefully yours are equally as good.

So under the first one, I've said that this caption can explain how US escalated because it demonstrates that the Viet Cong were winning in South Vietnam, and therefore, more US troops were needed to counter this.

In the second one, I can say that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was used to justify bombing North Vietnam.

And it was indeed the reason why the US took direct action against the North Vietnamese.

Right, let's move on now then to our second and final learning cycle for today, which is changing attitudes at home.

So most Americans were pleased that their country was doing what it could to stop the spread of communism.

A poll in October 1965, so about a year or so after the Vietnam War kind of officially started, it showed that 64% of Americans supported Johnson's escalation following the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

If you remember, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution wasn't a formal declaration of war, but is essentially what it was, which is why I say it's kind of officially the start of the Vietnam War.

However, there had always been Americans who were uncomfortable with their country's involvement in Vietnam and with the use of conscription.

And the use of conscription is forcing people by law to join the armed services.

And by 1965, discontent was growing.

So although 64% of Americans supported the US involvement in Vietnam, actually, there was a growing number of people who weren't just a bit miffed about it.

They were actively unhappy and willing to do something to demonstrate their unhappiness with American involvement as well.

So there were larger, there were mostly peaceful protests, and they were becoming more and more regular as the years went on.

Common tactics for these peaceful protests included marches, sit-ins, teach-ins and the burning of draught cards, which were the conscription orders that the American government sent out to young men.

By the summer of 1967, anti-Vietnam protests were effectively in full swing.

In October of that year, the March to the Pentagon saw 100,000 people in Washington, DC, call for an end to the war.

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

Prior to the Tet Offensive, the majority of Americans were still broadly supportive, but images of burning villages and wounded Vietnamese civilians, which were broadcast to American televisions every night, was eroding in the image of the US as the good guy standing up for smaller nations against the evils of communism.

It's hard to say that you are the good guy when you can see firsthand that your country is just bombing innocent civilians, destroying their villages.

It's hard to marry up that idea.

So this war was the first to be televised in such a way.

We did have video evidence of other wars.

However, not to the extent that the Vietnam War was being televised, and there wasn't necessarily live images of other wars.

There were sometimes live images being broadcast back to American homes of the Vietnam War.

For a lot of people, this brought home the realities of the incredibly destructive US tactics.

So everyone, again, is saying that we are beating the communists, but you can actually see that happening and see exactly what that means.

For a lot of people, it's deeply discouraging and they're suddenly not as supportive as they used to be.

1967 also saw continued protests about domestic issues, the most widespread being about issues regarding race.

There were a lot of race riots in America at this point in time as well.

Some of these erupted into significant levels of violence as well.

So we're going beyond race protests.

They become race riots at this point in time.

There was a lot of damage, there were destruction.

There were lives lost as well due to these race riots.

The US general in charge in Vietnam, General Westmoreland, was called home to speak to the American people and increase optimism that the war could be won.

And it's the first time that something like that had ever been attempted.

So never before in American history had an American general been asked to return from the frontline to talk to the ordinary people and try and convince them that, yes, the war will be over soon, the very first time.

And effectively what this means, it demonstrates just how seriously the US government took the opposition, the growing opposition, to the war.

However, Westmoreland's public statements backfired enormously after Tet Offensive.

So him saying that the war is soon over, the war will soon be won, and then the Tet Offensive occurs, for a lot of people, that made them extremely angry.

They felt that they had been lied to.

So especially (laughs) as well is that the general again made headlines by asking for another 200,000 more men to finish the fight.

So that 548,000, according to Westmoreland, that's not enough.

They needed another 200,000 men on top of that to actually go ahead and finish the fights.

So naturally, the US public are very angry about that.

They felt that Westmoreland and Johnson and his whole government had been lying to them.

They also felt as well, and, well, certainly Johnson felt that he couldn't sanction sending over 200,000 more men because it didn't feel as though Westmoreland had a real plan about how to end the war.

Simply just throwing men at the problem was no longer palatable for the American people.

And as a result of that, Johnson couldn't sanction that being Westmoreland's answer.

You need a stronger, more definitive plan to end this war, and Westmoreland couldn't provide one.

So as a result, 200,000 men were not, sorry, 2,000 additional men were not sent to Vietnam.

But also, Johnson himself decided that the time has come for him to step down as president as well.

He couldn't necessarily see himself becoming president for a second term.

By January 1969, support for their country's involvement in Vietnam had fallen to 39%.

So well under 1/2 of the population now supports the war at Vietnam after the Tet Offensive.

Right, let's have a quick knowledge check now then.

So what year did the March to the Pentagon take place? And again, as a reminder, the March to the Pentagon was the large-scale Vietnam War protest in America.

So was that in 1966, 1967 or 1968? Make your choice now.

All right, if you chose 1967, well done.

That is indeed correct.

So another quick knowledge check.

I would like you now to choose two reasons why public support for Johnson fell in the early months of 1968.

So was it because the Tet Offensive demonstrated that the Vietnam War was not close to ending, as Johnson had said? Is it because General Westmoreland, the man in charge of the US Army in Vietnam, wanted 200,000 more troops? Is it because high-ranking officials in Johnson's government were found to be communist spies? Or is it because it was discovered that Johnson had secretly been funding wars in several countries around the world? So choose two of those options now.

All right, if you chose A and B, then very well done.

That is indeed the correct answers.

All right, let's go for this task here then.

So I've got a quote from General Westmoreland, who's the leader of the US troops in Vietnam, in late 1967.

Let's read through that, first of all.

He says, "I have been observing the war in South Vietnam at close hand for almost four years.

During the first 1 1/2 years of my tour, we were confined generally to an advisory role.

In the past 2 1/2 years, I've seen the progressive commitment of US troops in support of the Vietnamese.

And I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today, he is certainly losing." Now, what I'd like you to do with that quote from General Westmoreland there, is answer these two questions.

So firstly, who do you think this message was for? Who is Westmoreland talking to in this particular quote? And B, why do you think this message was made? Why is he saying this? Why is he stating this, the facts here? So pause the video whilst you do this, and I'll see you once you've done that.

All right, welcome back.

So hopefully your answers look very similar to mine.

So who do you think Westmoreland's message was for? He was talking to the US public at this particular point in time.

And why did he send this message? Well, the reason being is that support for the war was falling.

He was trying to shore up support amongst the American public for the war in Vietnam.

Okay, our next task then.

I've got a graph on the screen here in front of you.

I want you to think, how useful is this source? How useful is this graph for understanding public opinion about US involvement in Vietnam? And just to explain the axes here, so we can see that the vertical axis there, that is the percentage of supports, or, in this case, percentage of disapproval for President Johnson at this point in time.

And then along the horizontal axis, we've got the dates there as well.

So you can read those as the dates.

The blue line are people, the American citizens who support Johnson, who think he's doing a good job.

And the orange line are people who disapprove of Johnson, who don't think he's doing a very, very good job.

So have a little think about what this source is showing you, and then I want you to think about how useful it is.

And some ideas for that is you could show one way in which it is useful, and one limitation of its usefulness as well.

So how is this source useful? How is this source potentially not so great or how could it be improved? And overall, how useful do you think it is? So pause the video whilst you do that, and I'll see you in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

So hopefully your answers look somewhat similar to mine.

So I said one way in which this source is useful is that Johnson became less popular with the war in Vietnam, and the graph shows a sharp fall in popularity soon after the Tet Offensive and Westmoreland's call for 200,000 more troops.

So if we just pop back to that graph there, you can see the Tet Offensive has been highlighted there.

You can see that the blue line, the approval line, takes a sharp decline at that point in time.

A limitation of its usefulness, though, is that there were other reasons for Johnson's rating to go down.

It wasn't just the war in Vietnam that was making Johnson unpopular with the US public.

So, for instance, race riots were also making people really quite unhappy with the way that America was going.

Right, our third and final task for this particular learning cycle, and the final task of today as well, I've got another interpretation, which this one's about US public reaction to the Tet Offensive.

I would like you to write down one relevant fact that either supports it or argues against it.

So do you have evidence to back up what this interpretation is saying or do you have evidence to contradict what this interpretation is saying? So if we read through the interpretation now together, the Tet Offensive played a pivotal role in President Johnson's decision not to seek reelection.

The offensive cast doubts on previously optimistic official reports about how the war was progressing.

The extensive media coverage of the offensive led to dramatic shifts in approval ratings for both the war and the president himself.

Johnson asked of his advisors, "When will it end?" So I'd like you to, like I said, write down either a fact that supports that interpretation or a fact that contradicts it.

Pause the video whilst you're doing that, and I'll see you again in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

So hopefully you got on fine with that task.

And here's something that I've said, which you could have also said as well.

(mumbles) Been very, very different, and still be fine.

I said that US public support for the war fell from 64% in 1965 to 39% in January 1969.

So it is true that the Tet Offensive was part of a big decline in supports.

So that's a supporting piece of evidence for this interpretation.

I've also gone on to say, though, just gonna give you different ideas what you could write, there had been protests about the Vietnam War before the Tet Offensive.

For example, a demonstration by 100,000 people in October in 1967.

So it wasn't the Tet Offensive on its own that affected his decision.

Okay? Right, just to summarise this lesson now then.

American involvement in Vietnam escalated up to 1968, with successive presidents committing more and more troops and equipment to the fight against communism.

Support for their country's involvement in Vietnam was initially high in America, but this diminished as the war dragged on.

And large-scale protests against the war in Vietnam became more and more frequent in America.

Thank you very much for joining me today.

Hopefully you've enjoyed yourself.

Hopefully you've learnt a lot.

And hopefully I'll see you again next time.

Bye-Bye.