President Harry Truman of the U. Vietminh rebels captured Dongkhe in September French government troops and Vietminh rebels clashed near Vinhyen in January , resulting in the deaths of some 6, Vietminh rebels. Vietminh rebels began a siege of French government troops in Dienbienphu on March 13, The French government appealed to the U.
French government troops were defeated by Vietminh rebels near Dienbienphu on May 7, French and Vietminh representatives signed a ceasefire agreement in Geneva on July 21, , and the ceasefire went into effect in northern Vietnam on July 27, and central Vietnam on August 1, Some , individuals, including some 75, French government soldiers, , civilians, , Vietminh rebels, and 40 British soldiers, were killed during the conflict.
The Maddox fired what it described as warning shots and was met by torpedo and machine gun fire. On August 4, the U. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Still, he was a smart boy who later graduated from the University of Michigan At first, General Jodl hoped to limit the terms of German surrender to only those forces still Live TV.
This Day In History. History Vault. Art, Literature, and Film History. Native American History. World War I. This decisive battle convinced the French that they could no longer maintain their Indochinese colonies and Paris quickly sued for peace. As the two sides came together in Geneva, Switzerland, international events were already shaping the future of Vietnam's modern revolution.
Drawn up in the shadow of the Korean War, the Geneva Accords represented the worst of all possible futures for war-torn Vietnam. Because of outside pressures brought to bear by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, Vietnam's delegates to the Geneva Conference agreed to the temporary partition of their nation at the seventeenth parallel to allow France a face-saving defeat. The Communist superpowers feared that a provocative peace would anger the United States and its western European allies, and neither Moscow or Peking wanted to risk another confrontation with the West so soon after the Korean War.
According to the terms of the Geneva Accords, Vietnam would hold national elections in to reunify the country. The division at the seventeenth parallel, a temporary separation without cultural precedent, would vanish with the elections. The United States, however, had other ideas. Instead, Dulles and President Dwight D. Eisenhower supported the creation of a counter-revolutionary alternative south of the seventeenth parallel. Almost immediately, Diem claimed that his newly created government was under attack from Communists in the north.
In late , with American military aid, Diem began to counterattack. He used the help of the American Central Intelligence Agency to identify those who sought to bring his government down and arrested thousands. The outcry against Diem's harsh and oppressive actions was immediate. Buddhist monks and nuns were joined by students, business people, intellectuals, and peasants in opposition to the corrupt rule of Ngo Dinh Diem.
The more these forces attacked Diem's troops and secret police, the more Diem complained that the Communists were trying to take South Vietnam by force. This was, in Diem's words, "a hostile act of aggression by North Vietnam against peace-loving and democratic South Vietnam. Some Kennedy advisers believed Diem had not instituted enough social and economic reforms to remain a viable leader in the nation-building experiment.
Others argued that Diem was the "best of a bad lot. From , the Communist Party of Vietnam desired to reunify the country through political means alone. Accepting the Soviet Union's model of political struggle, the Communist Party tried unsuccessfully to cause Diem's collapse by exerting tremendous internal political pressure. After Diem's attacks on suspected Communists in the South, however, southern Communists convinced the Party to adopt more violent tactics to guarantee Diem's downfall.
At the Fifteenth Party Plenum in January , the Communist Party finally approved the use of revolutionary violence to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem's government and liberate Vietnam south of the seventeenth parallel.
In May , and again in September , the Party confirmed its use of revolutionary violence and the combination of the political and armed struggle movements. The result was the creation of a broad-based united front to help mobilize southerners in opposition to the GVN. Special Forces. Photo courtesy of the soc. Used earlier in the century to mobilize anti-French forces, the united front brought together Communists and non-Communists in an umbrella organization that had limited, but important goals.
Anyone could join this front as long as they opposed Ngo Dinh Diem and wanted to unify Vietnam. The character of the NLF and its relationship to the Communists in Hanoi has caused considerable debate among scholars, anti-war activists, and policymakers.
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