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North Vietnam had a political organization and army called Viet Congo hat fought against the United States and other anti-communist forces using a guerilla and regular warfare. But as the war grew longer, Viet Congo fighting decreased while the North Vietnamese Army grew. There has been conflict in Vietnam for decades before the war. For nearly six decades Vietnam suffered under French colonial rule when Japan invaded parts of Vietnam in 1940.
In 1941, communist Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Mini returned to Vietnam from traveling for thirty years, to establish the Viet Mini, whose goal was to remove Japanese and French occupiers of the land. He said he was establishing an independent Vietnam with a new government called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. France was not pleased on hearing this and was not going to give up and fought back. Ho Chi Mini asked the U. S. For years to support him against the French. But during this time, Cold War era, their goal was to prevent the spread of Communism.
In fear of the “domino theory”, saying “if one county in Southeast Asia fell to Communism then surrounding countries would also soon fall, like a falling domino causing an entire row of standing dominoes to all” (Rosenberg,l So in 1950 the U. S chose to send aid to the French to defeat Ho Chi Mini from turning Vietnam into a communist country. After their defeat at the battle of Dine Been PH, the French surrendered and agreed to a set of treaties. “At the Geneva Conference of 1 954, a number of nations met to determine how the French could peacefully withdraw from the war. In this conference they made an agreement called the Geneva Accords.
So the French accepted the Viet Minim’s demands to remove all troops from Vietnam” (Specter,2). A democratic election was to be held in 1 956 that would unite the country under one government. The United States refused to agree to the election, fearing the communists might win. With help from the United States, “South Vietnam carried out the election only in South Vietnam rather than the whole country” (Specter,2). Mongo Dint Diem, South Vietnamese government leader was an extremely unpopular leader who refused to allow his people to participate in the democratic process and instead punished those who opposed him.
Which resulted in his assassination. Still, for eight years, the US. Government gave military and economic aid to South Vietnam o strengthen and support Dime’s regime. This partnership would set the stage for the most disastrous war in American history. The Gulf of Tontine Incident was when North Vietnam fired directly upon two U. S. Ships. “President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the first U. S. Ground troops to Vietnam in March 1965. The National Liberation Front (NIL) or known as the Viet Congo, had launched a guerrilla revolution against Mongo Dint Diem and the American-supported Republic of South Vietnam” (Specter,6).
So to defeat the resistance in South Vietnam, the United States launched an aggressive aiming against Ho Chi Mini and North Vietnamese government. Many presidents, military and political advisors,believed that aerial bombardment would lessen the ground war in the South by cutting off supply lines to the Viet Congo and ultimately forcing Communist leaders to surrender. But a lot of their tactics really it did little to break the will of North Vietnam, and never guaranteed them a United States victory. On January 30, 1 968, “North Vietnam surprised the U. S. ND South Vietnam by using Viet Congo to attack about a hundred South Vietnamese ties and towns, this event was called the Et Offensive” (Rosenberg,2). This attack failed in its goal of overthrowing the South Vietnamese government but became the turning point in the war. This showed that South Vietnam was unable to fend for itself against the North, despite many years of huge IS . S. Military aid. This also became a turning point in the war because President Johnson, faced an unhappy American public, viewing the war as “unnamable” developing anti- Vietnam war movements, and bad news from his military leaders in Vietnam.