• Who: North Vietnam, South Vietnam, the U.S., and their respective allies.
• What: A conflict that resulted in significant casualties, widespread protests, and political shifts.
• When: 1955-1975
• Where: Primarily Vietnam, with broader implications in Southeast Asia and globally
• Why: It was a proxy war in the Cold War era, rooted in ideological conflict between communism and anti-communism.
• How the Vietnam War impacted History: Led to major changes in U.S. foreign policy, military strategy, and domestic politics, highlighting issues of government trust and military intervention, and resulted in the unification of Vietnam under communist rule.
THE BIG IDEA: The Vietnam War was both a civil war and a proxy war (between the United States and her allies vs. the USSR and People’s Republic of China).
Pages to study: pg. 100 – 132 of The Making of the 20th Century World 1940s – 1991 (Unit 2).
Focus on these areas: key developments in North and South Vietnam in the 1950s, partition of Vietnam in 1954, consolidation of communist control in North Vietnam and instability in South Vietnam discontentment over the Geneva Accords, failure to carry out national elections in 1956, unpopularity of Ngo Dinh Diem’s actions and the support from the North for the insurgency in the South, escalation of tensions between North and South Vietnam from 1954, role of key players in the conflict: North Vietnam, South Vietnam, USA, USSR and China, the end of the Vietnam War and the immediate aftermath of Reunification of Vietnam, beginning of détente.
References: ChatGPT, Wikipedia, The Making of the 20th Century World 1940s – 1991 co-authored by Ben Walsh (Hodder Education) and 2261 Syllabus Document