Ethan Blake

  • Communists led by Mao Zedong take power in China

  • U.S. becomes involved

    President Eisenhower sends military advisers to train and arm South Vietnamese Army in its fight against the Communists.
  • Eisenhower proposes the "domino theory"

  • John F. Kennedy takes office

  • President Kennedy is assassinated

  • Two North Vietnamese gun boats attack an American destroyer

  • Full-scale military intervention begins

  • 20,000 people protest against the war in Washington

  • Johnson's national security advisor says "I see the light at the end of the tunnel."

  • North Vietnam launches a series of attacks, shaking America's confidence

  • President Nixon succeeds Johnson

  • Nixon and Kissinger begin withdrawing U.S. troops, "vietnamization"

  • U.S. forces decrease to 220,000

  • A media advisor named Marshall McLuhan writes "Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America, not on the battlefields of Vietnam."

  • Evacuation of Saigon