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REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM
declared the Republic of Vietnam, and promptly canceled the elections that had been scheduled for 1956. -
GENEVA ACCORDS
The Geneva Accords stipulated that the divide was temporary and that Vietnam was to be reunified under free elections to be held in 1956. -
JOHN F KENDDEY
, U.S. president John F. Kennedy sent American “military advisors” to Vietnam to help train the South Vietnamese army, the ARVN, but quickly realized that the Diem regime was unsalvageable. -
U.S. Senate
The U.S. Senate then approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolutionn which gave broad support to President Johnson to escalate U.S. involvement in the war. -
Operation Starlite made a first major battle
began as the first major American ground battle of the war when 5,500 US Marines destroyed a Viet Cong stronghold on the Van Tuong peninsula in Quang Ngai Province. The Marines were tipped-off by a Viet Cong deserter who said that there was an attack planned against the US base at Chu Lai. -
the House Un-American Activities Committee
began investigations of Americans who were suspected of aiding the Viet Cong, with the intent to introduce legislation making these activities illegal. Anti-war demonstrators disrupted the meeting and 50 were arrested. -
the enemey
when the enemy, supposedly on the verge of collapse, mounted the Tet Offensive (named after Tet Nguyen Dan, the lunar new year festival which is the most important Vietnamese holiday) in South Vietnam (and, to a lesser degree, in the 1969 Post-Tet Offensive). -
a suspected Viet Cong
executed by Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief. Loan shot the suspect in the head on a public street in front of journalists. The execution was filmed and photographed and helped sway public opinion in the United States against the war -
SOUTH VIETNAM ARMY
The U.S. government continued to fund the South Vietnamese army, but this funding quickly dwindled. Meanwhile, as President Nixon became embroiled in the Watergate scandal that led to his resignation in August 1974, North Vietnamese forces stepped up their attacks on the South and finally launched an all-out offensive in the spring of 1975. -
SOUTH AND NORTH
the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, who reunited the country under Communist rule as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, ending the Vietnam War. -
American President Jimmy Carter
PARODONED NEARLEY ALL VIETNAM WAR DRAFT EVADERS
