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He helped found the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. Led the Viet Minh independence movement from 1941 onward, establishing the Communist-ruled Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and defeating the French Union in 1954 at the battle of Dien Bien Phu.
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Hours after Japan’s surrender in World War II, Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh declares the independence of Vietnam from France. French forces seized southern Vietnam and opened talks with the Vietnamese communists. The north responded with a communist guerrilla movement in the South, called the Viet Cong. North Vietnam and the Viet Cong successfully opposed a series of ineffectual U.S.-backed South Vietnam regimes.
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The Geneva Accords, as part of the agreement, the French agreed to withdraw their troops from northern Vietnam. Vietnam would be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel, pending elections within two years to choose a president and reunite the country.
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower coins one of the most famous phrases when he suggests the fall of French Indochina to the communists could create a “domino” effect in Southeast Asia. The so-called “domino theory” dominated U.S. thinking about Vietnam for the next decade. The domino theory states that if one country fell under communist control others around would follow.
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Beginning in 1949, the Viet Minh fought an increasingly effective guerrilla war against France with military and economic assistance from newly Communist China. The French occupied Dien Bien Phu, a small mountain outpost on the Vietnamese border near Laos. In 1954, the Viet Minh army, moved against Dien Bien Phu and in March encircled it with 40,000 Communist troops and heavy artillery. The French collapsed.
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Diem would refuse to make any meaningful concessions or institute any significant new reforms so U.S. support was withdrawn. After this Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated during a coup by opposition generals.
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Diem refused to carry out the 1954 Geneva Accords, which had called for free elections to be held throughout Vietnam in 1956 in order to establish a national government. With the south torn by dissident groups and political factions, Diem established an autocratic regime that was staffed at the highest levels by members of his own family.
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This organization, the National Liberation Front (NLF), more commonly known as the Viet Cong, was designed to replicate the success of the Viet Minh, the umbrella nationalist organization that successfully liberated Vietnam from French colonial rule. North Vietnam established the National Liberation Front, to foment insurgency in the South. This was important because the Viet Conf tried to overthrow the South Vietnamese government.
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Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quang Duc burned himself to death at a busy intersection in Saigon. He was attempting to show that to fight all forms of oppression on equal terms, Buddhism too. It was important because it was an act of protest over discrimination towards Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government.
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JFK, was an American politician and journalist who served as the 35th president of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination, following his assassination LBJ took presidency. Researchers concluded that Kennedy would have sought a more diplomatic solution than Johnson, who committed more troops to the Vietnam War in 1964, and that Kennedy wanted to be out of Vietnam entirely by 1966.
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The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorized President Lyndon Johnson to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression” by the communist government of North Vietnam. It was passed on August 7, 1964, by the U.S. Congress after an alleged attack on two U.S. naval destroyers stationed off the coast of Vietnam. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution effectively launched America’s full-scale involvement in the Vietnam War.
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The first U.S. combat troops arrive in Vietnam as 3500 Marines land at China Beach to defend the American air base at Da Nang. They join 23,000 American military advisors already in Vietnam. The U.S. military advisory effort in Vietnam had a modest beginning in September 1950, when the United States Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), Vietnam, was established in Saigon.
