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War Powers Act
The War Powers Resolution is a federal law intended to check the U.S. president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. The resolution was adopted in the form of a United States congressional joint resolution.
Significance: It was created to limit the power of the president after the Vietnam War. -
Domino Theory Coined
The first figure to propose the domino theory was President Harry Truman in the 1940s, where he introduced the theory in order to “justify sending military aid to Greece and Turkey.”
Significance: After Eisenhower's speech, the phrase “domino theory” began to be used as a shorthand expression of the strategic importance of South Vietnam to the United States, as well as the need to contain the spread of communism throughout the world. -
Geneva Accords
The Geneva Conference, intended to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War and the First Indochina War, was a conference involving several nations that took place in Geneva, Switzerland, from April 26 to July 20, 1954
Significance: Most obviously, they brought an end to the First Indochina War and marked the end of French influence in Southeast Asia. The Geneva Accords also helped lay the groundwork for the Second Indochina War, more commonly known as the Vietnam War. -
Assassination Of Diem
On 1 November 1963, Ngô Đình Diệm, the president of South Vietnam, was arrested and assassinated in a successful coup d'état led by General Dương Văn Minh. The coup was the culmination of nine years of autocratic and nepotistic family rule in the country.
Importance: The death of Diem caused celebration among many people in South Vietnam, but also lead to political chaos in the nation. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia.
Significance: Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. -
LBJ Ordered 1st Troops in Vietnam
Lyndon B. Johnson decided to send the Marines,3,500 of them to Vietnam as what proved to be just the first American commitment of regular troops to that embattled country. Significance: To support the Saigon Government in an effort to defeat an increasingly lethal Communist insurgency. -
Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam.
The Tet Offensive played an important role in weakening U.S. public support for the war in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh and leaders in Hanoi planned the Tet Offensive in the hopes of achieving a decisive victory that would end the grinding conflict that frustrated military leaders on both sides. -
My Lai Massacre
The My Lai massacre was one of the most horrific incidents of violence committed against unarmed civilians during the Vietnam War. A company of American soldiers brutally killed most of the people—women, children, and old men in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968.
Significance: The brutality of the My Lai killings and the official cover-up fueled anti-war sentiment and further divided the United States over the Vietnam War. -
Nixon's Vietnamization Policy
A policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end US involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnamese forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops"
a strategy that aimed to reduce American involvement in the Vietnam War by transferring all military responsibilities to South Vietnam. The increasingly unpopular war had created deep rifts in American society. -
Nixon Sends troops into Cambodia
He announced his decision to launch American forces into Cambodia with the special objective of capturing COSVN, "the headquarters of the entire Communist military operation in South Vietnam." Nixon's speech on national television on 30 April 1970 was called "vintage Nixon" by Kissinger. -
Kent State Shooting
The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre and the Kent State massacre, were the killings of four and wounding of nine other unarmed Kent State University students by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970, in Kent, Ohio.
students protesting the bombing of Cambodia by the United States military forces clashed with Ohio National Guardsmen on the Kent State University campus. The Kent State Shootings became the focal point of a nation deeply divided by the Vietnam War. -
Hard Hat Riot
The Hard Hat Riot occurred on May 8, 1970, in New York City. It started around noon when around 400 construction workers and around 800 office workers attacked around 1,000 demonstrators affiliated with the student strike of 1970.
broke out near the intersection of Wall Street and Broad Street in Lower Manhattan, led to a mob scene with more than 20,000 people in the streets, eventually leading to a siege of New York City Hall, an attack on the conservative Pace University, lasted 3 hours -
Nixon's Christmas Bombing
Effects: According to Nixon and his supporters, the Christmas bombing forced the North Vietnamese to make concessions, accept an armistice, and release American POWs. It was a great U.S. victory that brought peace with honor.
its purpose was to persuade the South Vietnamese to go along with an armistice to which they were violently opposed. -
Paris Peace Accords
The Paris Peace Accords, officially titled the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam, was a peace treaty signed on January 27, 1973, to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War.
In January of 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed after four years of negotiations, with the intent to establish peace in Vietnam and end the war. The Accords were signed by the United States, and North and South Vietnam. -
Saigon Falls
The Fall of Saigon, also known as the Liberation of Saigon by North Vietnamese, was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong on 30 April 1975...
The fall of Saigon (now Ho Chin Minh City) effectively marked the end of the Vietnam War. After the introduction of Vietnamisation by President Richard Nixon, US forces in South Vietnam had been constantly reduced leaving the military of South Vietnam to defend their country against the North