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Among the terms of the Geneva Accords were the following: Vietnam would become an independent nation, formally ending 75 years of French colonialism. The former French colonies Cambodia and Laos would also be given their independence. Vietnam would be temporarily divided for a period of two years
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Assassinated by General Duong Van Diem, Diem's heavy-handed tactics against the Vietcong insurgency deepened his government's unpopularity, and his brutal treatment of the opposition to his regime alienated the South Vietnamese populace, notably Buddhists. In 1963 he was murdered during a coup d'état by some of his generals. -
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 secretly sends the first wave of U.S. troops over to South Vietnam to have a more significant role in the war. He feared that North Vietnam would soon gain power over South Vietnam and thus he sent troops to control the spread of communism -
The Tet Offensive was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. The offensive was an attempt to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War. -
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 -
In the presidential election, Republican former Vice President Richard Nixon defeated Democratic incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Nixon won the popular vote by less than one point, but took most states outside the Northeast and comfortably won the electoral vote. -
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. -
Vietnamization was a policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. 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". -
protesting students at City College met resistance from a small group of construction workers, some of whom self-identified themselves as Vietnam veterans, a preview of what would come later that week. Then, chaos descended on the peaceful scene, as nearly 200 construction workers arrived at the protest bearing patriotic signs and, according to a New York Times report on the incident, chants of “All The Way, U.S.A.” and “Love It or Leave It.” -
Improved relations with the Soviet Union and the PRC are often cited as the most successful diplomatic achievements of Nixon's presidency. The reason for opening up China was for the U.S. to gain more leverage over relations with the Soviet Union. Resolving the Vietnam War was a particularly important factor. -
On December 13, peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam collapsed. The North Vietnamese and American negotiators traded charges and countercharges as to who was to blame. Infuriated, President Nixon ordered plans drawn up for retaliatory bombings of North Vietnam. Beginning on December 18, American B-52s and fighter-bombers dropped over 20,000 tons of bombs on the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. North Vietnam claimed that over 1,600 civilians were killed -
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. -
With his complicity in the cover-up made public and his political support completely eroded, Nixon resigned from office on August 9, 1974. He is the only U.S. president to have resigned from office. On September 8, 1974, Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him. -
The Fall of Saigon, also known as the Liberation of Saigon, 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