DSST Vietnam War cheat sheet

Roots of the Vietnam War

• French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) was colonized from the 1860s–1880s; Vietnam was divided into Tonkin (north), Annam (center), and Cochinchina (south), with Cochinchina ruled as a direct colony and the others as protectorates.

• Ho Chi Minh (Nguyen Ai Quoc) founded the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930; earlier he was a founding member of the French Communist Party (1920) and worked with the Comintern, giving the independence movement a Marxist-Leninist and anti-colonial program.

• Japan occupied Indochina from 1940–41 while leaving the Vichy French administration in place; in March 1945 Japan overthrew French rule, creating a power vacuum that the Viet Minh exploited.

• The Viet Minh (League for the Independence of Vietnam) was formed in May 1941 at Pac Bo under Ho Chi Minh; its guerrilla force, later the People's Army of Vietnam, was organized by Vo Nguyen Giap.

• The August Revolution of 1945 followed Japan's surrender; the Viet Minh seized Hanoi and on 2 September 1945 Ho Chi Minh declared independence, quoting the U.S. Declaration of Independence in his speech.

• The Potsdam Agreement (July 1945) provided for Chinese Nationalist troops to accept Japanese surrender north of the 16th parallel and British troops south of it; Britain rearmed French forces, enabling France to reassert control in the south.

• The First Indochina War (1946–1954) began with the French bombardment of Haiphong in November 1946 and the Viet Minh attack on Hanoi in December 1946; it ended with the Viet Minh victory at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954.

• The 1954 Geneva Conference produced accords dividing Vietnam at the 17th parallel, with reunification elections scheduled for July 1956; the United States and South Vietnam (Bao Dai's state) did not sign the accords, and the elections were never held.

• The domino theory-articulated by Eisenhower in April 1954-held that a communist Vietnam would trigger the fall of neighboring Southeast Asian states; it framed U.S. policy from Truman's containment through the 1960s.