The Vietnam war

1. The Vietnam war By: Austin Certain, Gavin Mitchell, and Thomas Heckler

2. Causes Of the Vietnam War By Austin certain

3. The Vietnam war was a war that happened when congress passed the gulf of Tonkin allowing the president to send troops to Vietnam. This was to stop communist throughout the world. What is the Vietnam war

4. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964, giving president Johnson the permission to deploy troops in Vietnam. • It is considered the start of the Vietnam war but the conflict has deeper roots Why did the Vietnam war start

5. To summarize the Vietnam war started as a result of the U.S’s strategy of containment during the cold war, which lead to preventing the spread of communism throughout the world. Deeper conflict

6. Nearly two thirds of the men in the war were volunteers, leaving the other one third involuntary. • The entire Vietnam war lasted about 20 year, the longest war in U.S history. • The Vietnam war is featured in a famous movie called Forest Gump. Facts about the Vietnam war

7. Vietnamese War The warfare By Gavin Mitchell

8. The means of some forces obtaining guns in the war is interesting. Many countries were supplied guns, primarily from the big forces like China and the US. • There weren’t actually enough guns to supply even the modest armies in comparison to the US and so both the Anti-Communist and Communists countries sometimes had to supply their armies with less powerful guns. Thailand had to give the HK33 to their troops who didn’t receive a M1 Garand and the Viet Cong had to take guns from dead soldiers. • Guns were mounted to vehicles a lot to ensure safety of the supplies carried in the vehicles and the soldiers themselves. The guns mounted were almost always a machine gun since it was they were the most powerful and something like a truck could take the kick from the fire. • Shotguns were usually supplied to one member per squad within the US army. • The North Vietnamese had trouble producing sniper rifles due to their high cost so only the best of the best received. • All soldiers in the Viet Cong and Vietnamese army were told to make each shot count due to them always being low on ammo. Conventional Weaponry

9. The M48 Patton was the main battle tank of the US army during the war. It was used so much since it wasn’t slow compared to heavier tanks but was still sturdy. • A variant of the M48 Patton is the M67 Zippo. The nickname Zippo derives from an American cigarette lighter brand. Instead of the usual 90mm gun attached to the tank, it boasted a flamethrower. • Gun trucks were commonly used as a means of transportation of supplies since they could hold a lot and were mounted with guns as defense. It was not uncommon to see convoys of 200 of them. • Boats were used a lot in the war since Vietnam had a lot of rivers. They were used to transport supplies and occasionally as a mean to get a weapon on the water. • Boats were also used to get refugees out of the country after the war. Vehicles

10. Napalm is by far the most controversial weapon used in the war. It was a sticky substance that was flammable and when ignited, got to temperatures of 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. • Napalm was eventually banned by the United Nation’s Convention on Conventional Weapons, (CCW). President Obama agreed to this and signed the bill. • Agent Orange was another chemical weapon used in the war and was primarily used as a herbicide and was never intended to harm people directly. It was used to destroy Viet Cong crops and destroy the dense jungles which acted as cover for the Viet Cong. The effects it had on humans though, were much worse. Two such effects were gene damage which increased the chance of mutations in offspring, and causing various forms of cancer. • M34 White Phosphorus is a much less known chemical weapon used in the war. It provided visual cover since it created a white cloud and as a weapon since it absorbed the air around the cloud and caused asphyxiation which lead to plenty of harmful effects. Chemical weapons

11. Traps were used by the Vietnamese and the Viet Cong and were used to kill enemy soldiers or at the least slow them down. • The most common type of trap used was the Punji trap with a few varieties like the door trap, spike board, side-closing trap, just to name a few. • All of these traps used spikes to impale the victim and were easy to set up and cheap. • Many traps were set near Cu Chi tunnels, which were military targets. So the Viet Cong ,who used them, would set up traps near the entrances to confuse the enemy soldiers into thinking that they found an entrance to the tunnel, or placed the traps in very concealed locations near the entrances they would step on them be injured or die. • These traps and others like trip wire traps, letting loose giant logs, or maybe even detonating grenades, were effective since they were placed in the thick dense jungles of the peninsula of Vietnam. traps

12. Cu Chi tunnels were large underground facilities used to store supplies like guns and ammo, but also housed soldiers and had kitchens and hospitals because of that. • Living conditions in a tunnel were terrible. Infested with ants, vermin, scorpions, and poisonous centipedes might’ve been the least of a soldier’s problem since one captured Viet Cong soldier said that half of the soldiers in the tunnels had malaria. • The living quarters of the Cu Chi tunnels were usually about 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide. They were entirely meant for sleeping in. • The US army made many attempts to flush out the troops from the tunnels or destroy them completely. One such attempted was lobbing grenades down entrances but due to the unique way the tunnels were built. No one grenade got far. • The origins of the tunnels date back to the 40s when France ruled over the peninsula of Vietnam and were created to fight back the French and were obviously very effective to be used to win two wars. Cu Chi Tunnels

13. Effects of the Vietnam war By Thomas Heckler

14. The Vietnam war has had lasting effects on multiple countries and continues to be present in our world today. In the U.S., these effects can be seen in economy, as the U.S spent approximately $168 billion. As well as the economy, the Vietnam War caused lots of mistrust in our government, many people questions the decisions and actions of the executive branch. Furthermore, citizens of the U.S. questioned the claim made by their government as being of “moral superiority” and being “the defender of freedom and right.” As well as this, the Vietnam War resulted in 58,000 U.S. casualties. For those who did not suffer physical injuries whilst defending their country, the post-war psychological effects continue to leave their mark on around 700,000 Vietnam veterans. Finally, and perhaps the most noticeable effect of the Vietnam War in the U.S., the legal voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 after protests from young men drafted into the war arguing that they should be able to vote for their president, the leader of the military, if they must risk their lives defending their country. Effects on the U.S. The Vietnam war has had many short term and long term effects on the U.S. including casualties, loss of confidence and moral superiority, and psychological after-effects.

15. Effects on the rest of the world As well as many effects on the U.S., the Vietnam War has changed the world. One of these effects is the ever-present chemicals used in the war. These chemicals still cause various diseases and disabilities in children growing up in certain parts of Vietnam. The war also was the cause of around 3,000,000-4,000,000 total deaths. The Vietnam War also caused major inflation around the world and controlled all of politics for a generation. Continuing, the country of Vietnam was unable to rebuild a successful nation, and continue to have a socialist/communist government, but are taking steps away from that. The Vietnam war continues to have strong effects all over the world, not just the U.S. This describes a chemical substance popularly used by the U.S. that continues to cause disease, disabilities, and deformities to this day in some parts of Vietnam.

16. Vietnam War protests The Vietnam war resulted in many protests. Lots of people disagreed with the U.S.’s involvement in the war in Vietnam. The first protests of the war were in 1945, the protesters disagreed with the “recolonization” of Vietnam. In 1963, the War Resisters League organized their first protest against the Vietnam War. On December 9, 1964, the first coordinated nationwide protest against the Vietnam War took place in New York City, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Miami, Austin, Sacramento, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, Boston, Cleveland, and various other cities. One popular chant in these protests was, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” This photo depicts a group of protestors against the Vietnam War and the involvement of the U.S. in the war.

17. Results of the war By the end of the Vietnam war, The death tally was detrimental, the government had lost its people’s trust, and the U.S. was divided by different ways of how the government would be run. The U.S. dropped out of the war effort in 1973, two years before the end of the war, but did continue to support the South Vietnamese effort against the North. However, the support was not enough, as in 1975, the south Vietnamese regime collapsed, and Vietnam was united. The war in Vietnam destroyed the country, a ruined infrastructure, millions of Vietnamese citizens dead, and harmful toxins left from the chemical warfare in Vietnam. The money spent in the war effort by the U.S. also caused the social reform to be canceled as there was no longer a large enough budget to support the program. To give some perspective, this graph shows the American monthly death tally in the Vietnam War compared to the American monthly death tally in the war in Iraq that started in 2003.

18. The end of the Vietnam war The Vietnam War ended in April of 1975, with the northern part of Vietnam ultimately defeating south Vietnam, despite the support of the U.S. Because of this, Vietnam was unified, becoming a socialist/communist run country. The end of the war resulted in South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos being taken under communist control. After nearly 20 years of warfare, the second Indochina war was ended, with Vietnam being reunified and North Vietnam extending its communist ideals to the rest of Vietnam. This picture shows U.S. troops celebrating the end of the Vietnam War. Despite the war ending with the result against them, it clearly meant a lot to restore peace for the young soldiers.