Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Origins of the Vietnam War

Starting point is 00:00:00 The Vietnam War was perhaps the most significant event that took place in the latter half of the 20th century. It had profound impacts on the United States and, of course, Vietnam. However, many people have a very simplistic view of the causes of the war. They assume it was just a result of Cold War politics. While that certainly was a cause, the roots go back much further. Learn more about the origins of the Vietnam War and how and why it happened on this episode of Everything Everywhere daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day and tonight. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR.

Starting point is 00:01:06 This episode is not about the Vietnam War per se. I'm not going to be talking about troop movements, battles, or even the events that occurred in the United States during the war. This episode is about the long lead-up to the war and why it ever happened in the first place. The short explanation that most people have regarding the Vietnam War is that the United States was trying to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. And to be sure, that is a big part of the story. But as we'll see in a bit, there is more to it than that. The events that unfolded in Vietnam did not appear out of nowhere in the 1950s. they were the result of a long line of events that began almost a century beforehand.

Starting point is 00:01:51 The war's origin can probably be traced all the way back to the 16th and 17th centuries when French Jesuits arrived in Vietnam. The Jesuits, as they did in so many places, tried to convert the local people to Christianity. Notable among them was Alexander de Rhodes, a French Jesuit who was credited with creating the Vietnamese alphabet known as Kwok-Nur, which uses the Latin script. Over time, the French began to have a larger and larger presence in Vietnam. During the 18th century, some French adventurers and missionaries provided military and political support to the Wen Lords, who were one of the rival factions vying for control of Vietnam.

Starting point is 00:02:31 This early involvement set the stage for later French intervention. It wasn't until the mid-19th century that the French involvement in Vietnam became more formal. In particular, France's formal involvement began with a military, expedition in 1858, ostensibly to protect Catholic missionaries who are facing persecution. French forces alongside their Spanish allies launched an attack on Danang, but it was not immediately successful. It wasn't until 1862, after several years of conflict, that the French forced the Wynne dynasty to cede three provinces in southern Vietnam, marking the beginning of French colonial rule in a region that they called Cochin China. Over the next few decades, the

Starting point is 00:03:15 French gradually expanded their control over the rest of Vietnam. By 1884, after defeating the Vietnamese forces and their Chinese allies in the Sino-French War, the French had effectively taken control of the entire country. Vietnam was divided into three regions, Kocin China, which was directly ruled by France, Anam, a French protectorate in central Vietnam, and Tonkin, a French protectorate in North Vietnam. In 1887, the French established the Indo-Chinese Union, which included Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This marked the formal establishment of French colonial rule in the region. The French colonial administration exploited Vietnam's natural resources and its labor. They introduced cash crops, such as rubber and rice for export, built infrastructure to serve colonial interests,

Starting point is 00:04:03 and imposed heavy taxes on the Vietnamese population. The French also sought to impose their culture and language on the Vietnamese through the educational system, while simultaneously suppressing traditional Vietnamese culture. French became the language of administration, and many Vietnamese elites were educated in French schools. Neelless to say, this did not sit well with the Vietnamese people. The French were attempting to undermine their culture and replace it with a completely foreign one. From the outset of French rule, there was resistance from various Vietnamese groups. The most notable early resistance leader was Fanding Fu, who led a rebellion in the 1880s and 1890s. 1990s. By the early 20th century, modern nationalist movements began to emerge. Figures such as

Starting point is 00:04:51 Fan Bo Chao and Fan Chao Ching advocated for reform and independence. However, it was the rise of the communist movement under Ho Chi Minh that would pose the most significant challenge to French colonial rule. Ho Chi Minh, the future leader of North Vietnam, was a central figure in the struggle for Vietnamese independence. He was born Winseng Kung in 1890. He was born in a small, village in central Vietnam. His father, a Confucian scholar and teacher, instilled in him a strong sense of Vietnamese identity and resistance to French colonial rule. In his early 20s, Ho left Vietnam to work as a cook on a French steamer, which took him to various countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. Ho became a leader in the Vietnamese independence movement,

Starting point is 00:05:35 and in 1919, he attended the Versailles Peace Conference, where he petitioned for Vietnamese self-determination. At the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson advocated for the right of people to choose their own governments, which was a cornerstone of his vision for a new world order. Howe, along with many others in Southeast Asia, was deeply moved by the words of President Wilson. Ho Chi Minh issued a document titled The Eight Demands of the Animite People, which called for greater rights and freedoms for the Vietnamese under French colonial rule.

Starting point is 00:06:11 Ho was not given a response, and despite a moment, his lofty rhetoric, President Wilson never bothered to meet with him. The Versailles conference was about European powers, not their colonies. This became known in some circles as the Wilsonian moment, a missed opportunity by the United States to appeal to nationalist movements that became disillusioned. With respect to this episode, a lost chance to make an ally of a leader who was otherwise actually rather pro-American. After Versailles, Ho Chi-Men began to begin to to work more closely with socialist and communist groups that were willing to give him support. Historians have debated as to how much Ho Chi Minh was a communist versus how much he was a nationalist

Starting point is 00:06:55 and whether his rejection at Versailles resulted in embracing communism or if he was committed beforehand. But regardless of how and when he embraced communism, embrace communism he did. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the resistance movement in Vietnam grew but never achieved critical mass. What changed everything was the invasion of Vietnam by the Japanese in 1940. While the Japanese physically occupied the country, it was very different than how they occupied the rest of the countries in Southeast Asia that they invaded. After Germany had invaded France, France was ruled by the German puppet Vichy government. The Vichy government continued to administer Vietnam with the support of the Japanese military. The Vichy government's use of the

Starting point is 00:07:43 Japanese to pacify the country, weakened French control, and increased nationalism amongst the Vietnamese. In one of the odd twists to this story, during the war, Ho Chi Minh worked with the United States Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA. In Operation Deer Team, the OSS sent military advisors to Vietnam to provide assistance to the Vietnam. After the war, when the Japanese left, there was a power vacuum in the country. And on August 1945, the communist Vietnam, led by Ho Chi Minh, launched the August Revolution, seizing control of Hanoi and declaring Vietnam's independence. France attempted to reassert its control over Vietnam, leading to the first Indochina

Starting point is 00:08:29 war between the French and the Vietnam. The conflict was characterized mostly by guerrilla warfare. Perhaps more importantly, it became one of the first conflicts in the new Cold War between the West and the communist bloc. In the context of the emerging Cold War, United States President Harry Truman viewed the Vietnam as a communist threat aligned with the Soviet Union in China. Consequently, his administration decided to support France

Starting point is 00:08:58 in its efforts to regain control of Vietnam. This decision by Truman had profound implications for the United States. During and after the Second World War, the United States was largely in favor of France and Britain giving their colonies independence. However, in Vietnam, Truman made an exception due to the fact that the Vietnam were communists. In 1950, Truman authorized sending military advisors to Vietnam as part of the military assistance advisory group, which helped the French fight the Vietnam. A competitor state, simply known as the state of Vietnam, was established in 1949 as part of the

Starting point is 00:09:37 Indo-Chinese Union. The first Indochina War raged on for eight years until 19th, 1954 when the Vietnam achieved a significant victory over the French forces at the Battle of of Dienben-Fu. This was a stunning defeat for the French that marked the end of French colonial rule in Vietnam. The Geneva Accords of 1954 officially ended the first Indochina War. Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel with North Vietnam controlled by the communist Vietnam and South Vietnam by a non-communist government supported by the West. Both countries were no longer colonies of France. Ho Chi-min became the leader of North Vietnam, and the person who was selected lead to South Vietnam was no din Ziam. Ziam was staunchly anti-communist and

Starting point is 00:10:25 anti-colonialist, and was a member of the Catholic minority in the country. He was supported by the Eisenhower administration, and Ziam pursued American support because they were stronger and more reliable than France. Ziam suspended the elections that were promised in the Geneva Accord and soon began eliminating his potential political rivals. Ziam was a dictator, and he behaved as such. He was deeply unpopular in South Vietnam. He managed to eliminate or suppress all political opponents, except for the communist insurgents, which were funded by the North.

Starting point is 00:10:58 That being said, many communist sympathizers in the South, which Ziam called the Viet Cong, were arrested. Over 100,000 people were imprisoned, tortured, or executed. The United States, for their part, was well aware that Ziam was a dictator, but he was their dictator, which was all that mattered during the Cold War. One of the reasons why the United States was so concerned about Vietnam and supportive of ZM in the late 1950s and early 1960s was something called the Domino Theory. The domino theory posited that if one country in a region fell to communism, others would soon

Starting point is 00:11:35 follow. Thus, communism in Vietnam had to be stopped, less than it spread to other countries in the region. The problem was that supporting an unpopular dictator in Ziam only increased support for the Vietmen, who were the only real alternative. This was especially true in rural areas. Ziam also cracked down on Buddhists in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country and favored his fellow Catholics. Nonetheless, through the 1950s, the number of American military advisors in the country, remained relatively small. As of 1960, there were only 900. The number of American military personnel began to increase, however, in 1961 with the inauguration of President John Kennedy. No din Ziem, the president of South Vietnam, was assassinated on November 2nd, 1963,

Starting point is 00:12:25 following a military coup. The coup was orchestrated by a group of South Vietnamese generals who had grown increasingly frustrated with Ziam's autocratic rule, his repressive policy, and his inability to combat the communist insurgency effectively. Ziam was found hiding in a Catholic church in Saigon. After he was captured, he and his brother were executed while in transit. The United States, via the CIA, approved the removal of Ziam as president. Finally, in 1964, North Vietnam supposedly attacked American naval vessels in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. The resulting uproar in Congress, which I had covered in a previous episode,

Starting point is 00:13:05 led to the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and its signing by President Lyndon Johnson. This was the event that ushered in the dramatic increase in American military personnel, which resulted in the start of a full-scale war in Vietnam. There were many steps that led to the Vietnam War, in some cases decades in advance, which would have totally changed the direction that history took. If President Wilson had acknowledged the grievances of Ho Chi Minh in 1919, or if President Truman had taken a different approach, or if the Indochina War had taken place before the start of the Cold War,

Starting point is 00:13:42 things might have turned out very different, and the Vietnam War might never have happened. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere

Starting point is 00:14:10 Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the completionist club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Origins of the Vietnam War

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