U.S. officials kept insisting that victory was imminent. In 1954, the French were forced to give the country independence, as a result of a guerilla war, led primarily by Communists. Communist Ho Chi Minh led a nationalist guerrilla fight to declare independence. At first, the United States remained officially neutral, even as it avoided any contact with Ho. escalated involvement in Vietnam War (1954-1975) 37: Nixon, Richard Milhous** 1913-1994: 1969-1974 "War on Drugs" (1971) visited China (1972) ... replaced preceding President who died: name** left office before completion of term **name: replaced preceding living President: Both sides used a wide variety of devastating weapons during the Vietnam War. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all deepened U.S. involvement in the decades-long conflict. All Rights Reserved. Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. The first man to die in Vietnam was James Davis, in 1961. Of Those Lost. The nation was partitioned in two, with Ho in control of the North and pro-Western leader Ngo Dinh Diem in control of the South. He risked decades in prison to release 7,000 top-secret documents to The New York Times and other newspapers in 1971. President Harry Truman meets with Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, French military commander in the the first Indochina War, and Henri Bonnet, French ambassador to the United Sates from 1944-1954. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! During Nixon's presidency, the Paris Peace Accords were signed. The Pentagon Papers showed how five presidents consistently lied to the American people about the Vietnam War that was killing thousands of … But that changed in August 1964, when the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident prompted Congress to grant expansive war-making powers to newly installed President Lyndon B. Johnson. The last president during the Vietnam War was Richard Nixon. Some of the answerers said Eisenhower or JFK. Many presidents have been in office during a war, and if such a thing happened during Barack Obama's term, he too would do what presidents have always done during war-time. LISTEN: McNamara and Kennedy Discuss the Vietnam War. Even Ho Chi Minh, the nationalist and communist revolutionary, started off pro-American. However, the war did not officially end until April 23, 1975, under Ford's presidency. Though each president expressed doubts in private about American involvement, none wanted to be blamed for losing Vietnam to the communists. After all this, a treaty was finally signed in January of 1973, which ended the war for the Americans but not South Vietnam. Fearing that Vietnam, too, would become a communist state, he sent over transport planes and jeeps, along with 35 military advisers, as part of a multimillion-dollar aid package. Eisenhower began the United States' involvement with the Vietnam War by creating the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization to help squelch communist uprisings in the area. Then the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, plus the flow of aid from China and the Soviet Union to the Viet Minh, prompted Truman to reexamine Vietnam in a Cold War light. Answer Save. But, as the Pentagon Papers would later reveal, these comments were deeply misleading. The next declaration was under Reagan in 1983 in Lebanon. The decision to retaliate would for all intents and purposes mark the beginning of the American war in Vietnam—a conflict that would last eight more years, take the lives of … The unpopularity deepened when the nation watched, enthralled, a series of televised Senate hearings at which the success story was repeatedly challenged. Declaration of Independence as part of a speech in which he implored the Allies to recognize Vietnam’s independence. 1940 - 1945: Japan beat the French in Vietnam during World War II. Some presidents served in the military during war time but saw no action, so it is unclear exactly how many presidents can really be considered war veterans. The question of how to handle the situation in Vietnam vexed President Kennedy from his first days in office. Once in the White House, Kennedy provided South Vietnam with jet fighters, helicopters, armored personnel carriers, river patrol boats and other tools of war. Near the end of his life, JFK hinted to aides that he might withdraw from Vietnam following his re-election, but it’s unclear whether he would have actually done so. 9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the official Vietnam era from August 5, 1964 to May 7, 1975. White House Collection / National Archives. In 1965, he stepped down and eventually died in 1969. JFK was president from 1961 until he was shot in 1963. It later emerged, however, that he had secretly tried to sabotage peace talks in order to improve his electoral chances. Although troops were sent in 1950 by President Truman, but this was not a prelude to the Vietnam war. Under President Richard Nixon, 21,194 American soldiers were killed in Vietnam during 1969-74. Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images. Though Diem proved corrupt and authoritarian, Eisenhower called him “the greatest of statesmen” and “an example for people everywhere who hate tyranny and love freedom.” More importantly, he also supplied Diem with money and weapons, sending nearly $2 billion in aid from 1955 to 1960 and increasing the number of military advisors to around 1,000. In 1995 Vietnam released its official estimate of the number of people killed during the Vietnam War: as many as 2,000,000 civilians on both sides and some 1,100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. Vietnam War - Vietnam War - The fall of South Vietnam: On March 29, 1973, the last U.S. military unit left Vietnam. It's been called the most unpopular war in American history, and four presidents (Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon) inherited this nightmare. The Vietnam War was already widely unpopular by early 1966, despite the repeated attempts by President Lyndon Johnson, his aides and the generals to proclaim that U.S. troops were winning. This war was in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and was US-led with the backing of 34 other countries, the largest military alliance since World War II. Each side employed brutal tactics, including torture and political assassinations. Towards the end of the war, peace talks began to arise but South Vietnam would not settle. After Iraq had refused to remove troops from Kuwait, the allied troops began bombing on January 17. His tune changed, however, by the time he ran for president in 1960, in part over concerns he would be called soft on communism. In 1967, as American casualties in the Vietnam War mounted, and no end to the conflict seemed to be in sight, anti-war demonstrations that had been escalating for several years took on a new size and tone. Bush was in office. 2. By that time the communists and South Vietnamese were already engaged in what journalists labeled the “postwar war.” Both sides alleged, more or less accurately, that the other side was continuously violating the terms of the peace agreements. During Nixon's presidency, the Paris Peace Accords were signed. The Philippines: Allies During the Vietnam War Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos’ official request in February 1966 for congressional approval to send a combat engineer battalion to the assistance of South Vietnam could not have shocked the citizens of the Philippines more than if … One and a half million is a lot more than 650,000. As it turned out, though, fighting continued until 1975, when North Vietnamese troops marched into Saigon, South Vietnam’s capital, and reunified the nation under communist rule. Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon oversaw the conflict, which ratcheted up in intensity as the years passed by. In 1947, however, Truman asserted that U.S. foreign policy was to assist any country whose stability is threatened by communism. © 2020 A&E Television Networks, LLC. Arthur Schatz/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images. USA in Vietnam war: 5 presidents 1. The war would eventually claim the lives of more than 58,000 Americans and some 3 million Vietnamese. That same year, large anti-war demonstrations popped up in cities across America. John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) was the 35th president of the United States, holding office from January 1961 to his assassination in November 1963. 240 men were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Ellsberg, a former U.S. military analyst and Marine in Vietnam, worked at the RAND Corporation and the Pentagon. After visiting Vietnam as a congressman in 1951, John F. Kennedy publicly lambasted U.S. efforts to assist the French, saying that to act “in defiance of innately nationalistic aims spells foredoomed failure.” Three years later, he presciently declared, “I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance … can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere.”. 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