PathtoWar

After grim fighting in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the French army admitted defeated. The Vietnamese people were tried of living under colonial rule and they declared independence on June 2, 1945. After the rebels overthrow the leaders the peace convention in Geneva declared the 17th parallel as the dividing line between the North and South. The leader of North Vietnam was the head of the revolutionary army, Ho Chi Minh. Ngo Dinh Diem was the prime minister in the South. Diem dreaded that once the elections of 1956 took place Ho CHi Minh would rule both the north and the South and turn them both into a united communist counrty. Meanwhile the US who was backing up the French joined Ngo Dinh Diem.

During the 1960s the US sent over about 11000 military advisers to vietnam. Ngo Dinh Diem and his army the the Army of the Republic of Vietnam were not very popular in South Vietnam. The gurella fighters and the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam attacked on both sides of the 17th to unite the two opposing sides. In November 1963 Diem was assinated causing the South to grow more unstable. The ARVN could outnumber the Viet Cong but the ARVN could not defeat them.

Many US officals belived that when Vietnam fell to Communism the entire region would succomb to it too. THe main U.S. goal of the time was to contain communism all over the world. When President Johnson annouced what the Viet Cong had done to the US ship Congress quickly approved the power assinged to the president in a time of war. When President Lydon B. Johnson obtained these powers he quickly orginized an army to go and provide support for the South Vietnamese. 