yndon johnson why was the cold war called the cold war

In January 1968 the NVA launched what became known as the communist Tet Offensive into South Vietnam, stalemate eventually enthused, the Americans later recapturing the territory, yet failing to defeat the Vietcong. Massive air raids and the deployment of over half-a-million USA troops soon followed neither ever having any lasting effect. South Vietnam turned for assistance to the USA.īy February 1965 Johnson declared war against North Vietnam and started a bombing campaign against the country. Thereafter there developed a struggle between the governments of South Vietnam and its Vietcong insurgents the latter were more and more assisted by regular forces from North Vietnam, which in turn obtained varying amounts of aid from China and Russia. Corrupt, divided among themselves, politically ineffective, afraid that union implied not co-operation but rather a take-over by the communists, the rulers of South Vietnam rejected the demand.

This demand had the support of the Vietcong, communist partisans who operated in the south. In 1959 the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (north Vietnam) demanded free elections as provided for in the Geneva agreement.

The Northern regime, under the leadership of Ho Chi- Minh, was communist: South Vietnam, at least in theory, was democratic under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem. The French left the southern zone in 1956. A ceasefire followed and in May 1954,at an international conference at Geneva, it was decided that Vietnam should be partitioned at the 17th parallel however provision was also made for the holding of free elections, at a later date, with the object of re-uniting the country. The French struggled hard to regain control of Vietnam, but in 1954 suffered a major defeat when their garrison at Dien Bien Phu, established to prevent the Vietminh from infiltrating into neighbouring Laos, surrendered. When the war ended he proclaimed a Democratic Republic of Vietnam at Hanoi. During the Second World War he became leader of the Vietminh fiercely nationalist party, opposed to either Japanese or French domination. In 1930,Ho Chi-minh, who had studied Marxism in Paris and Moscow, founded a communist Party there. In Vietnam nationalist feeling was particularly strong. In 1945,the French re-occupied Vietnam from the Japanese, originally before the war this had been a French colony.

Yndon johnson why was the cold war called the cold war