OCR Text |
Show Vietnam: A History Of A Country At War Diem was established as the head of the Republic of South Viet Nam. In a letter to Diem, President Eisenhower stated: "The purpose of this offer (of aid) is to assist the Government of Viet Nam in developing and maintaining a strong, viable state, capable of resisting attempted at-tempted subversion of aggression through military means." In 1961, when Gen. Eisenhower left office, there were 773 American Ameri-can military advisors in South Viet Nam and no combat troops. pour material into Indo-China. THE FRENCH forces were lent a humiliating defeat, suffering more than 253,000 casualties, including in-cluding 92,000 killed, or nearly twice the number of American dead in the Korean conflict (5,246). The Geneva agreements of July 21, 1954, supposedly ended, the war in Southeast ' Asia by dividing Viet Nam at the 17th parallel into a Communist North and a free South. Although the United States didn't sign the agreement, it agreed to abide by the decisions. AFTER THE partitioning of Viet Nam in 1954, Ngo Dinh n LAWRENCE MAUERMAN By Chronicle Stuft WV.1r ,ru Ws Not'5: Undoubtedly, Edlr the li unlion in Viet this y!nd the pros and cons of faction there will be salient ?UniCs for discussion and re-Kon re-Kon on our campus. Al-dlSCrfv Al-dlSCrfv Present at the University re'dyseveral groups concerned ar T1 I policy m Viet Nam students will be met with and .mints from both sides of Controversy. To familiarize dents with the situation, the rhronicle" would like to give aCsho? history of events that Lye taken place to date in order ihat the students may view the tnts nf ih" coming year in the ,7hf of historical5 perspective This is the first in the series.) THE HISTORY of Viet Nam, as it concerns us 'today, can be traced from the period just before be-fore World War II. At this time the three associated states of Indo-China - Laos, Cambodia, and Viet Nam were under the colonial rule of Vichy France. Taking advantage of the powerless pow-erless condition of France in 191, the Japanese occupied Indo-China Indo-China and made it a staging-base for actions against Thailand, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other areas in southeast Asia. DURING THE Pacific War, the United States supplied aid to Ho Chi Minh, a Moscow-trained Communist who led a native resistance re-sistance movement against the Japanese. After World War II, the French attempted to regain power, pow-er, but Ho Chi Minh proclaimed a "people's republic" and thus started a 72-year war. IN 1950, under the Truman Administration, the U.S. began its policy of giving military and economic assistance to anti-Communist forces in the area. Altogether, the U.S. paid approximately ap-proximately 3 billion dollars of the costs of the losing French struggle against the Communist-led Communist-led Viet Ninh. After 1949, the Viet Ninh received help from the Chinese Communists who had achieved control of Mainland China. i WHEN GEN. Eisenhower became be-came President in 1953, world opinion, both Communist and Free-world, was centered on the Korean War, which had been going for about 2V2 years. With the signing of the Korean Armistice Armis-tice on July 27, 1953, the attention atten-tion shifted again to the struggle strug-gle in Indo-China. Being freed of drains on ammunition am-munition and supplies in Korea, the Chinese were now able to |