3/29【历史上的今天】美国输掉越南战争

美国历史上的今天

越战结束

每天一篇《美国历史上的今天》，提炼和总结历史在今天发生的重要事件：谁，在哪里，什么时候，做了什么，这件事为什么重要、以及在写关于什么主题的论文的时候可以作为潜在论据引用。

每天半分钟，轻松积累史实

为AP历史拿5分打下坚实基础

When: March 29, 1973

What: Two months after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement, the last U.S. combat troops left South Vietnam. America’s direct eight-year intervention in the Vietnam War was at an end.

Why significant: In 1961, after two decades of indirect military aid, U.S. President John F. Kennedy sent the first large force of U.S. military personnel to Vietnam to bolster the ineffectual autocratic regime of South Vietnam against the communist North. Three years later, with the South Vietnamese government crumbling, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered limited bombing raids on North Vietnam, and Congress authorized the use of U.S. troops. By 1965, North Vietnamese offensives left President Johnson with two choices: escalate U.S. involvement or withdraw. Johnson ordered the former, and troop levels soon jumped to more than 300,000 as U.S. air forces commenced the largest bombing campaign in history.

During the next few years, the extended length of the war, the high number of U.S. casualties, and the exposure of U.S. involvement in war crimes helped turn many in the U.S. against the Vietnam War. The communists’ Tet Offensive of 1968 crushed U.S. hopes of an imminent end to the conflict and galvanized U.S. opposition to the war. In response, Johnson announced in March 1968 that he would not seek reelection, citing what he perceived to be his responsibility in creating a perilous national division over Vietnam. He also authorized the beginning of peace talks.

In the spring of 1969, as protests against the war escalated in the U.S., U.S. troop strength in the war-torn country reached its peak at nearly 550,000 men. U.S. president Richard Nixon began U.S. troop withdrawal and “Vietnamization” of the war effort that year, but he intensified bombing. Large U.S. troop withdrawals continued in the early 1970s as President Nixon expanded air and ground operations into Cambodia and Laos in attempts to block enemy supply routes along Vietnam’s borders. This expansion of the war, which accomplished few positive results, led to new waves of protests in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Finally, in January 1973, representatives of the U.S., North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris, ending the direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. 

The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular foreign war in U.S. history and cost 58,000 American lives. As many as two million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed.

Tags: Vietnam War, Cold War