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The Geneva Peace Accords Signed
Signed by France and Vietnam in the summer of 1954. Vietnam's delegates to the Geneva Conference agreed to the temporary partition of their nation at the seventeenth parallel to allow France a face-saving defeat. -
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The Second Indochina War
After one hundred years of colonial rule, France was forced to leave Vietnam. Nationalist forces under the direction of General Vo Nguyen Giap defeated the allied French troops at the mountain outpost of Dien Bien Phu in the northwest corner of Vietnam. -
Government of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) established
the Eisenhower administration helped create a new nation from nothing (GVN). Using SEATO for political cover, the U.S. gave massive amounts of American military, political, and economic aid to establish GVN. -
Ngo Dinh Diem becomes president of GVN
Almost immediately after his election, Diem claimed that GVN was under attack from Communists in the north. Diem claimed that DRV (North Vietnam) wanted to take South Vietnam by force -
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Communist Party of Vietnam attempt to reunify Vietnam through political means
The Communist Party of Vietnam accepted the Soviet Union's model of political struggle. The Communist Party tried unsuccessfully to cause Diem's collapse by exerting tremendous internal political pressure. -
Diem couterattacks North Vietnam
With American military aid, Diem began to counterattack North Vietnam. Diem passed a rseries of acts known as Law 10/59 that made it legal to hold someone in jail if they were a suspected Communist without bringing formal charges. -
NLF created
The National Liberation Front was created, as an umbrella organization consisting of communists and non-communists. Anyone could join this front as long as they opposed Ngo Dinh Diem and wanted to unify Vietnam. -
White Paper
President Kennedy sent a team to Vietnam to report on conditions in the South and to assess future American aid requirements. The report (December 1961 White Paper) argued for an increase in military, technical, and economic aid. -
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Military Coup
Massive protests on the streets of Saigon broke out, twhich ed Buddhist monks to self-immolation. Some of Diem's own generals in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) approached the American Embassy in Saigon with plans to overthrow Diem. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
In response to American and GVN espionage along its coast, the DRV launched a local attack against two American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Resolution was followed by limited reprisal air attacks against the DRV.