Routledge

Chapter Resources

Chapter 12: The Vietnam Wars 1945–79

Debates

Debating America's Vietnam War

Maps

The Vietnam War in the 1960s

Discussion Questions

  1. Why did the French try to hold on to their empire in Southeast Asia after the Second World War?
  2. What explains the gradual increase of American involvement in Vietnam?
  3. Is the Vietnam War in 1960–1975 best understood as a civil war?
  4. How important was ideology in the war?
  5. Why did the Nixon administration decide to pursue the policy of ‘Vietnamization’?
  6. What was the role of China and the Soviet Union in the Vietnam Wars?
  7. Is it correct to argue that American domestic opinion decided the outcome of the Vietnam War?
  8. Why did peace not come to Indochina in 1975?
  9. Did the United States ‘lose’ the war?
  10. What has been the long-term impact of the Vietnam War (both for the United States and Indochina)?

Weblinks

http://www.vietnamwar.com/index.htm
This site advertises itself as the ‘ultimate source’ for studying the Vietnam War. A slight exaggeration, but the links to articles, timelines, facts and various types of sources are probably unparalleled.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/
This is the companion site to CNN's Cold War series, the first major international documentary on the subject. Links to all twenty-four episodes and their scripts, timelines, biographies, interactive maps and more. The part on the Vietnam War is disturbing and fascinating.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/publications/DOC_readers/bpread/bpread.htm
The National Security Archives website offers unprecedented access to recently declassified documentation on the Cold War. All aspects of the Vietnam War get their share, although the collections are particularly fascinating on the 1970s.

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/
Perhaps the easiest gateway to accessing primary documents from US archives. This is a digitalized version of the Foreign Relations of the United States series, divided by country or region and year(s). Numerous volumes deal with US Vietnam policy from the 1940s to the early 1970s.