The Vietnam War

1. The Vietnam War

2. A Generation in Conflict • The Domino Theory was the belief that if one country fell to communism, the other Southeast Asian nations would eventually fall to communism as well • The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular war that Americans ever fought in • Over $150 Billion dollars in financial costs • 58,000 Americans lost their lives • The escalation of the war caused an inflation on war fuel and food prices • Remarkable social change in America • Civil rights leaders began to argue with racist laws • Women's rights groups demanded fairer treatment • Both seeking equal rights • Younger groups began to drop out of school and experiment with drugs

3. Counterculture and the War • 1960s counterculture grew from a number of events, issues, circumstances, and technological developments. • The Vietnam War, and the national divide between supporters and opponents of the war were the most important factors contributing to the rise of the counterculture movement. • War protests consisting of thousands of mostly younger people in major US cities united millions against the war • The counterculture era essentially started with the assassination President John F. Kennedy. It ended with the termination of US combat military involvement in the communist areas of Southeast Asia

4. Anti-war Movement: Campus Protests/ Mass Mobilization • Day-long boycotts for classes post operation Rolling Thunder in 1965 • University of Michigan 3,000 students turned out for sessions • “Tech-ins” spread to Europe and Japan • Dow Chemical Company recruited at Wisconsin, students staged a sit-in • Sit-in turned erupted into violence when students would not cooperate • Students boycotted class for weeks • Students held strikes all over the country • Peace movement spread like wildfire • Anti-war rally at the Sheep Meadow attracted 300,000 people • Veterans were not thanked

5. Teenage Soldiers: Who made up a majority of American soldiers in Vietnam? • The average age for Vietnam soldiers was around nineteen years old • World War 2 average age was twenty-six • College students graduates were only 12% of those who served • High school dropouts were a majority of teenagers who served • African Americans were a majority of the soldiers who fought in the war • African Americans and other minorities were given more combat-intensive assignments

6. Deferments Deferment - the act or fact of putting something off to a later time, postponement • Draft deferments were given to college students and workers in select jobs • Illiterate citizens and the poor were sent into the battlefield first • Citizens with higher educations were given jobs away from the battlefront such as office duties