Name: Vietnam War | The 20th century | World history | Khan Academy
Uploaded: 2018-09-22T05:41:28.000Z
Duration: 17 min 41 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In order to have a respectable
understanding of the Vietnam

War, we have to rewind all
the way back to the late 1800s

when France was
colonizing Southeast Asia.

And in particular, it colonized
what is now Laos, Vietnam,

and Cambodia-- and
they were collectively

You can see Cambodia here,
Vietnam along the coast,

I have a little gap
in my timeline here--

And so you can imagine,
during World War II,

France was quickly
overrun by the Germans.

The Vietnamese wanted
their independence,

and so you have a liberation
movement that rises up.

And it was led by the Viet
Minh, and the Viet Minh

This right here is a
picture of Ho Chi Minh.

they were also communist,
which, you could imagine, later

But you fast forward
through World War II.

Eventually, the Japanese
take control over Indochina,

But by the time '45
rolls around, or at least

the end of '45-- and we know
that the United States defeats

Japan-- now, all of a
sudden, the Viet Minh

are able to declare a somewhat
temporary independence.

after that-- and the region
is occupied temporarily

by the Chinese in the north, and
the British in the south, who

were part of the Allied
forces against the Axis.

But eventually, you have
the French coming back,

And you have this war that
develops-- the First Indochina

sympathetic to the
French-- the Vietnamese

who were loyal to the
French-- and the North.

how it sets up, at the
end of World War II

when you had the temporary
occupiers, the British

The British had more
influence in the South.

When the French come
back they, essentially,

are able to reinstate
control over the South.

So right when the
Indochina War is beginning,

the French already have
more control over the South.

had more influence in
the South, as well.

During French colonial rule it
was really the southern third

of Vietnam where you had
a lot of French influence.

And this is a current
map, and the current map

does not have this
orange boundary over here

But before the Vietnam War,
this was not Ho Chi Minh City,

And Saigon was kind of where
most of the French control

And so you have the
Geneva Conference of 1954

that partitions Vietnam along
the 17th parallel between North

off period, a period
where you can have thing

settling down, and
then having elections.

It wasn't meant to be
a permanent partition.

had 900,000 people, mainly
Catholics, move from the North

You also had several
hundred thousand people

But net net, most of the
movements by Roman Catholic

Vietnamese was from
the North to the south.

You fast forward a little
bit, you eventually have--

and I'm sure I'm butchering
the pronunciation here--

eventually he takes control,
and becomes president in '55.

and this guy is not a big
fan of things like elections,

or non-corrupt government,
and all the rest.

But you could imagine that the
United States is positively

One, he dresses in nice
Western suits and all of that,

And at this time period,
the United States

is starting to think in
terms of the Cold War.

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Vietnam War | The 20th century | World history | Khan Academy

essentially

eventually

engage

period