Path+to+Vietnam

Until the late 1800s, Vietnam was ruled by France. Ho Chi Minh united Vietnam with communism in the 1930s. Ho Chi Minh was very popular in North and sort of popular in south vietnam throughout the 30s and 40s and 50s. But he had one major opponent, Ngo Dinh Diem. Ngo Dinh Diem was anti communist and had a lot of support from south vietnam. France was trying to win Vietnam back with war. Truman supported this because he wanted France to help them with the cold war against the soviets. After Kennedy took office, he started to send military advisers and equipment to south vietnam, who the french were supporting as well. JFK also supported the overthrow of diem, the bad leader of south vietnam. After kennedy was assasinated, Johnson took office. he got the US to support the war in vietnam more. American ships go to the gulf of tonkin in 1964. Not much happens, but some of the ships use their advanced weapons against opposing ships. Then, the US did operation rolling thunder, which was to continuously drop bombs on north korea. Finally, in 1965, 3500 US marines landed in vietnam.

This image shows a rolling thunder mission over vietnam this image shows the gulf of tonkin, which is where us ships entered vietnam sometimes