In 1961, Richard Nixon left office after spending 8 years as vice president to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nixon and Eisenhower warned the new president, John F. Kennedy, that one of the biggest problems he would face was Vietnam, where a civil war between the Communist North and capitalist South threatened to spill over into the wider Cold War.Eisenhower had tried to stop the USA becoming involved in the conflict, only allowing 900 military advisers to assist South Vietnam.
In 1968, Nixon was elected president. Much had changed during the years he was out of power. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had taken the opposite path to Eisenhower and escalated US involvement in Vietnam. There were 540,000 US soldiers in the country and around 300 of them were dying each week. The war was deeply unpopular at home, with a third of Americans describing themselves as ‘strongly against’ it.
Your organisation does not have access to this article.
Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise
Subscribe
