Which US president ended his country's participation in the Vietnam War? View the step-by-step solution to: Which US president ended his country's participation in the Vietnam War? This question was answered on Jun 08, 2016. View the Answer Which US president ended his country's participation in the Vietnam War? WmLittle posted a question · Jun 08, 2016 at 6:58am Top Answer The way to answer this question is ... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(29995166) ]} lewismrk557 answered the question · Jun 08, 2016 at 6:59am Other Answers president Gerald Ford .... The end of the Vietnam War on April 30, 1975, was a much-anticipated and emotionally fraught event... View the full answer {[ getNetScore(30005967) ]} View Full Answer or ask a new question Related Questions The late 1960s and 1970s were turbulent years both at home and abroad for the United States.

Evaluate the failures and successes of the Nixon presidency during Recently Asked Questions Need a World History tutor? mathtutor1983 3 World History experts found online! Average reply time is less than an hour Get Homework Help Why Join Course Hero? Course Hero has all the homework and study help you need to succeed! We’ve got course-specific notes, study guides, and practice tests along with expert tutors and customizable flashcards—available anywhere, anytime. - - Study Documents Find the best study resources around, tagged to your specific courses. Share your own to gain free Course Hero access or to earn money with our Marketplace. - Question & Answers Get one-on-one homework help from our expert tutors—available online 24/7. Ask your own questions or browse existing Q&A threads. Satisfaction guaranteed! - Flashcards Browse existing sets or create your own using our digital flashcard system. A simple yet effective studying tool to help you earn the grade that you want! Who were U.S Presidents during the Vietnam War? - The Vietnam War The Vietnam War 1 Comment Last Updated on June 21, 2016 Don't Miss Stories Follow the Vietnam War There were 5 U.S. Presidents during its involvement in the Vietnam War.

They were: 1. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961) Following the French defeat in the First Indochina War and subsequently the Geneva Accords leading to a partition of Vietnam, President Eisenhower decided to support anti-communist leader Ngo Dinh Diem in consolidating power in the South. In September 1954, he created the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) in an attempt to block communist spread to Southeast Asia. SEATO essentially put Vietnam under its protection, which later became one of the major justifications for the U.S. intervention in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. In February 1955, President Eisenhower sent the first American military advisors to Vietnam to help build up Diem’s army. When Diem announced the formation of Republic of Vietnam (later known as South Vietnam) in October 1955, Eisenhower immediately recognized and offered military and economic assistance to the new nation. In fact, the MAAG Vietnam was reorganized from MAAG Indochina in November 1955 to train South Vietnamese Army. In July 1956, Diem under the U.S. support refused to participate in the unifying elections.

The Eisenhower administration believed that the communists could have won the elections thanks to the popularity of their leader Ho Chi Minh, which was an unacceptable outcome for the U.S. Eisenhower pledged his continued support for Diem during Diem’s 10-day visit to the U.S. in May 1957 and remained committed to Diem’s government throughout his second term as president. As a matter of fact, he increased the number of U.S. military advisors in South Vietnam to around 900 men by 1960 owing to North Vietnam’s growing support of “uprisings” in the south. 2. John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) John F. Kennedy was an ardent believer in containing communism and “Domino Theory”. In his first speech as President in January 1961, Kennedy made it clear that he would continue the policy of the former President, Dwight Eisenhower, and support the government of Diem in South Vietnam. Kennedy also pledged more aid and military advisors to help train South Vietnamese Army. As a matter of fact, the U.S.

provided $65 million in military equipment and $136 million in economic aid to Diem’s government by 1961. During Kennedy’s presidency, the Strategic Hamlet Program introduced by Diem and supported by the U.S. failed terribly, and as a result, drove a large number of South Vietnamese peasants into supporting the Viet Cong. In fact, the number of Viet Cong increased tremendously by 300% to 17,000 in just two years when the “Strategic Hamlet” was in operation. In response, Kennedy significantly increased U.S. military advisors in South Vietnam to 16,000 by 1963 compared to just 3,200 in 1961. Kennedy’s presidency also saw Diem’s repression of Buddhists after their public protests throughout South Vietnam owing to his religious favoritism and discrimination. As corruption, Buddhist crisis, and mounting successes by the Viet Cong weakened Diem’s regime and threatened the stability of South Vietnam, Kennedy became convinced that Diem could never unite South Vietnam to fight against the Viet Cong.

On November 1, 1963, Kennedy tacitly approved a coup to overthrow Diem just three weeks before his assassination. 3. Lyndon B. Johnson (1963 – 1969) After assuming the presidency, Johnson was keen to continue supporting South Vietnam to fight against the Viet Cong. In the beginning, Johnson hesitated to commit U.S. troops to Vietnam as he was aware that U.S. military intervention might have an adverse impact on his chance of winning the 1964 election. In fact, during his campaign for President in 1964, he pledged not to send “American boys” to Vietnam and that South Vietnamese Army had to fight to protect its country. But then came the the Gulf of Tonkin incident. In response, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964 authorizing President Johnson to take any necessary measures against North Vietnam. Soon after Johnson won the 1964 presidential election by a landslide, he ordered a sustained bombing of North Vietnam called “Operation Rolling Thunder”, which lasted for more than 3 years (March 2, 1965 – November 1, 1968).

He then sent the first combat troops to South Vietnam in March 1965 in response to a Viet Cong’s attack on U.S. air base in Pleiku. During his presidency, Johnson constantly increased the number of U.S. troops deployed to Vietnam, which peaked at more than 500,000 in 1968. Despite mounting U.S. casualties as well as massive nationwide protests against the draft and conflict in Vietnam, Johnson refused to bring the troops home stating that he did not want to become “the first American President to lose a war.” By the end of his second term as president, his approval rates plunged to an all-time low as the end of the Vietnam War was nowhere in sight after the Viet Cong’s Tet Offensive. On March 31, 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, Johnson announced he would not seek reelection. In May 1968, Johnson announced formal peace talks would soon begin in Paris. The talks stalled during the last eight months of Johnson’s presidency, and the deadlock continued during the early years of Nixon’s administration. 4.

Richard Nixon (1969 -1974) Richard Nixon took office in 1969 with the promise of bringing “peace with honor” to the unpopular conflict in Vietnam. His “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War included gradual withdrawals of the U.S. troops from Vietnam as part of the so-called “Vietnamization” program from June 1969. He also replaced the military draft with a lottery in December of that year. However, Nixon, at the same time, secretly escalated the war into Cambodia and Laos in 1970 and 1971 respectively in an attempt to destroy North Vietnamese supply through the Ho Chi Minh Trail to South Vietnam. Fallout from these incursions caused massive protests, which even escalated to violence at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. At the end of his first term as president, Nixon made a historic visit to China in February followed by a strategic Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviets in May 1972. These diplomatic breakthroughs with China and Soviet Union put pressure on North Vietnam to negotiate seriously and secured Nixon’s landslide victory in his re-election.

Nixon ordered the “Christmas Bombing” later that year to keep North Vietnam at the negotiating table as well as to convince South Vietnam to sign a peace treaty, which had been negotiated for a few years. The Paris Peace Accords were eventually signed in January 1973 ending the American direct involvement in Vietnam. On March 29, 1973, the last U.S. combat troops left Vietnam although some military advisors and Marines remained in Saigon until its fall in April 1975. Nixon also ended military draft in his final year in office. Nixon became the first U.S. President ever to resign after the Watergate scandal in 1974. 5. Gerald R. Ford (1974 – 1977) Congress cut military aid to South Vietnam significantly during Ford’s presidency. In fact, it placed a $1 billion ceiling on military aid for fiscal year 1974 on August 4, which was trimmed further to $700 million by August 11, 1974. This was a huge cut in military aid as South Vietnam still received $2.8 billion in fiscal year 1973.

In 1975, it would be dropped substantially to just $300 million. Although it had been promised by the Nixon administration, Congress also forbade further U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia even when North Vietnamese forces blatantly violated the settlement in early 1975. In April 1975, as South Vietnam was about to fall, President Ford made a last-ditch appeal to Congress asking for $722 million in military aid to essentially save the crumbling regime. However, in a face-to-face discussion between President Ford and Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 14, 1975, the President’s request for aid was rejected. “I will give you large sums for evacuation, but not one nickel for military aid to Thieu .” – New York Senator Jacob Javits told President Ford during the meeting. On April 23, 1975, Ford declared the Vietnam War ended “as far as America is concerned”. Seven days later, Saigon was captured and South Vietnam fell to the communists.

email Vietnamization - Vietnam War - HISTORY.com Google Nixon’s Plan to End the War When President Richard Nixon took office in January 1969, the U.S. had been sending combat troops to fight in Vietnam since 1965, and some 31,000 American lives had been lost. However, the full-scale U.S. military commitment seemingly had made little progress in defeating North Vietnam and its Viet Cong guerilla allies. The enemy forces had absorbed tremendous punishment but remained determined to overthrow the U.S.-supported government of South Vietnam and reunite the country under Communist rule. Did You Know? Democrat Hillary Clinton (1947-) did a college internship with Melvin Laird, creator of Nixon's Vietnamization strategy. "I’ve always kidded Bill Clinton that Hillary went wrong after meeting him," Laird said in a 2008 Reader’s Digest interview. "She was a good Republican when she worked for me." Facing intense pressure from a frustrated and war-weary public, Nixon sought a way to disengage American combat forces without appearing to abandon South Vietnam to the Communists. He rejected calls from the anti-war movement to order an immediate withdrawal of U.S.

troops and publicly expressed a desire to achieve “peace with honor” in Vietnam. Toward this end, Nixon and his advisors developed a new strategy they called Vietnamization. U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird (1922-) first used the term in March 1969, following a visit to South Vietnam. The Nixon administration’s Vietnamization plan provided for a gradual, phased withdrawal of American combat forces, combined with an expanded effort to train and equip South Vietnam to take over military responsibility for its own defense. The president announced his Vietnamization strategy to the American people in a nationally televised speech on November 3, 1969. He emphasized how his approach contrasted with the “Americanization” of the war that had taken place under his predecessor, President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73). “The defense of freedom is everybody’s business, not just America’s business. And it is particularly the responsibility of the people whose freedom is threatened,” Nixon explained. “In the previous administration, we Americanized the war in Vietnam. In this administration, we are Vietnamizing the search for peace.” Implementing Vietnamization In addition to U.S.

troop withdrawals and efforts to prepare and modernize the South Vietnamese army, Nixon’s Vietnamization strategy also featured programs designed to strengthen the South Vietnamese government and expand its political base in rural areas. He offered U.S. assistance to help South Vietnamese officials organize local elections and implement social reforms and economic development initiatives. At the same time that the Vietnamization plan was put in place, however, the Nixon administration also escalated U.S. military activity in other parts of Southeast Asia. In April 1970, for example, the president secretly authorized bombing campaigns and a ground invasion of neutral Cambodia. When his expansion of the war came to public attention, Nixon asserted that the incursion into Cambodia was necessary to keep pressure on the enemy until the Vietnamization strategy took root. The president’s actions nonetheless came under harsh criticism and prompted massive anti-war demonstrations across America. Nixon gradually reduced the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam in several stages, from a peak of 549,000 in 1969 to 69,000 in 1972. However, during this same period, North Vietnamese leaders launched several offensives that tested the president’s resolve and cast doubt on his Vietnamization strategy.

The March 1972 Easter Offensive, for instance, highlighted the poor performance of the South Vietnamese army and its heavy reliance on U.S. air power to repel the Communist attack. Effectiveness of Vietnamization In January 1973, the Nixon administration negotiated a peace agreement with North Vietnamese leaders. Under the terms of the settlement, the U.S. agreed to withdraw its remaining troops within 60 days in exchange for an immediate cease-fire, the return of American prisoners of war, and North Vietnam’s promise to recognize the legitimacy of South Vietnam’s government and submit future disputes to an international commission. In his final report before leaving office that month, Laird declared the Vietnamization process completed: “As a consequence of the success of the military aspects of Vietnamization, the South Vietnamese people today, in my view, are fully capable of providing for their own in-country security against the North Vietnamese.” However, later events proved that the secretary of defense’s confidence was unfounded, as South Vietnam fell to the Communist forces in 1975.

Tags Milestones: 1969–1976 - Office of the Historian Milestones: 1969–1976 Ending the Vietnam War, 1969–1973 President Richard M. Nixon assumed responsibility for the Vietnam War as he swore the oath of office on January 20, 1969. He knew that ending this war honorably was essential to his success in the presidency. He expected that the American people would give him a year to end U.S. involvement in the war, and he expected to succeed during that time—believing that his experience in foreign relations, his toughness, and his willingness to bring to bear military and political pressure on North Vietnam would yield a settlement in the public negotiations just opening in Paris. President Richard M. Nixon and President Thieu at Midway, June 1969. (Nixon Presidential Library) In his first months in office, Nixon directed the U.S. military to increase its pressure on the battlefield, while ordering the secret B–52 bombings of North Vietnamese base camps in Cambodia—the “Menu bombings”—as a signal of his willingness to further escalate the war.

He expected to complement this military pressure with conciliatory negotiating terms in the newly begun negotiations, and with diplomatic pressure on the Soviet Union, hoping the Soviet Union would encourage their North Vietnamese allies to engage in serious negotiations. These forms of pressure, however, brought him no closer to ending the war. In order to buy time with the American people, Nixon began to withdraw forces from Vietnam, meeting with South Vietnam’s President Nguyen Van Thieu on Midway Island on June 8 to announce the first increment of redeployment. From that point on, the U.S. troop withdrawal never ceased. As U.S. troop strength and capabilities declined, the United States worked toward building South Vietnam’s military capacity through a program known as “Vietnamization.” It would remain a constant question over the remaining years of the administration, whether the South Vietnamese could build the combat capability, logistics and planning capacity, and leadership at the national and military levels to face the North Vietnamese on their own. It quickly became apparent that the public peace talks in Paris were being used as propaganda theater by both sides, and that any productive negotiations would have to be done in private.

On August 4, the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger conducted his first private session with the North Vietnamese leadership. He would meet with North Vietnamese Politburo member Le Duc Tho intermittently over the following months, with no apparent progress toward a settlement. In the fall of 1969, disappointed with the lack of any visible results from this strategy, Nixon and Kissinger directed an extensive planning effort assessing the possibility of coercing the North Vietnamese into negotiations through a series of “short, sharp blows” inflicted by air and naval forces. The political-military planning included a cell of National Security Council staff members examining strategic issues, and a military planning team comprised of Joint Staff, Pacific Command (PACOM), and Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) officers working at MACV Headquarters in Saigon. Nixon met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) on October 11, and it became clear that the planning had satisfied neither the White House nor the JCS.

With American casualties on the decline, the anti-war movement still a powerful force, and no satisfactory political-military solution in sight, Nixon turned away from that option to deliver the “silent majority” speech on November 3, 1969, rallying the American people toward patient support for a protracted war. The administration would continue its dual strategy of Vietnamization and negotiation. In March 1970 the fall of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in Cambodia destroyed the fragile neutrality of that state, as his successor Lon Nol demanded the North Vietnamese withdraw from their base camps along the South Vietnamese border. The North Vietnamese reacted by extending their presence toward the west. Nixon responded by ordering a US-South Vietnamese “incursion” into Cambodia on April 30. Limited by Nixon to a 30-kilometer strip along the border, and limited in time to the end of June, this action sparked violent protests on campuses across the United States. These culminated in the deaths of four students at Kent State University on May 4.

The incursion into the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) base camps yielded a great quantity of rice, weapons, and ammunition, and disrupted the North Vietnamese command and logistics structures for months, buying time for Vietnamization and further U.S. troop withdrawals. The following spring, Nixon ordered a theater-wide offensive, seeking to seize the initiative in the war. South Vietnamese forces crossed into Cambodia and Laos in early February 1971. The North Vietnamese had anticipated the incursion into Laos, known as Lam Son 719, and massed their forces in an attempt to annihilate the South Vietnamese. The South Vietnamese withdrawal disintegrated into a disorderly retreat. Meanwhile, Nixon and Kissinger sought to reshape the international context of the war through building relationships with North Vietnam’s superpower allies in Moscow and Beijing. Nixon wanted to create a dilemma for the Soviet and Chinese—give them “bigger fish to fry,” in his phrase—in choosing between their support of North Vietnam, and a closer relationship with the United States. The 1972 summits in Beijing and Moscow reflected this strategy, though the Communist powers continued their material support of Hanoi.

The North Vietnamese opened a three-pronged offensive in South Vietnam, known in the United States as the Easter Offensive, in late March 1972, expecting that a victory on the battlefield would translate into a triumph at the negotiating table. Rather than accept the prospect of defeat, Nixon sent massive air force and naval reinforcements to bases in Indochina and Guam. On May 4 he decided to mine North Vietnam’s harbors and open a sustained air offensive, Operation Linebacker, against North Vietnam. These actions, along with intensive air attacks in the battle areas and improved South Vietnamese defenses, stymied North Vietnam’s offensive, leading the Politburo, for the first time, to engage in serious negotiations. On October 11–12 Kissinger and Le Duc Tho reached agreement on a peace settlement, both sides working to reach that end before the U.S. presidential election on November 7. President Thieu rejected the settlement, refusing to accept a peace that left North Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam, and legitimized the Hanoi-controlled Communist shadow government, the Provisional Revolutionary Government. His rejection forced Kissinger to resume negotiations with Le Duc Tho.

Kissinger was unable to find any common ground acceptable to both Vietnamese parties in two renewed rounds of negotiations. Finally, in order to break the deadlock, on December 14 Nixon ordered massive B–52 attacks on the North Vietnamese heartland—the “Christmas Bombing.” Meanwhile he continued to exert intense pressure on Thieu, threatening to cut off U.S. economic, military, and political support of South Vietnam if Thieu refused to accept the agreement. Negotiations resumed on January 8, 1973, and the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam initialed the agreement on January 23. Thieu reluctantly accepted the settlement despite his continued misgivings, and the peace agreement was signed on January 27. The peace settlement enabled the United States to withdraw from the war and welcome the American prisoners of war back home. Neither of the Vietnamese parties abided by the settlement, however, and the war continued. Nixon had gained Thieu’s adherence to the agreement through a series of letters and envoys, all promising U.S. military support in the event of a North Vietnamese violation of the accords.

On November 14, 1972, for example, Nixon wrote Thieu that “I repeat my personal assurances to you that the United States will react very strongly and rapidly to any violation of the agreement.” Both sides understood this to mean the recommitment of B–52s to combat. In the end, these commitments were not upheld due to a combination of factors—domestic and Congressional reluctance to re-engage in the war, economic constraints, and finally the Watergate scandal, which weakened and distracted Nixon. Having rebuilt their forces and upgraded their logistics system, North Vietnamese forces triggered a major offensive in the Central Highlands in March 1975. On April 30, 1975, NVA tanks rolled through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, effectively ending the war. Milestones: 1961–1968 - Office of the Historian Milestones: 1961–1968 U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War: the Gulf of Tonkin and Escalation, 1964 In early August 1964, two U.S.

destroyers stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam radioed that they had been fired upon by North Vietnamese forces. In response to these reported incidents, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested permission from the U.S. Congress to increase the U.S. military presence in Indochina. On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. This resolution became the legal basis for the Johnson and Nixon Administrations prosecution of the Vietnam War. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara points out action in Gulf of Tonkin during a briefing at the Pentagon. (AP Photo/Bob Schutz) After the end of the First Indochina War and the Viet Minh defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the countries meeting at the Geneva Conference divided Vietnam into northern and southern halves, ruled by separate regimes, and scheduled elections to reunite the country under a unified government. The communists seemed likely to win those elections, thanks mostly to their superior organization and greater appeal in the countryside.

The United States, however, was dedicated to containing the spread of communist regimes and, invoking the charter of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (1954), supported the South Vietnamese leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, when he refused to hold the elections. Diem held control of the South Vietnamese Government, but he could not halt the communist infiltration of the South. By 1959, the Viet Cong, South Vietnamese communist guerillas, and the Viet Minh, began a large scale insurgency in the South that marked the opening of the Second Indochina War. Ngo Dinh Diem failed to capture the loyalties of the people of South Vietnam the way that Ho Chi Minh had done among the population of North Vietnam. Despite U.S. support, Diem’s rural policies and ambivalent attitude toward necessary changes like land reform only bolstered support for the Viet Cong in the southern countryside. By 1963, Diem’s rule had so deteriorated that he was overthrown and assassinated by several of his generals with the tacit approval of the Kennedy Administration. Three weeks later, U.S. President John F. Kennedy was also assassinated, and the war continued under new leadership in both countries.

Before his death, Kennedy had increased the U.S. advisory presence in South Vietnam in the hopes that a U.S.-supported program of “nation-building” would strengthen the new South Vietnamese government. However, South Vietnam continued to experience political instability and military losses to North Vietnam. By August, 1964, the Johnson Administration believed that escalation of the U.S. presence in Vietnam was the only solution. The post-Diem South proved no more stable than it had been before his ouster, and South Vietnamese troops were generally ineffective. In addition to supporting on-going South Vietnamese raids in the countryside and implementing a U.S. program of bombing the Lao border to disrupt supply lines, the U.S. military began backing South Vietnamese raids of the North Vietnamese coast. The U.S. Navy stationed two destroyers, the Maddox and the Turner Joy, in the Gulf of Tonkin to bolster these actions. They reported an attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on August 2, and a second attack on August 4. Doubts later emerged as to whether or not the attack against the Turner Joy had taken place. Immediately after reports of the second attack, Johnson asked the U.S. Congress for permission to defend U.S.

forces in Southeast Asia. The Senate passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution with only two opposing votes, and the House of Representatives passed it unanimously. Congress supported the resolution with the assumption that the president would return and seek their support before engaging in additional escalations of the war. The Gulf of Tonkin incident and the subsequent Gulf of Tonkin resolution provided the justification for further U.S. escalation of the conflict in Vietnam. Acting on the belief that Hanoi would eventually weaken when faced with stepped up bombing raids, Johnson and his advisers ordered the U.S. military to launch Operation Rolling Thunder, a bombing campaign against the North. Operation Rolling Thunder commenced on February 13, 1965 and continued through the spring of 1967. Johnson also authorized the first of many deployments of regular ground combat troops to Vietnam to fight the Viet Cong in the countryside.

Nixon declares Vietnam War is ending - Dec 08, 1969 - HISTORY.com Nixon declares Vietnam War is ending Share this: Nixon declares Vietnam War is ending Author Nixon declares Vietnam War is ending URL Publisher A+E Networks At a news conference, President Richard Nixon says that the Vietnam War is coming to a “conclusion as a result of the plan that we have instituted.” Nixon had announced at a conference in Midway in June that the United States would be following a new program he termed “Vietnamization.” Under the provisions of this program, South Vietnamese forces would be built up so they could assume more responsibility for the war. As the South Vietnamese forces became more capable, U.S. forces would be withdrawn from combat and returned to the United States. In his speech, Nixon pointed out that he had already ordered the withdrawal of 60,000 U.S. troops. Concurrently, he had issued orders to provide the South Vietnamese with more modern equipment and weapons and increased the advisory effort, all as part of the “Vietnamization” program. As Nixon was holding his press conference, troops from the U.S. 25th Infantry Division (less the Second Brigade) began departing from Vietnam.

Nixon’s pronouncements that the war was ending proved premature. In April 1970, he expanded the war by ordering U.S. and South Vietnamese troops to attack communist sanctuaries in Cambodia. The resulting outcry across the United States led to a number of antiwar demonstrations—it was at one of these demonstrations that the National Guard shot four protesters at Kent State. Although Nixon did continue to decrease American troop strength in South Vietnam, the fighting continued. In 1972, the North Vietnamese launched a massive invasion of South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese forces reeled under the attack, but eventually prevailed with the help of U.S. airpower. After extensive negotiations and the bombing of North Vietnam in December 1972, the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973. Under the provisions of the Accords, U.S. forces were completely withdrawn. Unfortunately, this did not end the war for the Vietnamese and the fighting continued until April 1975 when Saigon fell to the communists.

Related Videos Looking Back: The End of the Vietnam War - ABC News ABC News Looking Back: The End of the Vietnam War March 29, 2013 By MICHAEL IP Forty years ago, on March 29, 1973, the United States ended its military involvement in Vietnam. Although the war would continue another two years, the South Vietnamese would no longer receive American assistance. The nearly 10-year war divided the nation, defined a generation and changed how the U.S. military would operate. In all, 58,282 American soldiers lost their lives and another 303,644 Americans were wounded. MAY 21, 1972 - PROTESTS DEFINE A GENERATION (Archive Images/Getty Images) By 1972, less than 30% of Americans agreed with the Vietnam War. Protests were a common site in Washington, D.C., as well as on college campuses across the country. MAY 22, 1972 - AMERICA IS FED UP WITH THE WAR (Hulton Archive/Getty Images) The greatest opposition to the Vietnam War was the opposition to the draft.

In all, 1,728,344 males, age 20 to 26, were drafted to serve. Twenty-five percent of total forces in Vietnam were draftees. NOV. 13, 1972 - NIXON STARTS TO GIVE IN TO THE PRESSURE (National Archives/Getty Images) President Richard Nixon wanted to continue to support South Vietnam's war efforts. However, with anti-war sentiments growing in the United States and sustained casualties in Vietnam, Nixon felt pressure to bring an end to the war and started to plan an exit with National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and Maj. Gen. Alexander Haig. JAN. 15, 1973 - NIXON ANNOUNCES CEASE FIRE (Bettman/CORBIS) Nixon announced on national television a planned cease fire and plans to end U.S. offensive actions in Vietnam. JAN. 24, 1974 - PARIS PEACE ACCORDS OFFICIALLY BRING END TO U.S. INVOLVEMENT (Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images) Henry Kissinger met with North Vietnamese officials in Paris to finalize the details of the Paris Peace Accords.

The agreement was signed on Jan. 27 and went into effect immediately. Talks on the accords actually began in 1968, but stalled many times due to mistrust on both sides. MARCH 14, 1973 - PRISONERS OF WAR RELEASED (AP Photo) One of the major provisions of the Paris Peace Accords was the release of non-Vietnamese prisoners of war. Future U.S. senator John McCain was released on March 14, 2013, after five and a half years of captivity. MARCH 29, 1973 - LAST POWS RELEASED AND TROOPS LEAVE VIETNAM (David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images) Almost 600 POWs were released, but many more were unaccounted for. Many of the POWs were pilots who were shot down over North Vietnam and Laos. By the late 2000's, almost 1,800 Americans were still unaccounted for. MARCH 17, 1973 - A HERO IS WELCOMED HOME (Sal Veder/AP Photo) Lt. Col.

Robert Stirm returned home after nearly five years of captivity in North Vietnam. This picture depicting 15-year-old Lorrie Stirm, elated to see her father, won a Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. Digital History Digital History Digital History ID 3464 In the 1968 election, Republican Richard Nixon claimed to have a plan to end the war in Vietnam, but, in fact, it took him five years to disengage the United States from Vietnam. Indeed, Richard Nixon presided over as many years of war in Indochina as did Johnson. About a third of the Americans who died in combat were killed during the Nixon presidency. Insofar as he did have a plan to bring "peace with honor," it mainly entailed reducing American casualties by having South Vietnamese soldiers bear more of the ground fighting--a process he called "Vietnamization"--and defusing anti-war protests by ending the military draft. Nixon provided the South Vietnamese army with new training and improved weapons and tried to frighten the North Vietnamese to the peace table by demonstrating his willingness to bomb urban areas and mine harbors. He also hoped to orchestrate Soviet and Chinese pressure on North Vietnam.

The most controversial aspect of his strategy was an effort to cut the Ho Chi Minh supply trail by secretly bombing North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia and invading that country and Laos. The U.S. and South Vietnamese incursion into Cambodia in April 1970 helped destabilize the country, provoking a bloody civil war and bringing to power the murderous Khmer Rouge, a Communist group that evacuated Cambodia's cities and threw thousands into re-education camps. Following his election, President Nixon began to withdraw American troops from Vietnam in June 1969 and replaced the military draft with a lottery in December of that year. In December 1972, the United States began large-scale bombing of North Vietnam after peace talks reach an impasse. The so-called Christmas bombings led Congressional Democrats to call for an end of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. In late January 1973, the United States, South Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and North Vietnam signed a cease-fire agreement, under which the United States agreed to withdraw from South Vietnam without any comparable commitment from North Vietnam.

Historians still do not agree whether President Nixon believed that the accords gave South Vietnam a real chance to survive as an independent nation, or whether he viewed the agreement as a face-saving device that gave the United States a way to withdraw from the war "with honor." Vietnam - John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum Vietnam Vietnam During the early 1960s, the U.S. military presence in Vietnam escalated as corruption and internal divisions threatened the government of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. After World War II, the French tried to re-establish colonial control over a region known as French Indochina—today the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Following the defeat of the French, Vietnam was partitioned by the Geneva Accord of 1954 into Communist North Vietnam and non-Communist South Vietnam. The United States supported a military government in the South and the decision of its leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, to prevent free elections, which might result in the unification of the country under the control of the Communists. Guerilla forces supported by the Communist government of the North initiated a series of attacks in South Vietnam, and the Geneva Accord began to crumble.

The Domino Theory American foreign policy after World War II was based on the goal of containing Communism and the assumptions of the so-called "domino theory"—if one country fell to Communism, the surrounding countries would fall, like dominoes. In response to that threat, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was formed in 1955 to prevent Communist expansion, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent some 700 military personnel as well as military and economic aid to the government of South Vietnam. The effort was foundering when John F. Kennedy became president. Internal Divisions Corruption, religious differences, and mounting successes by the Vietcong guerrillas weakened the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem was Catholic, and public protests over the repression of Buddhists threatened the stability of his regime. Kennedy accelerated the flow of American aid and gradually increased U.S. military advisers to more than 16,000. At the same time, he pressed the Diem government to clean house and institute long-overdue political and economic reforms. The situation did not improve.

In September of 1963, President Kennedy declared in an interview, "In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the Communists... But I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake... [The United States] made this effort to defend Europe. Now Europe is quite secure. We also have to participate—we may not like it—in the defense of Asia." The Overthrow of Diem A few weeks later, on November 1, 1963, the South Vietnamese government was overthrown. The coup had the tacit approval of the Kennedy administration. President Diem was assassinated, after refusing an American offer of safety if he agreed to resign. In the final weeks of his life, President Kennedy wrestled with the future of the United States' commitment in Vietnam. Whether he would have increased military involvement or negotiated a withdrawal of military personnel still remains hotly debated among historians and officials who served in the administrations of President Kennedy and President Lyndon B.

Johnson. A Domino Falls United States military aid to Vietnam increased during 1964. By 1965, President Johnson authorized US troops to begin military offensives and started the systematic bombing of North Vietnam. By 1968, the number of US forces surpassed 500,000. During that year's presidential campaign, Americans were deeply divided by the deteriorating military and political situation in Vietnam. In May 1968, President Johnson announced that formal peace talks would soon begin in Paris. The talks stalled during the last eight months of Johnson's presidency, and the deadlock continued during the early years of Richard Nixon's administration. Finally, in January 1973, an agreement was reached, and President Nixon ordered an end to all US offensive actions against North Vietnam. In January 1975, North Vietnam began massive invasions of South Vietnam. A few months later, the North Vietnamese captured the capital city of Saigon, and the last Americans were evacuated from the US embassy. The American war in Vietnam was over. More than 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans had lost their lives. JOHN F.

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Question: Which US president ended his country's participation in the Vietnam War?
Answer: Richard Nixon