1.
Ho Chi Minh City
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Ho Chi Minh City, formerly named and still often known as Saigon, is the largest city in Vietnam by population. It was once known as Prey Nokor prior to annexation by the Vietnamese in the 17th century, under the name Saigon, it was the capital of the French colony of Cochinchina and later of the independent republic of South Vietnam 1955–75. On 2 July 1976, Saigon merged with the surrounding Gia Định Province and was officially renamed Ho Chi Minh City after revolutionary leader Hồ Chí Minh, the citys population is expected to grow to 13.9 million by 2025. Ho Chi Minh City has gone by different names during its history, reflecting settlement by different ethnic. In the 1690s, Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh, a Vietnamese noble, was sent by the Nguyễn rulers of Huế to establish Vietnamese administrative structures in the Mekong Delta and its surroundings. Control of the city and the passed to the Vietnamese. Immediately after the communist takeover of South Vietnam in 1975, a provisional government renamed the city after Hồ Chí Minh, even today, however, the informal name of Sài Gòn/Saigon remains in daily speech both domestically and internationally, especially among the Vietnamese diaspora. In particular, Sài Gòn is still used to refer to District 1. This name may refer to the many plants that the Khmer people had planted around Prey Nokor. It may also refer to the dense and tall forest that existed around the city. Other proposed etymologies draw parallels from Tai-Ngon, the Cantonese name of Cholon, which means embankment, and Vietnamese Sai Côn, a translation of the Khmer Prey Nokor. Prey means forest or jungle, and nokor is a Khmer word of Sanskrit origin meaning city or kingdom, the current official name, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, adopted in 1976 and abbreviated Tp. HCM, is translated as Ho Chi Minh City, abbreviated HCMC, the name commemorates Hồ Chí Minh, the first leader of North Vietnam. This name, though not his name, was one he favored throughout his later years. It combines a common Vietnamese surname with a name meaning enlightened will, in essence. Ho Chi Minh City began as a fishing village likely known as Prey Nokor, Forest City, or perhaps Preah Reach Nokor which. The area that the city now occupies was originally swampland, and was inhabited by Khmer people for centuries before the arrival of the Vietnamese. In 1623, King Chey Chettha II of Cambodia allowed Vietnamese refugees fleeing the Trịnh–Nguyễn civil war in Vietnam to settle in the area of Prey Nokor and to set up a custom house there
2.
South Vietnam
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South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam, was a state governing the southern half of Vietnam from 1955 to 1975. It received international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam, the term South Vietnam became common usage in 1954, when the Geneva Conference provisionally partitioned Vietnam into communist and non-communist parts. The Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed on 26 October 1955, with Ngô Đình Diệm as its first president and its sovereignty was recognized by the United States and eighty-seven other nations. It had membership in several committees of the United Nations. After the Second World War, the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, in 1949, anti-communist Vietnamese politicians formed a rival government in Saigon led by former emperor Bảo Đại. Bảo Đại was deposed by Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm in 1955, after Diệm was killed in a military coup led by general Dương Văn Minh in 1963, there was a series of short-lived military governments. General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu led the country from 1967 until 1975, the Vietnam War began in 1959 with an uprising by Viet Cong forces armed and controlled by Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Fighting reached a climax during the Tet Offensive of 1968, when there were over 1.5 million South Vietnamese soldiers and 500,000 U. S. soldiers in South Vietnam. Despite a peace treaty concluded in January 1973, fighting continued until the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong armies overran Saigon on 30 April 1975, the creation of this republic, during the Indochina War, allowed France to evade a promise to recognise Vietnam as independent. This pre-Vietnam government prepared for a unified Vietnamese state, but the countrys full reunification was delayed for a year because of the problems posed by Cochinchinas legal status, Nguyễn Văn Xuân 1949–55 State of Vietnam. Roughly 60% of Vietnamese territory was controlled by the communist Việt Minh. Vietnam was partitioned at the 17th parallel in 1954, once highly lauded by America, he was ousted and assassinated in a U. S. -backed coup. In 1963–65, there were numerous coups and short-lived governments, several of which were headed by Dương Văn Minh or Nguyễn Khánh, Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ was the top leader in 1965–67. Surrendered to Communists when others abandoned their posts, 1975–76 Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam. Huỳnh Tấn Phát Before World War II, the third of Vietnam was the concession of Cochinchina. Between Tonkin in the north and Cochinchina in the south was the protectorate of Annam, Cochinchina had been annexed by France in 1862 and even elected a deputy to the French National Assembly. It was more evolved, and French interests were stronger than in parts of Indochina. During World War II, Indochina was administered by Vichy France, japanese troops overthrew the French administration on 9 March 1945, Emperor Bảo Đại proclaimed Vietnam independent
3.
Vietnamese National Army
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On March 8,1949, after the Élysée Accords, the State of Vietnam was recognized by France as an independent country ruled by Vietnamese Emperor Bảo Đại. The Vietnamese National Army or Vietnam National Army was the State of Vietnams military force created shortly after that and it was commanded by Vietnamese General Hinh and was loyal to Bảo Đại. The VNA fought in joint operations with the French Unions French Far East Expeditionary Corps against the communist Viet Minh forces led by Ho Chi Minh. Different units within the VNA fought in a range of campaigns including the Battle of Nà Sản, Operation Hautes Alpes, Operation Atlas. With the departure of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps from Indochina in 1956, in 1955, the State of Vietnam was dissolved and replaced by Ho Chi Minhs Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north and Ngô Đình Diệms Republic of Vietnam in the south. In early May, civil war ensued in the capital of South Vietnam when the VNA fought General Lê Văn Viễns Bình Xuyên forces in the controlled areas of Saigon. By 1956 all French Union troops withdrew from Vietnam and most of the VNA officers remained in service in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, after the fall of Saigon breaking in 1975, some joined the French Foreign Legion and others exiled to France or the United States. Benefiting with French cadres assistance and United States material support the VNA quickly became a modern army modeled after the CEFEO Expeditionary Corps. Officers and Non-commissioned officers were trained in schools of cadres known in French as Ecoles des Cadres, or at the elite National Military Academy. The Preparatory Military School of Dalat was directed by Lieutenant Savani and it was created in 1936 after the Autun EMP as the Dalat School of the Eurasian Children of Troops. Once dissolved during the Japanese occupation in 1944, General de Lattre reformed the EETED as the EETD Dalat School of the Children of Troops in 1950, in 1953, the cadres formation raised with 54 new battalion created and hundreds of new officers formed by early March. By November the Vietnamese National Army was entirely enlisted of Vietnamese recruits from the Privates to Generals, on the other hand, until 1954 some Vietnamese were trained four months in an Infantry Instruction Centers based in southern Vietnam. Once licensed these recruits would not be part of the VNA, other officer and NCO alumni were coming from all French Union including Cambodia, Overseas, metropolitan French and French citizens of French West Africa and India. On April 20,1952, the Dalat academy celebrated its first promotion with a baptism which is the Saint Cyr -French West Point- fashion. Celebrating officials included Chief of State Bảo Đại, Prime Minister Trần Văn Hữu, General Governor of French Indochina Gautier and French General Salan and his majesty Bảo Đại awarded the Hoàng Diệu promotions senior and junior classes with a Saint-Cyr offered saber. As a symbol of the handover of responsibility of the whole Vietnam to the VNA. Military ranks were organized after the French armys hierarchy, shoulder patch insignia would have three, two or one bar or star. Generals would have three stars while NCO officers with a bar were called Ong Mot and those with two straight bars were unofficially named Ong Hai
4.
Central Intelligence Agency
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As one of the principal members of the U. S. Intelligence Community, the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is focused on providing intelligence for the President. Though it is not the only U. S. government agency specializing in HUMINT and it exerts foreign political influence through its tactical divisions, such as the Special Activities Division. Despite transferring some of its powers to the DNI, the CIA has grown in size as a result of the September 11 attacks. In 2013, The Washington Post reported that in fiscal year 2010, the CIA has increasingly expanded its roles, including covert paramilitary operations. One of its largest divisions, the Information Operations Center, has shifted focus from counter-terrorism to offensive cyber-operations, when the CIA was created, its purpose was to create a clearinghouse for foreign policy intelligence and analysis. Today its primary purpose is to collect, analyze, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence, warning/informing American leaders of important overseas events, with Pakistan described as an intractable target. Counterintelligence, with China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, the Executive Office also supports the U. S. military by providing it with information it gathers, receiving information from military intelligence organizations, and cooperates on field activities. The Executive Director is in charge of the day to day operation of the CIA, each branch of the military service has its own Director. The Directorate has four regional groups, six groups for transnational issues. There is a dedicated to Iraq, regional analytical offices covering the Near East and South Asia, Russia and Europe, and the Asian Pacific, Latin American. The Directorate of Operations is responsible for collecting intelligence. The name reflects its role as the coordinator of intelligence activities between other elements of the wider U. S. intelligence community with their own HUMINT operations. This Directorate was created in an attempt to end years of rivalry over influence, philosophy, in spite of this, the Department of Defense recently organized its own global clandestine intelligence service, the Defense Clandestine Service, under the Defense Intelligence Agency. This Directorate is known to be organized by regions and issues. The Directorate of Science & Technology was established to research, create, many of its innovations were transferred to other intelligence organizations, or, as they became more overt, to the military services. For example, the development of the U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft was done in cooperation with the United States Air Force, the U-2s original mission was clandestine imagery intelligence over denied areas such as the Soviet Union. It was subsequently provided with signals intelligence and measurement and signature intelligence capabilities, subsequently, NPIC was transferred to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
5.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
6.
State of Vietnam
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The State of Vietnam was a state that claimed authority over all of Vietnam during the First Indochina War although part of its territory was actually controlled by the communist Viet Minh. The state was created in 1949 and was recognized in 1950. Former emperor Bảo Đại was chief of state, after the 1954 Geneva Agreements, the State of Vietnam had to abandon the Northern part of the country to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Ngô Đình Diệm was appointed prime minister that same year, and after ousting Bảo Đại in 1955, since the August Revolution, Viet Minh had seized all of the territories of Vietnam. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam was established by Viet Minh on September 2,1945, by February 1947, following the pacification of Tonkin, the Tonkinese capital, Hanoi, and the main traffic axis returned under French control. The Việt Minh partisans were forced to retreat into the jungle, bao Dai had voluntarily abdicated on August 25,1945, after the fall of the short-lived Empire of Vietnam, a puppet state of the Empire of Japan. However, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam had declared the independence of Vietnam and had control almost Vietnams territory since September 2,1945, besides that, the DRV had also hosted the 1946 Vietnamese National Assembly election with the participation of 89% voter in Vietnam. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam, had become the constitutional representatives of Vietnam in 1946. On May 20,1949, the French National Assembly approved the reunification of Cochinchina with the rest of Vietnam, on decision took effect on June 14 and the State of Vietnam was officially proclaimed on July 2. From 1949 to 1954, reunification with Cochinchina, the State of Vietnam had partial autonomy from France as a state within the French Union. The State of Vietnam found support in the French Fourth Republic and the United States while Hồ Chí Minh was backed by the Peoples Republic of China, despite French support, roughly 60% of Vietnamese territory was under Việt Minh control in 1952. The massive voluntary migration of anti-Communist north Vietnamese, essentially Roman Catholic people, on June 14,1949, Bảo Đại was appointed Chief of State of the State of Vietnam, he was concurrently Prime Minister for a short while. On October 26,1955, the Republic of Vietnam was established, the State of Vietnam referendum of 1955 determined the future regime of the country. Following the signing of the 1949 Élysée Accords in Paris, Bảo Đại was able to create a National Army for defense purposes and it fought under the State of Vietnams banner and leadership and was commanded by General Nguyễn Văn Hinh. The currency used within the French Union was the French Indochinese piastre, notes were issued and managed by the Issue Institute of the States of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. First Indochina War French Indochinese piastre Vietnamese National Army French Indochina History of Vietnam
7.
Army of the Republic of Vietnam
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It is estimated to have suffered 1,394,000 casualties during the Vietnam War. After the fall of Saigon to the invading North Vietnamese Army, the VNA fought in joint operations with the French Unions French Far East Expeditionary Corps against the communist Viet Minh forces led by Ho Chi Minh. The VNA fought in a range of campaigns including but not limited to the Battle of Nà Sản, Operation Atlas. Benefiting from French assistance, the VNA quickly became a modern army modelled after the Expeditionary Corps and it included infantry, artillery, signals, armored cavalry, airborne, airforce, navy and a national military academy. After the 1954 Geneva agreements, French Indochina ceased to exist and by 1956 all French Union troops had withdrawn from Vietnam, Laos, in 1955, by the order of Prime Minister Diệm, the VNA crushed the armed forces of the Bình Xuyên. On October 26,1955, the military was reorganized by the administration of President Ngô Đình Diệm who then established the Army of the Republic of Vietnam on December 30,1955. The air force was known as the Vietnamese Air Force, early on, the focus of the army was the guerrilla fighters of the Vietnam National Liberation Front, formed to oppose the Diệm administration. The United States, under President John F. Kennedy sent advisors, in 1963 Ngô Đình Diệm was killed in a coup détat carried out by ARVN officers and encouraged by American officials such as Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. In the confusion that followed, General Dương Văn Minh took control, during these years, the United States began taking more control of the war against the NLF and the role of the ARVN became less and less significant. They were also plagued by continuing problems of corruption amongst the officer corps. Although the US was highly critical of the ARVN, it continued to be entirely US-armed and funded. S, there were also many circumstances in which Vietnamese families had members on both sides of the conflict. Slowly, ARVN began to expand from its role to become the primary ground defense against the NLF. From 1969 to 1971 there were about 22,000 ARVN combat deaths per year, starting in 1968, South Vietnam began calling up every available man for service in the ARVN, reaching a strength of one million soldiers by 1972. In 1970 they performed well in the Cambodian Incursion and were executing three times as many operations as they had during the American war period. However, the ARVN equipment continued to be of lower standards than their American and South Korean allies, however, the officer corps was still the biggest problem. Leaders were too often poorly trained, corrupt, lacking morale, however, forced to carry the burden left by the Americans, the South Vietnamese Army actually started to perform rather well, though with continued American air support. In 1972, General Võ Nguyên Giáp launched the Easter Offensive, the assault combined infantry wave assaults, artillery and the first massive use of armored forces by the PAVN. Although T-54 tanks proved vulnerable to LAW rockets, the ARVN took heavy losses, the PAVN and NLF forces took Quảng Trị Province and some areas along the Laos and Cambodian borders
8.
Ngo Dinh Diem
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Ngô Đình Diệm was a South Vietnamese politician. A former mandarin of the Nguyễn dynasty, he was named Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam by Head of State Bảo Đại in 1954. In October 1955, after winning a rigged referendum, he deposed Bảo Đại and established the first Republic of Vietnam. He was a leader of the Catholic element and was opposed by Buddhists. The assassination led to the end of the U. S. -Diệm alliance, Diệm has been a controversial historical figure in historiography on Vietnam War scholarship. Some historians portrayed him as a tool of the U. S. policymakers, nevertheless, some recent studies have portrayed Diệm from a more Vietnamese-centered perspective as a competent leader with his own vision on nation building and modernisation of South Vietnam. Diệm was born in 1901 in Quảng Bình, a central Vietnam province and his family originated in the Phú Cam district, a Catholic district in Huế city. His clan had been among Vietnams earliest Catholic converts in the 17th century, Diệm was given a saints name at birth, Gioan Baotixita, following the custom of the Catholic Church. The Ngô-Đình family, along with other Vietnamese Catholics, suffered from anti-Catholic persecutions from Emperors Minh Mạng, in 1880, while Diệms father, Ngô Đình Khả, was studying in Malaya, an anti-Catholic riot led by Buddhist monks almost wiped out the entire Ngô-Đình family. Over 100 of the Ngô clan were burned alive in a church including Khảs parents and he also worked for French armed forces commander as an interpreter and took part in campaigns against anti-colonial rebels in the mountains of Tonkin during 1880. Then, he became a high-ranking Mandarin, the first headmaster of the National Academy in Huế, which was found in 1896, and he also rose to become the minister of the rites and chamberlain, and keeper of the eunuchs. In 1907, after the ouster of Thành Thái king, Khả resigned and withdrew from the royal court, after the tragedy of his family, Khả decided to give up being a priest and got married. Khả had nine sons and three daughters by his second wife, Phạm Thị Thân, after his first wife died childless. They were, Ngô Đình Khôi, Ngô Đình Thị Giao, Ngô Đình Thục, Ngô Đình Diệm, Ngô Đình Thị Hiệp, Ngô Đình Thị Hoàng, Ngô Đình Nhu, Ngô Đình Cẩn, Ngô Đình Luyện. As a devout Roman Catholic, Khả took his family to Mass every morning. Mastering both Latin and classical Chinese, Khả made sure that his children were educated in Christian scriptures. At the age of fifteen he followed his brother, Ngô Đình Thục. Diệm even swore himself to celibacy to prove his devotion to his faith before he decided not to pursue clerical career due to finding monastic life too rigorous, according to Moyar, Diệm‘s personality was too independent to discipline himself in the church. He also inherited his fathers antagonism toward the French colonialists who occupied his country and it was there that he had the only romantic relationship of his life, when he fell in love with one of his teachers daughters
9.
Urban warfare
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Urban warfare is combat conducted in urban areas such as towns and cities. Urban combat is very different from combat in the open at both the operational and tactical level, complicating factors in urban warfare include the presence of civilians and the complexity of the urban terrain. Fighting in urban areas negates the advantages that one side may have over the other in armour, heavy artillery, some civilians may be difficult to distinguish from combatants such as armed militias and gangs, and particularly individuals who are simply trying to protect their homes from attackers. The United States Armed Forces term for urban warfare is UO, the previously used U. S. military term MOUT, an abbreviation for military operations in urban terrain, has been replaced by UO, although the term MOUT Site is still in use. The British armed forces terms are OBUA, FIBUA, or sometimes FISH, or FISH, israel Defense Forces calls urban warfare לשב, a Hebrew acronym for warfare on urban terrain. LASHAB in the IDF includes large-scale tactics, CQB training for fighting forces, the IDF has a special large and advanced facility for training soldiers and units in urban warfare. Urban military operations in World War II often relied on large quantities of artillery bombardment, in some particularly vicious urban warfare operations such as Stalingrad and Warsaw, all weapons were used irrespective of their consequences. However, when liberating occupied territory some restraint was often applied, Military forces are bound by the laws of war governing military necessity to the amount of force which can be applied when attacking an area where there are known to be civilians. Until the 1970s, this was covered by the 1907 Hague Convention IV – The Laws, sometimes distinction and proportionality, as in the case of the Canadians in Ortona, causes the attacking force to restrain from using all the force they could when attacking a city. In other cases, such as the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Berlin, when Russian forces attacked Grozny in 1999, large amounts of artillery fire were used. Fighting in an environment can offer some advantages to a weaker defending force or to guerrilla fighters through ambush-induced attrition losses. The attacking army must account for three dimensions more often, and consequently expend greater amounts of manpower in order to secure a myriad of structures, and mountains of rubble. Ferroconcrete structures will be ruined by heavy bombardment, but it is difficult to demolish such a building totally when it is well defended. The characteristics of a city include tall buildings, narrow alleys, sewage tunnels. Defenders may have the advantage of detailed knowledge of the area, right down to the layout inside of buildings. The buildings can provide excellent sniping posts while alleys and rubble-filled streets are ideal for planting booby traps, defenders can move from one part of the city to another undetected using underground tunnels and spring ambushes. Meanwhile, the attackers tend to more exposed than the defender as they must use the open streets more often, unfamiliar with the defenders secret. During a house to search the attacker is often also exposed on the streets
10.
John Foster Dulles
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John Foster Dulles served as U. S. Secretary of State under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era and he negotiated numerous treaties and alliances that reflected this point of view. Born in Washington, D. C. he was one of five children and his paternal grandfather, John Welsh Dulles, had been a Presbyterian missionary in India. His maternal grandfather, John W. Foster doted on Dulles and his brother Allen, the brothers attended public schools in Watertown, New York. Dulles attended Princeton University and graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1908, at Princeton, Dulles competed on the American Whig-Cliosophic Society debate team. He then attended the George Washington University Law School in Washington, both his grandfather Foster and his uncle Robert Lansing, the husband of Eleanor Foster, had held the position of Secretary of State. On June 26,1912, Dulles married Janet Pomeroy Avery and their older son John W. F. Dulles was a professor of history and specialist in Brazil at the University of Texas at Austin. Their daughter Lillias Dulles Hinshaw became a Presbyterian minister and their son Avery Dulles converted to Roman Catholicism, entered the Jesuit order, and became the first American theologian to be appointed a Cardinal. Upon graduating from law school and passing the bar examination, Dulles joined the New York City law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, after the start of World War I, Dulles tried to join the United States Army, but was rejected because of poor eyesight. Instead, Dulles received an Army commission as Major on the War Industries Board, Dulles later returned to Sullivan & Cromwell and became a partner with an international practice. In 1915, Dulles uncle, Robert Lansing, then the U. S, in Panama, Dulles offered waiver of the US tax on the annual Canal fee, so long as Panama declared war on Germany. Dulles made an impression as a junior diplomat by clearly and forcefully arguing against imposing crushing reparations on Germany. Afterwards, he served as a member of the War Reparations Committee at Wilsons request, as a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell, Dulles expanded upon his late grandfather Fosters expertise, specializing in international finance. Under that compromise, the money was invested and the profits sent as reparations to Britain and France, in the 1920s Dulles was involved in setting up a billion dollars worth of these loans. Dulles, a religious man, attended numerous international conferences of churchmen during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1924, he was the counsel in the church trial of Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick. The case settled when Fosdick, a liberal Baptist, resigned his pulpit in the Presbyterian Church congregation, after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Dulles previous practice brokering and documenting international loans ended. After 1931 Germany stopped making some of its scheduled payments, in 1934 Germany unilaterally stopped payments on private debts of the sort that Dulles was handling
11.
J. Lawton Collins
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General Joseph Lightning Joe Lawton Collins was a senior United States Army officer who served in World War II and became Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the Korean War. During World War II, he served in both the Pacific and European Theaters of Operations, one of few senior American commanders to do so and his elder brother, Major General James Lawton Collins, was also in the army. His nephew, Michael Collins, was the command module pilot on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 that put the first two men on the Moon and would retire as a general from the United States Air Force. His sister Gertrude was married to Brigadier General Arthur Edmund Easterbrook, Collins was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, into a large Irish Catholic family on May 1,1896. Due to the outbreak of war, the graduation was several weeks early and he graduated 35th in his class of 139. Among those he graduated alongside were Matthew Ridgway, Mark W. Clark, Bryant Moore, Ernest N. Harmon, keiser, William W. Eagles, William Kelly Harrison, Jr. and Frederick Augustus Irving. He was commissioned as a lieutenant into the Infantry Branch of the United States Army and was assigned as a platoon. He was promoted to first lieutenant in May, and temporary captain in August and he attended the U. S. Army Infantry School of Arms at Fort Sill, Oklahoma and served with the regiment at various locations between 1917 and 1919. He was promoted to captain in June 1918, and to major in September. The war came to an end soon afterwards, on November 11,1918 at 11, during this time Collins served in the Army of Occupation with the Philippine Scouts in Germany. Collins married Gladys Easterbrook in 1921 and, reverting to the rank of captain in 1920 and he was an instructor in weapons and tactics at the U. S. He graduated from the U. S. Army Industrial College in 1937, and he was then an instructor at the U. S. Army War College, 1938–1940. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in June 1940 and, now a colonel, was chief of staff of VII Corps in 1941. In February 1942 he was promoted to the general officer rank of brigadier general. At the time of his appointment he was the youngest division commander in the U. S. Army and it was during this campaign that Collins gained his nickname of Lightning Joe. Woodruff, the commander of VII Corps and one of Bradleys West Point classmates. Bradley turned to Eisenhower, claiming that Collins talks our language, at the age of just 47, this made Collins the youngest corps commander in the U. S. Army. Among the units serving under Collins command in Normandy was the veteran 82nd Airborne Division, commanded by Major General Matthew Ridgway, VII Corps played a major role in the Normandy landings in June 1944 and the subsequent Battle of Normandy, including Operation Cobra
12.
Mekong Delta
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The Mekong delta region encompasses a large portion of southwestern Vietnam of 39,000 square kilometres. The size of the covered by water depends on the season. The Mekong Delta has been dubbed as a treasure trove. The Mekong Delta was likely inhabited long since prehistory, the empires of Funan, angkor Borei is a site in the Mekong Delta that existed between 400 BC-500 AD. This site had extensive trade networks throughout Southeast Asia and with India. The region was known as Khmer Krom to the Khmer Empire, author Nghia M. Vo suggests that a Cham presence may indeed have existed in the area prior to Khmer occupation. Beginning in the 1620s, Khmer king Chey Chettha II allowed the Vietnamese to settle in the area, and to set up a house at Prey Nokor. The increasing waves of Vietnamese settlers which followed overwhelmed the Khmer kingdom—weakened as it was due to war with Thailand—and slowly Vietnamized the area. During the late 17th century, Mạc Cửu, a Chinese anti-Qing general, began to expand Vietnamese and Chinese settlements deeper into Khmer lands, and in 1691, Prey Nokor was occupied by the Vietnamese. Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh, a Vietnamese noble, was sent by the Nguyễn lords of Huế by sea in 1698 to establish Vietnamese administrative structures in the area and this act formally detached the Mekong Delta from Cambodia, placing the region firmly under Vietnamese administrative control. Cambodia was cut off access to the South China Sea. During the Tây Sơn wars and the subsequent Nguyễn Dynasty, Vietnams boundaries were pushed as far as the Cape Cà Mau, in 1802 Nguyễn Ánh crowned himself emperor Gia Long and unified all the territories comprising modern Vietnam, including the Mekong Delta. Upon the conclusion of the Cochinchina Campaign in the 1860s, the area became Cochinchina, Frances first colony in Vietnam, and later, part of French Indochina. During the Vietnam War—also referred to as the Second Indochina War—the Delta region saw savage fighting between Viet Cong guerrillas and units of the United States Navys swift boats and hovercrafts. Following independence from France, the Mekong Delta was part of the Republic of Vietnam, in the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge regime attacked Vietnam in an attempt to reconquer the Delta region. This campaign precipitated the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and subsequent downfall of the Khmer Rouge, the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam displays a variety of physical landscapes, but is dominated by flat flood plains in the south, with a few hills in the north and west. This diversity of terrain was largely the product of tectonic uplift, the present Mekong Delta system has two major distributary channels, both discharging directly into the East Sea. The Holocene history of the Mekong Delta shows delta progradation of about 200 km during the last 6 kyr, during the Middle Holocene the Mekong River was discharging waters into both the East Sea and the Gulf of Thailand
13.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
14.
Vietnam War
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It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The war is considered a Cold War-era proxy war. As the war continued, the actions of the Viet Cong decreased as the role. U. S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, in the course of the war, the U. S. conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam and they viewed the conflict as a colonial war and a continuation of the First Indochina War against forces from France and later on the United States. The U. S. government viewed its involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam and this was part the domino theory of a wider containment policy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread of communism. Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina, U. S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962. Regular U. S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965, despite the Paris Peace Accord, which was signed by all parties in January 1973, the fighting continued. In the U. S. and the Western world, a large anti-Vietnam War movement developed as part of a larger counterculture, the war changed the dynamics between the Eastern and Western Blocs, and altered North–South relations. Direct U. S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973, the capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities, estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 to 3.8 million. Some 240, 000–300,000 Cambodians,20, 000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U. S. service members died in the conflict. Various names have applied to the conflict. Vietnam War is the most commonly used name in English and it has also been called the Second Indochina War and the Vietnam Conflict. As there have been several conflicts in Indochina, this conflict is known by the names of its primary protagonists to distinguish it from others. In Vietnamese, the war is known as Kháng chiến chống Mỹ. It is also called Chiến tranh Việt Nam, France began its conquest of Indochina in the late 1850s, and completed pacification by 1893. The 1884 Treaty of Huế formed the basis for French colonial rule in Vietnam for the seven decades
15.
Viet Cong
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It had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized peasants in the territory it controlled. Many soldiers were recruited in South Vietnam, but others were attached to the Peoples Army of Vietnam, although the terminology distinguishes northerners from the southerners, communist forces were under a single command structure set up in 1958. North Vietnam established the National Liberation Front on December 20,1960, many of the Việt Cộngs core members were volunteer regroupees, southern Viet Minh who had resettled in the North after the Geneva Accord. Hanoi gave the military training and sent them back to the South along the Ho Chi Minh trail in the early 1960s. The NLF called for southern Vietnamese to overthrow the colonial regime of the American imperialists. The offensive riveted the attention of the media for weeks. Later communist offensives were conducted predominantly by the North Vietnamese, the organisation was dissolved in 1976 when North and South Vietnam were officially unified under a communist government. The term Việt cộng appeared in Saigon newspapers beginning in 1956 and it is a contraction of Việt Nam Cộng-sản, or alternatively Việt gian cộng sản. The earliest citation for Việt Cộng in English is from 1957, American soldiers referred to the Viet Cong as Victor Charlie or V-C. Victor and Charlie are both letters in the NATO phonetic alphabet, Charlie referred to communist forces in general, both Việt Cộng and North Vietnamese. The official Vietnamese history gives the name as the Liberation Army of South Vietnam or the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam. Many writers shorten this to National Liberation Front, in 1969, the Viet Cong created the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, abbreviated PRG. Although the NLF was not officially abolished until 1977, the Viet Cong no longer used the name after PRG was created, members generally referred to the Viet Cong as the Front. Todays Vietnamese media most frequently refers to the group as the Peoples Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam, by the terms of the Geneva Accord, which ended the Indochina War, France and the Viet Minh agreed to a truce and to a separation of forces. The Viet Minh had become the government of Democratic Republic of Vietnam since the Vietnamese 1946 general election, military forces of non-communists regrouped in South Vietnam, which became a separate state. The political forces was not compulsory to regroup, elections on reunification were scheduled for July 1956. A divided Vietnam angered Vietnamese nationalists, but it made the country less of a threat to China, Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the past and Vietnam in the present do not recognise that Vietnam was divided into two countries. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai negotiated the terms of the ceasefire with France, about 90,000 Viet Minh were evacuated to the North while 5,000 to 10,000 cadre remained in the South, most of them with orders to refocus on political activity and agitation
16.
1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing
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Cử and Quốc hoped that the airstrike would expose Diệms vulnerability and trigger a general uprising, but this failed to materialise. One bomb penetrated a room in the wing where Diệm was reading but failed to detonate. With the exception of Diệms sister-in-law Madame Nhu, who suffered minor injuries, however, three palace staff died and 30 were injured. Afterwards, Cử escaped to Cambodia, but Quốc was arrested and imprisoned, in the wake of the airstrike, Diệm became hostile towards the American presence in South Vietnam. Diệm claimed that the American media was seeking to bring him down and he introduced new restrictions on press freedom and political association. The media speculated that the United States would use the incident to justify the deployment of troops to South Vietnam in the event the U. S. remained circumspect. Domestically, the incident was reported to have increased plotting against Diệm by his officers, Cử was the second son of Nguyễn Văn Lực, a leader of the VNQDD, which opposed the Diệm regime. In 1960, Diệm had jailed Lực for one month for engaging in anti-government activities, the VNQDD planned that Cử and Quốc, another pilot from the same squadron, would attack the Independence Palace on 27 February. Quốc had recently been personally commended by Diệm for his achievements in combat, Quốc had relatives who were involved with the VNQDD. Cử recruited Quốc by claiming the Vietnamese armed services and the United States were aware of the plot, Quốc had more subordinates but was not sure of their loyalty, so he did not try to recruit them for the attack on the palace. Years later, Cử blamed Diệms treatment of opposition parties as the motivation for his attack and he believed that Diệm had prioritised remaining in power over fighting the VC and that, for six years, Cử had been denied promotion because of Diệms obsession with hindering political opponents. Cử criticised the Americans for having supported Diệm, saying, the Americans had slammed the door on those of us who wanted the fight against the communists. The communists had been involved in attacks on Army of the Republic of Vietnam units 60 km south of the capital and had inflicted heavy damage, instead of proceeding south as ordered, they changed course to attack the Independence Palace, the official presidential residence. This meant that two companies of communist guerrillas were able to retreat after their attack without counter-attack, on their second run, they dropped bombs and napalm before firing rockets and strafing the presidential compound with machine-gun fire. The two continued their runs for 30 minutes before units loyal to the president arrived and launched a counter-attack. Taking advantage of weather and low cloud cover, the two pilots circled the palace at altitudes of around 150 m, periodically diving out of the clouds to re-attack before darting back into them. The airstrike caught the Saigon garrison off guard and, in the confusion, two tanks and a number of jeeps armed with 50-calibre machine guns patrolled the smoke-filled streets as a precaution. The first 500 lb bomb penetrated a room in the wing where Diệm was reading a biography of George Washington
17.
Gulf of Tonkin incident
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The Gulf of Tonkin incident, also known as the USS Maddox incident, drew the U. S. more directly into the Vietnam War. It involved two separate confrontations involving North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin, the original U. S. Maddox fired three warning shots and the North Vietnamese boats then attacked with torpedoes and machine gun fire. Maddox expended over 280 3-inch and 5-inch shells in what was claimed to be a sea battle. One U. S. aircraft was damaged, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were said to have been killed. Maddox was unscathed except for a bullet hole from a Vietnamese machine gun round. The resolution served as Johnsons legal justification for deploying U. S. conventional forces, in 1995, former Secretary of Defense McNamara met with former Vietnam Peoples Army General Võ Nguyên Giáp to ask what happened on August 4,1964 in the second Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Giáp claimed that the attack had been imaginary, the report stated, regarding the first incident on August 2, that at 1500G, Captain Herrick ordered Ogiers gun crews to open fire if the boats approached within ten thousand yards. At about 1505G, Maddox fired three rounds to warn off the communist boats and this initial action was never reported by the Johnson administration, which insisted that the Vietnamese boats fired first. It also forbade the political interference of other countries in the area, the creation of new governments without the stipulated elections, and foreign military presence. By 1961, President Ngo Dinh Diem faced significant discontent among some quarters of the southern population, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident occurred during the first year of the Johnson administration. Shortly before his assassination, in November 1963, Kennedy had begun a limited recall of U. S. forces, Johnsons views were likewise complex, but he had supported military escalation as a means of challenging what was perceived to be the Soviet Unions expansionist policies. The Cold War policy of containment was to be applied to prevent the fall of Southeast Asia to communism under the precepts of the domino theory. After Kennedys assassination, Johnson ordered in more U. S. forces to support the Saigon government, in 1964 the program was transferred to the Defense Department and conducted by the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group. For the maritime portion of the operation, a set of fast patrol boats had been purchased quietly from Norway. In 1963 three young Norwegian skippers traveled on a mission in South Vietnam and they were recruited for the job by the Norwegian intelligence officer Alf Martens Meyer. Martens Meyer, who was head of department at the intelligence staff. The three skippers did not know who Meyer really was when they agreed to a job that involved them in missions against North Vietnam. Four years later, Secretary McNamara admitted to Congress that the U. S. ships had in fact been cooperating in the South Vietnamese attacks against North Vietnam, Maddox, although aware of the operations, was not directly involved
18.
Tet Offensive
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It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. The name of the offensive comes from the Tết holiday, the Vietnamese New Year, the North Vietnamese launched a wave of attacks in the late night hours of 30 January in the I and II Corps Tactical Zones of South Vietnam. This early attack did not lead to defensive measures. The offensive was the largest military operation conducted by either side up to point in the war. During the Battle of Huế, intense fighting lasted for a month, during their occupation, the North Vietnamese executed thousands of people in the Massacre at Huế. Around the US combat base at Khe Sanh fighting continued for two more months. S, public support for the war declined and the U. S. sought negotiations to end the war. The term Tet offensive usually refers to the January–February 1968 offensive, there was a discrepancy, however, between MACV and the Central Intelligence Agencys order of battle estimates concerning the strength of Viet Cong guerrilla forces within South Vietnam. The MACV Combined Intelligence Center, on the hand, maintained that the number could be no more than 300,000. The agency responded that such a notion was ridiculous, since the militias were responsible for half of the casualties inflicted on U. S. forces. With the groups deadlocked, George Carver, CIA deputy director for Vietnamese affairs, was asked to mediate the dispute, George Allen, Carvers deputy, laid responsibility for the agencys capitulation at the feet of Richard Helms, the director of the CIA. He believed that it was a political problem, contravening the policy interest of the administration. During the second half of 1967 the administration had become alarmed by criticism and this trend was fueled not by a belief that the struggle was not worthwhile, but by mounting casualty figures, rising taxes, and the feeling that there was no end to the war in sight. A poll taken in November indicated that 55 percent wanted a war policy. But now that were there, lets win – or get out, under the leadership of National Security Advisor Walt W. Rostow, the news media then was inundated by a wave of effusive optimism. Every statistical indicator of progress, from kill ratios and body counts to village pacification, was fed to the press and we are beginning to win this struggle asserted Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey on NBCs Today show in mid-November. Upon their arrival, the two men bolstered the administrations claims of success, General Bruce Palmer, Jr. one of Westmorelands three Field Force commanders, claimed that the Viet Cong has been defeated and that He cant get food and he cant recruit. He has been forced to change his strategy from trying to control the people on the coast to trying to survive in the mountains, Westmoreland was even more emphatic in his assertions. At an address at the National Press Club on 21 November he reported that, as of the end of 1967, the communists were unable to mount a major offensive
19.
Cambodian Campaign
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The Cambodian Campaign was a series of military operations conducted in eastern Cambodia during 1970 by the United States and the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. These invasions were a result of the policy of President Richard Nixon, a total of 13 major operations were conducted by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam between 29 April and 22 July and by US forces between 1 May and 30 June. Cambodias official neutrality and military weakness made its territory effectively a safe zone where Vietnamese communist forces could establish bases for operations over the border. With the US shifting toward a policy of Vietnamization and withdrawal, a change in the Cambodian government allowed a window of opportunity for the destruction of the base areas in 1970 when Prince Norodom Sihanouk was deposed and replaced by pro-US General Lon Nol. The operation was also in response to North Vietnamese offensive on March 29 against the Cambodian Army that captured large parts of eastern Cambodia. These base areas were utilized by the Vietnamese communists to store weapons. PAVN forces had begun moving through Cambodian territory as early as 1963, during 1968, Cambodias indigenous communist movement, labeled Khmer Rouge by Sihanouk, began an insurgency to overthrow the government. While they received very limited help from the North Vietnamese at the time. The US government was aware of these activities in Cambodia, and this intelligence data would then be presented to the prince in an effort to change his mind. The president initially refused, but the point came with the launching of PAVNs Mini-Tet Offensive of 1969 within South Vietnam. Nixon, angered at what he perceived as a violation of the agreement with Hanoi after the cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam, while Sihanouk was abroad in France for a rest cure in January 1970, government-sponsored anti-Vietnamese demonstrations were held throughout Cambodia. On 18 March, the Cambodian National Assembly deposed Sihanouk and named Lon Nol as provisional head of state and this led Sihanouk to immediately establish a government-in-exile in Beijing and to ally himself with North Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge, the NLF, and the Laotian Pathet Lao. In doing so, Sihanouk lent his name and popularity in the areas of Cambodia to a movement over which he had little control. The North Vietnamese response to the coup was swift, PAVN began directly supplying large amounts of weapons and advisors to the Khmer Rouge, and Cambodia plunged into civil war. Lon Nol saw Cambodias population of 400,000 ethnic Vietnamese as possible hostages to prevent PAVN attacks and ordered their roundup, Cambodian soldiers and civilians then unleashed a reign of terror, murdering thousands of Vietnamese civilians. On 15 April for example,800 Vietnamese men had been rounded up at the village of Churi Changwar, tied together, executed and they then floated downstream into South Vietnam. Cambodias actions were denounced by both the North and South Vietnamese governments, even before the supply conduit through Sihanoukville was shut down, PAVN had begun expanding its logistical system from southeastern Laos into northeastern Cambodia. Communist forces then approached within 20 miles of the capital, Phnom Penh, a force of North Vietnamese quickly overran large parts of eastern Cambodia reaching to within 15 miles of Phnom Penh
20.
Operation Lam Son 719
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Operation Lam Son 719 was a limited-objective offensive campaign conducted in the southeastern portion of the Kingdom of Laos. The campaign was carried out by the forces of the Republic of Vietnam between 8 February and 25 March 1971, during the Vietnam War. The United States provided logistical, aerial, and artillery support to the operation, the objective of the campaign was the disruption of a possible future offensive by the Peoples Army of Vietnam, whose logistical system within Laos was known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. By launching such an attack against PAVNs long-established logistical system. A quick victory in Laos would bolster the morale and confidence of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, which was already high in the wake of the successful Cambodian Campaign of 1970. It would also serve as proof positive that South Vietnamese forces could defend their nation in the face of the withdrawal of U. S. ground combat forces from the theater. The operation would be, therefore, a test of that policy, only small-scale covert operations in support of the air campaigns had, however, been conducted on the ground inside Laos to halt the flow of men and supplies on the trail. The trail also linked up with a logistical system in neighboring Cambodia known as the Sihanouk Trail. However, following the overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970, strategically, this was an enormous blow to the North Vietnamese effort, since 70 percent of all military supplies that supported its effort in the far south had moved through the port. With the partial destruction of the North Vietnamese logistical system in Cambodia, if such an operation were to be carried out, the U. S. command believed, it would be best to do it quickly, while American military assets were still available in South Vietnam. There were increasing signs of heavy communist logistical activity in southeastern Laos and this build-up was alarming to both Washington and the American command, and prompted the perceived necessity for a spoiling attack to derail future communist objectives. MACV had been disturbed by intelligence of a PAVN logistical build-up in southeastern Laos but was reluctant to let the ARVN go it alone against the North Vietnamese, the groups findings were then sent on to the Joint Chiefs in Washington, D. C. Other possible benefits which might accrue from such an operation were also being discussed, on 7 January 1971 MACV was authorized to begin detailed planning for an attack against PAVN Base Areas 604 and 611. The task was given to the commander of U. S. XXIV Corps, Lieutenant General James W. Sutherland, the operation would consist of four phases. During the first phase U. S. forces inside South Vietnam would seize the border approaches, next would come an ARVN armored/infantry attack along Route 9 toward the Laotian town of Tchepone, the perceived nexus of Base Area 604. This advance would be protected by a series of leap-frogging aerial infantry assaults to cover the northern and southern flanks of the main column and it was hoped that the force could remain in Laos until the rainy season was underway at the beginning of May. At this meeting, Lãms operational area was restricted to a corridor no wider than 15 miles on side of Route 9. The same situation applied to Lieutenant General Dư Quốc Đống, commander of ARVN Airborne forces also scheduled to participate in the operation, after the incursion began, both men remained in Saigon and delegated their command authority to junior officers rather than take orders from Lãm
21.
Easter Offensive
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This conventional invasion was a radical departure from previous North Vietnamese offensives. In the I Corps Tactical Zone, North Vietnamese forces overran South Vietnamese defensive positions in a battle and captured Quảng Trị city. North-east of Saigon, in the III Corps Tactical Zone, PAVN forces overran Lộc Ninh, on all three fronts, initial North Vietnamese successes were hampered by high casualties, inept tactics and the increasing application of U. S. and South Vietnamese air power. One result of the offensive, was the launching of Operation Linebacker, by December, the Politburo had decided to launch a major offensive early in the following year. The officer entrusted with the conduct of the offensive was the PAVN chief of staff, the central questions then became where and with what forces the offensive would be launched and what its goals were to be. North Vietnam had used the regions of Laos and Cambodia as supply and manpower conduits for a decade. The offensive was given a title steeped in Vietnamese history, in 1773, the three Tây Sơn brothers united a Vietnam divided by civil war and social unrest. The youngest brother, Nguyễn Huệ, then defeated an invading Chinese army on the outskirts of Hanoi in 1788, the campaign eventually employed the equivalent of 14 divisions but decisive victory was not part of the North Vietnamese strategy. The goals were more limited. The prospect of seizing a South Vietnamese provincial capital, which could then be proclaimed as the seat of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, was also enticing. The Chinese placated the suspicions of their ally, by reassuring North Vietnam that even more military and these agreements led to a flood of equipment and supplies necessary for a modern, conventional army. To man the new equipment,25,000 North Vietnamese troops received specialized training abroad,80 percent of them in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe, a contingent of high-level Soviet military personnel also arrived in Vietnam and stayed until March 1972 in preparation for the offensive. During late 1971, U. S. and South Vietnamese intelligence estimates of communist intentions were mixed, an offensive was expected but intelligence as to its timing, location and size were confusing. The communists had mounted an offensive inside South Vietnam in 1968 but it was conducted mainly by the southerners of the NLF, without NLF support inside South Vietnam, a large-scale PAVN offensive was considered highly unlikely. A North Vietnamese thrust across the DMZ was also considered unlikely, in December, intelligence became conclusive, PAVN units supporting Khmer Rouge operations in Cambodia, began returning to the border areas. In Laos and Cambodia, there was also an expansion of infiltration. Within North Vietnam, there was a increase in military recruitment. Laird was unconvinced, telling the United States Congress in late January, U. S. and South Vietnamese intelligence services, had no consensus as to communist intentions
22.
Battle of the Paracel Islands
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The Battle of the Paracel Islands was a military engagement between the naval forces of the Peoples Republic of China and the Republic of Vietnam in the Paracel Islands on January 19,1974. The battle was an attempt by the Republic of Vietnam Navy to expel the Chinese Navy from the vicinity, as a result of the battle, the PRC established de facto control over the Paracels. As part of its nine-dash line boundary policy in the South China Sea and this claim has been persistently contested by Vietnam, the Philippines, and many international observers. The Paracel Islands, called Xisha Islands in Chinese and Hoang Sa Islands in Vietnamese, lie in the South China Sea lie approximately equidistant from the coastlines of the PRC, with no native population, the archipelago’s ownership has been in dispute since the early 20th century. Initially, France recognized Qing Chinas sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly archipelagos, Chinese maps since then have consistently shown China’s claims, first as a solid and then as a dashed line. In 1932, one year after the Japanese Empire invaded northeast China, in 1933, France seized the Paracels and Spratlys, announced their annexation, formally included them in French Indochina. They built several stations on them, but they did not disturb the numerous Chinese fishermen found there. In 1938 Japan took the islands from France, garrisoned them, in 1941, the Japanese Empire made the Paracel and Spratly islands part of Taiwan, then under its rule. Nanjing then declared both archipelagoes to be part of Guangdong Province, in 1946 it established garrisons on both Woody Island in the Paracels and Taiping Island in the Spratlys. The French tried but failed to dislodge Chinese nationalist troops from Yongxing Island, in 1950, after the Chinese nationalists were driven from Hainan by the People’s Liberation Army, they withdrew their garrisons in both the Paracels and Spratlys to Taiwan. In 1954 France ceased to be a factor when it accepted the independence of both South and North Vietnam and withdrew from Indochina, in 1956 North Vietnam formally accepted that the Paracel and Spratly islands were historically Chinese. About the same time, the PLA reestablished a Chinese garrison on Yongxing Island in the Paracels and that same year, however, South Vietnam reopened the abandoned French camp on Shanhu Island and announced it had annexed the Paracel archipelago as well as the Spratlys. To focus on its war with the North, South Vietnam by 1966 had reduced its presence on the Paracels to only a weather observation garrison on Shanhu Island. The PLA made no attempt to remove this force, on January 16,1974, six South Vietnamese Army officers and an American observer on the frigate Lý Thường Kiệt were sent to the Paracels on an inspection tour. They discovered two Chinese “armored fishing trawlers” laying off Drummond Island to support a detachment of PLA troops who had occupied the island. Chinese soldiers were observed around a bunker on nearby Duncan Island, with a landing ship moored on the beach. This was promptly reported to Saigon, and several vessels were sent to confront the Chinese ships in the area. The South Vietnamese Navy frigate signaled the Chinese squadron to withdraw, the rival forces shadowed each other overnight, but did not engage
23.
Fall of Saigon
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The event marked the end of the Vietnam War and the start of a transition period to the formal reunification of Vietnam under the Socialist Republic. This bombardment at the Tân Sơn Nhất Airport killed the last two American servicemen to die in Vietnam, Charles McMahon and Darwin Judge. By the afternoon of the day, North Vietnamese troops had occupied the important points of the city. The South Vietnamese government capitulated shortly afterward, the city was renamed Hồ Chí Minh City, after the Democratic Republics late President Hồ Chí Minh. The evacuation culminated in Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation in history, in addition to the flight of refugees, the end of the war and institution of new rules by the communists contributed to a decline in the citys population. Various names have applied to these events. The Vietnamese government officially calls it Day of liberating the South for national reunification or Liberation Day and it is called the Ngày mất nước, Tháng Tư Đen, Ngày Quốc Nhục, or Ngày Quốc Hận by many Overseas Vietnamese who were refugees from communism. The rapidity with which the South Vietnamese position collapsed in 1975 was surprising to most American and South Vietnamese observers, and probably to the North Vietnamese and their allies as well. For instance, a prepared by the CIA and U. S. Army Intelligence. These predictions proved to be grievously in error, even as that memo was being released, General Dũng was preparing a major offensive in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, which began on 10 March and led to the capture of Buôn Ma Thuột. The ARVN began a disorderly and costly retreat, hoping to redeploy its forces and hold the part of South Vietnam. Along the way, disorderly South Vietnamese retreats and the flight of refugees—there were more than 300,000 in Đà Nẵng—damaged South Vietnamese prospects for a turnaround. By April 8, the North Vietnamese Politburo, which in March had recommended caution to Dũng, cabled him to demand “unremitting vigor in the all the way to the heart of Saigon. ”On April 14, they renamed the campaign the Hồ Chí Minh campaign, after revolutionary leader Hồ Chí Minh. Meanwhile, South Vietnam failed to any significant increase in military aid from the United States. On April 9, PAVN forces reached Xuân Lộc, the last line of defense before Saigon, the North Vietnamese front line was now just 26 miles from downtown Saigon. With the ARVN having few defenders, the fate of the city was effectively sealed, the ARVN III Corps commander, General Toan, had organized five centers of resistance to defend the city. These fronts were so connected as to form an arc enveloping the area west, north. South Vietnamese defensive forces around Saigon totaled approximately 60,000 troops, however, as the exodus made it into Saigon, along with them were many ARVN soldiers, which swelled the men under arm in the city to over 250,000
24.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Dwight David Ike Eisenhower was an American politician and Army general who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a general in the United States Army during World War II. He was responsible for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43, in 1951, he became the first Supreme Commander of NATO. Eisenhower was of mostly Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry and was raised in a family in Kansas by parents with a strong religious background. He graduated from West Point in 1915 and later married Mamie Doud, after World War II, Eisenhower served as Army Chief of Staff under President Harry S. Truman and then accepted the post of President at Columbia University. Eisenhower entered the 1952 presidential race as a Republican to counter the non-interventionism of Senator Robert A. Taft, campaigning against communism, Korea and he won in a landslide, defeating Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson and temporarily upending the New Deal Coalition. Eisenhower was the first U. S. president to be constitutionally term-limited under the 22nd Amendment, Eisenhowers main goals in office were to keep pressure on the Soviet Union and reduce federal deficits. He ordered coups in Iran and Guatemala, Eisenhower gave major aid to help the French in the First Indochina War, and after the French were defeated he gave strong financial support to the new state of South Vietnam. Congress agreed to his request in 1955 for the Formosa Resolution, after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, Eisenhower authorized the establishment of NASA, which led to the space race. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, Eisenhower condemned the Israeli, British and French invasion of Egypt and he also condemned the Soviet invasion during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 but took no action. Eisenhower sent 15,000 U. S. troops to Lebanon to prevent the government from falling to a Nasser-inspired revolution during the 1958 Lebanon crisis. Near the end of his term, his efforts to set up a meeting with the Soviets collapsed because of the U-2 incident. On the domestic front, he covertly opposed Joseph McCarthy and contributed to the end of McCarthyism by openly invoking executive privilege and he otherwise left most political activity to his Vice President, Richard Nixon. Eisenhower was a conservative who continued New Deal agencies and expanded Social Security. Eisenhowers two terms saw considerable economic prosperity except for a decline in 1958. Voted Gallups most admired man twelve times, he achieved widespread popular esteem both in and out of office, since the late 20th century, consensus among Western scholars has consistently held Eisenhower as one of the greatest U. S. Presidents. The Eisenhauer family migrated from Karlsbrunn in the Saarland, to North America, first settling in York, Pennsylvania, in 1741, accounts vary as to how and when the German name Eisenhauer was anglicized to Eisenhower. Eisenhowers Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors, who were farmers, included Hans Nikolaus Eisenhauer of Karlsbrunn
25.
John F. Kennedy
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Kennedy was a member of the Democratic Party, and his New Frontier domestic program was largely enacted as a memorial to him after his death. Kennedy also established the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, Kennedys time in office was marked by high tensions with Communist states. He increased the number of American military advisers in South Vietnam by a factor of 18 over President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in Cuba, a failed attempt was made at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro in April 1961. He subsequently rejected plans by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to orchestrate false-flag attacks on American soil in order to gain approval for a war against Cuba. After military service in the United States Naval Reserve in World War II and he was elected subsequently to the U. S. Senate and served as the junior Senator from Massachusetts from 1953 until 1960. Kennedy defeated Vice President, and Republican presidential candidate, Richard Nixon in the 1960 U. S, at age 43, he became the youngest elected president and the second-youngest president. Kennedy was also the first person born in the 20th century to serve as president, to date, Kennedy has been the only Roman Catholic president and the only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22,1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested that afternoon and determined to have fired the shots that hit the President from a sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald two days later in a jail corridor, then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded Kennedy after he died in the hospital. The FBI and the Warren Commission officially concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin, the majority of Americans alive at the time of the assassination, and continuing through 2013, believed that there was a conspiracy and that Oswald was not the only shooter. Since the 1960s, information concerning Kennedys private life has come to light, including his health problems, Kennedy continues to rank highly in historians polls of U. S. presidents and with the general public. His average approval rating of 70% is the highest of any president in Gallups history of systematically measuring job approval and his grandfathers P. J. Kennedy and Boston Mayor John F. Fitzgerald were both Massachusetts politicians. All four of his grandparents were the children of Irish immigrants, Kennedy had an elder brother, Joseph Jr. and seven younger siblings, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Robert, Jean, and Ted. Kennedy lived in Brookline for ten years and attended the Edward Devotion School, the Noble and Greenough Lower School, and the Dexter School through 4th grade. In 1927, the Kennedy family moved to a stately twenty-room, Georgian-style mansion at 5040 Independence Avenue in the Hudson Hill neighborhood of Riverdale, Bronx and he attended the lower campus of Riverdale Country School, a private school for boys, from 5th to 7th grade. Two years later, the moved to 294 Pondfield Road in the New York City suburb of Bronxville, New York. The Kennedy family spent summers at their home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in September 1930, Kennedy—then 13 years old—attended the Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. In late April 1931, he required an appendectomy, after which he withdrew from Canterbury, in September 1931, Kennedy attended Choate, a boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut, for 9th through 12th grade
26.
Lyndon B. Johnson
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A Democrat from Texas, he previously served as a United States Representative from 1937 to 1949 and then as a United States Senator from 1949 to 1961. He spent six years as Senate Majority Leader, two as Senate Minority Leader, and two more as Senate Majority Whip, Johnson ran for the Democratic nomination in the 1960 presidential election. Although unsuccessful, he was chosen by then-Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts to be his running mate and they went on to win a close election over Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. Johnson was sworn in as Vice President on January 20,1961. Two years and ten months later, on November 22,1963 and he successfully ran for a full term in the 1964 election, winning by a landslide over Republican opponent Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. He is one of four people who have served as President, Vice President, Senator. Johnson was renowned for his personality and the Johnson treatment. Assisted in part by an economy, the War on Poverty helped millions of Americans rise above the poverty line during his administration. With the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Johnson escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted Johnson the power to use force in Southeast Asia without having to ask for an official declaration of war. The number of American military personnel in Vietnam increased dramatically, from 16,000 advisors in non-combat roles in 1963 to 550,000 in early 1968, American casualties soared and the peace process bogged down. Growing unease with the war stimulated a large, angry antiwar movement based especially on university campuses in the U. S. and abroad. Johnson faced further troubles when summer riots broke out in most major cities after 1965, while he began his presidency with widespread approval, support for Johnson declined as the public became upset with both the war and the growing violence at home. In 1968, the Democratic Party factionalized as antiwar elements denounced Johnson, Republican Richard Nixon was elected to succeed him, as the New Deal coalition that had dominated presidential politics for 36 years collapsed. After he left office in January 1969, Johnson returned to his Texas ranch, historians argue that Johnsons presidency marked the peak of modern liberalism in the United States after the New Deal era. Johnson is ranked favorably by some historians because of his policies and the passage of many major laws, affecting civil rights, gun control, wilderness preservation. Lyndon Baines Johnson was born on August 27,1908, near Stonewall, Texas, in a farmhouse on the Pedernales River. Johnson had one brother, Sam Houston Johnson, and three sisters, Rebekah, Josefa, and Lucia, the nearby small town of Johnson City, Texas, was named after LBJs cousin, James Polk Johnson, whose forebears had moved west from Oglethorpe County, Georgia. Johnson had English, German, and Ulster Scots ancestry and he was maternally descended from pioneer Baptist clergyman George Washington Baines, who pastored eight churches in Texas, as well as others in Arkansas and Louisiana
27.
Richard Nixon
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Richard Milhous Nixon was an American politician who served as the 37th President of the United States from 1969 until 1974, when he became the only U. S. president to resign from office. He had previously served as a U. S, Representative and Senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California, after completing his undergraduate studies at Whittier College, he graduated from Duke University School of Law in 1937 and returned to California to practice law. He and his wife Pat moved to Washington in 1942 to work for the federal government and he subsequently served on active duty in the U. S. Navy Reserve during World War II. Nixon was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and to the Senate in 1950 and his pursuit of the Hiss Case established his reputation as a leading anti-communist, and elevated him to national prominence. He was the mate of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party presidential nominee in the 1952 election. Nixon served for eight years as vice president and he waged an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1960, narrowly losing to John F. Kennedy, and lost a race for Governor of California to Pat Brown in 1962. In 1968, he ran for the presidency again and was elected by defeating incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Nixon ended American involvement in the war in Vietnam in 1973 and brought the American POWs home, and ended the military draft. His administration generally transferred power from Washington D. C. to the states and he imposed wage and price controls for a period of ninety days, enforced desegregation of Southern schools and established the Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon also presided over the Apollo 11 moon landing, which signaled the end of the moon race and he was reelected in one of the largest electoral landslides in U. S. history in 1972, when he defeated George McGovern. The year 1973 saw an Arab oil embargo, gasoline rationing, the scandal escalated, costing Nixon much of his political support, and on August 9,1974, he resigned in the face of almost certain impeachment and removal from office. After his resignation, he was issued a pardon by his successor, in retirement, Nixons work writing several books and undertaking of many foreign trips helped to rehabilitate his image. He suffered a stroke on April 18,1994. Richard Milhous Nixon was born on January 9,1913 in Yorba Linda, California and his parents were Hannah Nixon and Francis A. Nixon. His mother was a Quaker and his father converted from Methodism to the Quaker faith, Nixons upbringing was marked by evangelical Quaker observances of the time, such as refraining from alcohol, dancing, and swearing. Nixon had four brothers, Harold, Donald, Arthur, four of the five Nixon boys were named after kings who had ruled in historical or legendary England, Richard, for example, was named after Richard the Lionheart. Nixons early life was marked by hardship, and he quoted a saying of Eisenhower to describe his boyhood, We were poor. The Nixon family ranch failed in 1922, and the moved to Whittier
28.
Gerald Ford
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Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. was an American politician who served as the 38th President of the United States from 1974 to 1977, following the resignation of Richard Nixon. Prior to this he served eight months as the 40th Vice President of the United States, before his appointment to the vice presidency, Ford served 25 years as U. S. Representative from Michigans 5th congressional district, the nine of them as the House Minority Leader. As President, Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, marking a move toward détente in the Cold War, with the conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam nine months into his presidency, U. S. involvement in Vietnam essentially ended. Domestically, Ford presided over the worst economy in the four decades since the Great Depression, with growing inflation, one of his most controversial acts was to grant a presidential pardon to President Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. During Fords presidency, foreign policy was characterized in procedural terms by the increased role Congress began to play, in the Republican presidential primary campaign of 1976, Ford defeated former California Governor Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination. Arthur not to be elected in his own right, following his years as President, Ford remained active in the Republican Party. After experiencing health problems, he died at home on December 26,2006, Ford lived longer than any other U. S. president –93 years and 165 days – while his 895-day presidency was the shortest of all presidents who did not die in office. Gerald Rudolph Ford was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. on July 14,1913, at 3202 Woolworth Avenue in Omaha, Nebraska, where his parents lived with his paternal grandparents. His mother was Dorothy Ayer Gardner and his father was Leslie Lynch King Sr. a wool trader, Dorothy separated from King just sixteen days after her sons birth. She took her son with her to the Oak Park, Illinois, home of her sister Tannisse and brother-in-law, from there, she moved to the home of her parents, Levi Addison Gardner and Adele Augusta Ayer, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dorothy and King divorced in December 1913, she gained custody of her son. Fords paternal grandfather Charles Henry King paid child support until shortly before his death in 1930, Ford later said his biological father had a history of hitting his mother. James M. Ford later told confidantes that his father had first hit his mother on their honeymoon for smiling at another man. After two and a half years with her parents, on February 1,1916, Dorothy married Gerald Rudolff Ford and they then called her son Gerald Rudolff Ford, Jr. The future president was never adopted, and did not legally change his name until December 3,1935. He was raised in Grand Rapids with his three half-brothers from his mothers marriage, Thomas Gardner Tom Ford, Richard Addison Dick Ford. Ford also had three half-siblings from the marriage of Leslie King, Sr. his biological father, Marjorie King, Leslie Henry King
29.
Ho Chi Minh
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He was a key figure in the foundation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, as well as the Peoples Army of Vietnam and the Việt Cộng during the Vietnam War. After the war, Saigon, the capital of the Republic of Vietnam, was renamed Hồ Chí Minh City. Ho Chi Minh was born Nguyễn Sinh Cung, in 1890 in the village of Hoàng Trù, from 1895, he grew up in his father Nguyễn Sinh Sắc s village of Làng Sen, Kim Liên, Nam Đàn, Nghệ An Province. He had three siblings, his sister Bạch Liên, a clerk in the French Army, his brother Nguyễn Sinh Khiêm, a geomancer and traditional herbalist, as a young child, Cung studied with his father before more formal classes with a scholar named Vuong Thuc Do. Cung quickly mastered Chinese writing, a prerequisite for any study of Confucianism. In addition to his studious endeavors, he was fond of adventure, following Confucian tradition, at the age of 10, his father gave him a new name, Nguyễn Tất Thành. Thànhs father was a Confucian scholar and teacher, and later a magistrate in the small remote district of Binh Khe. This exposed Thành to rebellion at an age and seemed to be the norm for the province where Thành came of age. The province was known for its resistance to foreign rule, in deference to his father, Thành received a French education, attended lycée in Huế, the alma mater of his later disciples, Phạm Văn Đồng and Võ Nguyên Giáp and his later enemy, Ngô Đình Diệm. Previously, it was believed that Thành was involved in a demonstration of poor peasants in Huế in May 1908. However, a document from the Centre des archives dOutre-mer in France shows that he was admitted to Collège Quốc học on August 8,1908, which was several months after the anti-corvée demonstration. The exaggeration of revolutionary credentials was common among Vietnamese communist leaders and he chose to leave school in order to find a chance to go abroad. Thành worked as a helper on a French steamer, the Amirale de Latouche-Tréville, while using the alias Văn Ba. The steamer departed on 5 June 1911 and arrived in Marseille, the ship then left for Le Havre and Dunkirk, returning to Marseille in mid-September. There he applied for the French Colonial Administrative School but his application was rejected, instead, he decided to begin traveling the world by working on ships and visited many countries from 1911 to 1917. In 1912, while working as the cooks helper on a ship, from 1912–13, he may have lived in New York City and Boston, where he claimed to have worked as a baker at the Parker House Hotel. Inquiries to the Parker House management revealed no records of his ever having worked there, among a series of menial jobs, he claimed to have worked for a wealthy family in Brooklyn between 1917–18, and for General Motors as a line manager. At various points between 1913 and 1919, Thành claimed to have lived in West Ealing, and later in Crouch End and he reportedly worked as either a chef or dish washer at the Drayton Court Hotel in West Ealing