High School History Recap

#22 The End of the Vietnam War

May 19, 2020 William H Palk and Colin du Plessis Season 1 Episode 22
High School History Recap
#22 The End of the Vietnam War
Show Notes

In this episode we conclude our series on Vietnam. We consider Richard Nixon's policy of Vietnamization (or "De-Americanization") and the events leading up to Nixon announcing the end of American involvement in Vietnam on 23 January 1973. Nixon was very focused on US foreign policy and we see him visit the Soviet Union and China. Did these visits help bring the war to an end? What about the years following the withdrawal of the United States? Nixon is replaced by Gerald Ford after the Watergate Scandal and we see North Vietnam conquering the South: effectively a victory for the Communist North. How did the South (and the US) lose the Vietnam War? We've drawn extensively on the work of Geoffrey C War and Ken Burns ("The Vietnam War"), as well as Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing ("The Cold War"). We've also consulted Odd Arne Westad's book "The Cold War: A World History."

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