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U.S. History 1877-Present 12.1b: The Cold War Revisited 34 Views
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Description:
Upon entering office, Eisenhower had to decide whether to engage in conflict in Vietnam or risk plunging humanity into a domino effect of world communist domination... Eh, at least dominos are fun.
Transcript
- 00:04
So what had gone wrong in Vietnam? Well, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the [map of Vietnam]
- 00:08
Republican candidate for president in 1952, concluded that Truman and the
- 00:12
Democrats had failed to do enough to whip the French into shape. Probably [Eisenhower trains Frenchman]
- 00:16
skipped out on the burpees or something... Well up to that point, Ike's claim to fame was being
- 00:20
the successful Allied army commander back in World War II. He was sure that [Eisenhower military picture]
Full Transcript
- 00:24
he had what it took to, as one American military advisor phrased it, "put the
- 00:29
squeeze" on the French to get them off their fannies. Now that's diplomacy... And [hand squeezes water balloon]
- 00:34
no, no actual fanny squeezing was done. More like Fanny kicking. Despite [fanny gets kicked]
- 00:39
increased economic and military aid in 1953, a French defeat appeared inevitable, [France inflates and pops]
- 00:44
but the U.S. refused to abandon our beret-wearing brethren. Heck,
- 00:48
President-Elect Dwight D. Eisenhower even pronounced to the nation, "Destiny has laid [Eisenhower speaks]
- 00:53
upon our country the responsibility of the free world's leadership." And we wonder
- 00:58
why people say we're full of ourselves... Eisenhower and Secretary of State John
- 01:01
Foster Dulles agreed that U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam would have dangerous global [Dulles and Eisenhower speak]
- 01:06
consequences and would certainly lead to the worldwide spread of communism. Ike told [Communism spreads]
- 01:11
the American people to think of it like a row of dominoes. If Vietnam fell, [dominoes fall]
- 01:14
another country would quickly follow until the entire free world tumbled into
- 01:19
communism. But how far would Eisenhower be willing to go to plug what he called
- 01:24
"the leaky dike in Indochina?" Should he send American troops? If so, how many? Or [dike leaks]
- 01:29
should he just send really big corks? And like an endless game of Jeopardy, the [cork plugs leak]
- 01:33
questions kept coming. If the U.S. were to intervene directly and perhaps to [countries fight]
- 01:37
declare its own war against the Viet Minh, would America win where the French
- 01:42
had failed? Could the U.S. with its new role as leader of the free world afford
- 01:47
to be defeated by a communist enemy, or would such a loss have worldwide
- 01:51
repercussions? Well, the answer to that one was a big ol' yes. By early 1954,
- 01:56
the leak began to gush. For the first time, the U.S. government [leak gets bigger]
- 01:59
considered the option of sending American troops to Vietnam, a decision
- 02:02
that all leading officials had hoped to avoid like the plague. We bet some of [officials meet]
- 02:06
them even started wearing those terrifying beaked plague masks to meetings. Well, [person in plague mask leans in]
- 02:10
Eisenhower's administration may have been tempted to step in [Eisenhower doesn't gamble]
- 02:13
but in the end voted against direct military action. The stakes were far too
- 02:17
high. Just one month after President Eisenhower delivered his foreboding
- 02:21
domino theory statement, Indochina fell. Without American firepower, the French [dominoes fall]
- 02:26
army surrendered, and Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh declared victory the U.S. was [Minh beats France]
- 02:31
not at all pleased with the peace agreement. It refused to endorse the
- 02:34
Geneva peace accords, arguing that they gave too much power to communist [Geneva Peace Accords signed]
- 02:38
leadership in Vietnam. Much to the U.S. government's dismay, France and the Viet
- 02:43
Minh agreed to divide the region nearly in half, with Ho Chi Minh controlling the [Vietnam divided]
- 02:47
North and France maintaining its influence over the South. And furthermore,
- 02:51
according to the terms of the Accords, national elections would be held in two
- 02:55
years in an effort to reunify the country. Well, the U.S. predicted that if
- 02:59
the elections took place, Ho Chi Minh and the communist party of Vietnam would [newspaper headline]
- 03:03
certainly win, and a democratically elected communist leader would be, in the
- 03:07
words of U.S. Secretary of State Dulles, "something to gag about..." Or maybe he was
- 03:12
just talking about Mamie Eisenhower's meatloaf. [Mamie Eisenhower serves dinner]
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