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There is no clear starting point. One could say that the war began with the first American death in 1945, when Viet Minh forces mistakenly shot an OSS officer after WWII had ended; or you could say it was 1950, when President Truman officially supported the old regime that would become South Vietnam; there was 1955, when President Eisenhower sent in military advisors; 1962 with JFK sending Green Berets in massive numbers; or 1964 with LBJ ramping up the already established mission to full-scale warfare. The beginning of American involvement in the Vietnam War could be any of those dates and more. If you let a camel stick its nose under the tent, eventually it will insist on being completely within the tent. America is the camel here. We stuck our nose in, and bit by bit, we became fully entangled. It took so much blood and treasure there and here to dislodge ourselves again, forever changing not just American and Vietnamese history, but how the world arranged power.
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Bibliography
America at War: The Macmillan Compendium (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994). https://amzn.to/2uaLkEd

Christian Appy, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity (New York: Penguin, 2015). https://amzn.to/46pNqQL

Alan Axelrod, America’s Wars (New York: Wiley and Sons, 2002). https://amzn.to/2NHcLOa

Bernard B. Fall, Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina (Mechanicsburg, Pen.: Stackpole Books, 1994). https://amzn.to/3G3EGEk

George Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, 6th ed. (1979; New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001). https://amzn.to/45rjjXC

Edwin Hoyt, America’s Wars & Military Excursions (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co, 1987). https://amzn.to/2u9QGiP
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Wiki: United States involvement in the Vietnam War began shortly after the end of World War II in Asia, first in an extremely limited capacity and escalating over a period of 20 years. The U.S. military presence peaked in April 1969, with 543,000 American combat troops stationed in Vietnam.[1] By the conclusion of the United States's involvement in 1973, over 3.1 million Americans had been stationed in Vietnam.
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Hashtags: #history #vietnamwar #vietnam
chapters
0:00 intro
4:30 promo
6:10 French conquest
7:16 WWII
8:29 First Indochina War
11:26 partition
12:59 MAAG
13:57 green berets
14:59 MACV
17:05 Gulf of Tonkin
20:10 full involvement
21:35 conclusion
25:01 outtakes