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The Cold War was a long, tense conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted from 1945 to 1991.

It was called "cold" because they never directly fought in a major war. Instead, they competed to be the world's most powerful nation using:

Proxy Wars: Fighting through other countries, helping opposite sides

Spying

Building more weapons (Arms Race)

Propaganda (trying to make their system look better)

Ally with more nations

...

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The French Occupation of Vietnam began in 1858 and lasted till 1954. France invaded Vietnam in 1858, gradually taking control of the entire country by 1887, when it became part of French Indochina (along with Laos and Cambodia). The French occupation of Vietnam ended with the First Indochina War in 1954, when the Geneva Accords of 1954 granted Vietnam independence.

The French occupation of Vietnam was led by economic and political ambitions. The growth of French capitalism created a demand for new markets to trade its goods, and France saw Vietnam as a potential gateway to the larger Chinese market. Vietnam was plentiful in resources like rice, coal, and rubber, which were valuable to French industry.

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The French introduced coffee to Vietnam, and today, Vietnam is one of the world’s largest coffee producers.

Saigon was known as the “Paris of the East” because of its French architecture and culture.

Many streets in Vietnam still have French names or influences in their layout and design.

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The U.S was worried about Soviet influence and expansion from all the way back in WW2 due to the spread of communism which the U.S saw as a threat. In 1947, the US declared the Truman Doctrine to contain communism and launched the Marshall plan shortly after to help Western Europe recover economically from WW2 and to stop communism from taking over in the West. The USSR then set up multiple satellite governments in Eastern Europe. The US made NATO and the USSR made the Warsaw Pact, effectively splitting Europe up between east and west and creating a heated geopolitical conflict between the two sides with an underlying threat of nuclear warfare.a

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The French occupation of Vietnam was a period of French colonization that began in 1858 and officially ended in 1954, during which France conquered the country and integrated it into its colonial territory of French Indochina. France occupied Vietnam for economic and geopolitical reasons, viewing the region as a strategic trading hub and a source of valuable resources, including rice and rubber. financial exploitation and poverty, the development of a nationalist resistance movement, the First Indochina War, and the eventual division of the country into North and South Vietnam.

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Several factors led up to the Vietnamese Famine in 1944.

The Japanese military occupation as well as the French administration in Vietnam also contributed to the famine as they demanded large amounts of rice for their war efforts and exports. Rice paddies that were used for growing crops like cotton and jute were also demanded.

This also disrupted the food distribution since the Japanese were limiting shipping capacities for their own purposes, making it difficult even for southern regions of Vietnam to transport rice to the north to prevent the famine.

Allied bombing by the Americans destructed transportation, further preventing the transport of food from the south to the north.

Even though there was a sufficient amount of food in the south that could have been transported to the north, no effecitve strategies were provided by the government and institutions to limit the famine's effect.

Natural disasters like typhoons and flooding in coastal areas of Vietnam further led to the destruction of rice crops, worsening the situation and resulting in the famine.

What were the lasting effects?

As a result of the famine, survivors experienced a long term reduction in their BMI (body mass index) that was around 5.6% to 8.4%, which was passed down to their offspring.

Survivors also had lower house incomes and there was a reduction in school participation from children.

Those born in 1943 - 1945 experienced a great decline in literacy rates.

The famine didn't only affect the health and economic state of Vietnam but it also affected their overall wellbeing, leaving behind trauma.

Any interesting facts?

The famine was a man-made catastrophe that was further exacerbated by natural disasters, resulting in the deaths of approximately 1 to 2 million people in northern Vietnam.

As mentioned already, there was a huge reduction in the BMI and even arm length effects of survivors which was then passed down to their offspring.

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What happened and when?

The Great Famine of 1944-45 was a famine that took place in Vietnam. According to government records, this famine killed over 2 million people in North Vietnam.

Why did this happen?

The Vietnamese Famine of 1944 was caused by multiple factors. One of which was the Japanese occupation of Vietnam following an agreement with French colonial administrators, remaining there until the end of World War II, causing Vietnam to be under dual colonization.

In 1944, the U.S. bombing had cut off supplies of coal from the North to Saigon, therefore the French and Japanese used rice and maize as fuel for power stations instead. In addition, the Japanese directed the destruction of rice fields in favor of cultivating jute to provide gunny bags for their economy. They also piled rice for domestic consumption and export. Many historians agree that Japan contributed to key factors in the Vietnamese Famine. However, natural causes such as droughts and floods also contributed to the famine.

What did this cause?

The famine forced citizens to walk from town to town to search for food. The Viet Minh, led by communists, managed to direct public resentment and encourage people to steal rice granaries from the occupation powers. In response, the Japanese imposed harsh punishments, and sometimes even mutilated them physically which further fueled the anger. This resulted in the death of over millions. Starving Vietnamese died throughout Northern Vietnam, with their corpses being spread all through out the streets of Hanoi. When the Chinese came to disarm the Japanese, their corpses had to be cleaned up by students.

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The US really disliked communism as they thought that it could be a threat to their influence and democracy as a whole and that it could lead to more authoritarian and tyrannical governments and the USSR thought the same thing but in reverse for the US. They both wanted to have more influence and control in Europe and so multiple technological rivalries happened, there was a lot of espionage and proxy wars like Cuba and Vietnam occurred as well but though never directly fought each other on a big scale due to the threat of nuclear annihilation.

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The Vietnamese boat people were refugees that fled Vietnam by boat nearing the close of the 1975 Vietnam War. This migration was a humanitarian crisis peaked in the late 1970s but continued into the 1990s. An estimate of 2 million people risked their lives on overcrowded boats facing servere dangers at sea including starvation, drowning, and even pirate attacks however many also found new homes in Canada, The US, and Austrailia.

A reason for the exodus was the fear of persecution from the Vietnamese government, following the fall of Saigon the new communist government sought to punish those who had supported the fallen South Vietnamese government or the United States. The war had caused widespread destruction causing economic hardship and the new government's policies led to a lack of opportunities which pushed many to seek a better life elsewhere.

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Mai Lai massacre is a war crime committed by the US army during the Vietnam War. Up. to around 500 civilians were killed, including children, women, and elderly men. This mass murder took place in Mai Lais 4, which is a village hamlet, under the command of Lieutenant William Calley Jr., and his troop C Company is responsible for the act. The massacre began with US troops searching for guerillas around the region, and later found no guerilla were present in the village. The troops then violently displaced the villagers and gathered them in open fields, unarmed, unprotected, and were then murdered with various forms of brutality.

The aftermath of it is infinitesimal, originally 22 soldiers were charged of murdering Vietnamese civilians, only Lieutenant William Calley Jr. was convicted of murder of twenty-two, and sentenced life in prison, yet his sentence reduced to twenty years after it being commuted.

The lead to this act was directly related to the impact of war, due to losses during combats, American soldiers began to view every Vietnamese as a potential threat, including civilians, induced by either their fear, condescending view, and urge of getting revenge.

An interesting fact about this event is that, they attempted to cover-up the massacre from war-crime investigations, and proclaimed that this was a battle against Viet Cong, and civilians were only killed in the middle of a “fierce fire fight”.

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The World's Sole Superpower: The US became the dominant global military, economic, and cultural power.

The Nuclear Age: Nuclear weapons became a permanent and defining feature of international relations. The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) ensured no direct war between major powers, but the threat remains.

Creation of Alliances: Permanent military alliances like NATO continue to exist and have expanded, influencing current global tensions.

Proxy Conflict Legacy: Many of the proxy wars left behind long-term instability, ethnic conflict, and authoritarian governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

New States: The collapse of the Soviet Union created 15 independent countries, profoundly changing the map of Europe and Central Asia.

Technological Advancements: Competition led to massive spending on technology, resulting in the Space Race (which put humans on the moon, actually, 12 people) and major advances in rocketry, computing, and the internet.

There is positive effects and negative effects, and i dont know what to write next

:)

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The Tet Offensive, which was the turning point of the Vietnam War, began on January 31, 1968, with initial attacks launched a day earlier. This massive, coordinated surprise attack was launched by the combined communist forces of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (Viet Cong) and the People's Army of Vietnam (North Vietnamese Army). They struck a broad array of targets across South Vietnam, ranging from cities and towns to provincial capitals and, most strikingly, the very heart of the nation in Saigon. The timing was carefully chosen to occur during the Tet Lunar New Year holiday, during which a traditional ceasefire was in effect, which gave their forces a decisive advantage of surprise. North Vietnamese leaders conceived the offensive in late 1967 as an audacious action to break a prolonged military stalemate that had persisted despite massive American involvement. Their strategic objectives were both manifold and ambitious: they aimed to stimulate an immediate spontaneous popular uprising by the South Vietnamese masses against their government, decisively destabilize the Saigon government, and effectively demoralize American political and public determination to continue the war.

The backdrop for this intense urban combat immediately set the stage for one of the most infamous incidents of the war. During the Saigon offensive, Viet Cong cells, which had infiltrated the city, launched selective attacks on South Vietnamese officials, policemen, and their families. It was amidst this violent and chaotic circumstance that the suspected Viet Cong officer, Nguyễn Văn Lém (also known as "Bảy Lốp"), was captured. On 1 February 1968, in the midst of the chaos of ongoing street fighting, South Vietnamese National Police Chief General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan shot and killed Lém on a Saigon street. The killing, maybe motivated by revenge, battlefield justice, or to create a grisly example, was captured in a photograph that would become known as the "Saigon Execution." Taken from just a few feet away by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams, the image captured the exact moment that the pistol was fired, creating a searing and powerful symbol of the war's brutality. The power of the photo was compounded by the contentious circumstance of Lém, who was wearing civilian clothes and was accused of murdering a South Vietnamese officer and his family, though the exact circumstances of his case still remain disputed.

From a purely military viewpoint, the Tet Offensive was a catastrophe for the communist forces. They were unable to capture and hold any major cities, suffered appallingly heavy losses from which the Viet Cong in particular never fully recovered, and most crucially failed to ignite the general popular uprising they had hoped for. And yet in a basic paradox, the offensive was a huge political and psychological victory for the North. It utterly shattered the sophisticated illusion on the part of South Vietnamese and American leaders that the war was nearing a successful conclusion, revealing instead the enormous scope, organization, and determination of the enemy. The "Saigon Execution" photo was instrumental in creating this impression. It won a Pulitzer Prize and became one of the most recognized photographs of the 20th century, igniting an international firestorm of controversy regarding the morality of the war, the rules of engagement, and the nature of the South Vietnamese ally. In the United States, the cumulative shock of the scale of the offensive and the visceral horror of the photograph abruptly turned public opinion against the war, galvanized the anti-war movement, and created a crisis of trust in the government.

The long-term effects were immediate and far-reaching. President Lyndon B. Johnson, faced with a political rebellion, announced only weeks later that he would not seek re-election. American policy set out on an irreversible course correction away from direct U.S. fighting involvement and in the direction of a "Vietnamization" policy, intended to put the primary burden of combat on South Vietnamese soldiers. The image itself became part of the canon of photojournalism and history as a classic illustration of the manner in which one photograph has the ability to dramatically alter public opinion and the course of history. To those personally involved, its impact was deeply personal; General Loan's career was irrevocably tainted by the photo, leading Eddie Adams to later remark in remorse that "two people died in that photograph—the general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera." In summary, while the Tet Offensive was a tactical military defeat for the communists, its strategic psychological impact, reinforced by iconic journalism, successfully altered the direction of the Vietnam War by making its true costs and complexities known to the world.

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- A defoliant chemical herbicide used by the US in the Vietnam War to disrupt ecosystems. Used to remove jungle covers from Vietnamese Soldiers. Destroyed millions of acres of farmland.

Poisoned communal rivers and soil

Forced relocation for villagers

Disrupted the agriculture and economy

Caused several illnesses

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What happened and when?) & Why did this happen? (Jane)

The Vietnam War lasted from 1954 to 1975. Vietnam was separated into 2 different parts: the northern communist group and the southern anti communist group, which later got backup from the US in 1965, known to the Vietnamese as the “American War” or “The War Against America to Save Their Nation.”

The main cause of conflict was because after Vietnam's independence from France, the north wanted to unify the country under one single communist regime similar to the soviet Union and China, to which the Southern Vietnamese government refused and instead wanted to align themselves with the West, like the US. The US stepped in to help the southern Vietnamese government during the Vietnam War because it served as a major front in the broader Cold War struggle. The US was scared it would cause a domino theory, which might lead multiple Southeast Asia countries to become communist.

What led up to this event? (Isobel)

The reasons that led up to this event were during ww2 when Vietnam had been part of the French Empire. Vietnam's independence, during ww2, Japan invaded Vietnam. After the war, Ho Chi Minh and his Vietminh resistance army fought for independence, capturing Hanoi in 1945 and declaring Vietnam independent. France tried to gain control but was defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

The Elections were never held, and the country remained divided:  North Vietnam was a communist republic led by Ho Chi Minh, while South Vietnam was a capitalist republic led by Ngo Dinh Diem.

Reason 2: Civil War The Vietminh aimed to unite Vietnam under communist leader Ho Chi Min. Many in the South were dissatisfied with Ngo Dinh Diem’s rule. A civil war broke out between the north and the south and from 1958 onwards, communist forces in the south, known as the National Liberation Front (NLF), intensified these attacks.

What were the lasting effects? (Isobel) What did this cause? (Isobel)

The lasting effects of Vietnam have not only has it affected Vietnam itself but also the United States. Effects on the United States: The war caused political limits on presidential power, economic inflation, social unrest, distrust in government, and lasting trauma for veterans.

Effects on Vietnam: Millions died or were injured, the economy and infrastructure were devastated, and toxic chemicals caused long-term health issues.

Global Effects: The war strengthened authoritarian regimes, hurt U.S. credibility, and shifted global power dynamics toward China.

The Vietnam War caused immense human, economic, and political devastation in Vietnam. Millions were killed and wounded. Cities and farmlands were destroyed, and the country was renamed under communist rule in 1976, leading to a large refugee crisis. In the United States, over 58,000 soldiers died, and the war caused deep social divisions, distrust, and so much more. Regionally, South Southeast Asia faced instability, and globally.

Any interesting facts? (Jane)

The US had multiple allies, such as South Korea, Laos, New Zealand, and Australia.

More than 125,000 young Americans fled to Canada to escape the draft, as they did not agree with the war.

Most soldiers who fought in the war were volunteers who did not want the spread of communism.

Women played a huge part in the conflict as they were promised equality and social impact if they did.

The US played ghost sounds through speakers in the jungle to scare the Vietnamese, based on the belief that if someone didn't receive a proper burial, they would hunt the living as ghosts.