The True Origin of the Vietnam War: It Didn't Start With America

The True Origin of the Vietnam War: It Didn't Start With America Most people think they know how the Vietnam War began. In the picture most of us carry, it starts with American helicopters over green jungle in the nineteen sixties. But the first shots were fired in nineteen forty-six, no American soldier was involved, and by the end of that first war the United States was already paying most of the bill. In this video we follow the documents in order, from the colony France built for profit and Ho Chi Minh's contact with American intelligence, through his letters to President Truman, the French war and the American money behind it, Dien Bien Phu and Geneva, the election that was never held, the advisers, and the Gulf of Tonkin. Along the way we hear the historians who disagree about where the real origin lies. We keep two words apart: begin and escalate. By the end you will see four answers that the sources support, and the limit of each one. The war did not start with America. But the war that Americans remember was a choice, made one step at a time. If you stayed with us to the end, leave the word Geneva in the comments, and tell us where you think this war really began. SOURCES: • Pentagon Papers, Part I, section "Ho Chi Minh: Asian Tito?" (Wikisource transcription of the copy declassified by the U.S. National Archives) • Pentagon Papers, Part II (Wikisource transcription) • Robert J. Hanyok — "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964" (Cryptologic Quarterly; Naval Historical Center mirror, ibiblio.org) • Bob Bergin — "Old Man Ho: Ho Chi Minh and the OSS" (Studies in Intelligence, vol. 62, no. 2, June 2018, CIA) • Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955-1957, Volume I, document 297 (Office of the Historian) • Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 2 September 1945 (Fordham Internet History Sourcebooks) • Dwight D. Eisenhower — Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (transcribed excerpt, p. 372) • Wikipedia — "Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam" • Wikipedia — "Ho Chi Minh" • Wikipedia — "OSS Deer Team" #VietnamWar #HoChiMinh #GulfOfTonkin #PentagonPapers #ColdWar #FirstIndochinaWar #DienBienPhu #Geneva1954 #FrenchIndochina #TetOffensive #Truman #Eisenhower #MilitaryHistory #History #HistoryDocumentary #HistoryExplained #HiddenHistory #TheTrueOrigin