hi I'm John Green this is crash-course
US history and today we're going to talk
about the Cold War again really less
about the cold more about the war as
usual we're not going to focus so much
on the generals and the tactics but
instead on why the wars were fought and
what it all meant and today we get to
visit a part of the world that we
haven't seen much on this series Asia
now my best work
so we're going to start today with the
place where the Cold War really heated
up at least as far as America's concerns
agree it's Vietnam most me from the past
but like all your romantic endeavors
unsuccessful the correct answer is of
course Korea like me from the past many
Americans have forgotten about the
Korean War which lasted three years from
1950 to 1953 and is sometimes called The
Forgotten War but it was real the Korean
War was the first real like shooting war
that Americans were involved in after
World War two and it was also the only
time that American troops directly
engaged with an honest-to-goodness
communist power I am referring not to
North Korea but to China which became
communist in 1949 and qualifies as a
major world power because it was and
also is huge
we love you China just kidding you're
not watching because of the Great
Firewall so the end of World War two
left Korea split between a communist
North led by kim ill crazy pants song
and an anti-communist but hardly
democratic South led by syngman rhee the
two were supposed to reunite but that
was impossible because they were
constantly fighting fighting that cost
around 100,000 lives the civil war
between the two Koreas turned into a
full-fledged international conflict in
June of 1950 when kemell sung invaded
the south and the u.s. responded Truman
thought that Kim's invasion was being
pushed by the Soviets and that it was a
challenge to the quote free world
Truman went to the United Nations and he
got authorization but he didn't go to
Congress and never called the Korean War
a war insisting instead that American
troops were leading a UN police action
but that was kind of a misleading
statement General Douglas MacArthur was
in command of this tiny little police
force at the start of the war because he
was the highest ranking General in the
region he was also really popular at
least with the press although not so
much with other generals or with the
president under McArthur UN forces which
basically meant American and South
Korean forces pushed the North Koreans
back past the 38th parallel where the
two countries had been divided and then
Truman made a fateful decision the
United States would try to reunify Korea
as a non communist state which if you've
looked at a map recently you'll notice
went swimmingly America's allies and the
UN all agreed to this idea so up north
they went all the way to the northern
border with China at the Yalu River at
that point Chinese forces feeling that
American forces were a smidge too close
to china counter-attacked on november
1st 1950 and by christmas the two sides
were stalemated again at the 38th
parallel right where they started to war
dragged on for two more years with the
u.s. pursuing a scorched earth policy
and dropping more bombs on Korea than
had been dropped in the entire Pacific
Theater during World War two the two
sides tried to negotiate a peace treaty
but the sticking point was the
repatriation of North Korean and Chinese
prisoners who didn't want to go back to
their communist homelands meanwhile at
home Americans were growing tired of
fighting a war that they weren't winning
which helped to swing the election of
1952 for Dwight Eisenhower also he was
running against perennial presidential
loser Adlai Stevenson who was perceived
as an egghead intellectual because his
name was Adlai Stevenson in addition to
helping I get elected the Korean War had
a number of profound effects first and
most importantly it was expensive both
in terms of lives and money in three
years of fighting 30 3629 americans were
killed 102 thousand were wounded and
nearly four million Korean and Chinese
people were killed wounded or missing
the majority of Korean casualties were
civilians the Korean War also further
strengthened executive power in the
United States
Truman went to war without a declaration
and Congress acquiesced this doesn't
mean that the war was initially
unpopular it wasn't people wanted to see
America do something about communism and
allowing Kim to take the south and
possibly threaten Japan was unacceptable
however the whole idea that you don't
really need to declare war to go to war
while not new in America sure has been
important in the last sixty years and
the Korean War also strengthened the
Cold War mentality I mean this was the
height of the Red Scare also the Korean
War set the stage for America's longer
more destructive and more well known
engagement in Asia the Vietnam War oh
it's time for the mystery document
the rules here are simple I guess the
author of the mystery document I'm
either right or I get shocked all right
let's see what we got the Declaration of
the French Revolution made in 1791
states all men are born free and with
equal rights and must always remain free
and have equal rights those are
undeniable truths nevertheless for more
than 80 years the French imperialists
abusing the standard of liberty equality
and fraternity have violated our
fatherland and oppressed our fellow
citizens they have acted contrary to the
ideals of humanity and justice in the
field of politics they have deprived our
people of every Democratic liberty well
Stan that sounds like a Frenchman who
really doesn't want to be French anymore
so what somebody who's very disappointed
by the way that France has been running
their colonies I'm gonna guess that it's
North Vietnamese leader and crash-course
chalkboard person Ho Chi Minh wait Stan
says he needs his real name it's win
Xing Kong yes so this document points
out that at least rhetorically Ho Chi
Minh was fighting for liberation from a
colonial power as much as if not more
than he was trying to establish a
communist dictatorship in Vietnam but
because of the Cold War in its
prevailing theories the United States
could only see Howe as a communist
stooge a tool of the Kremlin and under
the so called domino theory Vietnam was
just another domino that had to be
propped up or else the rest of Southeast
Asia would fall to communism like a row
of dominoes now in retrospect this was a
fundamental misunderstanding but it's
important to understand that at the time
people felt that they didn't want the
Soviet Union to expand the way that say
Nazi Germany had America's involvement
in Vietnam like most things Cold War
dates back to World War two but it
really picked up in the 1950s as we
threw our support behind the French in
their war to maintain their colonial
empire wait Stan why would we fight with
the French to maintain a quality land
but oh right because we were blinded by
our fear of communism now Eisenhower
wisely refused to send troops or use
atomic weapons to help the French really
good call and the Geneva Accords were
supposed to set up elections to reunite
North and South which had been divided
after World War two but then we didn't
let that happen because sometimes
democracies don't vote for our guy
instead the US began supporting the
repressive elitist regime of no Dinh
Diem as a bulwark against communism GM
was a Catholic in a majority Buddhist
country and his support of landowners
didn't win him any fans but he was
against communism which was good enough
for us
the first major involvement of American
troops then called advisors began in the
early 1960s technically their role was
to advise the army of the Republic of
Vietnam also called arvin how did they
not know this was doomed let's fight for
arvin against this guy you were scary
seriously anyway pretty quickly this
advising turned into shooting and the
first American advisors were killed in
nineteen
wondering John Kennedy's presidency
however most Americans consider Vietnam
to be Lyndon Johnson's war and they
aren't wrong the major escalation of
American troops started under Johnson
especially in 1965 after the Gulf of
Tonkin incident this is one of the great
incidents in all of American history so
in August 1964 North Korean patrol boats
attacked US warships in the Gulf of
Tonkin as a result Johnson asked
Congress to authorize the President to
take quote all necessary measures to
repel armed attack in Vietnam which
Congress dutifully did with the Gulf of
Tonkin Resolution so why is this one of
the great incidents in American history
because the whole patrol boats attacking
warships thing that didn't happen none
of that stuff happened except we did
actually go to war now in retrospect
this seems like a terrible idea but it
was very popular at the time because to
quote the historian James Patterson
preventing communism after all remained
the guiding star of American policy wait
a second did I just say to quote
historian James Patterson like the crime
novelist now it's a different guy
parently that's a bummer he doesn't
write his own books because he's so busy
with his secret career being a historian
so the number of American troops began a
steady increase and so did the bombing
the frightfully named Operation Rolling
Thunder began in the spring of 1965 and
in March of that year two marine
battalions arrived at Danang air base
authorized to attack the enemy no
advising about it but Johnson didn't
actually tell the American public that
our troops had this authorization which
was part of a widening credibility gap
between what the government told
Americans about the war and what was
really happening let's go to the
thought-bubble
by 1968 there were about half a million
American soldiers in Vietnam and the
government was confidently saying that
victory was just around the corner but
then in January Vietnamese forces
launched the Tet Offensive and what was
eventually repelled the fact that the
North Vietnamese were able to mount such
an offensive cast doubts on the claims
that US victory was imminent the Vietnam
war itself was particularly brutal with
much of the ground fighting taking place
in jungles rather than large-scale
offensives troops were sent on Search
and Destroy missions and often it was
difficult to tell enemy from civilian
capturing territory wasn't meaningful so
commanders kept track of body counts
like if more enemy were killed than
Americans we were
winning in addition to jungle fighting
there was a lot of bombing like more
bombs were dropped on North and South
Vietnam than both the axis and Allied
powers in all of World War two the u.s.
used chemical defoliants like Agent
Orange to get rid of that pesky jungle
and also napalm was used to burn trees
homes and people television coverage
meant that Vietnam was the first war
brought into American living rooms and
people were horrified by what they saw
they were especially shocked by the My
Lai massacre which took place in 1968
but was only reported a year later in
1969 these draftees were young and
disproportionately from the lower
classes because enrollment in college or
grad school earned you a deferment so
unlike previous American wars the burden
of fighting did not fall evenly across
socio-economic class thanks
thought-bubble so as Americans at home
became increasingly aware of what was
going on in Vietnam protests started but
it's important to remember that the
majority of Americans were not out in
the streets or on college campuses
burning their draft cards right up
through 1968 and maybe even 1970 most
Americans supported the Vietnam War
during the 1968 presidential campaign
Richard Nixon promised that he had a
secret plan to end the war and appealed
to the silent majority of Americans who
weren't on board with the anti-war
movement so the first part of Nixon's
secret plan was vietnamisation gradually
withdrawing American troops and leaving
the fighting to the Vietnamese the
second part involved more bombing and
actually escalating the war by sending
American troops into Cambodia in order
to cut off the so-called Ho Chi Minh
Trail named for this guy a supply line
that connected north to south not only
did this not work it also destabilized
Cambodia and helped the Khmer Rouge to
come to power the Khmer Rouge
represented the absolute worst that
communism had to offer forcing almost
all Cambodians into communes and
massacring one third of the country's
population so not a great secret plan in
the United States by 1970 the anti-war
protests had grown and discontent within
the armed forces was enormous Vietnam
veterans including future almost
President John Kerry were participating
in protests and things got even worse in
1971 when the New York Times published
the Pentagon Papers classified documents
that showed that the government had been
misleading the public about
war for years Congress eventually
responded by passing the War Powers Act
in 1973 which was supposed to limit the
president's ability to send troops
overseas without their approval and
prevent another Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution oh how does that work out
Stan not great yeah I'll say after five
years of negotiations Nixon and his
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were
able to end America's involvement in
Vietnam in 1973 the Paris peace
agreement made it possible for America
to withdraw its troops the war between
North and South Vietnam however
continued until 1975 when the North
finally conquered the south and created
a single communist Vietnam the Vietnam
War cost the United States more than a
hundred billion dollars 58,000 Americans
died as well as between three and four
million Vietnamese people and Vietnam
was the first war in American history
that we definitively lost we lost it
because we didn't understand the
Vietnamese and we didn't understand why
they were fighting to return to the
historian James Patterson the unyielding
determination of the enemy wore down the
American commitment which proved to be
far less resolute America expected that
its superior technology and wealth would
eventually wear down the Vietnamese and
they'd just give up communism but the
Vietnamese weren't fighting for
communism they were fighting for Vietnam
this fundamental misunderstanding
combined with the government's
dishonesty changed Americans
relationship with their leaders before
Vietnam most Americans trusted their
government even when they knew it did
horrible things but after the war and
largely because of it that trust was
gone thanks for watching I'll see you
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course and as we say in my hometown
don't forget to be awesome