ROOTS OF THE ANTI VIETNAM WAR MOVEMENT (2024)

FAQs

ROOTS OF THE ANTI VIETNAM WAR MOVEMENT? ›

The antiwar movement of the 1960's against the Vietnam War had its roots in the collective experiences of the two world wars and the Great Depression.

Many Americans opposed the war on moral grounds, appalled by the devastation and violence of the war. Others claimed the conflict was a war against Vietnamese independence or an intervention in a foreign civil war; others opposed it because they felt it lacked clear objectives and appeared to be unwinnable.

The largest and most organized anti-war movement in American history arose during the Vietnam War. After the escalation of bombing of North Vietnam, protests questioning the war's morality sprouted on college campuses in 1965 as faculty and students staged “teach-ins” with anti-war seminars replacing regular classes.

Some were opposed to the war because they felt war was morally wrong. They opposed the killing (accidental or otherwise) of civilians, especially women and children. Then there were some that opposed it because they were draft age, and stood a good chance of being drafted into the military and being sent to Vietnam.

The Vietnam War (1955-1975) was fought between communist North Vietnam, backed by the Soviet Union and China, and South Vietnam, supported by the United States. The bloody conflict had its roots in French colonial rule and an independence movement driven by communist leader Ho Chi Minh.

Final answer: Protesters opposed the Vietnam War on moral grounds, objection to the draft, concern over resource diversion from domestic programs, and doubts about the legitimacy and purpose of the war.

Getting Started

The first substantial demonstration, in October 1963, occurred when there were only American military advisers in Vietnam, and it opposed the government's support for Ngo Dinh Diem, the repressive president of South Vietnam.

Vietnam and the rise of the antiwar movement

As the US involvement in the Vietnam War intensified, so did antiwar sentiment. Especially after 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson dramatically escalated the US troop presence and bombing campaigns in Vietnam, the war became the focal point for student political activism.

The best-known national student organization was Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), formed in 1960 by students looking for an alternative to stifling Cold War politics.

The SDS March on Washington to End the War in Vietnam, held on April 17th, 1965, turned out to be the largest peace protest up to that point in American history, drawing between 15,000 and 25,000 college students and others to the nation's capital.

What was the anti Vietnam War protest? ›

The Vietnam anti-war movement was one of the most pervasive displays of opposition to the government policy in modern times. Protests raged all over the country. San Francisco, New York, Oakland, and Berkeley were all demonstration hubs, especially during the height of the war in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Vietnam is a socialist republic with a one-party system led by the Communist Party. The CPV espouses Marxism–Leninism and Hồ Chí Minh Thought, the ideologies of Hồ Chí Minh.

Ironically, as the draft continued to fuel the war effort, it also grew the anti-war cause. In almost every major city in the nation, an anti-draft protest took place. Draft cards were burned, Selective Service buildings were protested, and teach-ins and sit-ins were continual events.

A major cause of the Vietnam War was the Cold War ideological battle between communism and capitalism. The Vietnam War was also caused in part by a decolonization movement in the country and cooperation between the U.S. and French governments.

The Vietnam War had its origins in the broader Indochina wars of the 1940s and '50s, when nationalist groups such as Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh, inspired by Chinese and Soviet communism, fought the colonial rule first of Japan and then of France.

Despite financial assistance from the United States, nationalist uprisings against French colonial rule began to take their toll. On May 7, 1954, the French-held garrison at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam fell after a four month siege led by Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh.

Doves preached messages of peace and love. In their eyes, the war was unjust and was killing thousands of young American men only to help the profits of US companies. They saw the involvement of US corporations like the Dow Chemical Company as immoral.

Political opposition

The American Government spent vast amounts of money on the war that could have been spent on domestic problems. Some politicians who had supported the war to begin with, such as Robert McNamara, began to turn against American involvement.

News coverage of the war, which included graphic visual testimonies of the death and destruction in Vietnam, turned US public opinion increasingly against the war. Revelations that the Johnson and Nixon administrations had lied to the American people about the war undermined the public's trust in government.

Anti-war activists work through protest and other grassroots means to attempt to pressure a government (or governments) to put an end to a particular war or conflict or to prevent it in advance.