1960 in South Vietnam

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1960
in
South Vietnam

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The following lists events that happened during 1960 in South Vietnam .

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Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam One former communist country,one puppet government of North Vietnam and Red ally.

Republic of South Vietnam was formed on June 8, 1969, by North Vietnam as a purportedly independent shadow country and government that opposed the government of the Republic of Vietnam under President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu in the South Vietnam. Delegates of the National Liberation Front, as well as several smaller groups, participated in its creation.

Viet Cong mass political organization in South Vietnam and Cambodia

The Việt Cộng, also known as the National Liberation Front, was a mass political organization in South Vietnam and Cambodia with its own army – the People's Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam (PLAF) – that fought against the United States and South Vietnamese governments during the Vietnam War, eventually emerging on the winning side. It had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized peasants in the territory it controlled. Many soldiers were recruited in South Vietnam, but others were attached to the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), the regular North Vietnamese army. During the war, communists and anti-war activists insisted the Việt Cộng was an insurgency indigenous to the South, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of Hanoi. Although the terminology distinguishes northerners from the southerners, communist forces were under a single command structure set up in 1958.

Khmer Republic 1970–1975 pro-American military government of Cambodia

The Khmer Republic was the pro–United States military-led republican government of Cambodia that was formally declared on 9 October 1970. Politically, the Khmer Republic was headed by General Lon Nol and Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak that took power in the 18 March 1970 coup against Prince Norodom Sihanouk, then the country's head of state.

Nguyễn Hữu Thọ Vietnamese politician

Nguyễn Hữu Thọ was a Vietnamese revolutionary and Chairman of Consultative Council of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam from 6 June 1969 to 2 July 1976, and the Chairman of the National Assembly of Vietnam from 4 July 1981 to 18 June 1987.

Paris Peace Accords Peace treaty between United States and 2 countries (South Vietnam+North Vietnam):

The Paris Peace Accords, officially titled the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam, was a peace treaty signed on January 27, 1973, to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War. The treaty included the governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam, and the United States, as well as the Republic of South Vietnam (PRG) that represented indigenous South Vietnamese revolutionaries. US ground forces up to that point had been sidelined with deteriorating morale and gradually withdrawn to coastal regions, not partaking in offensive operations or much direct combat for the preceding two-year period. The Paris Agreement Treaty would in effect remove all remaining US Forces, including air and naval forces in exchange for Hanoi's POWs. Direct U.S. military intervention was ended, and fighting between the three remaining powers temporarily stopped for less than a day. The agreement was not ratified by the United States Senate.

The Indochina Wars were a series of wars fought in Southeast Asia from 1945 until 1991, between communist Indochinese forces against mainly French, South Vietnamese, American, Cambodian, Laotian and Chinese forces. The term "Indochina" originally referred to French Indochina, which included the current states of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. In current usage, it applies largely to a geographic region, rather than to a political area. The wars included:

Nguyễn Thị Định Communist leader, politician

Madame Nguyễn Thị Định was the first female general of Vietnam People's Army during the Vietnam War. Her role in the war was as National Liberation Front deputy commander, and was described as "the most important Southern woman revolutionary in the war". Furthermore, she was commander of an all-female force known as the Long-Haired Army, whom engaged in espionage and combat against ARVN and US Forces.

Trương Như Tảng Vietnamese politician

Trương Như Tảng is a Vietnamese lawyer and politician living in France. He was active in many anti-South Vietnamese organizations before joining the newly created Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam as the Minister of Justice. He spent many years in the jungles near and in Cambodia until the Fall of Saigon in 1975. He quickly became disillusioned with the newly imposed North Vietnamese regime and escaped the reunited Socialist Republic of Vietnam via a boat in August 1978. He was sent to a refugee camp in Indonesia before moving to Paris, France, to live out his life in exile.

Trần Văn Hữu served as president of the government of Cochinchina from 1948 to 1949, then as Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam from 1950 to 1952.

Central Office for South Vietnam

Central Office for South Vietnam, officially known as the Central Executive Committee of the People's Revolutionary Party from 1962 until its dissolution in 1976, was the American term for the North Vietnamese political and military headquarters inside South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It was envisaged as being in overall command of the communist effort in the southern half of the Republic of Vietnam, which included the efforts of both People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), the Viet Cong, and the People's Revolutionary Party. Some doubted its existence but in his memoirs the American commander in South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, spoke of it as something whose existence and importance were not in doubt.

During the Second Indochina War, better known as the Vietnam War, a distinctive land warfare strategy and organization was used by the National Liberation Front and the People's Army of Vietnam or NVA to defeat their American and South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) opponents. These methods involved closely integrated political and military strategy – what was called dau tranh. The National Liberation Front, (NLF) was an umbrella of front groups, sympathizers and allies set up by the rulers of North Vietnam to conduct the insurgency in South Vietnam. The NLF also included fully armed formations- regional and local guerrillas, and the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF). The PLAF was the "Main Force" – the Chu Luc or full-time soldiers of the NLF's military wing. Many histories lump both the NLF and the armed formations under the term "Viet Cong" or "VC" in common usage. Both were tightly interwoven and were in turn controlled by the North. Others consider the Viet Cong or "VC" to primarily refer to the armed elements. The term PAVN, identifies regular troops of the North Vietnamese Army or NVA as they were commonly known by their Western opponents. Collectively, both forces- the southern armed wing and the regulars from the north were part of PAVN.

The role of the United States in the Vietnam War began after World War II and escalated into full commitment during the Vietnam War from 1955 to 1973. The U.S. involvement in South Vietnam stemmed from a combination of factors: France's long colonial history in French Indochina, the US War with Japan in the Pacific, and both Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong's pledge in 1950 to support Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh's guerrilla forces. Related to this, Roosevelt was adamantly against providing any aid to France that would in any way prop up France's struggle to maintain its pre WWII colonial empire. However, Stalin and Mao's offering their support to the Viet Minh in 1950, changed the battlefield dynamic and geopolitical character of the struggle to one of a global conflict against Maoist and Stalinist expansionism. It was at the time, in September 1950, that French forces began to be moderately backed by America. Beginning with $10M USD worth of military supplies, President Harry S. Truman from that initial support provided progressively increasing amounts of financial and military assistance to French forces fighting in what was still in the minds of the Western powers French Indochina. Beginning in 1950, US involvement increased from just assisting French collision forces to providing direct military assistance to the associated states. Eventually, U.S. missions were carried out at a more consistent rate by sending out increasing amounts of military assistance from the United States. Their main intent was to restrict Communist expansion in Indochina as they thought it would soon lead to Communist takeovers in Thailand, Laos, Malaya, and all of what later became Vietnam. This would have resulted in a change in balance of power throughout Asia. The U.S. foreign policy establishment saw national security US and Western Europe's interests being marginalized due to the rise of this Communist expansion, and thus it strived to take measures to restrict it. Under Truman the support went from $10M in September 1950 to $150M by the end of 1951. The struggle passed from Truman to Eisenhower who saw the fall of French Indochina, and in 1961 the Eisenhower administration passed the conflict to Kennedy. In May 1961 Kennedy sent 500 more military advisers, bringing American forces there to 1,400. With the budget increased and with American boot on the ground in Vietnam by at least 1961, these actions came to be questioned by other segments of the US government and among the people of the United States.

Peoples Revolutionary Party (Vietnam)

The People's Revolutionary Party of Vietnam was a political party in South Vietnam established in 1962. It provided leadership for the Việt Cộng uprising. In 1976, the party was merged with the Workers' Party of Vietnam in North Vietnam to form the Communist Party of Vietnam.

North Vietnam supported the Pathet Lao to fight against the Kingdom of Laos between 1958–1959. Control over Laos allowed for the eventual construction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that would serve as the main supply route (MSR) for enhanced NLF and NVA activities in the Republic of Vietnam. As such, the support for Pathet Lao to fight against Kingdom of Laos by North Vietnam would prove decisive in the eventual communist victory over South Vietnam in 1975 as the South Vietnamese and American forces could have prevented any NVA and NLF deployment and resupply if these only happened over the 17th Parallel, also known as the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a narrow strip of land between North and South Vietnam that was closely guarded by both sides. It also helped the Pathet Lao win the Kingdom of Laos, although the Kingdom of Laos had American support.

II Corps (South Vietnam) corps of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN)

The II Corps was a corps of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the army of the nation state of South Vietnam that existed from 1955 to 1975. It was one of four corps in the ARVN, and it oversaw the region of the central highlands region, north of the capital Saigon. Its corps headquarters was in the mountain town of Pleiku.

1960 in the Vietnam War

In 1960, the oft-expressed optimism of the United States and the Government of South Vietnam that the Viet Cong were nearly defeated proved mistaken. Instead the Viet Cong became a growing threat and security forces attempted to cope with Viet Cong attacks, assassinations of local officials, and efforts to control villages and rural areas. Throughout the year, the U.S. struggled with the reality that much of the training it had provided to the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) during the previous five years had not been relevant to combating an insurgency. The U.S. changed its policy to allow the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to begin providing anti-guerrilla training to ARVN and the paramilitary Civil Guard.

A commune is a type of third tier subdivision of Vietnam. It is divided into 11,162 units along with wards and townships, which have an equal status.

United NLF Groups

The United NLF Groups was a Swedish popular movement that sought to mobilize support for the struggle of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front.

Peoples Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam

The People's Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam (PLAF), or Viet Cong's army, was the official army of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. The PLAF forces were independent of the People's Army of Vietnam. The PLAF was unofficially established after 1954 and was recognized as main battle forces in South Vietnam by North Vietnam in 1961. The PLAF forces appeared to be outside of the control of the People's Army of Vietnam, but under the command of the Central Office for South Vietnam, politically and militarily controlled by Hanoi and functioned as a branch of the North Vietnamese Army.

References

  1. James DeFronzo, Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements (3d. Ed., Westview Press, 2007) pp165–166