Title: Vietnam War Collection (Subject), 1965-1967
Extent: 0.22
Date Acquired: 05/16/2006
Subjects: Vietnam War, 1961-1975.
Languages: English
This is an artificial collection created to provide access to materials that were acquired primarily because of their relationship to the Vietnam War. Rather than create a number of small collections, especially where only one document or letter constitutes the entire collection, we have chosen to bring them together as a subject oriented artificial collection.
This collection currently includes a bound volume of The Army Reporter for the year 1967, as well as samples of Vietnamese propaganda and information about Vietnam distributed to the American troops. Other materials will be added as acquired.
Vietnam War, (1954-1975), a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. Called the "American War" in Vietnam (or, in full, the "War Against the Americans to Save the Nation"), the war was also part of a larger regional conflict and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies.
At the heart of the conflict was the desire of North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial administration of Vietnam in 1954, to unify the entire country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China. The South Vietnamese government, on the other hand, fought to preserve a Vietnam more closely aligned with the West. U.S. military advisers, present in small numbers throughout the 1950s, were introduced on a large scale beginning in 1961, and active combat units were introduced in 1965. By 1969 more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and China poured weapons, supplies, and advisers into the North, which in turn provided support, political direction, and regular combat troops for the campaign in the South. The costs and casualties of the growing war proved too much for the United States to bear, and U.S. combat units were withdrawn by 1973. In 1975 South Vietnam fell to a full-scale invasion by the North.
Repository: Eastern Kentucky University - Special Collections and Archives
Acquisition Source: Various
