Why did the USA become involved in Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s?

GCSE: History

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After the World War II, the USA was one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world. The USA was known as one of the two superpowers. The other was the USSR, a communist country. This affected America’s attitude towards communism and the USA became an anti-communist country that despised the USSR.
Since America was a capitalist country, the Truman Doctrine was developed in 1947 to help any country that was at risk of falling to Communism. This was part of the beginnings of the Cold War with the USSR. In 1949 China became a Communist country. This became very significant as that could influence other nearby countries to turn to communism. In September 1945, Ho Chi Minh announced the formation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. But what the Vietminh didn’t know was that Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had already decided what would happen to Vietnam. It had been agreed that the country would be divided into two. The northern half would fall under the control of the Chinese and the Southern half under the British.

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