The Cold War

20th Century battlefield 1968 Vietnam On  30th January 1968 the people in Saigon in South Vietnam were celebrating their holiday of Tete when fighting broke out from the communist assault. The Tete offensive had begun.  How did this happen Since 1965 the US had been fighting in Vietnam since 1965 as the Americans thought if Vietnam fell to communism then rest of south east Asia would fall which was known as the Domino effect. The US had many artillery bases just South of the boarder bombing the North with a demilitarised zone along the boarder. The South was an unstable republic while the North was backed up by China and the USSR and it's leader was the Communist was Ho Chi Minh. He had trained and equipped 500,000 North Vietnamese soldiers and had punished out the imperial French.  The Americans were led by William Westmoreland was in charge of 500,000 US troops and 800,000 South Vietnamese soldiers. The Americans were fighting the North and was fighting Com

Overview of JFK In the 1960 election Kennedy proved himself as a strong anti- communist (so was Nixon)he wanted there to by a more flexable response to events rather than Eisenhower's policy of brinkmanship which led to all issues creating a nuclear issue. He was going to this by spending more money on the military he also unlike Nixon he stressed the idea of a so called 'missile gap' which lead to him winning the 1960 election only by a tiny marginal. When he came into power he increased military funding by 3.2 billion dollars in the summer 1961 as well as increasing the armed forces by 300,000 and sent 40,000 troops to Europe. Cuba Before the 1960's Cuba was seen as a playground for the Americas and controlled a lot of their wealth. They owned 40% of sugar, 80 percent of Cuban utilities and 90% of the mining wealth. This all changed when in January 1959 Castro took over of the country from the right wing dictator Fulgencio Barista.Castro introduced land reform