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With the first U.S. military assistance to the French in 1950, a generation-long commitment to anticommunist nation-building project in South Vietnam began. After the French defeat at Dienbienphu in 1954, the United States engaged in an authoritarian modernization program, pumping millions of dollars of aid into S. Vietnam, supporting the Western-oriented and unpopular and autocratic, S. Vietnamese leader Ngô -Dinh Diêm. After S. Vietnamese generals deposed, and killed, Diem in a 1963 coup, South Vietnamese national politics devolved into instability. The U.S. then militarily escalated the War in S. Vietnam. The U.S. escalation simultaneously attempted to prevent the infiltration of N. Vietnamese communist forces from the North; contain a pro-communist movement/insurgency in the South; and tried to prevent the implosion of the S. Vietnamese government.INSTRUCTOR Dr. Gary Kappel is a Professor of History, Emeritus, at Bethany College where he taught for 36 years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Bethany College and a Masters and PhD in European History from West Virginia University. During his time at Bethany he taught a wide range of courses in European history, military history, and social and intellectual history. In 2003 he accompanied a group of students to Vietnam. He recently completed work on a documentary film about the New Martinsville Regatta for inboard hydroplanes and the revival of the sport in the upper Ohio Valley area via the vintage hydroplane movement.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
People's University at the Ohio County Public Library, Wheeling, United States
