em decided not to hold free elections. This was to his benefit as his opposer, Ho Chi Minh would probably have won the elections. He in return started to train guerrillas to oppose the government forces in the south. These guerrillas, the Viet Cong (meaning: Vietnamese communist), began attacks on the U.S. military installations in 1957. The Americans still believed strongly in the domino theory. They were afraid that if Vietnam was to become communist, the countries and regions around Vietnam would also turn communist. Like when you push over a domino, it would trigger off a whole set of dominoes. The Americans felt it as their duty to prohibit this from happening. In April 1961 the U.S. signed a treaty of amity and economic relations with South Vietnam. In December of that year the first American troops arrived in Vietnam. A year later they had gone from 400 troops to 11.200 American troops in Vietnam. The Diem government was having substantial difficulty with coping with the unrest in South Vietnam. On November 1 1963, the Diem regime was overthrown in a military coup. Diem was executed in this coup and succeeded by an army general called Nguyen Thieu. He created, together with General Nguyen Cao Ky, a military council in 1965. During elections in 1967 Thieu became the president of South Vietnam.In 1963 Johnson became the new president of America. He believed strongly that communism planned to take control over the world. In the first week of August, 1964 there was a report of North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacking two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson used this attack as an excuse to send a huge number of American servicemen and throw bombs in Vietnam. The U.S. senate passed the Gulf Tonkin Resolution on August 7. This authorised the use of military power in Vietnam. With the approval of the Senate, Johnson ordered the bombing of the cities Hanoi and Haiphong. By the end of 1965 the American combat strength lay at 200...
