Dewey’s last 1945 report to his superiors concluded “the French and British are finished here, and we ought to clear out of Southeast Asia” The U.S. was busy in Vietnam long before the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident led to a Congressional blank check for war. Nearly a decade prior to the defeat of the…
Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam an independent republic, free of French colonial rule, on September 2, 1945. Half a million people gathered in Hanoi to hear him read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, which was modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Below, Susan Dunn delves into the inspiration for Ho Chi Minh’s speech that…
