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During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union - allies vs…

- - - - pre-war border skirmishes, 10,000 dead
        
        June 25, 1950 - 75,000 DPRK Army soldiers cross 38th parallel - The first military action of the Cold War. By July, US gives S.K. full support
        
        Defensive war was failing. DPRK - disciplined, well-trained, South - reluctant to fight, frightened, confused, water running out, Americans are forced to drink form rice paddies (intestinal disease)
        
        By late summer - Truman and General Douglas MacArthur, decide on making the war an offensive one: liberating the North from the communists.
        
        New strategy works: DPRK repelled beyond 38th parallel. US troops near the DRPK - China border, Mao threatens full-scale war on US.
        Truman and his advisers were sure such a war would lead to Soviet aggression in Europe, atomic weapons deployment, millions of deaths. General MacArthur - vicyory at any cost, “There is no substitute for victory” against international communism. On April 11, the president fired the general for insubordination.
        
        July 1951 - Truman and his new military commanders start peace talks at Panmunjom, both sides want a ceasefire, could not agree on whether POWs should be forcibly “repatriated” (China, DPRK for; US against). July 27, 1953 - peace treaty signed, POWs could chose to stay where they liked, ; a new boundary near the 38th parallel that gave South Korea an extra 1,500 square miles of territory; 2-mile-wide “demilitarized zone” that still exists today.
        
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      - April 1950, a National Security Council report known as NSC-68 had recommended that the United States use military force to “contain” communist expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring
- - - - 1955 - President Eisenhower had pledged his firm support to Diem and South Vietnam.
        With training and equipment from American military and police, Diem's security forces arrested some 100,000 people, many of whom were tortured and executed.
        
        1957 - Vietkong strikes back, targeting government officials
        
        1960 - opposition to expressly pro-Catholic dictator Diem form National Liberation Front
        
        US - domino principle - by 1962,under Kennedy, U.S. military presence in South Vietnam had reached some 9,000 troops
        
        1963 - Diem and Kennedy are killed, Johnson takes over, increases military and economic support,
        
        August 1964 - after an attack on US navy in the Gulf of Tonkin, USS Maddox incident, Johnson orders a retaliatory bombing strike on a number of targets in North Vietnam,
        
        1964 - Congress soon passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave Johnson broad war-making powers, and U.S. planes began regular bombing raids the following February,
        
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