What you’ll learn to do: explain U.S. opposition to the War in Vietnam and the eventual withdraw of U.S. troops from the war

Figure 1. An antiwar protest.

As the war in Vietnam raged on, the moral questions it raised continued to divide the American public. To try to end the conflict, Nixon escalated it by bombing Hanoi and invading Cambodia to eliminate sources of Viet Cong support. Instead, his actions provoked massive antiwar demonstrations in the United States that often ended in violence, such as the tragic shooting of unarmed student protestors at Kent State University in 1970. The 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers revealed the true nature of the war to an increasingly disapproving and disenchanted public. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger eventually drafted a peace treaty with North Vietnam, and, after handing over responsibility for the war to South Vietnam, the United States withdrew its troops in 1973. South Vietnam surrendered to the North two years later.