The Finished Product

The students put together all of the ideas and content they had developed in the long discussion about why the U.S. became involved in Vietnam. They had to work together to decide which were the most important reasons and to create a "no scroll page." This is the result:

 

 

Why the U.S. Became Involved in Vietnam

Following World War II, a period in the 1940s and 1950s called "The Cold War," the U.S. was very fearful of the spread of Communism. Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson knew the American people were terrified of a potential Communist world dominance, so they had to take whatever steps they could to prevent that from happening. They were afraid of a "domino effect"--that if Vietnam succumbed to Communism, other South East Asian and Middle Eastern countries would follow suit.

Although it seems like a country the size of Vietnam (in dark pink below China on the map) would not pose much of a threat, many leaders saw Vietnam as a sort of "doorway" into a lot of other important Asian countries such as China, Japan, and India. This was an opportunity to promote democracy in a geographic region dominated by lots of other forms of government, including Communism.