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In 1941, a Vietnamese nationalist movement, the Viet Minh, was formed by Ho Chi Minh.

The American association with Ho had actually begun in December 1942 when representatives of the Viet Minh approached the U.S. Embassy in China for help in securing the release of “an Annamite named Ho Chih-chi”…
(( his real name is Nguyen Ai Quoc, a communist trained in Russia))… from a Nationalist Chinese prison, where he was being held for having invalid documents. In September 1943, when Ho was finally released, he returned to Vietnam to organize Vietnamese seeking independence. An October 1943 OSS memo proposed that the United States “use the Annamites…to immobilize large numbers of Japanese troops by conducting systematic guerrilla warfare in the difficult jungle country.” The missive went on to suggest the OSS’s most effective propaganda line was to “convince the Annamites that this war, if won by the Allies, will gain their independence.”

With the liberation of France in 1944, and the soon after fall of the Axis, Japan no longer had anything holding it back in Indochina..The Japanese quickly made inroads into Vietnam, staging a coup d’état in March 1945 that dissolved the French government and established a puppet government. On March 11, Emperor Bao Dai proclaimed Vietnam’s independence and his intent to cooperate with the Japanese. Ho Chi Minh was surprised by this development, and regarded another independence movement as a threat to the Viet Minh’s. At the same time, with the Japanese coup against the French, the OSS realized it was cut off from the flow of intelligence from French Indochina
to its base in Kunming, and it urged Ho to work with the United States.

In Decemeber 1946, the French shelled the city of Haiphong and forcibly reentered the capital, Hanoi. These actions began a conflict between the French and the Viet Minh, known as the First Indochina War.

In the mid-1940s, the Viet Minh leadership, under Ho Chi Minh, looked to the West for help in its independence movement and got it. At the time, the OSS was operating a base in China’s wartime capital, Chungking. With the growing military complications in Indochina, **Brig. Gen. William Donovan**, the director of the OSS, instructed his staff to use “anyone who will work with us against the Japanese, but do not become involved in French-Indochinese politics.” The Viet Minh, was seeking not only Vietnam’s independence from France, but also freedom from the Japanese occupation.

In mid-1944 the OSS approached Ho to help organize an intelligence network in Indochina to help fight the Japanese and to help rescue downed American pilots. By then, “Ho had been cooperating with the Americans in propaganda activities,” wrote Captain Archimedes Patti, head of the OSS base in Kunming, China, and later Hanoi.

As World War II ended, the United States and its allies, most of them former colonial powers, now confronted a new problem. Independence movementswere emerging all over the East. In July of 1945, Special Operations Team Number 13, code-named “Deer,” had parachuted into a jungle camp called Tan Trao, near Hanoi, with directions to proceed to the headquarters of Ho Chi Minh, whom they naively knew only as a “Mr. Hoo.”

Shortly after the formal Japanese surrender, Ho Chi Minh was in Hanoi and declared Vietnamese independence from all colonial powers, using the American Declaration of Independence as his template. Banners of “Welcome to the Allies” (specifically, the United States) flew in the city’s Ba Dihn Square, the OSS contingent in Hanoi photographed the occasion and Minister of the Interior Giap recognized U.S. support in a speech.

They trained the Viet Cong to carry out Guerilla attacks on Japanese assets and the rest is history..Sound similiar to Mr Ben Laden??
Round about this time in the USA…Containment was a foreign policy strategy first laid out by **George F. Kennan** in 1947. Containment stated that communism needed to be contained and isolated, or it would spread to neighboring countries.

With the war in the Pacific over, the OSS ended its mission in Indochina. The Deer Team had stayed in Thai Nguyen for a few days following the Viet Minh victory there. In the years that followed, Ho Chi Minh continued to write letters of a diplomatic nature to President Harry Truman, asking for U.S. aid, but the letters were never answered. Ho didn’t break with the United States until the Americans gradually became involved with the French in working against the Vietnamese in the 1950s.

With the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and end of the First Indochina War in 1954, Vietnam was part1tioned through the signing of the Geneva Accords.

Split in two, with a communist government in the north under Ho Chi Minh and a democratic government in the south under Ngo Dinh Diem the two Vietnams maintained an uneasy coexistence for five years.

A year after the Geneva Accords, Prime Minister Diem commenced a “Denounce the Communists” campaign in the south. Throughout the summer of 1955, Communists and other opposition members were jailed and executed. In addition to attacking the communists, the Roman Catholic Diem assaulted Buddhist sects and organized crime, which further alienated the largely Buddhist Vietnamese people and eroded his support. In the course of his purges, it is estimated that Diem has up to 12,000 opponents executed and as many as 40,000 jailed. To further cement his power, Diem rigged a referendum on the future of the country in October 1955 and declared the formation of the Republic of Vietnam, with its capital at Saigon.

In 1959, Ho launched a guerrilla campaign in South Vietnam, led by Viet Cong (National Liberation Front) units, with the goal of uniting the country under communist rule. These guerilla units found support among the rural population who desired land reform.

Concerned about the situation, the Kennedy Administration increased aid to South Vietnam. As part of a larger policy of containing the spread of communism, the United States worked to train the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and provided military advisors to help combat the guerrillas. Though the flow of aid increased, President John F. Kennedy was against the use of ground forces in Southeast Asia believing their presence would cause adverse political consequences….

However with Diem going apes*it out of control.. Regime change was soon on the table..

This was accomplished on November 2, 1963, when the CIA aided a group of ARVN officers to overthrow and kill Diem.
His death led to a period of political instability that saw the rise and fall of a succession of military governments.
To help deal with the post-coup chaos, Kennedy increased the number of US advisors in South Vietnam to 16,000.

With Kennedy’s death later THAT SAME MONTH, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson ascended to the presidency and reiterated the US’ commitment to
fighting communism in the region.

So.. What caused the Vietnam War??
France being a D… in Indochina..
The Japanese invading Vietnam and becoming a pain in the area.
The OSS (so Brig. Gen. William Donovan) using Ho Chi Minh as a stick in the bum to peeve off the Japanese..
Ho lying to the OSS and actually being a communist agent. (Which the Deer team commander was too dumb to see)
George F. Kennan putting in place a containement policy in US..
McCarthy being a …. and terrifying everyone about Communism.Diem being a puppet OSS dictator.. and letting South Vietnam go gangrene with corruption..and probably not listening to US anymore..((Anywhere the Ricans go, Corruption is sure to follow..))

So I havent seen your documentary.. but the only real reason that Kennedy ’caused’ the Vietnam war.. was because the CIA assasssinated their puppet Diem and watched the local warlords beat each other to death whilst the people in the fields were hearing about Heroic Ai Quoc liberating the workers with Freedom and independance whilst armed and trained by OSS operatives. And the army wouldnt have been sent (proabably) if it hadnt been for George F Kennan. Dont forget him.. Thanks for the death and suffering and agent orange Kennan.
What a man!!