NYGH 2021-S3EOY-Adv Hist

Class Register Number Name End-of-Year Examination 2021 Secondary 3 ADVANCED HISTORY 2 hours Tuesday 05 October 0845 – 1045 READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST 1. Write your name, register number and class on all the work you hand in. 2. Write in dark blue or black ink. 3. Do not use staples, paper clips, glue or correction tape/fluid. 4. Write your answers and working on the separate writing paper provided, unless oth erwise stated. 5. Section A – Answer all parts of question 1. Section B – Answer one of the two questions. 6. Leave 2 blank lines after each sub-question. 7. Start each question on a fresh sheet of paper. 8. At the end of the examination, fasten all your work securely together. 9. The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question. This document consists of 6 printed pages and 2 blank pages. Setter: JLM NANYANG GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL [Turn over

2 Section A: Source-Based Case Study Question 1 is compulsory for all candidates Study the Background Information and the sources carefully, and then answer all the questions. You may use any of the sources to help you answer the questions, in addition to those sources you are told to use. In answering the questions, you should use your knowledge of the topic to help you interpret and evaluate the sources. 1 (a) Study Source A. What is the cartoonist’s opinion of the United States’ involvement in Vietnam? Explain your answer. [5] (b) Study Source B. Why was this cartoon published? Explain your answer. [5] (c) Study Sources C and D. How similar are the sources? Explain your answer. [6] (d) Study Source E. How useful is this source in understanding why the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) were able to build support? Explain your answer. [6] (e) Study all the sources. How far do the sources support the view that difficulties faced by the United States in Vietnam were of their own making? Explain your answer. [15]

3 [Turn over How far were the difficulties faced by the United States of America in the Vietnam War, of their own making? BACKGROUND INFORMATION Read this carefully. It may help you to answer some of the questions. American involvement in Vietnam was the product of the United States government’ s foreign policy of containment. That was the financial, military and diplomatic effort to prevent the spread of communism throughout the world , pursued by the United States from 1948 to 1991. The conflict in Vietnam was a proxy war of the much larger and widespread Cold War between the US and the USSR. Fighting in Vietnam began as a civil war between communists in the North, and French-backed pro-Westerners in the South. The United States government committed itself to helping the South Vietnamese cause and preventing communi st North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh from uniting Vietnam under communist rule. This commitment took many different forms in the years prior to 1964, including money, secret military presence and the training of Vietnamese troops. Beginning in 1965, the ground war escalated. By 1966 over 200,000 US troops were in Vietnam and by 1969, over 550,000. Troop enlistment was made possible by the draft, which created widespread animosity among those already questioning the legitimacy of American involvement in Vietnam. In this climate of hostility toward the war, the public also began questioning how long the United States would be committed to the conflict and whether there was a viable exit strategy. Source A: A cartoon published in an American newspaper on 1 May 1975.

4 Source B: An American cartoon from 1967. Source C: An excerpt of a letter from American Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara, to President Johnson in May 1967. The Vietnam War is unpopular in this country. It is becoming increasingly unpopular as it escalates – causing more American casualties. Most Americans do not know how we got where we are, and most are convinced that somehow we should not have got this deeply in. All want the war ended and expect their President to end it. Successfully. Or else. There may be a limit beyond which many Americans will not permit the United States to go. The picture of the world’s greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1000 innocent civilians a week while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission, is not a pretty one.

5 [Turn over Source D: Extract from President Johnson’s State of the Union Address, broadcast to the United States’ citizens in January 1966. There were some in South Vietnam who wished to force Communist rule on their own people. But their progress was slight. Their hope of success was dim. Then, little more than six years ago, North Vietnam decided on conquest. From that day to this, soldiers and supplies have moved from north to south in a swelling stream – swallowing the remnants of revolution in aggression. As the assault mounted, our choice gradually became clear. We could leave, abandoning South Vietnam to its attackers and to certain conquest, or we could stay and fight beside the people of South Vietnam. We stayed. And we will stay until aggression has stopped. We will stay because a just nation cannot leave to the cruelties of its enemies a people who have staked their live and independence on America’s solemn pledge – a pledge which has grown through the commitment of three American Presidents. We will stay because in Asia and around the worId are countries whose independence rests, in large measure, on confidence in America's word and in America's protection. To yield to force in Vietnam would weaken that confidence, would undermine the independence of many lands, and would whet the appetite of the aggressor. We would have to fight in one land, and we would have to fight in another - or abandon much of Asia to the domination of Communists. Source E: An interview with a former Viet Cong recruit in 1967, who subsequently defected to the South. The Viet Cong distorted the truth. They told the people that the Americans, through their aid, were transforming South Vietnam into a new type of colony and a fortress which will enable them to provoke a war in Southeast Asia. They said the people should r ise up to overthrow the Americans and their henchmen, to reunify the country in peace, neutrality, independence and harmony between all racial groups, with no distinction of class, region, or political affiliation, and to obtain their own economic rights. The government of South Vietnam, for a long time, has committed numerous errors which have had catastrophic consequences, such as indiscriminate arrests of the people, torturing those arrested, acceptance of bribes, which the Viet Cong exploit very aptly. The Viet Cong exaggerate the gravity of the errors committed, and inflame the hatred of the population against the government of South Vietnam. Source F: A historian’s assessment in 2017 of the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam War. The communists’ primary assets in their long war against the United States were, first, a distinctly Vietnamese variant of Mao’s highly flexible protracted war strategy, designed to wear down the American people’s will to fight, even as it permitted the buildup of a powe rful conventional army in North Vietnam. The second asset was a remarkably dynamic and cohesive political organization withi