General Certificate of Secondary Education
History Controlled Assessment Task Unit 3: Investigative Study Support and Opposition for the Vietnam War [GHY31]
VALID FROM SEPTEMBER 2013 – MAY 2014
INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES
Answer both questions. The candidate should show evidence of having studied and evaluated between 10 and 15 sources in their Investigative Study. The sources which accompany the tasks must be used as part of the Investigative Study. The time allocation of 3 hours for the formal write-up of the task must not be exceeded.
INFORMATION FOR CANDIDATES
Controlled Assessment is marked out of 50. Question 1 is worth 15 marks and Question 2 is worth 35 marks. Quality of written communication will be assessed in both questions. You should aim to write approximately 2000 words in total.
Candidates’ work to be submitted May 2014
Controlled Assessment Tasks must comply with the Regulations as detailed in the Subject Specifi cation. NB: Some Controlled Assessment Tasks instructions may constitute more than 1 page. Please check you have all the information you need to complete the task if printing from a computer. 8583.06 1 [Turn[Turn overover Controlled Assessment Task: Support and Opposition for the Vietnam War
Answer both questions. You should use the source material provided and other evidence gathered during your investigative research to complete your answers.
Source A
From an Internet website, www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk, on opposition to the Vietnam War.
As the war continued, more and more Americans turned against it. People were particularly upset by the use of chemical weapons such as napalm and agent orange. In 1967, a group of academics set up the International War Crimes Tribunal. After interviewing many witnesses, they came to the conclusion that the United States was guilty of using weapons against the Vietnamese that were banned by international law. The United States armed forces were also found guilty of torturing captured prisoners and innocent civilians. The Tribunal, and other critics of the war, claimed that the US behaviour in Vietnam was as bad as the atrocities committed by the Nazis in Europe during the Second World War.
Source B
A photograph showing Kim Phuc running naked along a road, following the dropping of a napalm bomb, June 1972.
Source C
From a speech by Martin Luther King, 1967.
We were taking the young black men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8000 miles away to guarantee freedom in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. We are faced with watching negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them in the same schools. 8583.06 2 [Turn over Source D
A British journalist, John Pilger, describing a demonstration of veterans in Washington, 29 April 1971.
The speaker is William Wyman, from New York City. He is nineteen and has no legs. He has ripped away the medals he received in exchange for his legs and to those who form a ring of pity around him, he says: ‘Before I lost my legs, I killed and killed and killed! We all did!’ Never before in this country have young soldiers marched in protest against a war in which they themselves have fought and which is still going on.
Source E
A cartoon by the British cartoonist Richard Jolley, published in 2003. It is referring to a fi lm about the Vietnam War, Apocalypse Now, in which an American soldier says: ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning.’
Source F
From a letter by Ho Chi Minh to President Johnson, 1967.
The US government has committed war crimes, crimes against peace and against mankind. Half a million US troops have used the most inhumane weapons and most barbarous methods of warfare, such as napalm, chemicals and gases to massacre our countrymen, destroy crops and raze villages to the ground.
8583.06 3 [Turn over Source G
Statistics showing the human and fi nancial cost of the Vietnam War from The USA 1917–1980, by Nigel Smith, published in 1996.
Human cost American: 58,156 dead Vietnamese: 3 million military and civilian dead
MIAs (missing in action) American: 1,992 Vietnamese: probably 300,000
Financial cost America: $150 billion North and South Vietnam: amount unknown
Troops in action American: nearly 3.5 million (1964–1975) North Vietnamese: 570,000 South Vietnamese: 1.1 million
Source H
From The Powers That Be by David Halberstam, published in 1979. He is commenting on Morley Safer’s fi lm broadcast in 1965 about a ‘search and destroy’ mission.
The American troops walked towards the village in single fi le, everyone fi ring with no return fi re. The only three marines wounded were shot by their own men. The troops tore the village apart and set fi re to the Vietnamese thatched huts. The pictures showed the full force of television – the ability to dramatise, focusing on one incident, one day in the war. Safer’s fi lm prepared the way for a different view of the war among the Americans at large. There was from that time on a greater acceptance of bad news about Vietnam. .
8583.06 4 [Turn over Source I
A photograph of an anti-war protest in New York City, April 1967.
Source J
From a History textbook, The Cold War: Superpower Relations, 1945–1989, by Josh Brooman, published in 1997.
The Americans did more harm than good to the ordinary people in Vietnam. In their search for the Vietcong, US soldiers often went on ‘search and destroy’ missions, burning the homes and possessions of anyone suspected of helping them. They used chemical sprays to uncover Vietcong supply trails in the jungle, but these chemicals destroyed rice-crops as well as trees. The bombs caused massive destruction; more American bombs fell on Vietnam in three years than fell on Europe in the whole of the Second World War. Although the Vietcong also used extreme cruelty on many occasions, it was the Americans who came to be hated most as the aggressors.
8583.06 5 [Turn over Questions AVAILABLE MARKS 1 Explain how the American media portrayed their country’s involvement in the Vietnam War between 1964 and 1973. [15] 15
2 Source A claims that ‘As the war continued, more and more Americans turned against it. People were particularly upset by the use of chemical weapons such as napalm and agent orange’.
Using all the evidence you have studied (including representations and interpretations), how far would you agree with this interpretation that the use of chemical weapons in Vietnam by the USA was the main reason for the growing opposition of the American people to the war between 1964 and 1973? [35] 35
Total 50
8583.06 6 [Turn over