The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War
A TED-Ed video followed by several APUSH style MCQs, SAQs, and LEQs
In March 2013, educator Cameron Paterson and the folks at TED-Ed produced a 3:54 animated video entitled The Ho Chi Minh Trail. Though very good, my APUSH students will on occasion complain that the accent of the narrator makes it hard to understand what is being said. Regardless, I show the video in class every year.
Next year, for the first time, I will provide my students with a chance, after they have watched the video, to answer the APUSH style Multiple Choice, Short Answer, and Long Answer questions found below.
The MCQs
Questions 1–4 refer to the excerpt below
“If they [the Americans] had been wise they should at a certain point in time have cut a specific section of the Trail and taken over that area. Then we would have been stuck. We would never have been able to fight and win as we did.”
* General Le Trong Tan, a senior commander in the NVA during the Vietnam War, when asked in later years what he would have done to win the war if he had been an American general.
Q1.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail passed through all but which of these countries?
- A. Vietnam
- B. Thailand
- C. Laos
- D. Cambodia
Q12.
Which of the below was used to justify U.S. support for the bombing of the trail?
- A. internationalism
- B. McCarthyism
- C. the domino theory
- D. the nuclear arms race
Q3.
What did the United States government say about the Ho Chi Minh Trail?
- A. A defeat of mastery — a championing of all odds — a beacon of human defiance
- B. One of the great achievements of military engineering of the twentieth century
- C. A pestilence that riddled southeast Asia for over 20 years
- D. The trail was a necessary inconvenience
Q4.
Which of the below can best be viewed as a long-term effect of the bombing of the trail, and especially the portion located in Cambodia?
- A. Americans became more willing to question government decisions.
- B. Government leaders refocused government policies to serve social needs.
- C. Future wars suffered from low levels of public support.
- D. Young people began voting at rates higher than other groups
Questions 5 and 6refer to the excerpt below.
“I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.”
* President Harry Truman, address before a joint session of Congress articulating what would become known as the Truman Doctrine, 1947, at the start of the Cold War.
Q5
Truman had the goal of
- A. restraining communist military power and ideological influence
- B. creating alliances with recently decolonized nations
- C. reestablishing the principle of isolationism
- D. avoiding a military confrontation with the Soviet Union
Q6
Truman issued the doctrine primarily in order to
- A. support decolonization in Asia and Africa
- B. support United States allies in Latin America
- C. protect United States interests in the Middle East
- D. bolster non-communist nations, particularly in Europe
The SAQs
- Briefly explain one specific historical impact of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident
- Briefly explain one specific historical impact of the Tet Offensive.
- The Vietnam War and the US bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail inspired sizable and passionate antiwar protests that became more numerous as the war escalated. Name and briefly describe one specific piece of historical evidence in support of the claim that sometimes the antiwar protests led to violence.
- Briefly describe a historical event, development, or process that occurred in Vietnam before any significant American bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail
- The Vietnam War and the US bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail took place during the Cold War. Briefly describe one major similarity between the Cold War and World War II.
- Briefly describe one major difference between the Cold War and World War II.
- Briefly describe one major similarity between the Vietnam War bombings and the Korean War bombings.
- Briefly describe one major difference between the bombing of Vietnam during the Vietnam War and the bombing of Korea during the Korean War.
- Briefly describe one major similarity between the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the Marshall Plan
- Briefly describe one major difference between the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the Marshall Plan
The LEQs
- Evaluate the extent to which the United States sought to contain Communism in Asia from 1947 to 1975
- Evaluate the extent to which US Cold War containment policy succeeded in Asia from 1950 to 1975.
- Evaluate the extent to which Americans feared Soviet expansion in Asia from 1947 to 1975
- Evaluate the relative importance of the different causes of the Vietnam War.
Sidenote #1
If you have a few MCQs, SAQs, or LEQs that you’ve created and want to see added to this post, just email them to me at ppaccone@smusd.us. I’d gladly include.
Sidenote #2
Below are some other very good videos pertaining to the topic of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War.
Sidenote #3
Aside from the above, I also encourage my students to watch APUSH teacher Rhonda Webbs’s 8.8 AP Daily videos (The Vietnam War). I’m a big fan of the AP Daily videos.
Yes, I have heard many AP teachers describe the AP Daily videos as “boring,” worse even, but that’s not how I view the videos.
I view the AP Daily videos as content-rich, well-structured, professionally-looking, and well-presented bite-sized bits of knowledge that allow for all students to learn the needed content and skills in as little time as possible.
Below is what I especially like about the AP Daily videos (Ms. Webb’s videos, in particular):
- That the information found on each slide is so well written and formatted that the students who want to take notes need only take screenshots of the slides, rather than have to listen over and over again to what the video-producing teacher has said to get the gist of the message. To put it another way, I find the AP Daily videos infinitely more “note-taking friendly” than any of the content-delivering videos produced by various AP teachers found on Youtube, though I think many of these teachers have also produced high-quality videos. I, in fact, show some of their videos in class on occasion, though only after having had my students watch the AP Daily videos.
- That the AP Daily video-producing teachers don’t attempt to interject humor, movie clips, silly faces, and sound effects into their videos. I prefer the no-nonsense, I’m not-going-to-waste-your-time approach; finding the alternative, and their attempts to engage, generally an unwanted distraction.
- That AP Classroom provides me with the ability to hold my students accountable to the watching of the videos by way of an online, though often administered in class, AP Classroom Topic Question Quiz.
- That AP Classroom provides me with an indication of the extent to which the students in my classes have answered the AP Classroom Topic Question Quiz questions correctly.
- That AP Classroom provides me with an indication of the extent to which my students have “watched” each of the assigned videos.
- That AP Classroom does not allow students to skip through a video and still earn credit for having “watched” the video. Students must watch the entire video for AP Classroom to so register.
