Propaganda Poster Investigation

This poster says “Anywhere there is communism, there is terrorism and assassination!” It was created and distributed internationally by the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) in 1954, just after the division of Vietnam into North and South.

France had ruled the colony of “French Indochina,” including modern Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, for decades. After France fell to the Axis powers in World War II, Japan occupied the territory. As WWII came to a close and a Japanese surrender seemed likely, the Viet Minh – a communist-led organization dedicated to Vietnamese independence – launched an uprising and declared Vietnam to be an independent state. However, after WWII, France moved to regain control of the area, leading to war between France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). The Geneva Accords settled the First Indochina War and called for a temporary partition of Vietnam at the 17th Parallel—creating a communist state in North Vietnam and a French-backed non-communist state in South Vietnam.

A “Red Scare” was gripping Americans in the 1940s and 50s. In 1949 the Soviet Union had successfully tested an atomic bomb and Chinese Communists formed the People’s Republic of China. Communist North Korea invaded South Korea the next year. Many interpreted these events as evidence of a global communist plot.

The U.S. government did not want South Vietnam to become communist. Many Americans feared communism as a different political system, and also because of their belief in the “domino theory.” First voiced by President Eisenhower, the theory used the visual image of falling dominoes to represent the fear that if South Vietnam “fell” to communism, then Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma (now Myanmar), Indonesia, and Malaysia would also become communist countries. Based on the perceived threat of the domino theory, the U.S. government adopted the policy of containment: trying to contain communism in the countries it was already in and keep it from spreading.

Answer in preparation for a class discussion:

• How might people feel about communism after seeing this poster?
• Why do you think the U.S. government would display this poster to the people in South Vietnam? What do you think the U.S. government wanted the South Vietnamese people to do?
• Do you think the containment policy was a good way to deal with communism?
• What else might the United States have to do to enforce containment besides distributing propaganda posters?