The Home Front

America in the 1960s and early 1970s was a country in transition. We had gone from the heady exuberance of the post-World War II economic boom, to the daily specter of the Cold War with its constant threat of nuclear annihilation.

We were faced with the reality of offensive missiles 90 miles from our shores, in Cuba, and a tense standoff with the Soviet Union on the high seas. The Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum and there was turmoil in the streets of many southern cities.

America was winning the space race, after a slow start, and would place a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. There was much unrest on college campuses, a president had been assassinated, drugs were coming into the mainstream, and the "Women's Liberation" movement had been born.

It was in this maelstrom of change that the Vietnam War was being fought. We will examine the effects of these changes on the military and the prosecution of the war in Vietnam, and its eventual outcome.

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