The U.S. government viewed American involvement in the war as a way to
prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam. This was part of their wider
strategy of containment, which aimed to stop the spread of communism. The North
Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam under
communist rule. They viewed the conflict as a colonial war, fought initially
against France, then against America as France was backed by the U.S., and
later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S. puppet state.
Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French
Indochina. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels
tripling in 1961 and again in 1962. U.S. combat units were deployed beginning
in 1965. Operations crossed international borders, with Laos and Cambodia
heavily bombed as part of a bombing campaign to eradicate the Viet Cong.
American involvement in the war peaked in 1968, at the time of the Tet
Offensive. After this, U.S. ground forces were gradually withdrawn as part of a
policy known as Vietnamization, which aimed to end American involvement in the
war. Despite the Paris Peace Accords, which was signed by all parties in
January 1973, the fighting continued.U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973 as a result of the Case–Church Amendment passed by the U.S. Congress. The capture of Saigon by the Vietnam People's Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities .Estimates of the number of Vietnamese service members and civilians killed vary from 800,000 to 3.1 million. Some 200,000–300,000 Cambodians, 20,000–200,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict.
Names
for the War
Various names have been applied to
the conflict. Vietnam War is the most commonly used name in English. It
has also been called the Second Indochina War, and the Vietnam
Conflict.
As there have been so many conflicts
in Indochina, this conflict is known by the name of their chief opponent to
distinguish it from the others. InVietnamese, the war is generally known as Chiến
tranh Việt Nam (The Vietnam War). It is also called Kháng chiến chống Mỹ
(Resistance War Against America), loosely translated as the American War.
The main military organizations
involved in the war were, on one side, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam
(ARVN) and the U.S. military, and, on the other side, the Vietnam People’s Army
(VPA) (also known as the North Vietnamese Army, or NVA), and the Viet Cong, or
National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF), a South Vietnamese
communist guerrilla force.
Background
to 1949
France began its conquest of Indochina
in the late 1850s, and completed pacification by 1893. The Treaty of Hue,
concluded in 1884, formed the basis for French colonial rule in Vietnam for the
next seven decades. In spite of military resistance, most notably by the Can
Vuong of Phan Dinh Phung, by 1888 the area of the current-day nations of
Cambodia and Vietnam was made into the colony of French Indochina (Laos was
added later). Various Vietnamese opposition movements to French rule existed
during this period, such as the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang who staged the failed Yen
Bai mutiny in 1930, but none were ultimately as successful as the Viet Minh
Common front, which was founded in 1941, controlled by the Indochinese
Communist Party, and funded by the U.S. and the Chinese Nationalist Party in
its fight against Japanese occupation.
During World War II, the French were
defeated by the Germans in 1940. For French Indochina, this meant that the
colonial authorities became Vichy French, allies of the German-Italian Axis
powers. In turn this meant that the French collaborated with the Japanese
forces after their invation of French Indochina during 1940. The French
continued to run affairs in the colony, but ultimate power resided in the hands
of the Japanese.
The Viet Minh was founded as a
league for independence from France, but also opposed Japanese occupation in
1945 for the same reason. The U.S. and Chinese Nationalist Party supported them
in the fight against the Japanese. However, they did not have enough power to
fight actual battles at first. Viet Minh leader Ho chi Minh was suspected of
being a communist and jailed for a year by the Chinese Nationalist Party.
Double occupation by France and
Japan continued until the German forces were expelled from France and the
French Indochina colonial authorities started holding secret talks with the
Free French. Fearing that they could no longer trust the French authorities,
the Japanese army interned them all on 9 March 1945 and created a puppet state
instead, the Empire oh Vietnam under Bao Dai.
During 1944–1945, a deep famine
struck northern Vietnam due to a combination of bad weather and French/Japanese
exploitation (French Indochina had to supply grains to Japan). Between 400,000
and 2 million people died of starvation (out of a population of 10 million in
the affected area). Exploiting the administrative gap that the internment of
the French had created, the Viet Minh in March 1945 urged the population to
ransack rice warehouses and refuse to pay their taxes. Between 75 and 100
warehouses were consequently raided. This rebellion against the effects of the
famine and the authorities that were partially responsible for it bolstered the
Viet Minh's popularity and they recruited many members during this period.
On 22 August 1945, following the Japanese
surrender OSS agents Archimedes Patti and Carleton B.Swift jr arrived in Hanoi
on a mercy mission to liberate allied POWs and were accompanied by Jean
Sainteny a French government official. The Japanese forces informally
surrendered (the official surrender took place on 2 Sep 1945 in Tokyo Bay) but
being the only force capable of maintaining law and order the Japanese Imperial
Army remained in power while keeping French colonial troops and Sainteny
detained.
During August the Japanese forces
allowed the Việt Minh and other nationalist groups to take over public
buildings and weapons without resistance, which began the August Revolution.
OSS officers met repeatedly with Ho chi Minh and other Viet Minh officers
during this period and on 2 September 1945 Ho Chi Minh declared the independent
Democratic Republic of Vietnam before a crowd of 500,000 in Hanoi. In an
overture to the Americans, he began his speech by paraphrasing the United
States Declaration of Independence: "All men are created equal. The
Creator has given us certain inviolable Rights: the right to Life, the right to
be Free, and the right to achieve Happiness."
The Viet Minh took power across
Vietnam in the August Revolution, with large popular support. After their
defeat in the war, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) gave weapons to the
Vietnamese, and kept Vichy French officials and military officers imprisoned
for a month after the surrender. The Việt Minh had recruited more than 600
Japanese soldiers and given them roles to train or command Vietnamese soldiers.
A Japanese naval officer surrenders
his sword to a French Lieutenant in Saigon on 13th September 1945.
However, the major allied victors of
World War II, the United Kingdom, the United
States, and the Soviet Union, all agreed the area belonged to the French. As
the French did not have the ships, weapons, or soldiers to immediately retake Vietnam,
the major powers came to an agreement that British troops would occupy the
south while Nationalist Chinese forces would move in from the north.
Nationalist Chinese troops entered the country to disarm Japanese troops north
of the 16th parallel on 14 September 1945. When the British landed in the
south, they rearmed the interned French forces as well as parts of the
surrendered Japanese forces to aid them in retaking southern Vietnam, as they
did not have enough troops to do this themselves.
On the urging of the Soviet Union,
Ho Chi Minh initially attempted to negotiate with the French, who were slowly
re-establishing their control across the area. In January 1946, the Viet Minh
won elections across central and northern Vietnam. On 6 March 1946, Ho signed
an agreement allowing French forces to replace Nationalist Chinese forces, in
exchange for French recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a
"free" republic within the French Union, with the specifics of such
recognition to be determined by future negotiation. The French landed in Hanoi
by March 1946 and in November of that year they ousted the Viet Minh from the
city. British forces departed on 26 March 1946, leaving Vietnam in the hands of
the French. Soon thereafter, the Viet Minh began a guerrilla war against the
French Union forces, beginning the First Indochina War.
The war spread to Laos and Cambodia,
where Communists organized the Pathet Lao and the khmer Serei, both of which
were modeled on the Viet Minh. Globally, the Cold War began in earnest, which
meant that the rapprochement that existed between the Western powers and the
Soviet Union during World War II disintegrated. The Viet Minh fight was
hampered by a lack of weapons; this situation changed by 1949 when the Chinese Communists
had largely won the Chinese Civill War and were free to provide arms to their
Vietnamese allies.
|
Date:
|
1 November 1955 –
30 April 1975
(19 years, 5 months, 4 weeks and 1 day) |
Location: south Vietnam ,north Vietnam,
Cambodia , laos
|
Result
|
|
|
Territorial
changes |
Unification of North and South
Vietnam into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
|
|
Anti-communist forces
|
Communist forces
|
|
1.South Vietnam
2.U.S.A
3.South Korea
4.Australia
5.Thailand
6.Khmer Republic
7.Kingdom of Laos
Supported by
1.Philippines
2.Spain
3.Taiwan
|
1.North Vietnam
2.Viet Cong
3.khmer Rouge
4.Pather Lao
Supported by
1.Soviet Union
2.China
3.Cuba
4.North Korea
5.Czechoslovakia
6.Bulgeria
7.Burma
|
|
Strength
|
|
|
~1,830,000 (1968)
South Vietnam: 850,000
United States: 536,100 Free World Military Forces: 65,000 South Korea: 50,000 Australia: 7,672 Thailand, Philippines: 10,450 New Zealand: 552 |
461,000+
North Vietnam: 287,465 (January 1968)
China: 170,000 (1969) Soviet Union: 3,000 North Korea: 300–600 |
|
Causalities and
Losses
|
|
|
South Vietnam
195,000–430,000 civilian dead 171,331–220,357 military dead 1,170,000 wounded
United States
58,220 dead; 303,644 wounded South Korea 5,099 dead; 10,962 wounded; 4 missing Australia 500 dead; 3,129 wounded New Zealand 37 dead; 187 wounded |
North Vietnam & Viet Cong
50,000-65,000 civilian dead 400,000–1,100,000 military dead or missing 600,000+ wounded
China
1,446 dead; 4,200 wounded Soviet Union 16 dead
Total dead: 451,462–1,166,462
Total wounded: ~604,200 |
Vietnamese civilian dead: 245,000–2,000,000
Cambodian Civil War dead: 200,000–300,000*
Laotian Civil War dead: 20,000–200,000*
Total civilian dead: 465,000–2,500,000**
Total dead: 1,102,000–3,886,026
Total civilian dead: 465,000–2,500,000**
Total dead: 1,102,000–3,886,026
