Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a war fought between 1964 and 1975 on the ground in South Vietnam and bordering areas of Cambodia and Laos (see also, Secret War), and in bombing runs (Rolling Thunder) over North Vietnam. Fighting on one side was a coalition of forces including the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam or the "RVN"), the United States, South Korea, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. Fighting on the other side was a coalition of forces including the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the National Liberation Front (NLF), a South Vietnamese guerrilla movement. The USSR and People's Republic of China provided military aid to the North Vietnamese and to the NLF, but they were not military combatants. The war was part of a larger regional conflict involving the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos, known as the Second Indochina War. In Vietnam, this conflict is known as the American War (Vietnamese Chiến Tranh Chống Mỹ Cứu Nước, literally War Against the Americans to Save the Nation).
Origins of the War
The Vietnam War was in many ways a direct successor to the French Indochina War, sometimes referred to as the First Indochina War, in which the French fought, with the economic support of USA, to regain control of their former colony in Indochina. During World War II, Vichy France had handed Vietnam over to the Japanese. Vietnam was under Japanese military control, as well as de facto Japanese administrative control, although the Vichy French continued to serve as the official administrators. After the Japanese surrender, the French fought to regain control of their colony against the Viet Minh independence movement, led by Communist Party leader Ho Chi Minh. After the Viet Minh defeated the French colonial army at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the colony was granted independence.
According to the ensuing Geneva Conference, Vietnam was partitioned, ostensibly temporarily, into a Northern and Southern zones of Viet-Nam. The former was to be ruled by Ho Chi Minh, while the latter would be under the control of Emperor Bao Dai. In 1955 the South Vietnamese monarchy was abolished and Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem became President of a new South Vietnamese republic.
The Geneva accords specified that elections to unify the country would be scheduled to take place in June, 1956, but such elections were never held. The RVN government of President Diem, with the support of US President Eisenhower, had no interest in holding elections that threatened to bring Communist influences into the South's government. This was especially true after the north implemented a massive agricultural reform program, that distributed land to poor peasants, with an obvious influence on the electorate of the south. President Eisenhower noted in his memoirs that if a nation-wide election had been held, the communists would have won. In addition the Communists were said to have been unlikely to allow a free election in their half of Vietnam. Regardless, neither the US nor the two Vietnams had signed the election clause in the accord. Initially, it seemed that a partitioned Vietnam would become the norm, similar in nature to the partitioned Korea created years earlier.
The (NLF or Viet Cong) was a guerrilla movement in opposition to the South Vietnamese government. (The RVN and the US referred to the NLF as Viet Cong, short for Viet Nam Cong San, or "Vietnamese Communist" The NLF itself never called itself by this name). In response to the guerilla war, the United States began sending military advisors in support of the government in the South. North Vietnam and the USSR supported the NLF with arms and supplies, advisors, and regular units of the North Vietnamese Army, which were transported via an extensive network of trails and roads through the neutral nation of Laos, which became known as the Ho Chi Minh trail.
US Escalation to 1964
| Vietcong casualties |