The conflict between the French and the Viet Minh came to a head at the decisive Battle of Dien Bien Phu, when, after a four-month siege, the French lost to the Viet Minh under commander Vo Nguyen Giap, marking the end of French rule in Vietnam. By the end of June 1972, however, after a failed offensive into South Vietnam, Hanoi was finally willing to compromise. The military leadership in Washington, however, was hostile to any role for U.S. advisors other than conventional troop training. [209] While U.S. forces were redeployed, the ARVN took over combat operations throughout the country, with casualties double US casualties in 1969, and more than triple US ones in 1970. "[93]:367, Vietnam was a major political issue during the United States presidential election in 1968. [79], The U.S. Air Force destroyed more than 20% of the jungles of South Vietnam and 2050% of the mangrove forests by spraying over 20 million gallons of toxic herbicides (defoliants) including Agent Orange. More than two decades of violent conflict had inflicted a devastating toll on Vietnams population: After years of warfare, an estimated 2 million Vietnamese were killed, while 3 million were wounded and another 12 million became refugees. [203][40]:526 From 1969 on, search-and-destroy operations became referred to as "search and evade" or "search and avoid" operations, falsifying battle reports while avoiding guerrilla fighters. [105]:238 Dim staffed his government's key posts mostly with northern and central Catholics. Minh's regime was overthrown in January 1964 by General Nguyn Khnh. The 17th Parallel indicates the boundary separating North and South Vietnam following the peace negotiations in Geneva in 1954. Phuoc Binh, the provincial capital, fell on 6 January 1975. These actions were part of a diversionary strategy meant to draw U.S. forces towards the Central Highlands. Why Did the Vietnam War Start? - WorldAtlas An election was scheduled in two years time to unify Vietnam, but the U.S., fearful that a national election would lead to communist rule, ensured it never took place. There is the start of the conflict between the warring sides in Vietnam, and there is also the motive of the United States for siding with South Vietnam. Scientific reports have concluded that refugees exposed to chemical sprays while in South Vietnam continued to experience pain in the eyes and skin as well as gastrointestinal upsets. [173]:317, Over 3million people left Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the Indochina refugee crisis after 1975. Some historians marked the beginning of the conflict in 1954 when North and South Vietnam were officially divided at the Geneva Accords. The DRV ruled as the only civil government in all of Vietnam for 20 days, after the abdication of Emperor Bo i, who had governed under Japanese supervision. L c Th and Henry Kissinger, along with the PRG Foreign Minister Nguyn Th Bnh and a reluctant President Thiu, signed the Paris Peace Accords on 27 January 1973. [150]:78 The resolution granted the president power "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression" and Johnson would rely on this as giving him authority to expand the war. Ronald H. Spector is Professor of History and International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. [262] The US Department of Defense estimates the VC/PAVN had conducted 36,000 murders and almost 58,000 kidnappings from 1967 to 1972, c. Following an attack on a U.S. Army base in Pleiku on 7 February 1965,[151] a series of airstrikes was initiated, Operation Flaming Dart, while Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin was on a state visit to North Vietnam. American support of Dim in refusing elections was seen as thwarting the democracy America claimed to support. [154], The objective of stopping North Vietnam and the Viet Cong was never reached. The Vietnam War has been featured extensively in television, film, video games, music and literature in the participant countries. [272][273] Some women also served for the PAVN and Viet Cong intelligence services. Given that the United States never issued a formal declaration of war, reaching a unanimous agreement on a precise start date for the Vietnam War is tricky. Even as the enemy body count (at times exaggerated by U.S. and South Vietnamese authorities) mounted steadily, DRV and Viet Cong troops refused to stop fighting, encouraged by the fact that they could easily reoccupy lost territory with manpower and supplies delivered via the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Cambodia and Laos. leadership. Two Douglas A-4C Skyhawk fly past the anti-submarine aircraft carrier. Other aerial campaigns, such as Operation Barrel Roll, targeted different parts of the Viet Cong and PAVN infrastructure. [120]:73, In March 1956, southern communist leader L Dun presented a plan to revive the insurgency entitled "The Road to the South" to the other members of the Politburo in Hanoi; however, as both China and the Soviets opposed confrontation at this time, L Dun's plan was rejected. By 1969 more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. According to Hanoi's official history, the Viet Cong was a branch of the People's Army of Vietnam. To address this problem, the ANC released advertisements portraying women in the ANC as "proper, professional and well protected." A team sent by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to report on conditions in South Vietnam advised a build-up of American military, economic and technical aid in order to help Diem confront the Viet Cong threat. [111]:140 The United States said, "With respect to the statement made by the representative of the State of Vietnam, the United States reiterates its traditional position that peoples are entitled to determine their own future and that it will not join in any arrangement which would hinder this". [169] Up to the war's end, the Viet Cong and PAVN would initiate 90% of large firefights, of which 80% were clear and well-planned operations, and thus the PAVN/Viet Cong would retain strategic initiative despite overwhelming US force and fire-power deployment. A top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967 was published in the New York Times in 1971shedding light on how the Nixon administration ramped up conflict in Vietnam. [80][81][82] The war is one of the most commonly used examples of ecocide, including by Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, lawyers, historians and other academics. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge would eventually kill 13 million Cambodians out of a population of around 8million, in one of the bloodiest genocides in history.[64][312][313][314]. The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The Viet Minh had confiscated large private landholdings, reduced rents and debts, and leased communal lands, mostly to poorer peasants. Vietnam emerged from the war as a potent military power within Southeast Asia, but its agriculture, business, and industry were disrupted, large parts of its countryside were scarred by bombs and defoliation and laced with land mines, and its cities and towns were heavily damaged. Nixon ended draft calls in 1972, and instituted an all-volunteer army the following year. [248] The substantiated cases included 7 massacres between 1967 and 1971 in which at least 137 civilians were killed; seventy eight further attacks targeting non-combatants resulting in at least 57 deaths, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted; and 141 cases of U.S. soldiers torturing civilian detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock. U.S. troop withdrawals continued, but American airpower responded, beginning Operation Linebacker, and the offensive was halted. [352] As of 2006[update], the Vietnamese government estimates that there are over 4,000,000 victims of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam, although the United States government denies any conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the Vietnamese victims of dioxin poisoning. [110] In 1956, leaders in Hanoi admitted to "excesses" in implementing this program and restored a large amount of the land to the original owners. The next few years would bring even more carnage, including the horrifying revelation that U.S. soldiers had mercilessly slaughtered more than 400 unarmed civilians in the village of My Lai in March 1968. 6 Events That Laid the Groundwork for the Vietnam War In March 1969 Nixon launched a massive secret bombing campaign, called Operation Menu, against communist sanctuaries along the Cambodia/Vietnam border. The first is May 16, 1945, the date the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA) sent an Army special operations group, code-named the Deer Team . Her diaries were later published in Vietnam as ng Thy Trm's Diary (Last Night I Dreamed of Peace), where it became a best-seller and was later made into a film Don't Burn (ng t). His successor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, put forth the Domino Theory that a communist victory in Vietnam would create a domino effect in Southeast Asia and therefore must be prevented at all costs. The Air Force ran many missions of this kind to secure additional funding during budget negotiations, so the tonnage expended does not directly correlate with the resulting damage. Thuc's anniversary celebrations occurred shortly before Vesak had been bankrolled by the government, and Vatican flags were displayed prominently. In contrast to the air attacks on North Vietnam, the U.S.-South Vietnamese war effort in the south was fought primarily on the ground, largely under the command of General William Westmoreland, in coordination with the government of General Nguyen Van Thieu in Saigon. Thiu had halted the general advance, leaving armoured divisions able to surround them. Did you know? The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, also known as the U.S.S. [17] It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Half of the ARVN troops involved were either captured or killed, half of the ARVN/US support helicopters were downed by anti-aircraft fire and the operation was considered a fiasco, demonstrating operational deficiencies still present within the ARVN. At the heart of the conflict was the desire of North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial administration of Vietnam in 1954, to unify the entire country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China. The group was ultimately defeated in April following a battle in Saigon. [40]:714 After having appealed unsuccessfully to Congress for $722 million in emergency aid for South Vietnam, President Ford had given a televised speech on 23 April, declaring an end to the Vietnam War and all U.S. The French-speaking Australian journalist Kate Webb was captured along with a photographer and others by the Viet Cong in Cambodia and travelled into Laos with them; they were released back into Cambodia after 23 days of captivity. On 21 August 1963, the ARVN Special Forces of Colonel L Quang Tung, loyal to Dim's younger brother Ng nh Nhu, raided pagodas across Vietnam, causing widespread damage and destruction and leaving a death toll estimated to range into the hundreds. Its primary function was to manage American military aid to and through France to the Associated States of Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) to combat communist forces. US casualties in 1970 were less than half of 1969 casualties after being relegated to less active combat. "[105]:264 In April 1961, Kennedy approved the Bay of Pigs Invasion, which ended in failure. It was fought in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia between North and South Vietnam. [40]:246247 This marked the beginning of the American ground war. Warfare had demolished the countrys infrastructure and economy, and reconstruction proceeded slowly. Opposition to the war in the United States bitterly divided Americans, even after President Richard Nixon signed theParis Peace Accordsandordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. Operation Rolling Thunder and Operation Arc Light expanded aerial bombardment and ground support operations. Dates: November 1, 1955 - April 30, 1975 The Vietnam War was fought between communist North Vietnam and the government of Southern Vietnam. [232]:85 The statement was on air at 2:30pm. The indigenous forces numbered in the tens of thousands and they conducted direct action missions, led by paramilitary officers, against the Communist Pathet Lao forces and their North Vietnamese supporters. [201]:349350[202]:166175 At home, desertion rates quadrupled from 1966 levels. During the Cold War, the U.S. practiced a policy of containment. [329] General record-keeping was reported to have been sloppy for government spending during the war. How did the Vietnam War start? | The Week UK [40]:96[101] This followed an American psychological warfare campaign, designed by Edward Lansdale for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which exaggerated anti-Catholic sentiment among the Viet Minh and which falsely claimed the US was about to drop atomic bombs on Hanoi. Ami Pedahzur has written that "the overall volume and lethality of Viet Cong terrorism rivals or exceeds all but a handful of terrorist campaigns waged over the last third of the twentieth century", based on the definition of terrorists as a non-state actor, and examining targeted killings and civilian deaths which are estimated at over 18,000 from 1966 to 1969. The Pathet Lao overthrew the monarchy of Laos in December 1975, establishing the Lao People's Democratic Republic under the leadership of a member of the royal family, Souphanouvong. Articles with the HISTORY.com Editors byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan, Matt Mullen and Christian Zapata. The U.S. and its allies mounted complex search and destroy operations, designed to find enemy forces, destroy them, and then withdraw, typically using war helicopters. [citation needed] Operation Masher would have negligible impact, however, as the PAVN/VC returned to the province just four months after the operation ended. [93]:353354 The idea that the government of South Vietnam could manage its own affairs was shelved. [329], As of 2013, the U.S. government is paying Vietnam veterans and their families or survivors more than $22billion a year in war-related claims.[330][331]. The U.S. military reported 58,220 American casualties. [174], The Tet Offensive began on 30 January 1968, as over 100 cities were attacked by over 85,000 VC/PAVN troops, including assaults on key military installations, headquarters, and government buildings and offices, including the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. To hasten a collapse and foment panic, the PAVN shelled Tan Son Nhut Airport and forced its closure. [285] Webb would be the first Western journalist to be captured and released, as well as cover the perspective of the Viet Cong in her memoir On The Other Side. [93]:19 John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, said in a speech to the American Friends of Vietnam: "Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam."[114]. The modern classical composer George Crumb composed a string quartet, a threnody, regarding the war in 1970 titled Black Angels. Working under the domino theory, which held that if one Southeast Asian country fell to communism, many other countries would follow, Kennedy increased U.S. aid, though he stopped short of committing to a large-scale military intervention. The past and future of a right-wing myth". Those who argue that the United States opponents won the war cite the United States overall objectives and outcomes. United States Vietnam Relations, 19451967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, vol. [231], During the course of the Vietnam War a large segment of the American population came to be opposed to U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Only one American, Lieutenant William Calley, will be found guilty of any crime in connection with My Lai. [217] In AprilMay 1970, North Vietnam invaded Cambodia at the request of the Khmer Rouge following negotiations with deputy leader Nuon Chea. "Stabbed in the Back! The South Vietnamese then led their own invasion of Laos, which was pushed back by North Vietnam. [40]:517 On 27 October 1969, Nixon had ordered a squadron of 18 B-52s loaded with nuclear weapons to race to the border of Soviet airspace to convince the Soviet Union, in accord with the madman theory, that he was capable of anything to end the Vietnam War. Vietnam War: When Did It Start? - EnkiVillage The target was Bun Ma Thut, in k Lk Province. In 2017, March 29 was officially designated National Vietnam War Veterans Day. The conflict in Vietnam took root during an independence movement against French colonial rule and evolved into a Cold War confrontation. With his approval ratings dropping in an election year, Johnson called a halt to bombing in much of North Vietnam (though bombings continued in the south) and promised to dedicate the rest of his term to seeking peace rather than reelection. In November 1965, the U.S. engaged in its first major battle with the PAVN, the Battle of Ia Drang. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, but his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, continued the work that Kennedy had started. [169] The PAVN/Viet Cong had furthermore developed strategies capable of countering U.S. military doctrines and tactics (see NLF and PAVN battle tactics). HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Journalism in the ensuing years has documented other overlooked and uninvestigated war crimes involving every army division that was active in Vietnam,[248] including the atrocities committed by Tiger Force. More than 20% of South Vietnam's forests and 3.2% of its cultivated land was sprayed at least once. [24]:xli. There had also been reports of Catholic paramilitaries demolishing Buddhist pagodas throughout Dim's rule. Casualties fluctuated considerably from year to year, but a degree of accuracy can be inferred from the fact that 500,000 was 59 percent of the 849,018 total and that 59 percent of the war's days had passed by the time of Fallaci's conversation with Giap. It granted him broad latitude in handling the struggle against communism in Southeast Asia. The Pentagon Papers The Secrets and Lies of the Vietnam War, Exposed in One Epic Document With the Pentagon Papers revelations, the U.S. public's trust in the government was forever diminished.. [40]:686, The success of the 19731974 dry season offensive inspired Tr to return to Hanoi in October 1974 and plead for a larger offensive the next dry season. On August 2, 1964, the U.S.S. In April 1957, insurgents launched an assassination campaign, referred to as "extermination of traitors". In response, China invaded Vietnam in 1979. More than 3 million people (including over 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than half of the dead were Vietnamese civilians. United States 3-0 Vietnam (Jul 21, 2023) Game Analysis - ESPN The references for this article are grouped in three sections. [189] As Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara noted, "the dangerous illusion of victory by the United States was therefore dead. Called the American War in Vietnam (or, in full, the War Against the Americans to Save the Nation), the war was also part of a larger regional conflict (see Indochina wars) and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. Most arms were captured from poorly defended ARVN militia outposts. In 1971, the Pentagon Papers were leaked to The New York Times. Vietnam War | The Canadian Encyclopedia This proposal was conveyed to the U.S. embassy in Saigon in Cable 243. Gabriel Garca Mrquez, a Nobel Prize winning writer, described South Vietnam as a "False paradise" after the war, when he visited in 1980: The cost of this delirium was stupefying: 360,000 people mutilated, a million widows, 500,000 prostitutes, 500,000 drug addicts, a million tuberculous and more than a million soldiers of the old regime, impossible to rehabilitate into a new society. Having transferred power to Trn Vn Hng on 21 April, he left for Taiwan on 25 April. The Maddox fired what it described as warning shots and was met by torpedo and machine gun fire. Many returning veterans faced negative reactions from both opponents of the war (who viewed them as having killed innocent civilians) and its supporters (who saw them as having lost the war), along with physical damage including the effects of exposure to the toxic herbicide Agent Orange, millions of gallons of which had been dumped by U.S. planes on the dense forests of Vietnam. [196]:272274 An unconventional victory was sidelined in favor of a strategy built on conventional victory through conquest. He instituted the death penalty against any activity deemed communist in August 1956. The Vietnam War (1955-1975) was fought between communist North Vietnam, backed by the Soviet Union and China, and South Vietnam, supported by the United States.
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