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Vietnam War

The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955[A 1] to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was a major conflict of the Cold War. While the war was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, the north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies, making the war a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. military involvement ending in 1973. The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries officially becoming communist states by 1976.

"Second Indochina War" redirects here. For the war between India and China, see Nathu La and Cho La clashes.

After the fall of French Indochina with the 1954 Geneva Conference on 21 July, the country gained independence from France but was divided into two parts: the Viet Minh took control of North Vietnam, while the U.S. assumed financial and military support for South Vietnam.[56][A 8] The Viet Cong (VC), a South Vietnamese common front under the direction of the north, initiated a guerrilla war in the south. The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), also known as the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), engaged in more conventional warfare with U.S. and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces. North Vietnam invaded Laos in 1958, establishing the Ho Chi Minh Trail to supply and reinforce the VC.[57]: 16  By 1963, the north had sent 40,000 soldiers to fight in the south.[57]: 16  U.S. involvement increased under President John F. Kennedy, from just under a thousand military advisors in 1959 to 23,000 by 1964.[58][29]: 131 


Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution that gave President Lyndon B. Johnson broad authority to increase U.S. military presence in Vietnam, without a formal declaration of war. Johnson ordered the deployment of combat units for the first time and dramatically increased the number of American troops to 184,000.[58] U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes. The U.S. also conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam[29]: 371–374 [59] and continued significantly building up its forces, despite little progress being made. In 1968, North Vietnamese forces launched the Tet Offensive. Though it was a tactical defeat for them, it was a strategic victory, as it caused U.S. domestic support for the war to fade.[29]: 481  By the end of the year, the VC held little territory and were sidelined by the PAVN.[60] In 1969, North Vietnam declared the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam. Operations crossed national borders, and the U.S. bombed North Vietnamese supply routes in Laos and Cambodia. The 1970 deposing of the Cambodian monarch, Norodom Sihanouk, resulted in a PAVN invasion of the country (at the request of the Khmer Rouge), and then a U.S.-ARVN counter-invasion, escalating the Cambodian Civil War. After the election of Richard Nixon in 1969, a policy of "Vietnamization" began, which saw the conflict fought by an expanded ARVN, while U.S. forces withdrew in the face of increasing domestic opposition. U.S. ground forces had largely withdrawn by early 1972, and their operations were limited to air and artillery support, advisors, and materiel shipments. The Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 saw all U.S. forces withdrawn [61]: 457  The accords were broken almost immediately, and fighting continued for two more years. Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975, while the 1975 spring offensive saw the Fall of Saigon to the PAVN on 30 April, marking the end of the war. North and South Vietnam were reunified on 2 July the following year.


The war exacted an enormous human cost: estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 966,000 to 3 million. Some 275,000–310,000 Cambodians, 20,000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict.[A 7] The end of the Vietnam War would precipitate the Vietnamese boat people and the larger Indochina refugee crisis, which saw millions of refugees leave Indochina, an estimated 250,000 of whom perished at sea. Once in power, the Khmer Rouge carried out the Cambodian genocide, while conflict between them and the unified Vietnam would eventually escalate into the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, which toppled the Khmer Rouge government in 1979 and ended the genocide. In response, China invaded Vietnam, with subsequent border conflicts lasting until 1991. Within the United States, the war gave rise to what was referred to as Vietnam syndrome, a public aversion to American overseas military involvement,[62] which, together with the Watergate scandal, contributed to the crisis of confidence that affected America throughout the 1970s.[63]


The U.S. Air Force destroyed more than 20% of the jungles of South Vietnam and 20–50% of the mangrove forests, by spraying over 20 million U.S. gallons (75 million liters) of toxic herbicides (defoliants), including Agent Orange.[64][65][66] The war is one of the most commonly used examples of ecocide.[67][68][69]

Names

Various names have been applied to the War. These have shifted over time, although Vietnam War is the most commonly used title in English. It has been variously called the Second Indochina War since the war spread to both Laos and Cambodia,[70][71] the Vietnam Conflict,[72][73] and Nam (colloquially 'Nam). In Vietnam it is commonly known as Kháng chiến chống Mỹ (lit.'Resistance War against America').[74][75] The Vietnamese Government officially refers to it as the Resistance War against America to Save the Nation.[76] It is also sometimes called the American War.[77]

Phase 1. Commitment of U.S. (and other allies) forces necessary to halt the losing trend by the end of 1965.

Phase 2. U.S. and allied forces mount major offensive actions to seize the initiative to destroy guerrilla and organized enemy forces. This phase would end when the enemy had been worn down, thrown on the defensive, and driven back from major populated areas.

Phase 3. If the enemy persisted, a period of twelve to eighteen months following Phase 2 would be required for the final destruction of enemy forces remaining in remote base areas.

[152]

Vietnamization, 1969–1972

Nuclear threats and diplomacy

U.S. president Richard Nixon began troop withdrawals in 1969. His plan to build up the ARVN so that it could take over the defense of South Vietnam became known as "Vietnamization". As the PAVN/VC recovered from their 1968 losses and generally avoided contact, Creighton Abrams conducted operations aimed at disrupting logistics, with better use of firepower and more cooperation with the ARVN.[29]: 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.[182][183] Nixon had also sought détente with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with China, which decreased global tensions and led to nuclear arms reduction by both superpowers; however, the Soviets continued to supply the North Vietnamese with aid.[184][185]

History of Cambodia

History of Laos

History of Vietnam

List of conflicts in Asia

Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War

U.S. news media and the Vietnam War

Third Indochina War

Sino-Vietnamese War

The Vietnam War (TV series)

Soviet–Afghan War

: references for the in-line, numbered superscript references contained within the article.

Citations

: the main works used to build the content of the article, but not referenced as in-line citations.

Main sources

: additional works used to build the article

Additional sources

(1976). Demilitarized Zones – Veterans after Vietnam. Perkasie, PA: East River Anthology. ISBN 0-917238-01-X.

Berry, Jan

Nau, Terry L. (2013). Reluctant Soldier ... Proud Veteran: How a cynical Vietnam vet learned to take pride in his service to the USA. Leipzig: Amazon Distribution GmbH.  978-1-4827-6149-8. OCLC 870660174.

ISBN

Conboy, Ken & Morrison, James (November–December 1999). "Plausible Deniability: US-Taiwanese Covert Insertions into North Vietnam". Air Enthusiast (84): 29–34.  0143-5450.

ISSN

Hammond, William (1987). Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1962–1968.

——— (1995). Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1968–1973. (Full-scale history of the war by U.S. Army; much broader than title suggests.)

(12 October 2020). "This Close: The day the Cuban missile crisis almost went nuclear" (a review of Martin J. Sherwin's Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, New York, Knopf, 2020). "The Day Nuclear War Almost Broke Out" [online version]. The New Yorker.

Kolbert, Elizabeth

. DK. 2017.

The Vietnam War: The Definitive Illustrated History

Video produced by the PBS Series History Detectives

A Vietnam Diary's Homecoming

Detailed bibliography of Vietnam War

Archived 13 August 2012 at the Wayback Machine primary sources on U.S. involvement

Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy–Vietnam

Glossary of Military Terms & Slang from the Vietnam War

Archived 30 April 2011 at the Wayback Machine

Impressions of Vietnam and descriptions of the daily life of a soldier from the oral history of Elliott Gardner, U.S. Army

Stephen H. Warner Southeast Asia Photograph Collection at Gettysburg College

in Open-Content project

Timeline US – Vietnam (1947–2001)

the official history of the United States Army

The U.S. Army in Vietnam

at The History Channel

The Vietnam War

UC Berkeley Library Social Activism Sound Recording Project: Anti-Vietnam War Protests

comprehensive timeline of the Vietnam War

Vietnam war timeline

 – Texas Tech University

Virtual Vietnam Archive

Mashable

1965–1975 Another Vietnam; Unseen images of the war from the winning side

University Archives and Special Collections, Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston

Archival collections about the Vietnam War