After World War II, the Japanese were forced to leave Southeast Asia. The French saw this as their chance to reclaim Indochina, the present-day nations of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
The Vietnamese, however, wanted self-rule for their country.
The First Indochina War began and Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh , nationalist and Communist forces in Vietnam, defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. However, war in Vietnam continued until 1975.
Causes of the Vietnam War
Once the Vietnamese defeated the French, an international peace conference was held in
Geneva, Switzerland. It was decided that Vietnam would be divided at the 17 th parallel. North of this line, Ho Chi Minh and his Communist forces would run the government. North Vietnam’s capital was Hanoi. In the south, the non-Communist government of President Ngo Dinh Diem was in control. South Vietnam’s capital was in Saigon.
The two countries were separated by a demilitarized zone similar to that of Korea. Communist
North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China. The United States and its allies supported South Vietnam. The Vietnam War was primarily a civil war involving the North
Vietnamese Communists and the South Vietnamese Viet Cong fighting against others in South
Vietnam. The Viet Cong were Communists seeking reunification of the country Communist rule.
The United States viewed the conflict as another example of Communist aggression.
Just as in the Korean War, the domino theory played a part in the Vietnam War. US President
Dwight Eisenhower believed that if Vietnam fell to communism, then other nations in the region would too. Therefore, President Eisenhower felt US presence in Vietnam was needed in order to prevent the Communists from overtaking all of Vietnam.
The Viet Cong , Communist guerillas based in South Vietnam, gained more and more strength as Diem ruled as a dictator. Guerillas used hit-and-run tactics when fighting rather than traditional fighting methods. Since the Communists continued to gain strength throughout all of
Vietnam, the United States decided to increase its presence.
US Involvement
The war escalated with the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, when it was said that the North
Vietnamese attacked US Navy ships. As a result of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, President
Lyndon Johnson received support from the US Congress to increase US involvement in the war.
In 1965, US combat troops were sent to Vietnam.
Effective Strategies of the Vietnamese
Long before US involvement increased in Vietnam, North Vietnamese troops started using the
Ho Chi Minh Trail . This was a system of paths though the jungles and mountains that connected North Vietnam to South Vietnam via Laos and Cambodia. During the 1960s, the

paths and traffic on the trail increased even when US bombing raids attempted to lessen its effectiveness. It took over one month to get from North to South Vietnam using the Ho Chi Minh
Trail, yet it was a very effective part of the Vietnam War.
The Communists launched the Tet Offensive in 1968. It did not succeed in gaining the main cities of South Vietnam as it was intended to, but it did succeed in reducing the American public’s support of the war. After the Tet Offensive, President Richard Nixon would begin to withdraw troops from Vietnam. This policy of turning over control of the war to South Vietnam while the US troops withdrew was called Vietnamization . The last US troops in Vietnam left in
1973, after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords.
Results of the War
The Vietnam War showed the world that even the United States, with the most advanced army and the best equipment, could be defeated by a lesser power. The Viet Cong’s guerilla tactics worked, and the more the U.S. bombed the Vietnamese countryside, the more the local people sided with the Viet Cong.
The Vie tnam War involved armed conflicts in Vietnam’s neighboring countries of Laos and
Cambodia, too. The U.S. bombed both of these countries to try and destroy the Viet Cong’s hiding places, as well as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Vietnam War resulted in over 58,000 U.S. deaths and about 2 million Vietnamese deaths. U.S. involvement in the war lasted through the terms of four presidents – Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard
Nixon.
The war ended in 1975, when the South Vietnamese surrendered before the capture of Saigon, by the North Vietnamese army. In 1976, North Vietnam united both North and South Vietnam to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of the former president of North Vietnam. H anoi became the country’s capital. Vietnam remains a
Communist country to this day.