About the neighborhood
War in Southeast Asia from 1955 to 1975
Belligerents
North Vietnam
Viet Cong and PRG
Pathet Lao
Khmer Rouge
GRUNK
China
Soviet Union
North Korea
South Vietnam
United States
South Korea
Australia
New Zealand
Laos (from 1959)
Khmer Republic
Thailand
Philippines
Taiwan
Commanders and leaders
Hồ Chí Minh#
Lê Duẩn
Võ Nguyên Giáp
Phạm Văn Đồng
Nguyễn Chí Thanh#
Trần Văn Trà
...and others
Ngô Đình DiệmX
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu
Nguyễn Cao Kỳ
Dwight Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy X
Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard Nixon
Robert McNamara
Melvin Laird
W. C. Westmoreland
Creighton Abrams
...and others
Strength ≈860,000 (1967)
North Vietnam: 690,000 (1966, including PAVN and Viet Cong)
Viet Cong: ~200,000 (estimated, 1968)
China: 170,000 (1968) 320,000 total
Khmer Rouge: 70,000 (1972)
Pathet Lao: 48,000 (1970)
Soviet Union: ~3,000
North Korea: 200
≈1,420,000 (1968)
South Vietnam: 850,000 (1968) 1,500,000 (1974–1975)
United States: 2,709,918 serving in Vietnam total Peak: 543,400 (April 1969)
Khmer Republic: 200,000 (1973)
Laos: 72,000 (Royal Army and Hmong militia)
South Korea: 48,000 per year (1965–1973, 320,000 total)
Thailand: 32,000 per year (1965–1973) (in Vietnam and Laos)
Australia: 50,190 total (Peak: 8,300 combat troops)
New Zealand: Peak: 552 in 1968
Philippines: 2,061
Casualties and losses
North Vietnam and Viet Cong: 30,000–182,000 civilian dead 849,018 military dead (per Vietnam; 1/3 non-combat deaths) 666,000–950,765 dead (US estimated 1964–1974) 232,000+ military missing (per Vietnam) 600,000+ military wounded
Khmer Rouge: unknown
Pathet Lao: unknown
China: ~1,100 dead and 4,200 wounded
Soviet Union: 16 dead
North Korea: 14 dead
Total military dead/missing: ≈1,100,000 Total military wounded: ≈604,200 (excluding GRUNK/Khmer Rouge and Pathet Lao)
South Vietnam: 195,000–430,000 civilian dead Military dead: 313,000 (total)254,256 combat deaths (between 1960 and 1974)
1,170,000 military wounded ≈1,000,000 captured
United States: 58,281 dead (47,434 from combat) 303,644 wounded (including 150,341 not requiring hospital care)
Laos: 15,000 army dead
Khmer Republic: unknown
South Korea: 5,099 dead; 10,962 wounded; 4 missing
Australia: 526 dead; 3,129 wounded
Thailand: 351 dead
New Zealand: 37 dead
Taiwan: 25 dead; 17 captured
Philippines: 9 dead; 64 wounded
Total military dead: 333,625 (1960–1974) – 392,369 (total) Total military wounded: ≈1,340,000+ (excluding FARK and FANK) Total military captured: est. 1,000,000+
Vietnamese civilian dead: 405,000–2,000,000
Vietnamese total dead: 966,000–3,010,000
Cambodian Civil War dead: 275,000–310,000
Laotian Civil War dead: 20,000–62,000
Non-Indochinese military dead: 65,494
Total dead: 1,326,494–3,447,494
For more information see Vietnam War casualties and Aircraft losses of the Vietnam War
FULRO fought an insurgency against both South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the Viet Cong, and was supported by Cambodia for much of the war.
The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and US. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until US forces were withdrawn in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian Civil Wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.
After the defeat of the French Union in the First Indochina War that began in 1946, Vietnam gained independence in the 1954 Geneva Conference but was divided in two at the 17th parallel: the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, took control of North Vietnam, while Ngo Dinh Diem led South Vietnam, which the US assumed financial and military support for. The North Vietnamese supplied and eventually directed the Viet Cong (VC), a common front of southern dissidents which intensified a guerrilla war from 1957. In 1958, North Vietnam invaded Laos, establishing the Ho Chi Minh trail to supply the VC insurgency. By 1961, North Vietnam was covertly sending soldiers of its People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) to assist the southern insurgents. President John F. Kennedy increased US involvement in the early 1960s, including military advisors and aid to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). In 1963, Diem was killed in a US-backed ARVN military coup, which added to South Vietnam's growing instability.
Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, the US Congress passed a resolution that gave President Lyndon B. Johnson authority to increase military presence without declaring war. Johnson launched a bombing campaign of the north and deployed combat troops, dramatically increasing deployment to 184,000 by 1966, and 536,000 by 1969. US forces relied on air supremacy and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations in rural areas. Communist forces relied on guerrilla tactics, using the countryside and jungle as concealed base areas.
In 1968, the communists under Lê Duẩn launched the Tet Offensive, which was a tactical defeat but convinced many Americans the war could not be won. Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon, began "Vietnamization" from 1969, which saw the conflict fought by an expanded ARVN while US forces withdrew. The 1970 Cambodian coup d'état resulted in a PAVN invasion and US–ARVN counter-invasion, escalating its civil war.
With its ranks degraded by widespread drug abuse and plummeting morale, US troops had mostly withdrawn from Vietnam by 1972. However, American forces provided crucial air support to ARVN against North Vietnam's massive Easter Offensive with the Linebacker Operations. Following the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the last American forces left. The accords were subsequently violated by North Vietnam, and bloody fighting continued until the 1975 Spring Offensive. Weakened by years of corruption and the economic troubles of South Vietnam's Thiệu regime, Saigon fell to the PAVN, marking the war's end. North and South Vietnam were officially reunified in 1976.
The war exacted an enormous cost: estimates of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 970,000 to 3 million. Some 275,000–310,000 Cambodians, 20,000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 US service members died. The war was also marked by brutal atrocities, including large-scale massacres by both sides including Huế and Mỹ Lai, terrorism, indiscriminate bombings, rape, torture, and persecution of ethnic minorities.
The war's end would precipitate the Vietnamese boat people and the larger Indochina refugee crisis, which saw millions leave Indochina, of which about 250,000 perished at sea. 20% of South Vietnam's jungle was sprayed with toxic herbicides, which led to significant health problems. The Khmer Rouge carried out the Cambodian genocide, and the Cambodian–Vietnamese War began in 1978. In response, China invaded Vietnam, with border conflicts lasting until 1991. Within the US, the war gave rise to Vietnam syndrome, an aversion to American overseas military involvement, which, with the Watergate scandal, contributed to the crisis of confidence that affected the United States throughout the 1970s.
Names
Various names have been applied and shifted over time, though the Vietnam War is the most commonly used in English. It has also been called the Second Indochina War, as it spread to Laos and Cambodia, the Vietnam Conflict, and colloquially 'Nam. South Vietnam used terms such as Kháng chiến chống Cộng sản (lit.'Resistance War against Communists') and Cuộc chiến bảo vệ tự do (lit.'Fight to Protect Freedom'). North Vietnam at the time, and official histories produced by the Government of Vietnam today, refer to it as Kháng chiến chống Mỹ, cứu nước (lit.'Resistance War against America to save the nation'), or simply the Resistance War against America. Vietnamese both within the country and overseas occasionally refer to it as Chiến tranh Việt Nam, the Vietnam War.
Background
Vietnam had been under French control as part of French Indochina since the 1880s. Vietnamese independence movements, such as the Vietnamese Nationalist Party, faced suppression despite growing public support for diverse reformist and revolutionary nationalist causes. Nguyen Sinh Cung established the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) in 1930; the Marxist–Leninist party aimed to overthrow French rule and establish a communist state.
Fractures between nationalists and communists emerged in the late 1920s, as the two groups differed in their visions for postcolonial Vietnam: republicanism for the revolutionary nationalists, and proletarian internationalism for the communists. The communists' radical push for centralized control led to a prolonged civil conflict marked by the suppression of rival nationalists, with the ICP largely responsible for initiating systemic Vietnamese-on-Vietnamese violence.
Japanese occupation of Indochina
In September 1940, Japan invaded French Indochina, following France's capitulation to Nazi Germany. By 1941, Japan had gained full military access across Indochina and established a dual colonial rule that preserved Vichy French administration while facilitating Japanese military operations. Cung, now known as Ho Chi Minh, returned from exile to establish the anti-Japanese Viet Minh movement. From 1945, the US Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) provided the Viet Minh with weapons and training to fight the occupying Japanese. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt supported Vietnamese resistance, and proposed Vietnam's independence be granted under an international trusteeship after the war. The Viet Minh secured their advantage by relocating their operations from southern China into Vietnam and leveraging Allied support.
In March 1945, Japan, losing the war, overthrew the French government in Indochina, established the Empire of Vietnam, and maintained Emperor Bảo Đại as a figurehead. The nationalist sentiment that had intensified during World War II paradoxically laid the groundwork for the communist-led Viet Minh, themselves cloaked in nationalism. Following the surrender of Japan, they launched the August Revolution, overthrowing the Japanese-backed state and seizing weapons from the Japanese. On 2 September, Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). However, British and French forces arrived in Indochina to oversee the Japanese surrender south of the 16th parallel, while Chinese Nationalist troops did so in the north. On September 23, the British supported a French coup that overthrew the DRV government in Saigon and reinstated French control. O.S.S. forces withdrew as the French sought to reassert control in southern Indochina.
First Indochina War
Beginning in August 1945, the Viet Minh sought to consolidate power by terrorizing and purging rival Vietnamese nationalist groups and Trotskyist activists. In 1946, the Franco-Chinese and Ho–Sainteny Agreements facilitated a coexistence between the DRV and French that strengthened the Viet Minh while undermining the nationalists. That summer, the Viet Minh colluded with French forces to eliminate nationalists, targeted for their ardent anti-colonialism.
With most of the nationalist partisans defeated, and negotiations broken down, tensions between the Viet Minh and French authorities erupted into full-scale war in December 1946, a conflict that would later become entangled with the Cold War. Surviving nationalist partisans and politico-religious groups rallied behind the exiled Bảo Đại to reopen negotiations with France in opposition to communist domination. While the State of Vietnam, under Bảo Đại as Chief of State, aligned with the anticommunist Western Bloc, the French exploited it to extend their colonial presence and to bolster their standing within NATO. By adhering to Marxist–Leninist principles, Vietnamese communists monopolized power through a series of radical campaigns.
The anticommunist Truman Doctrine, first announced by president Harry S. Truman in March 1947, pledged United States support to nations resisting "attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures". In Indochina, this policy was first put into practice when in February 1950 the US recognized the French-backed State of Vietnam, based in Saigon, as the legitimate government, after communist China and the Soviet Union recognized the Democratic Republic of Vietnam the month prior. The outbreak of the Korean War in June convinced Washington policymakers that the war in Indochina was another example of communist expansionism, directed by the Soviet Union. Within the United States, the Red Scare and rise of McCarthyism fostered public opposition to communism and convinced Americans that communist ideology needed to be quelled wherever possible.
Military advisors from China began assisting the Viet Minh in July 1950. Chinese weapons, expertise, and laborers transformed the Viet Minh from a guerrilla force into an army. In September 1950, the US created the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to screen French aid requests, advise on strategy, and train Vietnamese soldiers. By 1954, the US had spent $1billion in support of the French effort, shouldering 80% of the war costs.
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
In 1954, the French attempted to interdict Viet Minh supply lines at Dien Bien Phu near the Laotian border. Viet Minh forces under Võ Nguyên Giáp surrounded the French and mobilized heavy artillery and anti-aircraft batteries to bombard the French garrison. Repeated Viet Minh frontal assaults and the worsening French supply situation slowly wore the defenders down.
During the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, US carriers sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin and the US conducted reconnaissance flights. France and the US discussed the use of tactical nuclear weapons, though how seriously this was considered, and by whom, is unclear. According to then-Vice President Richard Nixon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up plans to use nuclear weapons to support the French. Nixon, a so-called "hawk", suggested the US might have to "put American boys in". President Dwight D. Eisenhower made American participation contingent on British support, but they were opposed. Eisenhower, wary of involving the US in an Asian land war, decided against intervention. US intelligence estimates remained skeptical of France's chance of success.
Encyclopedic content adapted from the Wikipedia article on An Thuong, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
