The Vietnam War ( – 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. 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 Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until US forces were withdrawn in 1973.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.
The civil and colonial conflicts in Vietnam became internationalized in 1950.The Chinese Military Advisory Group was established in April 1950 to provide substantial military assistance to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Meanwhile, the US Military Assistance Advisory Group, Indochina was set up in September 1950 to oversee the use and distribution of US military equipment by the French and the State of Vietnam. After the defeat of the French Union in the First Indochina War, Vietnam's independence was affirmed at the 1954 Geneva Conference, but the country was divided 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 communist front in the south that 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 contributed to growing American opposition to the war. 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 (such as Huế and Mỹ Lai), terrorism, indiscriminate bombings, rape, torture, and persecution of ethnic minorities. 20% of South Vietnam's jungle was sprayed with toxic herbicides, which led to significant health problems.
Political repression and flawed economic policies following the war 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. 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, though 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 () and (). North Vietnam at the time, and official histories produced by the Government of Vietnam today, refer to it as (), or simply the Resistance War against America. Vietnamese both within the country and overseas occasionally refer to it as , 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. In 1945, the US Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) provided the Viet Minh with training and weapons to develop local intelligence networks against Japanese forces.
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. Nationalist sentiment, intensified during World War II, helped pave the way for the communist-led Viet Minh, themselves cloaked in nationalism. Following the surrender of Japan, they launched the August Revolution, overthrowing the Nguyễn dynasty and seizing weapons from the Japanese. On 2 September, Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). At the same time, following Allied decisions, British forces were deployed to 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.
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. Surviving nationalist partisans and politico-religious groups rallied behind the exiled Bảo Đại to reopen negotiations with France to establish the State of Vietnam in opposition to communist domination. Adhering to Marxist–Leninist principles, the Viet Minh tightened their control through a series of radical campaigns, provoking disillusionment and growing defections.
Internationalization of war
The Chinese communist victory of 1949 transformed the nature of the Indochina War. In January 1950, the People's Republic of China became the first state to recognize the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and persuaded the Soviet Union to do the same. In line with the anticommunist Truman Doctrine, the US and other Western Bloc countries recognized the French-associated State of Vietnam, based in Saigon, as the legitimate government. The civil war and colonial war in Indochina became internationalized and increasingly intertwined with the global Cold War.
The outbreak of the Korean War in June convinced Washington policymakers that the war in Indochina was another example of communist expansionism. Within the United States, the Red Scare and rise of McCarthyism fostered public opposition to communism. In April 1950, the Chinese leadership formed the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG), marking the beginning of substantial Chinese support for the Viet Minh. 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 $1 billion in support of the French effort, shouldering 80% of the war costs.
Battle of Dien Bien Phu In late 1953, the CMAG and the Viet Minh planned operations in northwestern Vietnam around Dien Bien Phu near the Laotian border. During the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Viet Minh forces encircled the French, using heavy artillery and anti-aircraft batteries to bombard the garrison. France and the US discussed the use of tactical nuclear weapons, though how seriously this was considered is unclear.
In May 1954, the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu surrendered. At the Geneva Conference, they negotiated a ceasefire with the Viet Minh, and the independence of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam was affirmed, with Vietnam placed under a temporary North–South division.
Transition period
Between 1953 and 1956, the DRV government instituted agrarian reforms, including rent reduction and land reform, which resulted in political oppression. Witnesses suggested about one execution per 160 village residents, totaling around 100,000 executions. As the campaign was mainly in the Red River Delta, 50,000 executions became accepted by scholars. Documents from Hungarian diplomats suggest that executions were lower, though likely greater than 13,500. Confer: The overall death toll was higher when accounting for deaths from torture, imprisonment, isolation, and suicides. In 1956, leaders in Hanoi admitted to excesses and restored much of the land to the original owners.