The Vietnam War was a military conflict between North and South Vietnam from 1959 to 1975. The US became involved in 1962, with troop numbers reaching over 500,000. The war ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975, and the death toll is estimated to be between 1 and 4 million.
The Vietnam War was a military conflict fought primarily in southern Vietnam between 1959 and 1975. It was the source of many conflicting political and social opinions, especially in the years leading up to its conclusion. Militarily speaking, the war was the result of an attempt by North Vietnam and the Vietcong to overthrow the South Vietnamese government.
The conflict was a continuation of the First Indochina War, fought when the Vietnamese sought independence from France after World War II. The country was divided into North and South in the Geneva Accords of 1954. In the Vietnam War, the Democratic Republic of North Vietnam and its allies, the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, fought against Vietnam South, whose allies would include the United States, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand.
U.S. involvement in Vietnam began on November 1, 1955, when President Eisenhower deployed the Military Assistance Advisory Group to South Vietnam to help train the South Vietnamese Army. In 1956, when the elections that should have been held in Vietnam in accordance with the Geneva Conference did not take place, tensions increased significantly. December 1958 marked the first North Vietnamese invasion of Laos. While there were already Americans present in the Vietnam conflict, it wasn’t until 1962 when President Kennedy signed into law the Foreign Assistance Act of 1962, which granted military aid to countries that were “on the fringes of the Communist world and under direct attack.” .
The Vietcong achieved their first victory of the Vietnam War at the Battle of Ap Bac in January 1963, followed by the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem and an increasingly less stable South Vietnam. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson appointed William Westmoreland as commander of the US Army in Vietnam. Military troops increased in strength from about 16,000 to over 21,000 and were expected to rise to over 500,000 in number. The increase in troop numbers was seen as a direct response to a reported attack on US shipping by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin.
By the end of 1965, US troops had numbered 184,000, and the first major land battle involving the US military occurred during Operation Starlite. As anticipated, by the end of 1966 troop numbers were approaching 0.5 million, a figure that would rise slightly before the end of the war. The death toll from the war has passed 1 million and is believed to be as high as 4 million. The conflict officially ended after the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, when the South Vietnamese capital was captured by the People’s Army of Vietnam. Today, April 30 is a public holiday observed in Vietnam as Reunification Day.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
