The Vietnam War was an army conflict fought essentially in Southern Vietnam in the years between 1959 and 1975. The Vietnam War was the source of many antagonistic political and social viewpoints, particularly in the years leading in to its conclusion. Militarily talking, the Vietnam War was the results of North Vietnam and the Vietcong trying to overthrow the South Vietnamese central authority. The Vietnam War was a continuing of the 1st Indochina war, which was fought when the Vietnamese sought autonomy from France after WWII. The country was divided into 2 parts northerly and southern in the Geneva Accords in 1954. In the Vietnam War, The Democratic Republic of North Vietnam and its allies, the USSR and the People’s Republic of China, fought with South Vietnam, whose allies would include the U.

S. , Australia, South Korea, and New Zealand. The U. S. ‘ participation in Vietnam commenced on one Nov 1955, when President Eisenhower employed the Army help Advisory Group to South Vietnam to help train the Southern Vietnamese armed forces. In 1956, when elections that were to be held in Vietnam as per the Geneva Meeting did not happen, the strain mounted significantly. December 1958 marked North Vietnam’s first invasion into Laos. Though there were already US people present in the Vietnam conflict, it wasn’t till 1962 when President Kennedy signed the Foreign help Act of 1962, which granted army help to countries that were “on the edge of the Commie world and under direct attack.” The Vietcong had their first victory of the Vietnam War at the battle of Ap Bac in Jan 1963, which was followed by the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem and a less stable South Vietnam. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson designated William Westmoreland as chief of the US Army in Vietnam.

Army troops rose in strength from roughly sixteen thousand to over 21,000 and were forecasted to climb to over 500k in number. The increased number of troops was thought to be a direct reply to a reported attack on US ships by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin. By the end of 1965, US troops had reached 184,000 in number, and the first important ground battle concerning the US army had took place under Operation Starlite. As forecasted, by the end of 1966, troop numbers were approaching half million in number, which would climb barely higher before the war’s end.

The quantity of lives claimed by the Vietnam War surpasses 1,000,000 and is thought to be as high as 4,000,000. The Vietnam War came to an official end after the decline of Saigon on thirty April 1975, when the South Vietnam capital was caught by the Vietnam Peoples’s armed forces.

Today, 30th April is a public vacation noted in Vietnam as Reunification Day.