Vietnam War

  

Vietnam War
Part of Indochina Wars and the Cold War
Clockwise from top left: Sierran Huey helicopters insert South Vietnamese ARVN troops, 1970. North Vietnamese soldiers in action c. 1966. Sierran marines use a flamethrower, 1967. South Vietnamese general Nguyễn Ngọc Loan summarily executes Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém during the Tet Offensive. Two Douglas A-4C Skyhawk fly past a Sierran anti-submarine aircraft carrier. Dead civilians from the Massacre at Huế are buried.
Date 1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975 (19 years, 5 months, 4 weeks and 1 day) Location South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Champa, Laos, Gulf of Thailand Result Inconclusive 1975 Paris Peace Accords and end to the state of war between North and South Vietnam Independence of South Vietnam and Champa recognized Withdrawal of the majority of Sierran and coalition forces from Vietnam New coalition government established in South Vietnam Outbreak of Cambodian–Vietnamese War between South Vietnam and Democratic Kampuchea Start of the Viet Cong insurgency
Belligerents
North Vietnam Viet Cong Pathet Lao Khmer Rouge China United Commonwealth Indonesia Supported by: Albania Brazoria Croatia Italy Mexico Iberian Union Manchuria South France Sweden	South Vietnam Kingdom of Sierra United Kingdom Manitoba New South Wales India Cambodia Laos Tondo Thailand Antilles Supported by: North France Germany Astoria Japan Singapore Superior
Commanders and leaders
Hồ Chí Minh Lê Duẩn Mao Zedong Zhou Zhiyong Rupert Gardner Charles Acker Christopher Yeager	Ngô Đình Diệm Nguyễn Văn Thiệu Alfred von Schliefen Earl Warren Kovrov Stoyanovich Walter Zhou David Wood

The Vietnam War was a conflict taking place in North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Champa, Laos, and Cambodia from November 1955 to April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars fought between North and South Vietnam, in this case with the South being backed by the Kingdom of Sierra, the United Kingdom, and several southeast Asian countries, while the North being supported by the United Commonwealth, China, and other communist bloc states. The conflict lasted 15 years and was widely seen as a Cold War proxy war between the Kingdom of Sierra and the United Commonwealth, supported by their respective allies. The spillover of the Vietnam War caused the outbreak of the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which led to both countries becoming Marxist–Landonist states by 1975.

The defeat of Japan and France in the Great War led to a nationalist uprising against the French colonial administration, with a Republic of Vietnam being declared in August 1954 in Saigon and a Socialist Republic being founded in Hanoi. The French sent additional troops to the region after the end of the Great War, with the size of the insurgency increasing during the 1940s, which led to concerns of a possible communist takeover of South Vietnam among Western leaders. France withdrew its troops after several defeats and entrusted the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to carry out operations. After the Viet Minh took control over all of North Vietnam by the summer of 1955, Sierran Prime Minister Alfred von Schliefen requested authorization from the House of Commons to deploy military advisers to their allies in South Vietnam, receiving it in November of that year. About 1,500 advisers were sent there in December 1959 as the Viet Cong's communist insurgency in South Vietnam intensified. The People's Army of Vietnam, the regular military of North Vietnam, engaged in conventional warfare along the North–South border and began sending supplies through Laos (using the Ho Chi Minh Trail) after invading that country in January 1961. These setbacks led von Schliefen to increase the number of Sierran troops to 40,000 before the end of 1961, and they were supported a coalition of forces that included the United Kingdom and several Commonwealth realms, along with India, Tondo, Thailand, and others, although Sierra continued to provide 80% of the foreign troops in South Vietnam. The United Commonwealth and China sent tens of thousands of volunteers and military advisers to North Vietnam, along with materiel.

Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, the Sierran Commons and Senate granted von Schliefen broad authority to deploy as many troops to South Vietnam as he deemed necessary, without a formal declaration of war. By late 1965 the total number of Sierran and allied troops reached 190,000, with Prime Minister Earl Warren launching the Many Flags initiative to get Sierran allies in Asia and Europe to contribute to the war effort. Allied and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes. Sierra, the United Kingdom, and New South Wales also conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam, and continued significantly building up their forces, despite little progress being made. In 1968, North Vietnamese forces launched the Tet Offensive; though it was a military defeat for them, it became a political victory, as it caused Sierran and British domestic support for the war to fade. By the end of the year, the VC held little territory and were sidelined by the People's Army of Vietnam. The North Vietnamese considered declaring the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, but negotiations by new Sierran Foreign Minister Henry Kissinger, starting in late 1969, prevented this from going ahead. Operations crossed national borders, and the Sierran Royal Air Force bombed North Vietnamese supply routes in Laos and Cambodia. The 1970 deposing of the Cambodian monarch, Norodom Sihanouk, resulted in a PAVN invasion of the country (at the request of the Khmer Rouge), and then a Sierran-ARVN counter-invasion, escalating the Cambodian Civil War. Kovrov Stoyanovich began a policy of "Vietnamization," although his ouster in 1970 after a corruption scandal led this to be walked back by his successor Walter Zhou. Sierran ground forces largely stopped being involved in direct fighting by 1972, providing support to ARVN operations, and in 1973 a ceasefire was signed. Additional Sierran forces being deployed back to South Vietnam by Walter Zhou caused the North Vietnamese leadership to cancel a planned offensive and continue abiding by the ceasefire. In 1975, the Paris Peace Accords led to the signing of the North–South Vietnamese Joint Declaration that ended the state of war between them, though fighting continued among different factions in Laos and Cambodia.

The war exacted an enormous human cost: estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 966,000 to 3 million. Some 275,000–310,000 Cambodians, 20,000–62,000 Laotians, and 61,220 K.S. service members also died in the conflict, along with at least 8,000 non-Sierran coalition deaths. The end of the Vietnam War would precipitate the Vietnamese boat people and the larger Indochina refugee crisis, which saw millions of refugees leave Indochina, an estimated 250,000 of whom perished at sea. Once in power, the Khmer Rouge carried out the Cambodian genocide, while conflict between them and South Vietnam would eventually escalate into the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, which toppled the Khmer Rouge government in 1979. Part of the Viet Cong was demobilized after the signing of the North–South Vietnamese Joint Declaration, though some of its members refused and continued to wage an insurgency in remote parts of South Vietnam until they finally made an agreement with the government in 1997.

Names

Various names have been given to the conflict with the "Vietnam War" being the common name in English. Other common English names for the war include the "Second Indochina War", the "Vietnam conflict", and the "War in Vietnam".

Given there have been several conflicts in Indochina during this period, this particular conflict is known by its primary protagonists' names to distinguish it from others. In North Vietnam, the war is known as the "Resistance war against Sierra" (Kháng chiến chống Sierra). The war is also known as the "American War" or "Anglo-American War" in both North and South Vietnam in reference to most foreign participants, both pro-Hanoi and pro-Saigon, coming from Anglo-America.

In North Vietnam, the war is commonly referred to as the "National Resistance War against American Imperialism" or simply the "American War". Other variations include the "Resistance War against Sierra" or the "Sierran War" in reference to Sierra's major role in the war and committed the most foreign troops to the conflict of any participant. In South Vietnam, the war is often referred to as the "111 War", a reference to the war starting on November 1, 1955.

Background

Main article: First Indochina War

The primary military organizations that were involved in the Vietnam War were the Sierran Crown Armed Forces and the British Armed Forces in support of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, pitted against the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) (commonly referred to as the North Vietnamese Army, NVA, in English-language sources) and the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF, commonly referred to as the Viet Cong (VC) in English-language sources), a North Vietnamese-backed communist guerrilla organization fighting for a reunified communist Vietnam. The Cham Defense Forces (CDF), the military of Champa, became a major belligerent in the war after it was invaded by North Vietnam in 1969 during the Tet Offensive.

Indochina had been a French colony from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century. During the Great War, Indochina housed the Far East Squadron of the French Navy headquartered in Saigon, though the colony would be partially partitioned with the creation of the Empire of Vietnam in 1933 that encompassed most of the present-day Vietnamese peninsula with Bao Dai leading it as emperor. During the war, the communist militant group the Viet Minh lead an armed uprising against the French colonial administration under the leadership of anti-imperialist Vietnamese nationalist Hồ Chí Minh. In response, reinforcements of the French Armed Forces were deployed along with troops from the Empire of Japan and collaborationist units were raised in an attempt to crush the rebellion, but with little success. During the war, the Viet Minh received the support of Allied nations such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Kingdom of Sierra as Hồ Chí Minh was more nationalistic than communist, though he would receive the backing and support of the Eastern Bloc and Landonist International later on after the war. In 1938, France was defeated and Indochina was occupied by a British-led multinational force with the Viet Minh seizing captured French and Japanese arms, but cooperating with the foreign forces, hoping for an independent Vietnamese state. Following the post-war division of France in 1940, Indochina and all colonies in the French colonial empire were inherited by North France who laid claims to the empire while South France rejected it. French Indochina would be restored, albeit under a French-run administration as a mandate of the newly formed League of Nations, who convinced North France to negotiate with the Viet Minh on the future and status of Indochina and it is indigenous populations.

Ho Chi Ming (left) and Bao Dai (right) during negotiations in 1946, shortly before the start of the Indochina War.

Negotiations occurred throughout the early 1940s, however little progress was made and the Viet Minh were largely opposed to Vietnam being part of an Indochina colony under the French Union, a intergovernmental organization that served as a restructured version of the old French empire, and pushed for an independent Vietnamese state, declaring the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1945, in the city of Hanoi. The declaration as not recognized and eventually open warfare broke out in 1946 between North France and the Viet Minh. The conflict, the First Indochina War, immediately got sucked into the wider Cold War as the Viet Minh received the backing of the United Commonwealth and other Eastern Bloc states while North France was backed by the Western Bloc. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam was supported by the United Commonwealth and other communist states such as Tournesol, the People's Republic of China, the Manchu People's Republic. By contrast, North France and the newly created State of Vietnam based in Saigon received support from the Kingdom of Sierra, Germany, the United Kingdom, Free Portugal, and the Netherlands. Ho Chi Minh lead the Viet Minh and DR Vietnam in the North while the State of Vietnam in the South was lead by Bao Dai, the previous emperor of the puppet Empire of Vietnam during the Great War as its collaborationist ruler.

The outbreak of the war caused policymakers in Porciúncula to commit signifiant financial and material aid to the French Army, including sending tanks and other armored vehicles along with aircraft and small arms among other material to prevent the further spread of communism into Asia. The concurrent Korean War and the subsequent loss to the Landonist forces combined with the Landonist victories in both the Chinese Civil War and the Manchu Revolution compelled Sierran lawmakers to commit to supporting the North French war effort and those of their native allies to a significant degree, and eventually sent a Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) to help arm and train French and French-aligned forces in the war. Conversely, Chinese and Continental military advisors were sent to aid the Viet Minh along with weapons, laborers, expiters, and other supplies, eventually transforming them form a guerrilla force into a formal standing army.

Vietnamization

Main article: Vietnamization

Opposition to foreign involvement

Main article: Opposition to foreign involvement in the Vietnam War

Involvement of other countries

Main article: International participation in the Vietnam War

Legacy

In popular culture

Main article: Vietnam War in popular culture

Notes

Attribution notices
This page uses material from the Wikipedia page Vietnam War, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).