Vietnam War - wikipedia Vietnam War 1955 -- 1975 conflict in Vietnam For a list of wars throughout the history of Vietnam, see List of wars involving Vietnam. For the documentary television series, see The Vietnam War ( TV series ). This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. The readable prose size is 134 kilobytes. Please consider splitting content into sub-articles, condensing it, or adding or removing subheadings. ( June 2018 ) Vietnam War ( Chiến tranh Việt Nam ) Part of the Indochina Wars and the Cold War Clockwise, from top left : U.S. combat operations in Ia Drang, ARVN Rangers defending Saigon during the 1968 Tet Offensive, two A-4C Skyhawks after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, ARVN recapture Quảng Trị during the 1972 Easter Offensive, civilians fleeing the 1972 Battle of Quảng Trị, and burial of 300 victims of the 1968 Huế Massacre. Date 1 November 1955 -- 30 April 1975 ( 1975 - 04 - 30 ) ( 19 years, 5 months, 4 weeks and 1 day ) Location South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, South China Sea, Gulf of Thailand Result North Vietnamese Victory Withdrawal of U.S. - led forces from Indochina Communist governments take power in South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos South Vietnam annexed by North Vietnam Beginning of Third Indochina War Start of boat people crisis and Indochina refugee crisis Territorial changes Reunification of North and South Vietnam into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Belligerents North Vietnam Viet Cong and PRG Pathet Lao Cambodia Government - in - Exile Khmer Rouge China North Korea Military support : Soviet Union Cuba Czechoslovakia East Germany Poland Other support Bulgaria Hungary Romania Sweden South Vietnam United States Kingdom of Cambodia ( 1967 -- 1970 ) Khmer Republic Kingdom of Laos South Korea Thailand Australia Philippines New Zealand Military support : Taiwan Other support Brazil Iran Japan Spain Malaysia West Germany United Kingdom Commanders and leaders Ho Chi Minh † Lê Duẩn Võ Nguyên Giáp Lê Đức Thọ Phạm Văn Đồng Trường Chinh Tôn Đức Thắng Văn Tiến Dũng Nguyễn Hữu An Huỳnh Tấn Phát Nguyễn Hữu Thọ Hoàng Văn Thái Nguyễn Chí Thanh † Trần Văn Trà Nguyễn Văn Linh Lê Trọng Tấn Lê Đức Anh Mme Nguyễn Thị Định Võ Chí Công Mme Nguyễn Thị Bình Võ Văn Kiệt Souphanouvong Kaysone Phomvihane Phoumi Vongvichit Norodom Sihanouk Pol Pot Khieu Samphan... and others Ngô Đình Diệm † Ngô Đình Nhu † Nguyễn Văn Thiệu Nguyễn Cao Kỳ Cao Văn Viên Ngô Quang Trưởng Dương Văn Minh Trần Văn Hương Nguyễn Khánh Trần Thiện Khiêm Nguyễn Văn Hiếu † Đỗ Cao Trí † Nguyễn Chánh Thi Lê Minh Đảo John F. Kennedy † Lyndon B. Johnson † Richard Nixon Gerald Ford Robert McNamara William Westmoreland Creighton Abrams Frederick C. Weyand Paul D. Harkins Lon Nol Sisowath Sirik Matak Vang Pao Souvanna Phouma Phoumi Nosavan... and others Strength ≈ 860,000 ( 1967 ) North Vietnam : 690,000 ( January 1967, included NVA and Viet Cong ) Viet Cong : 200,000 ( estimated, 1968 ) GRUNK : 70,000 ( 1972 ) Pathet Lao : 48,000 ( 1960 ) Non-Ground Forces China : 170,000 ( 1967 ) North Korea : 200 ≈ 1,420,000 ( 1968 ) South Vietnam : 850,000 ( 1968 ) 1,500,000 ( 1974 -- 75 ) United States : 543,000 ( April 1969 ) Laos 72,000 Royal Army and Hmong Cambodia 200,000 ( 1973 ) Other Forces Thailand : 32,000 in Vietnam and Laos South Korea : 50,003 Australia : 7,672 Philippines : 2,061 New Zealand : 552 Casualties and losses North Vietnam & Viet Cong 65,000 -- 182,000 civilian dead 849,018 military dead ( per Vietnam ; 1954 - 75 inc. war in Laos and Cambodia, 1 / 3 non-combat deaths ) 666,000 -- 950,765 dead ( per US ; 1964 - 75, upper numb. thought 30 % inflated, includes miscounted civilians ; see bodycount ) 444,000 military dead ( per Lewy ) 600,000 + wounded China ≈ 1,100 dead and 4,200 wounded North Korea 14 dead Total military dead : 445,114 -- 850,132 Total wounded : ≈ 604,200 ( excluding GRUNK and Pathet Lao ) South Vietnam 195,000 -- 430,000 civilian dead 254,256 -- 313,000 military dead 1,170,000 wounded United States 58,318 dead ; 303,644 wounded ( including 150,341 not requiring hospital care ) Laos At least 15,000 Cambodia Unknown South Korea 5,099 dead ; 10,962 wounded ; 4 missing Australia 521 dead ; 3,129 wounded Thailand 351 dead New Zealand 37 dead Taiwan 25 dead Philippines 9 dead ; 64 wounded Total military dead : 333,620 -- 392,364 Total wounded : ≈ 1,340,000 + ( excluding FARK & FANK ) Vietnamese civilian dead : 627,000 -- 2,000,000 Vietnamese total dead : 966,000 -- 3,812,000 Cambodian Civil War dead : 275,000 -- 310,000 Laotian Civil War dead : 20,000 -- 62,000 Non-Indochinese military dead : 65,478 Total dead : 1,326,478 -- 4,249,478 For more information see Vietnam War casualties and Aircraft losses of the Vietnam War Indochina Wars Masterdom First Second Laotian Civil War Cambodian Civil War Third Cambodian - Vietnamese Cambodian - Thai border Sino - Vietnamese border conflicts Hmong insurgency FULRO insurgency against Vietnam Some Military Engagements During The Vietnam War Guerrilla phase Laos Chopper Sunrise Palace Bombing 1st Ap Bac Go Cong Hiep Hoa 34A Long Dinh Kien Long Quyet Thang 202 USNS Card Nam Dong 1964 Offensive An Lao Binh Gia Camp Holloway Qui Nhơn Ba Gia Dong Xoai Song Be Joint Warfare Phase 1965 Starlite Piranha An Ninh Hump Gang Toi 1st Bau Bang Bushmaster II Harvest Moon Plei Me Campaign Plei Me Ia Drang 1966 Marauder Crimp Masher / White Wing Bong Son Double Eagle Mastiff Suoi Bong Trang Utah Silver City A Shau Texas Buddhist Uprising Xa Cam My Birmingham Crazy Horse Austin IV Hardihood Hawthorne Hill 488 Jay Hastings Minh Thanh Road Duc Co Long Tan Thayer, Irving and Thayer II Attleboro Tan Son Nhut airbase Lam Son II Byrd SS Baton Rouge Victory Paul Revere IV Fairfax 1967 Deckhouse V Cedar Falls Sam Houston Enterprise Tra Binh Dong Bribie Junction City 1st Prek Klok 2nd Prek Klok Ap Gu Suoi Tre 2nd Bau Bang The Hill Fights Con Thien Suoi Chau Pha Wheeler / Wallowa My Lai Massacre Medina Shenandoah II Ong Thanh 1st Loc Ninh Napoleon Battle of the Slopes Dak To Phoenix 1968 Route 9 - Khe Sanh Campaign Ban Houei Sane Khe Sanh Lang Vei Lima Site 85 Scotland II Robin Tet Offensive Phase One New Year 's Day Battle of 1968 Saigon US Embassy Cholon and Phu Tho Racetrack Tan Son Nhut Air Base Bien Hoa and Long Binh Hue Quảng Trị Lo Giang Quyet Thang Toan Thang I May Offensive Landing Zone Center An Bao Kham Duc Coral -- Balmoral Phase III Offensive Duc Lap Vinh Loc Maui Peak Meade River Hat Dich Speedy Express Vietnamization and US Withdrawal 1969 -- 71 Cambodia Escape of the PRG Kompong Speu Prey Veng 2nd Cambodia Cambodian Counteroffensive Chenla I Chenla II Snuol Laos Tailwind Lam Son 719 Other Engagements Bold Mariner Dewey Canyon Taylor Common 2nd Tet Apache Snow Hamburger Hill Pipestone Canyon Binh Ba Texas Star FSB Ripcord Son Tay Raid FSB Mary Ann Long Khanh Nui Le Easter Offensive 1972 2nd Quang Trị 3rd Quang Trị 2nd Loc Ninh An Lộc Kontum Thunderhead Paris Peace Accords and War of the Flags ( 1973 -- 1974 ) Cửa Việt Sa Huỳnh Ap Da Bien Svay Rieng Iron Triangle Thượng Đức Spring ' 75 Phuoc Long Ban Me Thuot Hue -- Da Nang Phan Rang Xuân Lộc 2nd Saigon Air operations Farm Gate Chopper Ranch Hand Pierce Arrow Barrel Roll Pony Express Flaming Dart Iron Hand Rolling Thunder Steel Tiger Arc Light Tiger Hound Shed Light Thanh Hoa Bolo Popeye Yen Vien Niagara Igloo White Giant Lance Commando Hunt Menu Patio Freedom Deal Linebacker I Enhance Plus Linebacker II Homecoming Tan Son Nhut Air Base Babylift New Life Eagle Pull Frequent Wind Naval operations Yankee & Dixie Stations Gulf of Tonkin Market Time Vung Ro Bay Game Warden Double Eagle PIRAZ Sea Dragon Deckhouse Five Bo De River, Nha Trang, Tha Cau River Sealords Đồng Hới Pocket Money Custom Tailor End Sweep Paracel Islands East Sea Mayaguez incident Other US / Allied Ground Operations 1966 Van Buren New York Harrison Cocoa Beach Oregon Fillmore Lincoln Georgia Davy Crockett Paul Revere El Paso Wahiawa Nathan Hale Macon John Paul Jones Seward Colorado Amarillo Deckhouse IV Sunset Beach Shenandoah Geronimo 1967 Desoto Gadsden Pershing DMZ Hickory Prairie Prairie II Prairie III Buffalo Kingfisher Kentucky Lejeune Francis Marion Manhattan Beaver Cage Union Malheur I and Malheur II Union II Dragnet Akron Billings Concordia Hong Kil Dong Diamond Head Hood River Benton Swift Kunia Bolling Dragon Fire Osceola Lancaster Operation Coronado II IV V IX XI Neosho Santa Fe Kien Giang 9 - 1 Manchester Yellowstone Auburn 1968 Coburg Hop Tac I Patrick Truong Cong Dinh Carentan Burlington Trail Delaware Allen Brook Thor Pocahontas Forest Mameluke Thrust Somerset Plain 1969 Purple Martin Maine Crag Montana Mauler Oklahoma Hills Virginia Ridge Utah Mesa Idaho Canyon 1970 Pickens Forest Imperial Lake Jefferson Glenn Massacres of the Vietnam War Huế Phật Đản Xá Lợi Pagoda Châu Đốc Binh Tai Bình Hòa Bình An Thuy Bo Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất Hà My Đắk Sơn My Lai Huế Thanh Phong Son Thang Cai Lậy Tiger Force Operation Speedy Express Winter Soldier Investigation Vietnam War Crimes Working Group The Vietnam War ( Vietnamese : Chiến tranh Việt Nam ), also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America ( Vietnamese : Kháng chiến chống Mỹ ) or simply the American War, was a conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese army was supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies and the South Vietnamese army was supported by the United States, South Korea, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies. The war is considered a Cold War - era proxy war by some US perspectives. The majority of Americans believe the war was unjustified. The war would last roughly 19 years and would also form the Laotian Civil War as well as the Cambodian Civil War, which also saw all three countries become communist regimes in 1975. There are several competing views on the conflict, with some on the North Vietnam ese and National Liberation Front side viewing the struggle against US forces as a colonial war and a continuation of the First Indochina War against forces from France and later on the United States especially the light of the failed Geneva Conference calls for elections. Other interpretations of the North Vietnamese side include viewing it as a civil war especially in the early and later phases following the U.S interlude between 1965 and 1970 as well as a war of liberation. The perspective of some Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, the successor to the Viet Cong were motivated in part by significant social changes in the post-WW2 Vietnam, and had initially saw it as a revolutionary war supported by Hanoi The pro-government side in South Vietnam viewed it as a civil war, a defensive war against communism or were motivated to fight to defend their homes and families. The U.S. government viewed its involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam. This was part of the domino theory of a wider containment policy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread of communism. Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina. Most of the funding for the French war effort was provided by the U.S. The Viet Cong, also known as Front national de libération du Sud - Viêt Nam or FNL ( the National Liberation Front ), a South Vietnamese communist common front aided by the North, fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region, while the People 's Army of Vietnam, also known as the North Vietnamese Army ( NVA ), engaged in more conventional warfare, and had launched armed struggles from 1959 onward. U.S. involvement escalated in 1960 under Kennedy, with troop levels gradually surging under the MAAG program, from just under a thousand in 1959 to 16,000 in 1963. By 1964 there were already 23,000 U.S troops involved, but this escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a U.S. destroyer was alleged to have clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft. This was followed by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave Lyndon Johnson authorisation to increase U.S. military presence, deploying for the first time ground combat units and increasing troop levels to 184,000. Every year onward there was significant build - up despite little progress, with Robert McNamara, one of the principle architects of the war begin to express doubts of victory by the end of 1966. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes. In the course of the war, the U.S. conducted a large - scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam. Following the Tet Offensive, US forces begun withdrawal under the Vietnamization phase, while Army of the Republic of Vietnam unconventional and conventional capabilities increased following a period of neglect and became modelled on heavy fire - power focused doctrines modelled after US Forces. Operations crossed international borders : bordering areas of Laos and Cambodia were used by North Vietnam as supply routes and were heavily bombed by U.S. forces. Gradual withdrawal of U.S. ground forces began as part of `` Vietnamization '', which aimed to end American involvement in the war while transferring the task of fighting the communists to the South Vietnamese themselves and begun the task of modernising their armed forces. Morale declined significantly among US forces during the wind - down period and incidents of fragging, drug - use and insubordination increased with General Creighton Abrams remarking `` I need to get this army home to save it ''. From 1969 onwards the military actions of the Viet Cong insurgency decreased as the role and engagement of the NVA grew. Initially fielding less conventional and poorer weaponry, from 1970 onward the People 's Army of Vietnam and its branch People 's Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam had increasingly became mechanised and armoured, capable of modernised combined arms and mobile warfare and begun to widely deploy newer, untested weapons. These two side would see significant, rapid changes throughout its lifetime from their original post-colonial armies, and by mid-1970s the ARVN became the fourth largest army with the PAVN became the fifth largest army in the world in two countries with a population of roughly 20 million each. Despite the Paris Peace Accord, which was signed by all parties in January 1973, the fighting continued in the `` war - of - the - flags '' period in which both Saigon and Hanoi attempted to take territory before and after the accord and the ceasefire was broken just days after its signing. In the U.S. and the Western world, a large anti-Vietnam War movement developed as part of a larger counterculture, the largest such anti-war movement up to that point in history. The war changed the dynamics between the Eastern and Western Blocs, and altered North -- South relations, and had significantly influenced the political landscape in the United States, across much of Western Europe and U.S ground - force intervention spurred the rise of transnational political movements and campaigning. All air - force and naval units and all other forces were completely withdrawn in 15 August 1973. The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities ( see Vietnam War casualties ). Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 to 3.8 million. Some 275,000 -- 310,000 Cambodians, 20,000 -- 62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict, and a further 1,626 remain missing in action. The Sino - Soviet split re-emerged following the lull during the Vietnam War and ties between the DRV and its Cambodian allies in the Royal Government of the National Union of Kampuchea, the newly formed Democratic Kampuchea begun almost immediately in a series of border raids by the Khmer Rouge and erupted into the Cambodian -- Vietnamese War, with Chinese forces directly intervening in the Sino - Vietnamese War. The end of the war and resumption of the Third Indochina War would precipitate the Vietnamese boat people and the bigger Indochina refugee crisis, which saw an estimated 250,000 people perish at sea. Contents 1 Names for the war 2 Background 3 Transition period 4 Beginning of War, 1955 -- 63 4.1 Diệm era 4.2 Insurgency in the South, 1954 -- 60 4.2. 1 North Vietnamese involvement 5 Guerrilla War Escalation, 1961 -- 63 5.1 Ousting and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm 6 US Intervention, 1963 -- 69 6.1 Gulf of Tonkin incident 6.2 Bombing of Laos 6.3 The 1964 Offensive 6.4 American Ground War 6.5 Tet Offensive 7 Vietnamization and War Expansion, 1969 -- 72 7.1 Nuclear threats 7.2 Diplomacy 7.3 Domestic controversy 7.4 Collapsing US Morale 7.5 Transforming the PAVN and ARVN, US Withdrawal 7.6 Cambodia 7.7 Laos 7.8 1972 election and Paris Peace Accords 8 War of the Flags and Final Campaign, 1973 -- 75 8.1 Campaign 275 8.2 Final North Vietnamese offensive 8.3 Fall of Saigon 9 Opposition to U.S. involvement in the war, 1964 -- 73 10 Other countries ' involvement 10.1 Pro-Hanoi 10.1. 1 People 's Republic of China 10.1. 2 Soviet Union 10.1. 3 Czechoslovakia 10.1. 4 North Korea 10.1. 5 Cuba 10.1. 6 East Germany 10.1. 7 Poland 10.2 Pro-Saigon 10.2. 1 South Korea 10.2. 2 Thailand 10.2. 3 Australia and New Zealand 10.2. 4 Philippines 10.2. 5 Taiwan 10.2. 6 Brazil 10.3 Neutral and Non-Belligerent Nations 10.3. 1 Canada and the ICC 11 United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races ( FULRO ) 12 War crimes 12.1 Allied war crimes 12.2 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong war crimes 13 Women in the Vietnam War 13.1 American nurses 13.2 Vietnamese women 13.3 Female Journalists 14 Black servicemen in Vietnam 15 Weapons 15.1 Radio communications 15.2 Extent of U.S. bombing 16 Aftermath 16.1 Events in Southeast Asia 16.2 Effect on the United States 16.2. 1 Views On The War 16.2. 2 Cost Of The War 16.2. 3 Impact on the U.S. military 16.3 Effects of U.S. chemical defoliation 16.4 Casualties 16.5 In popular culture 16.6 Commemoration 17 See also 18 Annotations 19 Notes 20 References 20.1 Secondary sources 20.2 Primary sources 20.3 Historiography 21 External links Names for the War Further information : Terminology of the Vietnam War Various names have been applied to the conflict. Vietnam War is the most commonly used name in English. It has also been called the Second Indochina War and the Vietnam Conflict. As there have been several conflicts in Indochina, this particular conflict is known by the names of its primary protagonists to distinguish it from others. In Vietnamese, the war is generally known as Kháng chiến chống Mỹ ( Resistance War Against America ), but less formally as ' Cuộc chiến tranh Mỹ ' ( The American War ' ). It is also called Chiến tranh Việt Nam ( The Vietnam War ). Background See also : History of Vietnam, Cochinchina Campaign, Cần Vương, Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng, Yên Bái mutiny, Vietnam during World War II, War in Vietnam ( 1945 -- 46 ), 1940 -- 46 in the Vietnam War, 1947 -- 50 in the Vietnam War, First Indochina War, Operation Vulture, Operation Passage to Freedom, and 1954 in the Vietnam War The primary military organizations involved in the war were, on one side, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam ( ARVN ) and the United States armed forces, and, on the other side, the People 's Army of Vietnam ( PAVN ) ( more commonly called the North Vietnamese Army, or NVA, in English - language sources ), and the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam ( NLF, more commonly known as the Viet Cong in English language sources ), a South Vietnamese communist guerrilla force. Daniel Ellsberg contends that U.S. participation in Vietnam had begun in 1945 when it gave support to a French effort to reconquer its colony in Vietnam, a nation which had just declared independence in August 1945. Indochina was a French colony during the 19th century. When the Japanese invaded during World War II, the Viet Minh opposed them with support from the USA, Russia and China. They received some Japanese arms when Japan surrendered. The Viet Minh, a Communist - led common front under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, then initiated an insurgency against French rule. Hostilities escalated into the First Indochina War ( beginning in December 1946 ). By the 1950s, the conflict had become entwined with the Cold War. In January 1950, the People 's Republic of China and the Soviet Union recognized the Viet Minh 's Democratic Republic of Vietnam, based in Hanoi, as the legitimate government of Vietnam. The following month the United States and Great Britain recognized the French - backed State of Vietnam in Saigon, led by former Emperor Bảo Đại, as the legitimate Vietnamese government. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 convinced many Washington policymakers that the war in Indochina was an example of communist expansionism directed by the Soviet Union. Military advisors from the People 's Republic of China ( PRC ) began assisting the Viet Minh in July 1950. PRC weapons, expertise, and laborers transformed the Viet Minh from a guerrilla force into a regular army. In September 1950, the United States created a Military Assistance and Advisory Group ( MAAG ) to screen French requests for aid, advise on strategy, and train Vietnamese soldiers. By 1954, the United States had spent US $1 billion in support of the French military effort, shouldering 80 percent of the cost of the war. During the Battle of Dien Bien Phu U.S. carriers sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin and the U.S. conducted reconnaissance flights. There were also talks between the French and Americans in which the possible use of three tactical nuclear weapons was considered, though reports of how seriously this was considered and by whom are vague and contradictory. According to U.S. Vice-President Richard Nixon, the plan involved the Joint Chiefs of Staff drawing up plans to use three small tactical nuclear weapons in support of the French. Nixon, a so - called `` hawk '' on Vietnam, suggested that the United States might have to `` put American boys in ''. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower made American participation contingent on British support, but the British were opposed. Eisenhower decided against U.S. military intervention, being wary of getting the United States involved in a land war in Asia. Throughout the conflict, U.S. intelligence estimates remained skeptical of French chances of success. On 7 May 1954, the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu surrendered. The defeat marked the end of French military involvement in Indochina. At the Geneva Conference, the French negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Viet Minh, and independence was granted to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Transition period Main articles : Geneva Conference ( 1954 ) ; Operation Passage to Freedom ; Battle of Saigon ( 1955 ) ; Ba Cụt ; State of Vietnam referendum, 1955 ; Land reform in Vietnam ; and Land reform in North Vietnam The Geneva Conference, 1954 At the 1954 Geneva peace conference, Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel. Ho Chi Minh had wished to continue the war in the south, but was restrained by his Chinese allies who convinced him that he could win control by electoral means. Under the terms of the Geneva Accords, civilians were to be given the opportunity to move freely between the two provisional states for a 300 - day period. Elections throughout the country were to be held in 1956 to establish a unified government. Around one million northerners, mainly minority Catholics, fled south, fearing persecution by the communists. This followed an American psychological warfare campaign, designed by Edward Lansdale for the CIA, which exaggerated anti-Catholic sentiment among the Viet Minh and which falsely claimed the US was about to drop atomic bombs on Hanoi. The exodus was coordinated by a U.S. - funded $93 million relocation program, which included the use of the Seventh Fleet to ferry refugees. The northern, mainly Catholic refugees gave the later Ngô Đình Diệm regime a strong anti-communist constituency. Diệm staffed his government 's key posts mostly with northern and central Catholics. In addition to the Catholics flowing south, up to 130,000 `` Revolutionary Regroupees '' went to the north for `` regroupment '', expecting to return to the south within two years. The Viet Minh left roughly 5,000 to 10,000 cadres in the south as a `` politico - military substructure within the object of its irredentism. '' The last French soldiers were to leave Vietnam in April 1956. The PRC completed its withdrawal from North Vietnam at around the same time. Around 52,000 Vietnamese civilians moved from south to north. Between 1953 and 1956, the North Vietnamese government instituted various agrarian reforms, including `` rent reduction '' and `` land reform '', which resulted in significant political oppression. During the land reform, testimony from North Vietnamese witnesses suggested a ratio of one execution for every 160 village residents, which extrapolated nationwide would indicate nearly 100,000 executions. Because the campaign was concentrated mainly in the Red River Delta area, a lower estimate of 50,000 executions became widely accepted by scholars at the time. However, declassified documents from the Vietnamese and Hungarian archives indicate that the number of executions was much lower than reported at the time, although likely greater than 13,500. In 1956, leaders in Hanoi admitted to `` excesses '' in implementing this program and restored a large amount of the land to the original owners. Ba Cut in Can Tho Military Court 1956. He was the commander of a religious movement the Hòa Hảo whom had fought against Việt Minh, Vietnamese National Army and Cao Dai movement throughout the first war. The south, meanwhile, constituted the State of Vietnam, with Bảo Đại as Emperor and Ngô Đình Diệm ( appointed in July 1954 ) as his prime minister. Neither the United States government nor Ngô Đình Diệm 's State of Vietnam signed anything at the 1954 Geneva Conference. With respect to the question of reunification, the non-communist Vietnamese delegation objected strenuously to any division of Vietnam, but lost out when the French accepted the proposal of Viet Minh delegate Phạm Văn Đồng, who proposed that Vietnam eventually be united by elections under the supervision of `` local commissions ''. The United States countered with what became known as the `` American Plan '', with the support of South Vietnam and the United Kingdom. It provided for unification elections under the supervision of the United Nations, but was rejected by the Soviet delegation. The United States said, `` With respect to the statement made by the representative of the State of Vietnam, the United States reiterates its traditional position that peoples are entitled to determine their own future and that it will not join in any arrangement which would hinder this ''. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in 1954, I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly eighty percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bảo Đại. Indeed, the lack of leadership and drive on the part of Bảo Đại was a factor in the feeling prevalent among Vietnamese that they had nothing to fight for. Originating as a bandit group, the Bình Xuyên was crime syndicate briefly aligned with the Việt Minh before allying with the French in exchange for control over large parts of Saigon. Headed by Bảy Viễn, it was among the various factions contending for control prior to being defeated and absorbed by the Vietnamese National Army. According to the Pentagon Papers, however, from 1954 to 1956 `` Ngô Đình Diệm really did accomplish miracles '' in South Vietnam : `` It is almost certain that by 1956 the proportion which might have voted for Ho -- in a free election against Diệm -- would have been much smaller than eighty percent. '' In 1957, independent observers from India, Poland, and Canada representing the International Control Commission ( ICC ) stated that fair, unbiased elections were not possible, with the ICC reporting that neither South nor North Vietnam had honored the armistice agreement From April to June 1955, Diệm eliminated any political opposition in the south by launching military operations against two religious groups : the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo of Ba Cụt. The campaign also focused on the Bình Xuyên organized crime group which was allied with members of the communist party secret police and had some military elements. As broad - based opposition to his harsh tactics mounted, Diệm increasingly sought to blame the communists. In a referendum on the future of the State of Vietnam on 23 October 1955, Diệm rigged the poll supervised by his brother Ngô Đình Nhu and was credited with 98.2 percent of the vote, including 133 % in Saigon. His American advisors had recommended a more modest winning margin of `` 60 to 70 percent. '' Diệm, however, viewed the election as a test of authority. Three days later, he declared South Vietnam to be an independent state under the name Republic of Vietnam ( ROV ), with himself as president. Likewise, Ho Chi Minh and other communist officials always won at least 99 % of the vote in North Vietnamese `` elections ''. The domino theory, which argued that if one country fell to communism, then all of the surrounding countries would follow, was first proposed as policy by the Eisenhower administration. John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. Senator, said in a speech to the American Friends of Vietnam : `` Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam. '' Beginning of War, 1955 -- 63 U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles greet President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam in Washington, 8 May 1957. Diệm era Main articles : Ngô Đình Diệm and War in Vietnam ( 1954 -- 59 ) See also : Ngô Đình Diệm presidential visit to Australia Map of insurgency and `` disturbances '' between the periods of 1957 to 1960 A devout Roman Catholic, Diệm was fervently anti-communist, nationalist, and socially conservative. Historian Luu Doan Huynh notes that `` Diệm represented narrow and extremist nationalism coupled with autocracy and nepotism. '' The majority of Vietnamese people were Buddhist, and were alarmed by actions such as Diệm 's dedication of the country to the Virgin Mary. Beginning in the summer of 1955, Diệm launched the `` Denounce the Communists '' campaign, during which communists and other anti-government elements were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, or executed. He instituted the death penalty against any activity deemed communist in August 1956. According to Gabriel Kolko about 12,000 suspected opponents of Diệm were killed between 1955 and 1957 and by the end of 1958 an estimated 40,000 political prisoners had been jailed. In May 1957, Diệm undertook a ten - day state visit to the United States. President Eisenhower pledged his continued support, and a parade was held in Diệm 's honor in New York City. Although Diệm was publicly praised, in private Secretary of State John Foster Dulles conceded that Diệm had been selected because there were no better alternatives. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wrote in Argument Without End ( 1999 ) that the new American patrons of the Republic of Vietnam ( ROV ) were almost completely ignorant of Vietnamese culture. They knew little of the language or long history of the country. There was a tendency to assign American motives to Vietnamese actions, though Diệm warned that it was an illusion to believe that blindly copying Western methods would solve Vietnamese problems. Insurgency in the South, 1954 -- 60 Main article : Viet Cong Viet Cong Guerrillas, bear automatic weapons and use leafy camouflage as they patrol a portion of the Saigon River in small boats somewhere in South Vietnam. Between 1954 and 1957 there was large - scale but disorganized dissidence in the countryside which the Diệm government succeeded in quelling. In early 1957 South Vietnam enjoyed its first peace in over a decade. Incidents of political violence began to occur in mid-1957, but the government `` did not construe it as a campaign, considering the disorders too diffuse to warrant committing major GVN ( Government of Vietnam ) resources. '' By early 1959, however, Diệm had come to regard the ( increasingly frequent ) disorders as an organized campaign and implemented Law 10 / 59, which made political violence punishable by death and property confiscation. There had been some division among former Viet Minh whose main goal was to hold the elections promised in the Geneva Accords, leading to `` wildcat '' activities separate from the other communists and anti-GVN activists. In December 1960, the National Liberation Front ( NLF, a.k.a. the Viet Cong ) was formally created with the intent of uniting all anti-GVN activists, including non-communists. It was formed in Memot, Cambodia, and directed through a central office known as COSVN. According to the Pentagon Papers, the Viet Cong `` placed heavy emphasis on the withdrawal of American advisors and influence, on land reform and liberalization of the GVN, on coalition government and the neutralization of Vietnam. '' Often the leaders of the organization were kept secret. Support for the NLF was driven by peasant resentment of Diem 's reversal of land reforms in the countryside. The vast majority of the population lived in villages in the countryside, where a key demand was for land reform. In areas they controlled, the Viet Minh had confiscated large private landholdings, reduced rents and debts, and leased communal lands, mostly to the poorer peasants. Diem brought the landlords back to the villages. People who were farming land they had held for years now had to return it to landlords and pay years of back rent. This rent collection was enforced by the South Vietnamese army. The divisions within villages reproduced those that had existed against the French : `` 75 percent support for the NLF, 20 percent trying to remain neutral and 5 percent firmly pro-government, '' The Ho Chi Minh trail required on average, four - months of rough - terrain travel for combatants from North Vietnam destined for the Southern battlefields. North Vietnamese involvement See also : North Vietnamese invasion of Laos Sources disagree on whether North Vietnam played a direct role in aiding and organizing South Vietnamese rebels prior to 1960. Kahin and Lewis assert : Contrary to United States policy assumptions, all available evidence shows that the revival of the civil war in the South in 1958 was undertaken by Southerners at their own -- not Hanoi 's -- initiative... Insurgency activity against the Saigon government began in the South under Southern leadership not as a consequence of any dictate from Hanoi, but contrary to Hanoi 's injunctions. The Ho Chi Minh trail or the Truong Son Road by the North Vietnamese cuts through Laos. This would develop into a complex logistical system which would allow the North Vietnamese to maintain a war effort despite the largest aerial bombardment campaign in history. Similarly, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. states that `` it was not until September, 1960 that the Communist Party of North Vietnam bestowed its formal blessing and called for the liberation of the south from American imperialism ''. By contrast, James Olson and Randy Roberts assert that North Vietnam authorized a low - level insurgency in December 1956. To counter the accusation that North Vietnam was violating the Geneva Accord, the independence of the Viet Cong was stressed in communist propaganda. In March 1956, southern communist leader Lê Duẩn presented a plan to revive the insurgency entitled `` The Road to the South '' to the other members of the Politburo in Hanoi, but as both China and the Soviets opposed confrontation at this time, Lê Duẩn 's plan was rejected. However the North Vietnamese leadership approved tentative measures to revive the southern insurgency in December 1956. Communist forces were under a single command structure set up in 1958. The North Vietnamese Communist Party approved a `` people 's war '' on the South at a session in January 1959 and in May, Group 559 was established to maintain and upgrade the Ho Chi Minh trail, at this time a six - month mountain trek through Laos. About 500 of the `` regroupees '' of 1954 were sent south on the trail during its first year of operation. The first arms delivery via the trail was completed in August 1959. About 40,000 communist soldiers infiltrated into the south from 1961 to 1963. Guerrilla War escalation, 1961 -- 63 Main articles : War in Vietnam ( 1959 -- 63 ) and Strategic Hamlet Program See also : Phạm Ngọc Thảo President 's news conference of 23 March 1961 In the 1960 U.S. presidential election, Senator John F. Kennedy defeated incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon. Although Eisenhower warned Kennedy about Laos and Vietnam, Europe and Latin America `` loomed larger than Asia on his sights. '' In his inaugural address, Kennedy made the ambitious pledge to `` pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty. '' In June 1961, he bitterly disagreed with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev when they met in Vienna to discuss key U.S. -- Soviet issues. Only 16 months later, the Cuban Missile Crisis ( 16 -- 28 October 1962 ) played out on television worldwide. It was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full - scale nuclear war, and the U.S. raised the readiness level of Strategic Air Command ( SAC ) forces to DEFCON 2. The Kennedy administration remained essentially committed to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. In 1961, the U.S. had 50,000 troops based in South Korea, and Kennedy faced a three - part crisis -- the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement. These crises made Kennedy believe that another failure on the part of the United States to gain control and stop communist expansion would fatally damage U.S. credibility with its allies and his own reputation. Kennedy was thus determined to `` draw a line in the sand '' and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. He told James Reston of The New York Times immediately after his Vienna meeting with Khrushchev, `` Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place. '' South Vietnam, Military Regions, 1967 Kennedy 's policy toward South Vietnam rested on the assumption that Diệm and his forces had to ultimately defeat the guerrillas on their own. He was against the deployment of American combat troops and observed that `` to introduce U.S. forces in large numbers there today, while it might have an initially favorable military impact, would almost certainly lead to adverse political and, in the long run, adverse military consequences. '' The quality of the South Vietnamese military, however, remained poor. Poor leadership, corruption, and political promotions all played a part in weakening the South Vietnamese Army ( ARVN ). The frequency of guerrilla attacks rose as the insurgency gathered steam. While Hanoi 's support for the Viet Cong played a role, South Vietnamese governmental incompetence was at the core of the crisis. One major issue Kennedy raised was whether the Soviet space and missile programs had surpassed those of the United States. Although Kennedy stressed long - range missile parity with the Soviets, he was also interested in using special forces for counterinsurgency warfare in Third World countries threatened by communist insurgencies. Although they were originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional Soviet invasion of Europe, Kennedy believed that the guerrilla tactics employed by special forces such as the Green Berets would be effective in a `` brush fire '' war in Vietnam. Kennedy advisors Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow recommended that U.S. troops be sent to South Vietnam disguised as flood relief workers. Kennedy rejected the idea but increased military assistance yet again. In April 1962, John Kenneth Galbraith warned Kennedy of the `` danger we shall replace the French as a colonial force in the area and bleed as the French did. '' By November 1963, there were 16,000 American military personnel in South Vietnam, up from Eisenhower 's 900 advisors. The Strategic Hamlet Program was initiated in late 1961. This joint U.S. -- South Vietnamese program attempted to resettle the rural population into fortified camps. It was implemented in early 1962 and involved some forced relocation, village internment, and segregation of rural South Vietnamese into new communities where the peasantry would be isolated from Communist insurgents. It was hoped these new communities would provide security for the peasants and strengthen the tie between them and the central government. However, by November 1963 the program had waned, and it officially ended in 1964. On 23 July 1962, fourteen nations, including China, South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, North Vietnam and the United States, signed an agreement promising to respect the neutrality of Laos. Kennedy and McNamara Ousting and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm See also : Role of the United States in the Vietnam War § John F. Kennedy ( 1961 -- 1963 ), 1960 South Vietnamese coup attempt, 1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing, Huế Phật Đản shootings, and Xá Lợi Pagoda raids Main articles : Cable 243, Arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm, Buddhist crisis, Krulak Mendenhall mission, McNamara Taylor mission, 1963 South Vietnamese coup, and Reaction to the 1963 South Vietnamese coup The inept performance of the South Vietnamese army was exemplified by failed actions such as the Battle of Ap Bac on 2 January 1963, in which a small band of Viet Cong won a battle against a much larger and better - equipped South Vietnamese force, many of whose officers seemed reluctant even to engage in combat. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam forces were led in that battle by Diệm 's most trusted general, Huỳnh Văn Cao, commander of the IV Corps. Cao was a Catholic who had been promoted due to religion and fidelity rather than skill, and his main job was to preserve his forces to stave off coups ; he had earlier vomited during a communist attack. Some policymakers in Washington began to conclude that Diệm was incapable of defeating the communists and might even make a deal with Ho Chi Minh. He seemed concerned only with fending off coups, and had become more paranoid after attempts in 1960 and 1962, which he partly attributed to U.S. encouragement. As Robert F. Kennedy noted, `` Diệm would n't make even the slightest concessions. He was difficult to reason with... '' Ngô Đình Diệm after being shot and killed in the 1963 coup As historian James Gibson summed up the situation : Strategic hamlets had failed... The South Vietnamese regime was incapable of winning the peasantry because of its class base among landlords. Indeed, there was no longer a ' regime ' in the sense of a relatively stable political alliance and functioning bureaucracy. Instead, civil government and military operations had virtually ceased. The National Liberation Front had made great progress and was close to declaring provisional revolutionary governments in large areas. Discontent with Diệm 's policies exploded following the Huế Phật Đản shootings of nine majority Buddhists who were protesting against the ban on the Buddhist flag on Vesak, the Buddha 's birthday. This resulted in mass protests against discriminatory policies that gave privileges to the Catholic Church and its adherents. Diệm 's elder brother Ngô Đình Thục was the Archbishop of Huế and aggressively blurred the separation between church and state. Thuc 's anniversary celebrations shortly before Vesak had been bankrolled by the government, and Vatican flags were displayed prominently. There had also been reports of Buddhist pagodas being demolished by Catholic paramilitaries throughout Diệm 's rule. Diệm refused to make concessions to the Buddhist majority or take responsibility for the deaths. On 21 August 1963, the ARVN Special Forces of Colonel Lê Quang Tung, loyal to Diệm 's younger brother Ngô Đình Nhu, raided pagodas across Vietnam, causing widespread damage and destruction and leaving a death toll estimated to range into the hundreds. ARVN forces capture a Viet Cong U.S. officials began discussing the possibility of a regime change during the middle of 1963. The United States Department of State was generally in favor of encouraging a coup, while the Defense Department favored Diệm. Chief among the proposed changes was the removal of Diệm 's younger brother Nhu, who controlled the secret police and special forces and was seen as the man behind the Buddhist repression and more generally the architect of the Ngô family 's rule. This proposal was conveyed to the U.S. embassy in Saigon in Cable 243. The Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ) was in contact with generals planning to remove Diệm. They were told that the United States would not oppose such a move nor punish the generals by cutting off aid. President Diệm was overthrown and executed, along with his brother, on 2 November 1963. When Kennedy was informed, Maxwell Taylor remembered that he `` rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face. '' He had not anticipated Diệm 's murder. The U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, invited the coup leaders to the embassy and congratulated them. Ambassador Lodge informed Kennedy that `` the prospects now are for a shorter war ''. Kennedy wrote Lodge a letter congratulating him for `` a fine job ''. Following the coup, chaos ensued. Hanoi took advantage of the situation and increased its support for the guerrillas. South Vietnam entered a period of extreme political instability, as one military government toppled another in quick succession. Increasingly, each new regime was viewed by the communists as a puppet of the Americans ; whatever the failings of Diệm, his credentials as a nationalist ( as Robert McNamara later reflected ) had been impeccable. U.S. military advisors were embedded at every level of the South Vietnamese armed forces. They were however criticized for ignoring the political nature of the insurgency. The Kennedy administration sought to refocus U.S. efforts on pacification and `` winning over the hearts and minds '' of the population. The military leadership in Washington, however, was hostile to any role for U.S. advisors other than conventional troop training. General Paul Harkins, the commander of U.S. forces in South Vietnam, confidently predicted victory by Christmas 1963. The CIA was less optimistic, however, warning that `` the Viet Cong by and large retain de facto control of much of the countryside and have steadily increased the overall intensity of the effort ''. A U.S. B - 66 Destroyer and four F - 105 Thunderchiefs dropping bombs on North Vietnam during Operation Rolling Thunder Paramilitary officers from the CIA 's Special Activities Division trained and led Hmong tribesmen in Laos and into Vietnam. The indigenous forces numbered in the tens of thousands and they conducted direct action missions, led by paramilitary officers, against the Communist Pathet Lao forces and their North Vietnamese supporters. The CIA also ran the Phoenix Program and participated in Military Assistance Command, Vietnam -- Studies and Observations Group ( MAC - V SOG ), which was originally named the Special Operations Group, but was changed for cover purposes. U.S. intervention, 1963 -- 69 Main article : Joint warfare in South Vietnam, 1963 -- 69 Further information : Role of the United States in the Vietnam War § Americanization See also : 1964 South Vietnamese coup, September 1964 South Vietnamese coup attempt, December 1964 South Vietnamese coup, and 1965 South Vietnamese coup Youth Volunteers in Hanoi maintaining and rebuilding bombed infrastructure and buildings on a near daily basis. At the time Lyndon B. Johnson took over the presidency after the death of Kennedy, he had not been heavily involved with policy toward Vietnam. Upon becoming president, however, Johnson immediately focused on the war : on 24 November 1963, he said, `` the battle against communism... must be joined... with strength and determination. '' However, Johnson knew that he had inherited a rapidly deteriorating situation in South Vietnam, believing in the widely accepted arguments that were used for defending the South : Should they retreat or appease, either action would imperil other nations beyond the conflict. The military revolutionary council, meeting in lieu of a strong South Vietnamese leader, was made up of 12 members headed by General Dương Văn Minh -- whom Stanley Karnow, a journalist on the ground, later recalled as `` a model of lethargy ''. Lodge, frustrated by the end of the year, cabled home about Minh : `` Will he be strong enough to get on top of things ? '' His regime was overthrown in January 1964 by General Nguyễn Khánh. However, there was persistent instability in the military as several coups -- not all successful -- occurred in a short period of time. In a statement similar to that made to the French almost two decades earlier, Ho Chi Minh warned that if the Americans `` want to make war for twenty years then we shall make war for twenty years. If they want to make peace, we shall make peace and invite them to afternoon tea. '' Some have argued that the policy of North Vietnam was not to topple other non-communist governments in South East Asia. Photo of Viet Cong fighters crossing a river in 1966 Gulf of Tonkin incident Main articles : Gulf of Tonkin incident and Credibility gap On 2 August 1964, the USS Maddox, on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam 's coast, allegedly fired upon and damaged several torpedo boats that had been stalking it in the Gulf of Tonkin. A second attack was reported two days later on the USS Turner Joy and Maddox in the same area. The circumstances of the attack were murky. Lyndon Johnson commented to Undersecretary of State George Ball that `` those sailors out there may have been shooting at flying fish. '' An undated NSA publication declassified in 2005 revealed that there was no attack on 4 August. Play media Universal Newsreel film about an attack on U.S. air bases and the U.S. response, 1965 The second `` attack '' led to retaliatory air strikes, and prompted Congress to approve the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on 7 August 1964, Although most Congressmen at the time denied that this was a full - scale war declaration, the Tonkin Resolution granted the president unilateral power to launch any military actions he deemed necessary. In the same month, Johnson pledged that he was not `` committing American boys to fighting a war that I think ought to be fought by the boys of Asia to help protect their own land ''. Ho Chi Minh awards a medal to Nguyễn Văn Cốc who was claimed to have been responsible for downing 11 enemy aircraft. The National Security Council recommended a three - stage escalation of the bombing of North Vietnam. On 7 February 1965 following an attack on a U.S. Army base in Pleiku, Operation Flaming Dart ( initiated when Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin was on a state visit to North Vietnam ), Operation Rolling Thunder and Operation Arc Light commenced. The bombing campaign, which ultimately lasted three years, was intended to force North Vietnam to cease its support for the Viet Cong by threatening to destroy North Vietnam 's air defenses and industrial infrastructure. As well, it was aimed at bolstering the morale of the South Vietnamese. Between March 1965 and November 1968, `` Rolling Thunder '' deluged the north with a million tons of missiles, rockets and bombs. Bombing of Laos Main article : Laotian Civil War Bombing was not restricted to North Vietnam. Other aerial campaigns, such as Operation Barrel Roll, targeted different parts of the Viet Cong and NVA infrastructure. These included the Ho Chi Minh trail supply route, which ran through Laos and Cambodia. The ostensibly neutral Laos had become the scene of a civil war, pitting the Laotian government backed by the US against the Pathet Lao and its North Vietnamese allies. Massive aerial bombardment against the Pathet Lao and People 's Army of Vietnam forces were carried out by the US to prevent the collapse of the Royal central government, and to deny the use of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. dropped two million tons of bombs on Laos, nearly equal to the 2.1 million tons of bombs the U.S. dropped on Europe and Asia during all of World War II, making Laos the most heavily bombed country in history relative to the size of its population. The objective of stopping North Vietnam and the Viet Cong was never reached. The Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force Curtis LeMay, however, had long advocated saturation bombing in Vietnam and wrote of the communists that `` we 're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age ''. The 1964 offensive ARVN Forces and a US Advisor Inspect down a downed helicopter. Battle of Dong Xoai Following the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Hanoi had anticipated the arrival of US troops and begun expanding the Viet Cong as well as sending increasing numbers of North Vietnamese personnel southwards, and at this phase equipping and standardising the equipment of the Viet Cong forces with AK - 47 rifles and other supplies as well as forming the 9th Division. `` From a strength of approximately 5,000 at the start of 1959 the Viet Cong 's ranks grew to about 100,000 at the end of 1964... Between 1961 and 1964 the Army 's strength rose from about 850,000 to nearly a million men. '' The numbers for U.S. troops deployed to Vietnam during the same period were quite different ; 2,000 in 1961, rising rapidly to 16,500 in 1964. During this phase, the use of captured equipment decreased while greater numbers of ammunition and supplies were required to maintained regular units, and Group 559 was tasked with expanding the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in light of the near constant bombardment by US warplanes. The war had begun to shift into the final, conventional warfare phase of Hanoi 's three - stage protracted warfare model, in which they were tasked with destroying the ARVN and capturing and holding areas, however the Viet Cong were not yet strong enough to assault major towns and cities. In December 1964, ARVN forces had suffered heavy losses at the Battle of Bình Giã, in a battle that both sides viewed as a watershed. Previously, communist forces had utilised hit - and - run guerrilla tactics. However, at Binh Gia, they had defeated a strong ARVN force in a conventional battle and remaining in the field for four days. Tellingly, South Vietnamese forces were again defeated in June 1965 at the Battle of Đồng Xoài. American ground War A Marine from 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, moves man suspected to be a Viet Cong activist to the rear during a search and clear operation held by the battalion 15 miles ( 24 km ) west of Da Nang Air Base On 8 March 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam, unilaterally and without the consultation of the South Vietnamese government. This marked the beginning of the American ground war. U.S. public opinion overwhelmingly supported the deployment. The Marines ' initial assignment was defensive. The first deployment of 3,500 in March 1965 was increased to nearly 200,000 by December. The U.S. military had long been schooled in offensive warfare. Regardless of political policies, U.S. commanders were institutionally and psychologically unsuited to a defensive mission. General William Westmoreland informed Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp Jr., commander of U.S. Pacific forces, that the situation was critical. He said, `` I am convinced that U.S. troops with their energy, mobility, and firepower can successfully take the fight to the NLF ( Viet Cong ) ''. With this recommendation, Westmoreland was advocating an aggressive departure from America 's defensive posture and the sidelining of the South Vietnamese. By ignoring ARVN units, the U.S. commitment became open - ended. Westmoreland outlined a three - point plan to win the war : Phase 1. Commitment of U.S. ( and other free world ) forces necessary to halt the losing trend by the end of 1965. Phase 2. U.S. and allied forces mount major offensive actions to seize the initiative to destroy guerrilla and organized enemy forces. This phase would end when the enemy had been worn down, thrown on the defensive, and driven back from major populated areas. Phase 3. If the enemy persisted, a period of twelve to eighteen months following Phase 2 would be required for the final destruction of enemy forces remaining in remote base areas. Peasants suspected of being Viet Cong under detention of U.S. Army, 1966 The plan was approved by Johnson and marked a profound departure from the previous administration 's insistence that the government of South Vietnam was responsible for defeating the guerrillas. Westmoreland predicted victory by the end of 1967. Johnson did not, however, communicate this change in strategy to the media. Instead he emphasized continuity. The change in U.S. policy depended on matching the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong in a contest of attrition and morale. The opponents were locked in a cycle of escalation. The idea that the government of South Vietnam could manage its own affairs was shelved. Westmoreland and McNamara furthermore touted the body count system for gauging victory, a metric that would later prove to be flawed. The one - year tour of duty of American soldiers deprived units of experienced leadership. As one observer noted `` we were not in Vietnam for 10 years, but for one year 10 times. '' As a result, training programs were shortened. Heavily bandaged woman burned by napalm, with a tag attached to her arm which reads `` VNC Female '' meaning Vietnamese civilian South Vietnam was inundated with manufactured goods. As Stanley Karnow writes, `` the main PX ( Post Exchange ), located in the Saigon suburb of Cholon, was only slightly smaller than the New York Bloomingdale 's... '' The American buildup transformed the economy and had a profound effect on South Vietnamese society. A huge surge in corruption was witnessed. Washington encouraged its SEATO allies to contribute troops. Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, and the Philippines all agreed to send troops. South Korea would later ask to join the Many Flags program in return for economic compensation. Major allies, however, notably NATO nations Canada and the United Kingdom, declined Washington 's troop requests. The U.S. and its allies mounted complex operations, such as operations Masher, Attleboro, Cedar Falls, and Junction City. However, the communist insurgents remained elusive and demonstrated great tactical flexibility. By 1967, these operations had generated large - scale internal refugees, numbering nearly 2.1 million in South Vietnam with 125,000 people evacuated and rendered homeless during Operation Masher which was the largest search - and - destroy operation in the war up to that point. Operation Masher, the largest search - and - destroy operation up to that point would have negligible impact as the PAVN / VC returned to the province just four months after the operation ended. Despite the continual conductance of major operations, in which the Viet Cong would typically evade, the war was characterised by smaller - unit, contacts or engagements. Up to the war 's end, the Viet Cong and NVA would initiate 90 % of large firefights of which 80 % were clear and well - planned operations and thus the NVA / Viet Cong would retain strategic initiative despite overwhelming US force and fire - power deployment. The PAVN / NLF had furthermore developed strategies capable of countering US military doctrines and tactics, see NLF and PAVN battle tactics. U.S. soldiers searching a village for potential Viet Cong. Meanwhile, the political situation in South Vietnam began to stabilise with the coming to power of prime minister Air Marshal Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and figurehead Chief of State, General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, in mid-1965 at the head of a military junta. This ended a series of coups that had happened more than once a year. In 1967, Thieu became president with Ky as his deputy, after rigged elections. Although they were nominally a civilian government, Ky was supposed to maintain real power through a behind - the - scenes military body. However, Thieu outmanoeuvred and sidelined Ky by filling the ranks with generals from his faction. Thieu was also accused of murdering Ky loyalists through contrived military accidents. Thieu, mistrustful and indecisive, remained president until 1975, having won a one - candidate election in 1971. A US `` tunnel rat '' soldier prepares to enter a Viet Cong tunnel. The Johnson administration employed a `` policy of minimum candor '' in its dealings with the media. Military information officers sought to manage media coverage by emphasizing stories that portrayed progress in the war. Over time, this policy damaged the public trust in official pronouncements. As the media 's coverage of the war and that of the Pentagon diverged, a so - called credibility gap developed. Despite Johnson and Westmoreland publicly proclaiming victory was being achieved, with Westmoreland divulging that the `` end is coming into view '' internal reports in the Pentagon Papers indicate that Viet Cong forces still retained strategic initiative, being able to control their losses widely, with 30 % of all engagements being Viet Cong attacks against static US positions, 23 % being a VC / NVA ambush and encirclement, and just 5 % of engagements being US forces attacking a Viet Cong emplacement and 9 % being a US ambush against Viet Cong / NVA forces. Types of Engagements, From Department of Defence Study 1967 TYPE OF ENGAGEMENTS IN COMBAT NARRATIVES Percentage of Total Engagements Notes Hot Landing Zone. VC / NVA Attacks U.S. Troops As They Deploy 12.5 % Planned VC / NVA Attacks Are 66.2 % Of All Engagements Planned VC / NVA Attack Against US Defensive Perimeter 30.4 % VC / NVA Ambushes or Encircles A Moving US Unit 23.3 % Unplanned US Attacks On A VC / NVA Defensive Perimeter, Engagement A Virtual Surprise To US Commanders 12.5 % Perimeter Areas Being Well - Concealed / VC - NVA Alerted Planned US Attack Against Known VC / NVA Defensive Perimeter 5.4 % Planned US Attacks Against VC / NVA Represent 14.3 % Of All Engagements US Forces Ambushes Moving VC / NVA Units 8.9 % Chance Engagement, Neither Side Planned 7.1 % Tet offensive Main articles : Tet Offensive and United States news media and the Vietnam War ARVN forces assault a stronghold in the Mekong Delta In late 1967 the PAVN lured American forces into the hinterlands at Đắk Tô and at the Marine Khe Sanh combat base in Quảng Trị Province where the United States had engaged, in a series of battles known as The Hill Fights. Part of this would form a diversionary strategy that was meant to draw US forces towards the Central Highlands. Preparation for the General Offensive, General Uprising, known as Tet Mau Than, or the Tet Offensive was prepared, with the intention by Văn Tiến Dũng for forces to launch `` direct attacks on the American and puppet nerve centers -- Saigon, Hue, Danang, all the cities, towns and main bases... '' Hanoi sought to placate critics whom were critical of the ongoing stalemate, and had sought a decisive victory. They had reasoned this could be achieved through sparking a general uprising within the towns and cities and mass - defections among ARVN units, who were on holiday leave, during the period truce. Over 100 cities were attacked by over 85,000 enemy troops including assaults on key military installations, headquarters, and government buildings and offices, including the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. U.S. Marines fighting in Huế U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were initially shocked by the scale, intensity and deliberative planning of the urban offensive, as infiltration of personnel and weapons into the cities were done in intense covertness, nonetheless they responded in seizing back control of many areas captured by the Viet Cong except the former capital city of Huế. The combined NVA and Viet Cong troops captured most of the city and citadel and much of the city except the headquarters of the 1st Division and held on in the fighting for 26 days. During that time, they had executed approximately 2,800 unarmed Huế civilians and foreigners they considered to be enemies. In the following Battle of Huế American forces employed massive firepower that left 80 percent of the city in ruins. Further north, at Quảng Trị City, the ARVN Airborne Division, the 1st Division and a regiment of the US 1st Cavalry Division had managed to hold out and overcome an assault intended to capture the city. In Saigon, Viet Cong / NVA fighters had captured areas in and around the city, attacking key installations and the neighbourhood of Cholon before members of the ARVN Rangers dislodged them after three weeks. PAVN ground troops in battle During the first phase of the offensive, 1,100 Americans and other allied troops, 2,100 ARVN, 14,000 civilians, were killed with some US authors claiming the NVA and Viet Cong suffered 17,000 KIA and 32,000 total casualties ( including wounded ). A month later a second offensive known as the Phase II or, the May Offensive was launched, although less widespread, it had still demonstrated the Viet Cong were capable of carrying out nationally orchestrated nationwide offensives By the end of these two offensives nearly 5,000 ARVN were killed, over 4,000 US forces were killed, with total including wounded being 45,820 and an unknown number of PAVN casualties. Two months following the May Offensive, a third offensive was launched, the Phase III Offensive. The PAVN 's own official records of their losses across all three offensives was 45,267 killed and 111,179 total casualties. By then it had become the single bloodiest year of the war. The failure to spark a general uprising, and the fact that no units within the ARVN defected meant both war goals of Hanoi had fallen flat at enormous costs. Viet Cong / NVA killed by U.S. Air Force gunships and personnel during a perimeter attack of Tan Son Nhut Air Base during the Tet Offensive A few months earlier, in November 1967, Westmoreland had spearheaded a public relations drive for the Johnson administration to bolster flagging public support. In a speech before the National Press Club he had said a point in the war had been reached `` where the end comes into view. '' Thus, the public was shocked and confused when Westmoreland 's predictions were trumped by Tet. For General Westmoreland, public approval of his overall performance dropped from 48 percent to 36 percent -- and endorsement for his war effort fell from 40 percent to 26 percent. '' The American media, which had supported US efforts begun to turn on the Johnson administration for what had become an increasing credibility gap. The three offensives had contradicted the claims of progress... made by the Johnson administration and the military ``. The offensive constituted an intelligence failure on the scale of Pearl Harbor. According to Peter Arnett, an infantry commander said of Bến Tre ( laid to rubble by U.S. attacks ) that `` it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it. '' Westmoreland 's request for 200,000 additional troops had been leaked to the media and the subsequent fallout combined with the intelligence failure caused him to be removed from command on March 1968, succeeded by his deputy Creighton Abrams The ruins of a section of Saigon, in the Cholon neighborhood, following fierce fighting between ARVN forces and Viet Cong Main Force battalions. On 10 May 1968, peace talks began between the United States and North Vietnam in Paris. Negotiations stagnated for five months, until Johnson gave orders to halt the bombing of North Vietnam. At the same time, Hanoi realising it could not achieve a `` total victory '' employed a strategy known as `` talking while fighting, fighting while talking '', in which military offensives would occur concurrently with negotiations. President Lyndon B. Johnson declined to run for re-election as his approval rating slumped from 48 to 36 percent. Lyndon Johnson 's escalation of the war in Vietnam divided Americans into warring camps cost 30,000 American lives by the time he left office, ( and ) destroyed Johnson 's presidency His refusal to send more U.S. troops to Vietnam was seen as Johnson 's admission that the war was lost. As Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara noted, `` the dangerous illusion of victory by the United States was therefore dead. '' Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin with U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson at the Glassboro Summit Conference where the two representatives discussed the possibilities of a peace settlement Vietnam was a major political issue during the United States presidential election in 1968. The election was won by Republican party candidate Richard Nixon. Vietnamization and War expansion, 1969 -- 72 U.S. President Richard Nixon began troop withdrawals in 1969. His plan, called the Nixon Doctrine, was to build up the ARVN, so it could take over the defense of South Vietnam. The policy became known as `` Vietnamization ''. Nuclear threats On 27 October 1969, Nixon ordered a squadron of 18 B - 52s loaded with nuclear weapons to race to the border of Soviet airspace to convince the Soviet Union, in accord with the madman theory, that he was capable of anything to end the Vietnam War ( `` Operation Giant Lance '' ). Diplomacy Propaganda leaflet urging the defection of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese to the side of the Republic of Vietnam Nixon also pursued negotiations. Theater commander Creighton Abrams shifted to smaller operations, aimed at communist logistics, with better use of firepower and more cooperation with the ARVN. Nixon also began to pursue détente with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with China. This policy helped to decrease global tensions. Détente led to nuclear arms reduction on the part of both superpowers. But Nixon was disappointed that China and the Soviet Union continued to supply the North Vietnamese with aid. In September 1969, Ho Chi Minh died at age seventy - nine. Domestic controversy The anti-war movement was gaining strength in the United States. Nixon appealed to the `` silent majority '' of Americans who he said supported the war without showing it in public. But revelations of the My Lai Massacre, in which a U.S. Army platoon raped and killed civilians, and the 1969 `` Green Beret Affair '' where eight Special Forces soldiers, including the 5th Special Forces Group Commander, were arrested for the murder of a suspected double agent provoked national and international outrage. In 1971 the Pentagon Papers were leaked to The New York Times. The top - secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, commissioned by the Department of Defense, detailed a long series of public deceptions on the part of the U.S. government. The Supreme Court ruled that its publication was legal. Collapsing U.S. morale Following the Tet Offensive and the US public beginning to publicly turn against the war, US forces begun a period of morale collapse. At home, desertion rates quadrupled from 1966 levels. Among enlisted only 2.5 % chose infantry combat positions in 1969 - 1970. ROTC enrolment decreased from 191,749 in 1966 to 72,459 by 1971 and reaching an all - time low of 33,220 in 1974, depriving US forces of much - needed military leadership. Dying and wounded soldiers, photograph taken by Henri Huet, who was later killed in a helicopter crash. Open refusal of engaging in patrols, carrying out orders and disobedience begun to emerge during this period as well with notable case of an entire company refusing orders to engage or carry out operations. Unit cohesion begun to dissipate, and focused on minimising contact with Viet Cong and NVA troops. A practice known as `` sand - bagging '' started occurring, were units ordered to go on patrol would go into the country - side, find a site out of view from superiors and rest while radioing in false coordinates and unit reports. Drug usage increased rapidly among US forces during this period, as 30 % of US troops engaged in regular usage of marijuana while a House subcommittee found 10 - 15 % of US troops in Vietnam regularly used high - grade heroin. From 1969 on - ward search - and - destroy operations started to become referred to as `` search and evade '' or `` search and avoid '' operations, falsifying battle reports while avoiding guerrilla fighters. A total of 900 fragging and suspected fragging incidents were investigated, most occurring between 1969 to 1971. In 1969 field - performance of the US Forces was characterised by lowered morale, lack of motivation, and poor leadership. One battle which is used by historians to high - light the significant decline in US morale was the Battle of FSB Mary Ann, one of the final engagements in which a sapper attack had rampaged and destroyed the base, relatively unchallenged. William Westmoreland, no - longer in command but tasked with its investigation cited a clear dereliction of duty, lax defensive postures and lack of officers being in charged as the reason. On the collapse of US morale, historian Shelby Stanton wrote : In the last years of the Army 's retreat, its remaining forces were relegated to static security. The American Army 's decline was readily apparent in this final stage. Racial incidents, drug abuse, combat disobedience, and crime reflected growing idleness, resentment, and frustration... the fatal handicaps of faulty campaign strategy, incomplete wartime preparation, and the tardy, superficial attempts at Vietnamization. An entire American army was sacrificed on the battlefield of Vietnam. Transforming the PAVN and ARVN, U.S. withdrawal Group of Soldiers from ARVN with SFC Norman A. Doney, 5th S.F. Group Abn., 1st S.F., Vietnam, Sept. 1968. The failure of Tet in sparking a popular uprising caused a shift in Hanoi 's war strategy. Rather than continually focusing on consolidating a People 's War, the Giáp - Chinh `` Northern - First '' faction had regained control over military affairs from the Lê Duẩn - Hoàng Văn Thái `` Southern - First '' faction. Large - scale offensives were rolled back in favour of small - unit and sapper attacks as well as targeting the pacification and Vietnamization strategy. At the same - time, the PAVN had begun its transformation from a light - infantry, limited mobility force into a high - mobile and mechanised combined - arms army capable of defeating the ARVN in a conventional war. Beginning in 1970, American troops were withdrawn from border areas where most of the fighting took place, and instead redeployed along the coast and interior, which is one reason why casualties in 1970 were less than half of 1969 casualties as they were relegated to less active combat. At the same time that US forces were deployed, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam took over combat operations throughout the country, taking a more proactive combat role. The post-Tet environment for the ARVN and the RVN government following Tet saw a rise in membership in Regional Force and Popular Force militias likewise, now more capable of providing village security which the Americans could not under Westmoreland. In 1970 Nixon announced the withdrawal of an additional 150,000 American troops to be completed by spring, reducing the number of Americans to 265,500 At the same time that the conventional capabilities of the ARVN were upgraded, and as American troops were sidelined, from 1970 on ward Hanoi had abandoned plans for an unconventional victory, seeking a victory through conventional means. During this phase they had reverted to small - unit warfare while building up combined - warfare capacities, which would later be tested during Lam Son 719. A memorial of a T - 54 / Type 59 tank in Siem Reap commemorating the overthrow of US / RVN - backed Lon Nol and the end of the civil war by the PAVN and GRUNK. Cambodia Main articles : Operation Menu, Operation Freedom Deal, and Cambodian Civil War Prince Norodom Sihanouk had proclaimed Cambodia neutral since 1955, but permitted the PAVN / NLF to use Cambodia as a staging ground for the Sihanouk Trail. Nixon had by then launched a massive bombing campaign, called Operation Menu, against communist sanctuaries along the Cambodia / Vietnam border. Only five high - ranking Congressional officials were informed of Operation Menu. In 1970, Prince Sihanouk was deposed by his pro-American prime minister Lon Nol. North Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1970 at the request of Khmer Rouge deputy leader Nuon Chea. A series of military operations in Cambodia by the South Vietnamese alongside Lon Nol 's FANK was the closest that the entire leadership of the Viet Cong came close to being captured, a goal US / RVN Intelligence failed to do for nearly a decade. Lon Nol had also started rounding up Vietnamese civilians in Cambodia into internment camps and begun massacring them, provoking harsh reactions from both the North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese government. A month after COSVN 's escape, U.S. and ARVN forces launched a second invasion into Cambodia to attack NVA and Viet Cong bases. A counter-offensive later that year as part of Operation Chenla II by the PAVN would recapture most of the border areas and decimate most of Lon Nol 's forces. An alleged Viet Cong captured during an attack on an American outpost near the Cambodian border, is interrogated. This invasion sparked nationwide U.S. protests as Nixon had promised to deescalate the American involvement. Four students were killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University during a protest in Ohio, which provoked further public outrage in the United States. The reaction to the incident by the Nixon administration was seen as callous and indifferent, providing additional impetus for the anti-war movement. The U.S. Air Force continued to heavily bomb Cambodia in support of the Cambodian government as part of Operation Freedom Deal. Laos Main articles : Operation Commando Hunt, Operation Lam Son 719, and Laotian Civil War Building up on the success of ARVN units in Cambodia, and further testing the Vietnamization program, the ARVN were tasked to launch Operation Lam Son 719 in February 1971, aimed at cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos at a major crossroad of Tchperone, the first major operation aimed directly at occupying the Ho Chi Minh trail. The first few days were considered a success after more elite units had captured the town, but Nguyễn Văn Thiệu had halted the general advance, leaving armoured divisions able to surround and force a rout. Half of the ARVN troops involved in the operation were either captured or killed and the operation was considered a fiasco, demonstrating operational deficiencies still present within the ARVN In 1971 Australia and New Zealand withdrew their soldiers. The U.S. troop count was further reduced to 196,700, with a deadline to remove another 45,000 troops by February 1972. As peace protests spread across the United States, disillusionment and ill - discipline grew in the ranks including increased drug use, `` fragging '' ( the act of murdering the commander of a fighting unit ) and desertions. 1972 election and Paris Peace Accords Vietnamization was again tested by the Easter Offensive of 1972, a massive conventional NVA invasion of South Vietnam. The NVA and Viet Cong quickly overran the northern provinces and in coordination with other forces attacked from Cambodia, threatening to cut the country in half. U.S. troop withdrawals continued. American airpower responded, beginning Operation Linebacker, and the offensive was halted. However, it became clear that without American airpower South Vietnam could not survive. The last remaining American ground troops were withdrawn by the end of March 1973 ; U.S. naval and air forces remained in the Gulf of Tonkin, as well as Thailand and Guam. Operation Linebacker II, December 1972 The war was the central issue of the 1972 U.S. presidential election. Nixon 's opponent, George McGovern, campaigned on a platform of withdrawal from Vietnam. Nixon 's National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, continued secret negotiations with North Vietnam 's Lê Đức Thọ. In October 1972, they reached an agreement. However, South Vietnamese president Thieu demanded massive changes to the peace accord. When North Vietnam went public with the agreement 's details, the Nixon administration claimed that the North was attempting to embarrass the president. The negotiations became deadlocked. Hanoi demanded new changes. Russian advisers inspecting the debris of a B - 52 downed in the vicinity of Hanoi. To show his support for South Vietnam and force Hanoi back to the negotiating table, Nixon ordered Operation Linebacker II, a massive bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong 18 -- 29 December 1972. The offensive destroyed much of the remaining economic and industrial capacity of North Vietnam. Simultaneously Nixon pressured Thieu to accept the terms of the agreement, threatening to conclude a bilateral peace deal and cut off American aid. On 15 January 1973, Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action against North Vietnam. The Paris Peace Accords on `` Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam '' were signed on 27 January 1973, officially ending direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. A cease - fire was declared across North and South Vietnam. U.S. prisoners of war were released. The agreement guaranteed the territorial integrity of Vietnam and, like the Geneva Conference of 1954, called for national elections in the North and South. The Paris Peace Accords stipulated a sixty - day period for the total withdrawal of U.S. forces. `` This article '', noted Peter Church, `` proved... to be the only one of the Paris Agreements which was fully carried out. '' Viet Cong soldier stands beneath a Viet Cong flag carrying his AK - 47 rifle. He was participating in the exchange of POWs by the International Commission of Control and Supervision. War of the flags and final campaign, 1973 -- 75 The United States began drastically reducing their troop support in South Vietnam during the final years of Vietnamization. On 5 March 1971, the United States returned the 5th Special Forces Group, which was the first American unit deployed to South Vietnam, to its former base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Under the Paris Peace Accords, between North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Lê Đức Thọ and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and reluctantly signed by South Vietnamese president Thiệu, and all U.S. military forces withdrew from South Vietnam and prisoners were exchanged. Fighting begun almost immediately the next day, this time without US participation. North Vietnam was allowed to continue supplying communist troops in the South, but only to the extent of replacing expended materiel. Later that year the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Kissinger and Thọ, but the Vietnamese negotiator declined it saying that a true peace did not yet exist. The communist leaders expected the ceasefire terms would favor their side. But Saigon, bolstered by a surge of U.S. aid received just before the ceasefire went into effect, began to roll back the Viet Cong. The communists responded with a new strategy hammered out in a series of meetings in Hanoi in March 1973, according to the memoirs of Trần Văn Trà. As the Viet Cong 's top commander, Tra participated in several of these meetings. With U.S. bombings suspended, work on the Ho Chi Minh trail and other logistical structures could proceed unimpeded. Logistics would be upgraded until the North was in a position to launch a massive invasion of the South, projected for the 1975 -- 76 dry season. Tra calculated that this date would be Hanoi 's last opportunity to strike before Saigon 's army could be fully trained. Calling for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, George McGovern 's 1972 Presidential Campaign lost 49 of 50 states to Richard Nixon In the November 1972 Election, Democratic nominee George McGovern lost 49 of 50 states to the incumbent President Richard Nixon. On 15 March 1973, President Nixon implied the United States would intervene militarily if the communist side violated the ceasefire. Public and congressional reaction to Nixon 's trial balloon was unfavorable and in April Nixon appointed Graham Martin as U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam. During his confirmation hearings in June 1973, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger stated he would recommend resumption of U.S. bombing in North Vietnam if North Vietnam launched a major offensive against South Vietnam. On 4 June 1973, the U.S. Senate passed the Case -- Church Amendment to prohibit such intervention. The oil price shock of October 1973 following the Yom Kippur War in Egypt caused significant damage to the South Vietnamese economy. The Viet Cong resumed offensive operations when the dry season began and by January 1974 it recaptured the territory it lost during the previous dry season. After two clashes that left 55 South Vietnamese soldiers dead, President Thieu announced on 4 January that the war had restarted and that the Paris Peace Accord was no longer in effect. There were over 25,000 South Vietnamese casualties during the ceasefire period. Recently released American POWs from North Vietnamese prison camps, 1973 Gerald Ford took over as U.S. president on 9 August 1974 after President Nixon resigned due to the Watergate scandal. At this time, Congress cut financial aid to South Vietnam from $1 billion a year to $700 million. The U.S. midterm elections in 1974 brought in a new Congress dominated by Democrats who were even more determined to confront the president on the war. Congress immediately voted in restrictions on funding and military activities to be phased in through 1975 and to culminate in a total cutoff of funding in 1976. The success of the 1973 -- 74 dry season offensive inspired Trà to return to Hanoi in October 1974 and plead for a larger offensive in the next dry season. This time, Trà could travel on a drivable highway with regular fueling stops, a vast change from the days when the Ho Chi Minh trail was a dangerous mountain trek. Giáp, the North Vietnamese defense minister, was reluctant to approve Trà 's plan. A larger offensive might provoke a U.S. reaction and interfere with the big push planned for 1976. Trà appealed over Giáp 's head to first secretary Lê Duẩn, who approved of the operation. Memorial commemorating the 1974 Buon Me Thuot campaign, depicting a Montagnard of the Central Highlands, a PAVN soldier and a T - 54 tank. Trà 's plan called for a limited offensive from Cambodia into Phước Long Province. The strike was designed to solve local logistical problems, gauge the reaction of South Vietnamese forces, and determine whether U.S. would return to the fray. On 13 December 1974, North Vietnamese forces attacked Route 14 in Phước Long Province. Phuoc Binh, the provincial capital, fell on 6 January 1975. Ford desperately asked Congress for funds to assist and re-supply the South before it was overrun. Congress refused. The fall of Phuoc Binh and the lack of an American response left the South Vietnamese elite demoralized. The speed of this success led the Politburo to reassess its strategy. It was decided that operations in the Central Highlands would be turned over to General Văn Tiến Dũng and that Pleiku should be seized, if possible. Before he left for the South, Dũng was addressed by Lê Duẩn : `` Never have we had military and political conditions so perfect or a strategic advantage as great as we have now. '' At the start of 1975, the South Vietnamese had three times as much artillery and twice the number of tanks and armored cars as the opposition. They also had 1,400 aircraft and a two - to - one numerical superiority in combat troops over their Communist enemies. However, the rising oil prices meant that much of this could not be used. They faced a well - organized, highly determined and well - funded North Vietnam. Much of the North 's material and financial support came from the communist bloc. Within South Vietnam, there was increasing chaos. The departure of the American military had compromised an economy dependent on U.S. financial support and the presence of a large number of U.S. troops. South Vietnam suffered from the global recession that followed the Arab oil embargo. The Tri Thien - Hue National Liberation Army and PAVN armoured units capture Hue. March 1975. Campaign 275 See also : 1975 Spring Offensive, Battle of Ban Me Thuot, and Hue -- Da Nang Campaign On 10 March 1975, General Dung launched Campaign 275, a limited offensive into the Central Highlands, supported by tanks and heavy artillery. The target was Buôn Ma Thuột, in Đắk Lắk Province. If the town could be taken, the provincial capital of Pleiku and the road to the coast would be exposed for a planned campaign in 1976. The ARVN proved incapable of resisting the onslaught, and its forces collapsed on 11 March. Once again, Hanoi was surprised by the speed of their success. Dung now urged the Politburo to allow him to seize Pleiku immediately and then turn his attention to Kon Tum. He argued that with two months of good weather remaining until the onset of the monsoon, it would be irresponsible to not take advantage of the situation. President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, a former general, was fearful that his forces would be cut off in the north by the attacking communists ; Thieu ordered a retreat, which soon turned into a bloody rout. While the bulk of ARVN forces attempted to flee, isolated units fought desperately. ARVN General Phu abandoned Pleiku and Kon Tum and retreated toward the coast, in what became known as the `` column of tears ''. On 20 March, Thieu reversed himself and ordered Huế, Vietnam 's third - largest city, be held at all costs, and then changed his policy several times. As the North Vietnamese launched their attack, panic set in, and ARVN resistance withered. On 22 March, the NVA opened the siege of Huế. Civilians flooded the airport and the docks hoping for any mode of escape. As resistance in Huế collapsed, North Vietnamese rockets rained down on Da Nang and its airport. By 28 March 35,000 VPA troops were poised to attack the suburbs. By 30 March 100,000 leaderless ARVN troops surrendered as the NVA marched victoriously through Da Nang. With the fall of the city, the defense of the Central Highlands and Northern provinces came to an end. Followers of the PAVN / NLF in a PAVN - controlled zone, South Vietnam., 1974. Final North Vietnamese offensive Further information on the final North Vietnamese offensive : Ho Chi Minh Campaign With the northern half of the country under their control, the Politburo ordered General Dung to launch the final offensive against Saigon. The operational plan for the Ho Chi Minh Campaign called for the capture of Saigon before 1 May. Hanoi wished to avoid the coming monsoon and prevent any redeployment of ARVN forces defending the capital. Northern forces, their morale boosted by their recent victories, rolled on, taking Nha Trang, Cam Ranh, and Da Lat. On 7 April, three North Vietnamese divisions attacked Xuân Lộc, 40 miles ( 64 km ) east of Saigon. For two bloody weeks, severe fighting raged as the ARVN defenders made a last stand to try to block the North Vietnamese advance. By 21 April, however, the exhausted garrison were ordered to withdraw towards Saigon. An embittered and tearful president Thieu resigned on the same day, declaring that the United States betrayed South Vietnam. In a scathing attack, he suggested U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had tricked him into signing the Paris peace agreement two years earlier, promising military aid that failed to materialize. Having transferred power to Trần Văn Hương, he left for Taiwan on 25 April. By the end of April, the ARVN collapsed on all fronts except in the Mekong Delta. Thousands of refugees streamed southward, ahead of the main communist onslaught. On 27 April 100,000 North Vietnamese troops encircled Saigon. The city was defended by about 30,000 ARVN troops. To hasten a collapse and foment panic, the NVA shelled the airport and forced its closure. With the air exit closed, large numbers of civilians found that they had no way out. Fall of Saigon Main article : Fall of Saigon Further information : Operation Frequent Wind Chaos, unrest, and panic broke out as hysterical South Vietnamese officials and civilians scrambled to leave Saigon. Martial law was declared. American helicopters began evacuating South Vietnamese, U.S., and foreign nationals from various parts of the city and from the U.S. embassy compound. Operation Frequent Wind had been delayed until the last possible moment, because of U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin 's belief that Victorious NVA troops at the Presidential Palace, Saigon Saigon could be held and that a political settlement could be reached. Schlesinger announced early in the morning of 29 April 1975 the evacuation from Saigon by helicopter of the last U.S. diplomatic, military, and civilian personnel. Frequent Wind was arguably the largest helicopter evacuation in history. It began on 29 April, in an atmosphere of desperation, as hysterical crowds of Vietnamese vied for limited space. Martin pleaded with Washington to dispatch $700 million in emergency aid to bolster the regime and help it mobilize fresh military reserves. But American public opinion had soured on this conflict. President Gerald Ford had given a televised speech on 23 April, declaring an end to the Vietnam War and all U.S. aid. Frequent Wind continued around the clock, as North Vietnamese tanks breached defenses on the outskirts of Saigon. In the early morning hours of 30 April, the last U.S. Marines evacuated the embassy by helicopter, as civilians swamped the perimeter and poured into the grounds. Many of them had been employed by the Americans and were left to their fate. On 30 April 1975, NVA troops entered the city of Saigon and quickly overcame all resistance, capturing key buildings and installations. A tank from the 324th Division crashed through the gates of the Independence Palace at 11 : 30 am local time and the Viet Cong flag was raised above it. President Dương Văn Minh, who had succeeded Huong two days earlier, surrendered. Opposition to U.S. involvement in the War, 1964 -- 73 Anti-war protests Main articles : Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War and Protests of 1968 See also : Russell Tribunal and Fulbright Hearings During the course of the Vietnam War a large segment of the American population came to be opposed to U.S. involvement in southeast Asia. Public opinion steadily turned against the war following 1967 and by 1970 only a third of Americans believed that the U.S. had not made a mistake by sending troops to fight in Vietnam. Nearly a third of the American population were strongly against the war, a position which lasted through subsequent decades. Anti-Vietnam War demonstration, 1967 Early opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam drew its inspiration from the Geneva Conference of 1954. American support of Diệm in refusing elections was seen as thwarting the democracy America claimed to support. John F. Kennedy, while Senator, opposed involvement in Vietnam. Nonetheless, it is possible to specify certain groups who led the anti-war movement at its peak in the late 1960s and the reasons why. Many young people protested because they were the ones being drafted while others were against the war because the anti-war movement grew increasingly popular among the counterculture. Some advocates within the peace movement advocated a unilateral withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. Opposition to the Vietnam War tended to unite groups opposed to U.S. anti-communism and imperialism and, for those involved with the New Left such as the Catholic Worker Movement. Others, such as Stephen Spiro opposed the war based on the theory of Just War. Some wanted to show solidarity with the people of Vietnam, such as Norman Morrison emulating the self - immolation of Thích Quảng Đức. Vietnam War protesters in Vienna in 1968 High - profile opposition to the Vietnam War increasingly turned to mass protests in an effort to shift U.S. public opinion. Riots broke out at the 1968 Democratic National Convention during protests against the war. After news reports of American military abuses such as the 1968 My Lai Massacre, brought new attention and support to the anti-war movement, some veterans joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War. On 15 October 1969, the Vietnam Moratorium attracted millions of Americans. The fatal shooting of four students at Kent State University in 1970 led to nationwide university protests. Anti-war protests declined with the final withdrawal of troops after the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. Other countries ' involvement Pro-hanoi 2,000 years of Chinese - Vietnamese enmity and hundreds of years of Chinese and Russian mutual suspicions were suspended when they united against us in Vietnam. -- Richard Holbrooke, 1985 People 's Republic of China In 1950, the People 's Republic of China extended diplomatic recognition to the Viet Minh 's Democratic Republic of Vietnam and sent heavy weapons, as well as military advisers led by Luo Guibo to assist the Viet Minh in its war with the French ( 1946 - 1954 ). The first draft of the 1954 Geneva Accords was negotiated by French prime minister Pierre Mendès France and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai who, seeing U.S. intervention coming, urged the Viet Minh to accept a partition at the 17th parallel. Ho Chi Minh from the Việt Minh independence movement and Việt Cộng with East German sailors in Stralsund harbour, 1957 China 's support for North Vietnam when the U.S started to intervene included both financial aid and the deployment of hundreds of thousands of military personnel in support roles. In the summer of 1962, Mao Zedong agreed to supply Hanoi with 90,000 rifles and guns free of charge. Starting in 1965, China sent anti-aircraft units and engineering battalions to North Vietnam to repair the damage caused by American bombing, man anti-aircraft batteries, rebuild roads and railroads, transport supplies, and perform other engineering works. This freed North Vietnamese army units for combat in the South. China sent 320,000 troops and annual arms shipments worth $180 million. The Chinese military claims to have caused 38 % of American air losses in the war. China claimed that its military and economic aid to North Vietnam and the Viet Cong totaled $20 billion ( approx. $143 billion adjusted for inflation in 2015 ) during the Vietnam War. Included in that aid were donations of 5 million tons of food to North Vietnam ( equivalent to NV food production in a single year ), accounting for 10 -- 15 % of the North Vietnamese food supply by the 1970s. Military aid given to North Vietnam by the People 's Republic of China Year Guns Artillery pieces Bullets Artillery shells Radio trans - mitters Telephones Tanks Planes Auto - mobiles 1964 80,500 1,205 25,240,000 335,000 426 2,941 16 18 25 1965 220,767 4,439 114,010,000 1,800,000 2,779 9,502 ? 114 1966 141,531 3,362 178,120,000 1,066,000 1,568 2,235 ? ? 96 1967 146,600 3,984 147,000,000 1,363,000 2,464 2,289 26 70 435 1968 219,899 7,087 247,920,000 2,082,000 1,854 3,313 18 ? 454 1969 139,900 3,906 119,117,000 1,357,000 2,210 3,453 ? ? 162 1970 101,800 2,212 29,010,000 397,000 950 1,600 ? ? ? 1971 143,100 7,898 57,190,000 1,899,000 2,464 4,424 80 4,011 1972 189,000 9,238 40,000,000 2,210,000 4,370 5,905 220 14 8,758 1973 233,500 9,912 40,000,000 2,210,000 4,335 6,447 120 36 1,210 164,500 6,406 30,000,000 1,390,000 5,148 4,663 80 ? 506 141,800 4,880 20,600,000 965,000 2,240 2,150 ? 20 ? Total 1,922,897 64,529 1,048,207,000 17,074,000 30,808 48,922 560 164 15,771 Sino - Soviet relations soured after the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968. In October, the Chinese demanded North Vietnam cut relations with Moscow, but Hanoi refused. The Chinese began to withdraw in November 1968 in preparation for a clash with the Soviets, which occurred at Zhenbao Island in March 1969. The Chinese also began financing the Khmer Rouge as a counterweight to the Vietnamese communists at this time. Leonid Brezhnev ( left ) was the leader of the Soviet Union during the second half of the Vietnam War. China `` armed and trained '' the Khmer Rouge during the civil war and continued to aid them for years afterward. The Khmer Rouge launched ferocious raids into Vietnam in 1975 -- 1978. When Vietnam responded with an invasion that toppled the Khmer Rouge, China launched a brief, punitive invasion of Vietnam in 1979. Soviet Union Soviet ships in the South China Sea gave vital early warnings to Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam. The Soviet intelligence ships would pick up American B - 52 bombers flying from Okinawa and Guam. Their airspeed and direction would be noted and then relayed to COSVN, North Vietnam 's southern headquarters. Using airspeed and direction, COSVN analysts would calculate the bombing target and tell any assets to move `` perpendicularly to the attack trajectory. '' These advance warning gave them time to move out of the way of the bombers, and, while the bombing runs caused extensive damage, because of the early warnings from 1968 to 1970 they did not kill a single military or civilian leader in the headquarters complexes. Photo of Soviet anti-air instructors and North Vietnamese crewmen, taken in the spring of 1965 at an the anti-aircraft training center in Vietnam. The Soviet Union supplied North Vietnam with medical supplies, arms, tanks, planes, helicopters, artillery, anti-aircraft missiles and other military equipment. Soviet crews fired Soviet - made surface - to - air missiles at U.S. F - 4 Phantoms, which were shot down over Thanh Hóa in 1965. Over a dozen Soviet citizens lost their lives in this conflict. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian officials acknowledged that the Soviet Union had stationed up to 3,000 troops in Vietnam during the war. Cam Ranh Bay memorial complex dedicated to Soviet, Russian and Vietnamese servicemen Some Russian sources give more specific numbers : Between 1953 and 1991, the hardware donated by the Soviet Union included 2,000 tanks, 1,700 APCs, 7,000 artillery guns, over 5,000 anti-aircraft guns, 158 surface - to - air missile launchers, 120 helicopters. During the war, the Soviets sent North Vietnam annual arms shipments worth $450 million. From July 1965 to the end of 1974, fighting in Vietnam was observed by some 6,500 officers and generals, as well as more than 4,500 soldiers and sergeants of the Soviet Armed Forces. In addition, Soviet military schools and academies began training Vietnamese soldiers -- in all more than 10,000 military personnel. The KGB had also helped developed the signals intelligence capabilities of the North Vietnamese, through an operation known as Vostok ( also known as Phương Đông, meaning `` Orient '' and named after the Vostok 1 ). The Vostok program was a counterintelligence and espionage program. These programs helped proved pivotal in detecting and defeating CIA and South Vietnamese commando teams sent into North Vietnam, as they were detected and captured. Soviet - assistance had helped the Ministry of Public Security come into its own as it had recruited foreigners within high - level diplomatic circles among the Western - allies of the US, under a clandestine program known as `` B12, MM '' which produced thousands of high - level documents for nearly a decade, including targets of B - 52 strikes. In 1975, the SIGINT services had broken information from Western US - allies in Saigon, determining that the US would not intervene to save South Vietnam from collapse. North Vietnamese Air Force pilots walk by their aircraft the MiG - 17. The development of the Vietnam People 's Air Force during the war was assisted by Warsaw Pact nations throughout the war. Between 1966 and 1972 a total of 17 flying aces were credited by the VPAF against US fighters. Czechoslovakia The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was a member of the Warsaw Pact whom had sent significant aid to North Vietnam, both prior to and after the Prague Spring. The Czechoslovakian government created committees which sought to not only promote and establish peace, but also to promote victory for Viet Cong and Viet Minh forces. In the wake of the Prague Spring uprising, Czechoslovakia saw increasing parallels between its own conflict with the Soviet Union, and North Vietnam 's increasing conflict with the United States. Czech - made equipment and military aid would increase significantly following the Prague Spring. Czechoslovakian weapons created by Česká zbrojovka Uherský Brod with the Vz. 58 being alleged to be highly valued among People 's Army of Vietnam forces, and Czechoslovakia continued to send tens of thousands of Czech - made rifles alongside mortar and artillery throughout the war. In general, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic were quite aligned with European leftist movements, and there were simultaneous protests ongoing demonstrating against both the Soviet - intervention in Prague as well as the US intervention in Vietnam. A picture of Fidel Castro meeting with Võ Nguyên Giáp at the Vietnam Military History Museum. Cooperation between North Vietnam and Czechoslovakia on the development of its air capabilities begun as early as 1956. Czechoslovak instructors and trainers had instructed the Vietnam People 's Air Force in China and had helped them develop a modernised airforce, with the Czech - built Aero Ae - 45 and Aero L - 29 Delfín alongside Zlín Z 26 aircraft utilised significantly for training, and regarded as preferential to Soviet - built Yakovlev Yak - 3 as training aircraft. North Korea As a result of a decision of the Korean Workers ' Party in October 1966, in early 1967 North Korea sent a fighter squadron to North Vietnam to back up the North Vietnamese 921st and 923rd fighter squadrons defending Hanoi. They stayed through 1968, and 200 pilots were reported to have served. In addition, at least two anti-aircraft artillery regiments were sent as well. Cuba The contribution to North Vietnam by the Republic of Cuba, under Fidel Castro have been recognized several times by representatives of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Fidel Castro mentioned in his discourses the Batallón Girón ( Giron Battalion ) as comprising the Cuban contingent that served as military advisors during the war. In this battalion, alongside the Cubans, fought Nguyễn Thị Định, founding member of the Viet Cong, who later became the first female Major General in the North Vietnamese Army. East German solidarity stamp depicting a Vietnamese mother and child. There are numerous allegations by former U.S. prisoners of war that Cuban military personnel were present at North Vietnamese prison facilities during the war and that they participated in torture activities. Witnesses to this include Senator John McCain, 2008 U.S. Presidential candidate and former Vietnam prisoner of war, according to his 1999 book Faith of My Fathers. East Germany German Democratic Republic. The Ministry of Public Security of Vietnam ( Bộ Công An ) states there was special interest towards the Stasi in establishing an intelligence and security apparatus, particularly since the Stasi was well - regarded, considered `` industrial, modern, and ( with a ) scientific working - style ''. In official Vietnamese language histories on the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security, the assistance provided by the Soviet and East German intelligence services to Vietnam is usually rated as the most important within the socialist bloc. East Germany had also provided a substantive aid in helping North Vietnam duplicate `` Green Dragon '' identity cards, which were difficult to duplicate identity cards created by Saigon in order to identify North Vietnamese combatants. East German authorities had also begun providing material and technical aid to help develop and modernise the North Vietnamese economy and military. Alongside providing military and economic aid, East Germany had also vigorously denounced the US war effort, and had reaped significant international and diplomatic standing as a result of its anti-war campaigns. Poland The Polish People 's Republic had played a substantive role in brokering and serving as an intermediary for peace - talks between Hanoi and Saigon, as part of a delegation under the International Control Commission alongside Western European nations. Recent evidence has emerged that Poland played an early role in attempting to broker talks between Ngô Đình Nhu and the Diem regime and Hanoi in 1963 in an effort to prevent the expansion of the war, given that Polish representatives were the only communist nation present in Saigon and had acted as a broker and representative on behalf of Hanoi. Pro-Saigon South Korea Main article : South Korea in the Vietnam War Soldiers of the South Korean White Horse Division in Vietnam On the anti-communist side, South Korea ( a.k.a. the Republic of Korea, ROK ) had the second - largest contingent of foreign troops in South Vietnam after the United States. In November 1961, President Park Chung - hee proposed South Korean participation in the war to John F. Kennedy, but Kennedy disagreed. On 1 May 1964 Lyndon Johnson requested South Korean participation. The first South Korean troops began arriving in 1964 and large combat formations began arriving a year later. The ROK Marine Corps dispatched their 2nd Marine Brigade while the ROK Army sent the Capital Division and later the 9th Infantry Division. In August 1966 after the arrival of the 9th Division the Koreans established a corps command, the Republic of Korea Forces Vietnam Field Command, near I Field Force, Vietnam at Nha Trang. Official records are vindictive of the role of ROK Forces in the war, as State Department reports publicly questioned their usefulness in the conflict, as they have `` appeared to have been reluctant to undertake offensive operations, and are only useful in guarding a small sector of the populated area ''. State department reports furthermore state that ROK forces engaged in systemic, well - organised corruption in diverting US - equipment, and that actual security has often been provided by ARVN Territorial Forces whom lacked organic firepower and heavy artillery but served as a buffer between Korean units and the North Vietnamese Army. In addition, a RAND author conducting studies in South Vietnam in 1970 alleges that ROK forces had a `` deliberate, systematic policy of committing atrocities '' prompting civilians to leave ROK - controlled sectors. The conduct of ROK forces often emboldened and strengthened the Viet Cong, adding ranks from an otherwise neutral population and undermining efforts to defeat the insurgency overall. Vietnamese civilians of Phong Nhi village massacred by South Korean Blue Dragon Brigade in 1968 Approximately 320,000 South Korean soldiers were sent to Vietnam, each serving a one - year tour of duty. Maximum troop levels peaked at 50,000 in 1968, however all were withdrawn by 1973. About 5,099 South Koreans were killed and 10,962 wounded during the war. South Korea claimed to have killed 41,000 Viet Cong. An unknown percentage of ' enemy combatants ' may have been unarmed civilians, as ROK Forces were estimated to have deliberately killed at least 9,000 civilians. The United States paid South Korean soldiers 236 million dollars for their efforts in Vietnam, and South Korean GNP increased five-fold during the war. Thailand Main article : Thailand in the Vietnam War The Thai Queen 's Cobra battalion in Phuoc Tho Thai Army formations, including the Royal Thai Volunteer Regiment ( Queen 's Cobras ) and later the Royal Thai Army Expeditionary Division ( Black Panthers ), saw action in South Vietnam between 1965 and 1971. Thai forces saw much more action in the covert war in Laos between 1964 and 1972, though Thai regular formations there were heavily outnumbered by the irregular `` volunteers '' of the CIA - sponsored Police Aerial Reconnaissance Units or PARU, who carried out reconnaissance activities on the western side of the Ho Chi Minh trail. Australia and New Zealand Main articles : Military history of Australia during the Vietnam War and New Zealand in the Vietnam War An Australian soldier in Vietnam Australia and New Zealand, close allies of the United States and members of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization ( SEATO ) and the ANZUS military co-operation treaty, sent ground troops to Vietnam. Both nations had gained experience in counterinsurgency and jungle warfare during the Malayan Emergency and World War II. Their governments subscribed to the Domino theory. New Zealand was however a reluctant participant. Officials prophetically expected a foreign intervention to fail, were concerned that they would be supporting a corrupt regime and did n't want to further stretch their country 's small military ( which was already deployed to Malaysia ). In the end though, a desire to prove their commitment to the ANZUS alliance and discourage an American withdrawal from Southeast Asia necessitated a military commitment. Australia began by sending advisors to Vietnam in 1962, and combat troops were committed in 1965. New Zealand began by sending a detachment of engineers and an artillery battery, and then started sending special forces and regular infantry which were attached to Australian formations. Australia 's peak commitment was 7,672 combat troops and New Zealand 's 552. More than 60,000 Australian personnel were involved during the course of the war, of which 521 were killed and more than 3,000 wounded. Approximately 3,500 New Zealanders served in Vietnam, with 37 killed and 187 wounded. Most Australians and New Zealanders served in the 1st Australian Task Force in Phước Tuy Province. Australia 's decades of experience from both the Malayan Emergency and its AATTV role in 1962 saw a recognised need for true counter-insurgency which relied on providing village - level security, establishing civilian trust and cooperation and improving ARVN capabilities. This had brought Australian commanders to conflict with William Westmoreland 's conventional attrition warfare approach, especially since Australian ground forces were required to follow US doctrine. Nevertheless, Australian forces and experience were generally the most capable at the approach of COIN, despite being under significant doctrinal constraints Philippines Some 10,450 Filipino troops were dispatched to South Vietnam. They were primarily engaged in medical and other civilian pacification projects. These forces operated under the designation PHLCAG - V or Philippine Civic Action Group - Vietnam. More noteworthy was the fact that the naval base in Subic Bay was used for the U.S. Seventh Fleet from 1964 till the end of the war in 1975. The Navy base in Subic bay and the Air force base at Clark achieved maximum functionality during the war and supported an estimated 80,000 locals in allied tertiary businesses from shoe making to prostitution. Taiwan Main article : Republic of China in the Vietnam War Since November 1967, Taiwan secretly operated a cargo transport detachment to assist the United States and South Vietnam. Taiwan also provided military training units for the South Vietnamese diving units, later known as the Lien Doi Nguoi Nhai ( LDMN ) or `` Frogman unit '' in English. Military commandos from Taiwan were captured by North Vietnamese forces three times trying to infiltrate North Vietnam. Brazil The Brazilian government of President Castelo Branco officially supported the United States 's position in South Vietnam and contributed a medical team and supplies to the country -- the only Latin American country to do so. Neutral and non-belligerent nations Canada and the ICC Main article : Canada and the Vietnam War Canada, India and Poland constituted the International Control Commission, which was supposed to monitor the 1954 ceasefire agreement. Officially, Canada did not have partisan involvement in the Vietnam War and diplomatically it was `` non-belligerent '' though there is evidence to the contrary. The Vietnam War entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia asserts plainly that Canada 's record on the truce commissions was a pro-Saigon partisan one. United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed races ( FULRO ) Main articles : United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races and FULRO insurgency against Vietnam The ethnic minority peoples of South Vietnam like the Montagnards ( Degar ) in the Central Highlands, Hindu and Muslim Cham and the Buddhist Khmer Krom were actively recruited in the war. There was an active strategy of recruitment and favorable treatment of Montagnard tribes for the Viet Cong, as they were pivotal for control of infiltration routes. Some groups had split off and formed together the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races ( French : Front Uni de Lutte des Races Opprimées, acronym : FULRO ) to fight for autonomy or independence. FULRO fought against both the anti-Communist South Vietnamese and the Communist Viet Cong, and then FULRO proceeded to fight against the unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam after the fall of South Vietnam. During the war, the South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem began a program to settle ethnic Vietnamese Kinh on Montagnard lands in the Central Highlands region. This provoked a backlash from the Montagnards, some joining the NLF as a result. The Cambodians under both the pro-China King Sihanouk and the pro-American Lon Nol supported their fellow co-ethnic Khmer Krom in South Vietnam, following an anti-ethnic Vietnamese policy. Following Vietnamization many Montagnard groups and fighters were incorporated into the Vietnamese Rangers as border sentries. War crimes Victims of the My Lai massacre Main articles : List of war crimes § 1955 -- 1975 : Vietnam War, and Vietnam War casualties See also : List of massacres in Vietnam A large number of war crimes took place during the Vietnam War. War crimes were committed by both sides during the conflict and included rape, massacres of civilians, bombings of civilian targets, terrorism, the widespread use of torture and the murder of prisoners of war. Additional common crimes included theft, arson, and the destruction of property not warranted by military necessity. Allied War crimes Main articles : Tiger Force and Vietnam War Crimes Working Group See also : Winter Soldier Investigation In 1968, the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group ( VWCWG ) was established by the Pentagon task force set up in the wake of the My Lai Massacre, to attempt to ascertain the veracity of emerging claims of war crimes by U.S. armed forces in Vietnam, during the Vietnam War period. A suspected Viet Cong prisoner captured in 1967 by the U.S. Army awaits interrogation. He has been placed in a stress position by tying a board between his arms. Of the war - crimes reported to military authorities, sworn statements by witnesses and status reports indicated that 320 war - crimes incidents had a factual basis. The substantiated cases included 7 massacres between 1967 and 1971 in which at least 137 civilians were killed ; seventy eight further attacks targeting non-combatants resulting in at least 57 deaths, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted ; one hundred and forty - one cases of US soldiers torturing civilian detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock. Journalism in the ensuing years has documented large numbers of overlooked war crimes involving every army division that was active in Vietnam. During their visits to transit detention facilities under American administration in 1968 and 1969, the International Red Cross recorded many cases of torture and inhumane treatment before the captives were handed over to South Vietnamese authorities. The establishment of numerous free - fire zones by U.S. forces as a tactic to prevent Viet Cong fighters from sheltering in South Vietnamese villages. Such practice, which involved the assumption that any individual appearing in the designated zones was an enemy combatant that could be freely targeted by weapons, is regarded by journalist Lewis M. Simons as `` a severe violation of the laws of war ''. Nick Turse, in his 2013 book, Kill Anything that Moves, argues that a relentless drive toward higher body counts, a widespread use of free - fire zones, rules of engagement where civilians who ran from soldiers or helicopters could be viewed as Viet Cong, and a widespread disdain for Vietnamese civilians led to massive civilian casualties and endemic war crimes inflicted by U.S. troops. One example cited by Turse is Operation Speedy Express, an operation by the 9th Infantry Division, which was described by John Paul Vann as, in effect, `` many My Lais ''. A report by Newsweek magazine suggested that at minimum 5,000 civilians may have been killed during six months of the operation, as there was around 748 recovered weapons. Christian Appy in Working Class War documents widespread atrocities committed by US forces, especially towards the latter ' withdrawal ' period as well. These include practices of mutilation and brutality towards civilian populations in which no clear `` loyalty '' is known. Accidental or deliberate killings through napalming, artillery and others were alleged to have sometimes been re-attributed to the PAVN / VC by US forces. Napalm burn victims during the Viet Nam war being treated at the 67th Combat Support Hospital. Philip Caputo in A Rumor of War noted : General Westmoreland 's strategy of attrition also had an important effect on our behavior. Our mission was not to win terrain or seize positions, but simply to kill : to kill communists and as many of them as possible. Stack ' em like cordwood. Victory was a high body - count, defeat a low kill - ratio, war a matter of arithmetic. The pressure on unit commanders to produce enemy corpses was intense, and they in turn communicated it to their troops. This led to such practices as counting civilians as Viet Cong. ' If it 's dead and Vietnamese, it 's VC, ' was our rule of thumb in the bush. It is not surprising, therefore, that some men acquired a contempt for human life and predilection for taking it. Tam Tòa Church in Đồng Hới, Quảng Bình Province. Most of the city and the church was flattened during B - 52 bombings in 1965. During the Diem era ( 1954 -- 1963 ) R.J. Rummel estimated that 39,000 killed in democide, from a range of between 16,000 and 167,000 South Vietnamese civilians ; for 1964 to 1975, Rummel estimated a total of 50,000 killed in democide, from a range of between 42,000 and 128,000. Thus, the total for 1954 to 1975 is 81,000, from a range of between 57,000 and 284,000 deaths caused by South Vietnam, excluding NLF / North Vietnamese forces killed by the South Vietnamese armed forces. Torture and ill - treatment were frequently applied by the South Vietnamese to POWs as well as civilian prisoners. During their visit to the Con Son Prison in 1970, U.S. Congressmen Augustus F. Hawkins and William R. Anderson witnessed detainees either confined in minute `` tiger cages '' or chained to their cells, and provided with poor - quality food. A group of American doctors inspecting the prison in the same year found many inmates suffering symptoms resulting from forced immobility and torture. Red Cross reports after the war showed connections of U.S. advisors with the torture at POW camps. Another massacre US forces have been reported as committing is the Thuy Bo massacre alongside the Son Thang massacre. Rummel estimated that American forces committed around 5,500 intentional democidal mass - killings between 1960 and 1972, from a range of between 4,000 and 10,000 killed in democide. Benjamin Valentino attributes possibly 110,000 -- 310,000 `` counterguerrilla mass killings '' to U.S. and South Vietnamese forces during the war. South Korean forces were also accused of war crimes as well. One documented event was the Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất massacre where the 2nd Marine Brigade of the South Korean Army reportedly killed 69 -- 79 civilians on 12 February 1968 in Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất village, Điện Bàn District of Quảng Nam Province in South Vietnam. South Korean forces are also accused of perpetrating other massacres, namely : Bình Hòa massacre, Binh Tai Massacre and Hà My massacre alongside the Bình An / Tây Vinh massacre. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong War crimes Main article : Viet Cong and PAVN strategy, organization and structure § VC / NVA use of terror See also : Cambodian Civil War § War Crimes Interment of victims of the Huế Massacre Ami Pedahzur has written that `` the overall volume and lethality of Viet Cong terrorism rivals or exceeds all but a handful of terrorist campaigns waged over the last third of the twentieth century '', based on the definition of terrorists as a non-state actor, and examining targeted killings and civilian deaths which are estimated at over 18,000 from 1966 to 1969 The total tally of the assassinations VC / NVA terror squads from 1967 to 1972 stands at over 36,000 murders and almost 58,000 kidnappings according to one US Department of Defense estimate, c. 1973. Statistics for 1968 -- 72 suggest that `` about 80 percent of the terrorist victims were ordinary civilians and only about 20 percent were government officials, policemen, members of the self - defence forces or pacification cadres. '' Notable Viet Cong atrocities include the massacre of over 3,000 unarmed civilians at Huế during the Tet Offensive and the incineration of hundreds of civilians at the Đắk Sơn massacre with flamethrowers. Up to 155,000 refugees fleeing the final North Vietnamese Spring Offensive were killed or abducted on the road to Tuy Hòa in 1975. According to Rummel, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops killed 164,000 civilians in democide between 1954 and 1975 in South Vietnam, from a range of between 106,000 and 227,000. North Vietnam was also known for its abusive treatment of American POWs, most notably in Hỏa Lò Prison ( aka the Hanoi Hilton ), where torture was employed to extract confessions. Women in the Vietnam War American nurses Da Nang, South Vietnam, 1968 During the Vietnam War, American women served on active duty doing a variety of jobs. Early in 1963, the Army Nurse Corps ( ANC ) launched Operation Nightingale, an intensive effort to recruit nurses to serve in Vietnam. First Lieutenant Sharon Lane was the only female military nurse to be killed by enemy gunfire during the war, on 8 June 1969. One civilian doctor, Eleanor Ardel Vietti, who was captured by Viet Cong on May 30, 1962 in Buôn Ma Thuột, remains the only American woman unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. A nurse treats a Vietnamese child, 1967 Although a small number of women were assigned to combat zones, they were never allowed directly in the field of battle. The women who served in the military were solely volunteers. They faced a plethora of challenges, one of which was the relatively small number of female soldiers. Living in a male - dominated environment created tensions between the sexes. By 1973, approximately 7,500 women had served in Vietnam in the Southeast Asian theater. American women serving in Vietnam were subject to societal stereotypes. To address this problem, the ANC released advertisements portraying women in the ANC as `` proper, professional and well protected. '' This effort to highlight the positive aspects of a nursing career reflected the feminism of the 1960s -- 1970s in the United States. Although female military nurses lived in a heavily male environment, very few cases of sexual harassment were ever reported. Vietnamese women Master - Sergeant and pharmacist Do Thi Trinh, part of the WAFC, supplying medication to ARVN dependents Unlike the American women who went to Vietnam, both South and North Vietnamese women were enlisted and fought in the combat zone. Women were enlisted in both the North Vietnamese Army ( NVA ) and the Viet Cong guerrilla insurgent force in South Vietnam, many joining due to the promises of female equality and a greater social role within society. Some women also served for the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong intelligence services. The deputy military commander of the PLAF, the armed wing of the Viet Cong, was a female general Nguyễn Thị Định. All female units were present throughout the entirety of the war, ranging from front - line combat troops to anti-air units, scout and reconnaissance units and others providing intelligence. There was furthermore all female squads present at the Cu Chi theatre. alongside the Battle of Hue. Large numbers of women volunteered in addition throughout North Vietnam, manning anti-aircraft batteries, providing village security as well as serving in logistics on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Many more women would be embedded with troops on the front - line, serving as doctors and medical personnel. Đặng Thùy Trâm had became one of the most renown combat physicians after her diary was published follower her death. In South Vietnam, many women voluntarily served in the ARVN 's Women 's Armed Force Corps ( WAFC ) and various other Women 's corps in the military. Some, like in the WAFC, fought in combat with other soldiers. Others served as nurses and doctors in the battlefield and in military hospitals, or served in South Vietnam or America 's intelligence agencies. During Diệm 's presidency, Madame Nhu was the commander of the WAFC. Many women joined provincial and voluntary village - level militia in the People 's Self Defense Force as part of the South Vietnamese Popular Force especially during the ARVN expansions later in the war. Memorial temple to Nguyễn Thị Định and the female volunteers of the PLAF whom she commanded. They came to call themselves the `` Long - Haired Army ''. The war saw more than one million rural people migrate or flee the fighting in the South Vietnamese countryside to the cities, especially Saigon. Among the internal refugees were many young women who became the ubiquitous `` bargirls '' of wartime South Vietnam `` hawking her wares -- be that cigarettes, liquor, or herself '' to American and allied soldiers. American bases were ringed by bars and brothels. 8,040 Vietnamese women came to the United States as war brides between 1964 and 1975. Many mixed - blood Amerasian children were left behind when their American fathers returned to the United States after their tour of duty in South Vietnam. 26,000 of them were permitted to immigrate to the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Female journalists The Vietnam War also saw women play a prominent role as front - line reporters in the conflict, directly reporting on the conflict as it occurred. A number of women volunteered on the North Vietnamese side as embedded journalists including author Lê Minh Khuê embedded with PAVN forces, including on the Ho Chi Minh trail as well as on combat fronts. A number of prominent Western journalists were also involved in covering the war, with Dickey Chapelle being among the first as well as the first American female reporter killed in a war. The French - speaking Australian journalist Kate Webb was captured alongside a photographer and others by the Viet Cong in Cambodia and travelled into Laos with them, released back into Cambodia afterwards after 23 days of captivity. She would be the first Western journalist to be captured and released, as well as cover the perspective of the Viet Cong in her memoir On The Other Side. Another French - speaking journalist Catherine Leroy was briefly captured and released by North Vietnamese forces during the Battle of Huế, capturing some of the famous photos from the battles that would appear on the cover of Life Magazine. Black servicemen in Vietnam See also : Civil rights movement and Military history of African Americans § Vietnam War A wounded African - American soldier being carried away, 1968 The experience of American military personnel of African origin during the Vietnam War had received significant attention. For example, the website `` African - American Involvement in the Vietnam War '' compiles examples of such coverage, as does the print and broadcast work of journalist Wallace Terry. Terry 's book Bloods : An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans ( 1984 ), includes observations about the impact of the war on the black community in general and on black servicemen specifically. Points he makes on the latter topic include : the higher proportion of combat casualties in Vietnam among African American servicemen than among American soldiers of other races, the shift toward and different attitudes of black military careerists versus black draftees, the discrimination encountered by black servicemen `` on the battlefield in decorations, promotion and duty assignments '' as well as their having to endure `` the racial insults, cross-burnings and Confederate flags of their white comrades '' -- and the experiences faced by black soldiers stateside, during the war and after America 's withdrawal. By the war 's completion in 1975, black casualties had declined to 12.5 % of US combat deaths, approximately equal to percentage of draft - eligible black men, though still slightly higher than the 10 % who served in the military. Weapons Main article : Weapons of the Vietnam War Guerillas assamble shells and rockets delivered along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. During the early stages of their insurgency, the Viet Cong mainly sustained itself with captured arms ( often of American manufacture ) or crude, self - made weapons ( e.g. copies of the US Thompson submachine gun and shotguns made of galvanized pipes ). Most arms were captured from poorly defended ARVN militia outposts. In the summer and fall of 1967, all Viet Cong battalions were reequipped with arms of Soviet design such as the AK - 47 assault rifle and the RPG - 2 anti-tank weapon. Their weapons were principally of Chinese or Soviet manufacture. The period up to the conventional phase in the 1970, the Viet Cong and NVA were primarily limited to mortars 81 - mm mortars, recoil-less rifles and small - arms and had significantly lighter equipment and firepower in comparison with the US arsenal, relying on superior stealth, ambush and small - unit tactics to face the disproportionate US technological advantage. Captured South Vietnamese warplanes in Ho Chi Minh City While the North Vietnamese had both amphibious tanks ( such as the PT - 76 ) and light tanks ( such as the Type 62 ) later in the war they primarily used bicycles to transport munitions as heavier armaments were unused in the unconventional `` American - war '' phase, which was meant to erode US - morale rather than secure conventional victories. The war would later shift to a war of conquest from 1969 on wards, with Soviet equipment increasing significantly including MANPADS 9K32 Strela - 2, and anti-tank missiles including the 9M14 Malyutka. Many divisions within the NVA would incorporate armoured and mechanised battalions including the Type 59 tank., BTR - 60, Type 60 artillery and rapidly altered and integrated new war doctrines following the Tet Offensive. By 1975 they had become a fully modernised conventional fighting force capable of mounting combined - arms offensives, shifting from the strategy of mobile light - infantry and people 's war concept used against the United States. The US ' heavily armored, 90 mm M48A3 Patton tank saw extensive action during the Vietnam War and over 600 were deployed with US Forces. They played an important role in infantry support. M41 Walker Bulldog, the primary tank of the US and ARVN. The US service rifle was initially the M14 ( though some units were still using the WWII - era M1 Garand for a lack of M14s ). Found to be unsuitable for jungle warfare, the M14 was replaced by M16 which was more accurate and lighter than the AK - 47. For a period, the gun suffered from a jamming flaw known as `` failure to extract '', which means that a spent cartridge case remained lodged in the action after a round is fired. According to a congressional report, the jamming was caused primarily by a change in gunpowder which was done without adequate testing and reflected a decision for which the safety of soldiers was a secondary consideration. That issue was solved in early 1968 with the issuance of the M16A1 that featured a chrome plated chamber among several other features. End - user satisfaction with the M16 was high except during this episode, but the M16 still has a reputation as a gun that jams easily. ARVN soldiers posing on top of a Type 59 tank The M60 machine gun GPMG ( General Purpose Machine Gun ) was the main machine gun of the US army at the time and many of them were put on helicopters, to provide suppressive fire when landing in hostile regions. The MAC - 10 machine pistol was supplied to many special forces troops in the midpoint of the war. It also armed many CIA agents in the field. UH - 1D helicopters airlift members of a U.S. infantry regiment, 1966 Two aircraft which were prominent in the war were the AC - 130 `` Spectre '' Gunship and the UH - 1 `` Huey '' gunship. The AC - 130 was a heavily armed ground - attack aircraft variant of the C - 130 Hercules transport plane ; it was used to provide close air support, air interdiction and force protection. The AC - 130H `` Spectre '' was armed with two 20 mm M61 Vulcan cannons, one Bofors 40mm autocannon, and one 105 mm M102 howitzer. The Huey is a military helicopter powered by a single, turboshaft engine, with a two - bladed main rotor and tail rotor. Approximately 7,000 UH - 1 aircraft saw service in Vietnam. The Claymore M18A1, an anti-personnel mine, was widely used during the war. Unlike a conventional land mine, the Claymore is command - detonated and directional, meaning it is fired by remote - control and shoots a pattern of 700 one - eighth - inch steel balls into the kill zone like a shotgun. The aircraft ordnance used during the war included precision - guided munition, cluster bombs, and napalm, a thickening / gelling agent generally mixed with petroleum or a similar fuel for use in an incendiary device, initially against buildings and later primarily as an anti-personnel weapon that sticks to skin and can burn down to the bone. Radio communications North Vietnamese SAM crew in front of SA - 2 launcher. The Soviet Union would provide North Vietnam with considerable anti-air defence around installations. The Vietnam War was the first conflict where U.S. forces had secure voice communication equipment available at the tactical level. The National Security Agency ran a crash program to provide U.S. forces with a family of security equipment code named NESTOR, fielding 17,000 units initially. Eventually 30,000 units were produced. However limitations of the units, including poor voice quality, reduced range, annoying time delays and logistical support issues led to only one unit in ten being used. While many in the U.S. military believed that the Viet Cong and NVA would not be able to exploit insecure communications, interrogation of captured communication intelligence units showed they were able to understand the jargon and codes used in realtime and were often able to warn their side of impending U.S. actions. Extent of U.S. bombing See also : Operation Rolling Thunder, Operation Menu, Operation Freedom Deal, and CIA activities in Laos Bombs being dropped by the B - 52 Stratofortress long - range strategic bomber The U.S. dropped over 7 million tons of bombs on Indochina during the war -- more than triple the 2.1 million tons of bombs the U.S. dropped on Europe and Asia during all of World War II, and more than ten times the amount dropped by the U.S. during the Korean War. 500 thousand tons were dropped on Cambodia, 1 million tons were dropped on North Vietnam, and 4 million tons were dropped on South Vietnam. On a per capita basis, the 2 million tons dropped on Laos make it the most heavily bombed country in history ; The New York Times noted this was `` nearly a ton for every person in Laos. '' Due to the particularly heavy impact of cluster bombs during this war, Laos was a strong advocate of the Convention on Cluster Munitions to ban the weapons, and was host to the First Meeting of States Parties to the convention in November 2010. Former U.S. Air Force official Earl Tilford has recounted `` repeated bombing runs of a lake in central Cambodia. The B - 52s literally dropped their payloads in the lake '' : The Air Force ran many missions of this kind for the purpose of securing additional funding during budget negotiations, so the amount of tonnage expended does not directly correlate with the resulting damage. Aftermath Events in Southeast Asia Further information : Mayaguez incident and Indochina refugee crisis Vietnamese refugees fleeing Vietnam, 1984 On 2 July 1976, North and South Vietnam were merged to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Despite speculation that the victorious North Vietnamese would, in President Nixon 's words, `` massacre the civilians there ( South Vietnam ) by the millions, '' there is a widespread consensus that no mass executions in fact took place. However, in the years following the war, a vast number of South Vietnamese was sent to re-education camps where many endured torture, starvation, and disease while being forced to perform hard labor. According to Amnesty International Report 1979, this figure varied considerably depend on different observers : `` (... ) included such figures as `` 50,000 to 80,000 '' ( Le Monde, 19 April 1978 ), `` 150,000 '' ( Reuter from Bien Hoa, 2 November 1977 ), `` 150,000 to 200,000 '' ( Washington Post, 20 December 1978 ), and `` 300,000 '' ( Agence France Presse from Hanoi, 12 February 1978 ). '' These large variation may be due to `` Some estimates may include not only detainees but also people sent from the cities to the countryside. '' According to a native observer, there were 443.360 people who had to register for a period in re-education camps in Saigon alone, some of them were released after a few days, while others stayed there for more than a decade. A B - 52 Wreckage Site near the B - 52 Victory Museum, Hanoi. Downed during Operation Linebacker II, its remains have turned into a war monument. Gabriel García Márquez, a Nobel Prize winner writer, described South Vietnam as a `` False paradise '' after the war, when he visited this country in 1980 : `` The cost of this delirium was stupefying : 360,000 people mutilated, a million widows, 500,000 prostitutes, 500,000 drug addicts, a million tuberculous and more than a million soldiers of the old regime, impossible to completely rehabilitate into a new society. Ten percent of the population of Ho Chi Minh City was suffering from serious venereal diseases when the war ended, and there were 4 million illiterates throughout the South. '' The US used its security council veto to block Vietnam 's recognition by the United Nations three times, an obstacle to the country receiving international aid. By 1975, the Viet Minh had lost influence over the Cambodian communists. Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge would eventually kill 1 -- 3 million Cambodians out of a population of around 8 million, in one of the bloodiest genocides in history. A bombed Buddha statute in Laos. The US bombing campaigns saw the country becoming the single most bombed country in history. The relationship between Vietnam and Cambodia, then ruled by the Khmer Rouge communist party, escalated right after the end of the war, April 1975. In response to the Khmer Rouge taking over Phu Quoc on 17 April and Tho Chu on 4 May 1975, and was thought to be their responsibility for the disappearance of 500 Vietnamese natives on Tho Chu, Vietnam launched a counterattack to take back these islands. After several failed attempt to negotiate from both sides, in 1978, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea ( Cambodia ) and outed the Khmer Rouge, who were being supported by China, in the Cambodian -- Vietnamese War. In response, China invaded Vietnam in 1979. The two countries fought a brief border war, known as the Sino - Vietnamese War. From 1978 to 1979, some 450,000 ethnic Chinese left Vietnam by boat as refugees or were expelled. The Pathet Lao overthrew the monarchy of Laos in December 1975, establishing the Lao People 's Democratic Republic under the leadership of a member of the royal family, Souphanouvong. The change in regime was `` quite peaceful, a sort of Asiatic ' velvet revolution ' '' -- although 30,000 former officials were sent to reeducation camps, often enduring harsh conditions for several years. The conflict between Hmong rebels and the Pathet Lao continued in isolated pockets. The millions of cluster bombs the US dropped on southeast Asia rendered the landscape hazardous. In Laos alone, some 80 million bombs failed to explode and remain scattered throughout the country, rendering vast swathes of land impossible to cultivate and killing or maiming 50 Laotians every year. It is estimated that the explosive that still remains buried in the ground will not be remove entirely until the next few centuries. Over 3 million people left Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the Indochina refugee crisis. Most Asian countries were unwilling to accept these refugees, many of whom fled by boat and were known as boat people. Between 1975 and 1998, an estimated 1.2 million refugees from Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries resettled in the United States, while Canada, Australia, and France resettled over 500,000. China accepted 250,000 people. Of all the countries of Indochina, Laos experienced the largest refugee flight in proportional terms, as 300,000 people out of a total population of 3 million crossed the border into Thailand. Included among their ranks were `` about 90 percent '' of Laos 's `` intellectuals, technicians, and officials. '' An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 Vietnamese boat people died at sea, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Captured U.S. - supplied armored vehicles and artillery pieces Agent Orange and similar chemical substances used by the U.S. have also caused a considerable number of deaths and injuries in the intervening years, including among the US Air Force crew that handled them. Scientific reports have concluded that refugees exposed to chemical sprays while in South Vietnam continued to experience pain in the eyes and skin as well as gastrointestinal upsets. In one study, ninety - two percent of participants suffered incessant fatigue ; others reported monstrous births. Meta - analyses of the most current studies on the association between Agent Orange and birth defects have concluded that there is a statistically significant correlation such that having a parent who was exposed to Agent Orange at any point in their life will increase one 's likelihood of either possessing or acting as a genetic carrier of birth defects. The most common deformation appears to be spina bifida. There is substantial evidence that the birth defects carry on for three generations or more. In 2012, the United States and Vietnam began a cooperative cleaning up of the toxic chemical on part of Danang International Airport, marking the first time Washington has been involved in cleaning up Agent Orange in Vietnam. Effect on the United States Views on the War United States expenditures in South Vietnam ( SVN ) ( 1953 -- 1974 ) Direct costs only. Some estimates are higher. U.S. military costs U.S. military aid to SVN U.S. economic aid to SVN Total Total ( 2015 dollars ) $111 billion $16.138 billion $7.315 billion $134.53 billion $1.020 trillion In the post-war era, Americans struggled to absorb the lessons of the military intervention. As General Maxwell Taylor, one of the principal architects of the war, noted, `` First, we did n't know ourselves. We thought that we were going into another Korean War, but this was a different country. Secondly, we did n't know our South Vietnamese allies... And we knew less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh ? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we 'd better keep out of this kind of dirty business. It 's very dangerous. '' President Ronald Reagan coined the term `` Vietnam Syndrome '' to describe the reluctance of the American public and politicians to support further international interventions after Vietnam. According to a 2004 Gallup poll, 62 percent of Americans believed it was an unjust war. US public polling in 1978 reveal nearly 72 % of Americans believing the war was `` fundamentally wrong and immoral '', nearly a decade later the number reduced to 66 % and by 1985 to 2000 surveys consistently show 34 - 35 % believing the war was fundamentally wrong and immoral. Nearly a third of Americans believed the war was a noble cause when surveyed in 2000. A young Marine private waits on the beach during the Marine landing, Da Nang, 3 August 1965 Failure of the war is often placed at different institutions and levels. Some have suggested that the failure of the war was due to political failures of US leadership. The official history of the United States Army noted that `` tactics have often seemed to exist apart from larger issues, strategies, and objectives. Yet in Vietnam the Army experienced tactical success and strategic failure... success rests not only on military progress but on correctly analysing the nature of the particular conflict, understanding the enemy 's strategy, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of allies. A new humility and a new sophistication may form the best parts of a complex heritage left to the Army by the long, bitter war in Vietnam. '' Others point to a failure of US military doctrine. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stated that `` the achievement of a military victory by U.S. forces in Vietnam was indeed a dangerous illusion. '' The inability to bring Hanoi to the bargaining table by bombing also illustrated another U.S. miscalculation, and demonstrated the limitations of US military abilities in achieving political goals. As Army Chief of Staff Harold Keith Johnson noted, `` if anything came out of Vietnam, it was that air power could n't do the job. '' Even General William Westmoreland admitted that the bombing had been ineffective. As he remarked, `` I still doubt that the North Vietnamese would have relented. '' U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in a secret memo to President Gerald Ford that `` in terms of military tactics, we can not help draw the conclusion that our armed forces are not suited to this kind of war. Even the Special Forces who had been designed for it could not prevail. '' Hanoi had persistently sought unification of the country since the Geneva Accords, and the effects of US bombings had negligible diplomatic impacts on the goals of the North Vietnamese government. The effects of US bombing campaigns had mobilised the people throughout North Vietnam and mobilised international support for North Vietnam due to the perception of a super-power attempting to bomb a significantly smaller, agrarian society into submission. The Vietnam War POW / MIA issue, concerning the fate of U.S. service personnel listed as missing in action, persisted for many years after the war 's conclusion. The costs of the war loom large in American popular consciousness ; a 1990 poll showed that the public incorrectly believed that more Americans lost their lives in Vietnam than in World War II. Cost of the War Between 1953 and 1975, the United States was estimated to have spent $168 billion on the war ( $1.02 trillion in FY2015 dollars ). This resulted in a large federal budget deficit. Other figures point to $138.9 billion from 1965 to 1974 ( not inflation - adjusted ), ten times the amount of support for all education spending in the US and 50 times more than housing and community development spending within that time period. General record - keeping was reported to have been sloppy for government spending during the war. It was stated that war - spending could have paid off every mortgage in the US at that time, with money leftover. More than 3 million Americans served in the Vietnam War, some 1.5 million of whom actually saw combat in Vietnam. James E. Westheider wrote that `` At the height of American involvement in 1968, for example, there were 543,000 American military personnel in Vietnam, but only 80,000 were considered combat troops. '' Conscription in the United States had been controlled by the president since World War II, but ended in 1973. As of 2013, the U.S. government is paying Vietnam veterans and their families or survivors more than $22 billion a year in war - related claims. Impact on the U.S. military Marine gets his wounds treated during operations in Huế City, 1968 By war 's end, 58,220 American soldiers had been killed, more than 150,000 had been wounded, and at least 21,000 had been permanently disabled. The average age of the U.S. troops killed in Vietnam was 23.11 years. According to Dale Kueter, `` Of those killed in combat, 86.3 percent were white, 12.5 percent were black and the remainder from other races. '' Approximately 830,000 Vietnam veterans suffered some degree of posttraumatic stress disorder. An estimated 125,000 Americans left for Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft, and approximately 50,000 American servicemen deserted. In 1977, United States president Jimmy Carter granted a full and unconditional pardon to all Vietnam - era draft dodgers. As the Vietnam War continued inconclusively and became more unpopular with the American public, morale declined and disciplinary problems grew among American enlisted men and junior, non-career officers. Drug use, racial tensions, and the growing incidence of fragging -- attempting to kill unpopular officers and non-commissioned officers with grenades or other weapons -- created severe problems for the U.S. military and impacted its capability of undertaking combat operations. By 1971, a U.S. Army colonel writing in the Armed Forces Journal declared : `` By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non commissioned officers, drug - ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous... The morale, discipline, and battle - worthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States. '' Between 1969 and 1971 the US Army recorded more than 700 attacks by troops on their own officers. Eighty - three officers were killed and almost 650 were injured. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and General Westmoreland talks with General Tee on condition of the war in Vietnam. The Vietnam War called into question the U.S. Army doctrine. Marine Corps General Victor H. Krulak heavily criticised Westmoreland 's attrition strategy, calling it `` wasteful of American lives... with small likelihood of a successful outcome. '' In addition, doubts surfaced about the ability of the military to train foreign forces. Furthermore, throughout the war there was found to be considerable flaws and dishonesty by officers and commanders due to promotions being tied to the body count system with Westmoreland and McNamara touting the body count system for gauging victory. Ron Milam has questioned the severity of the `` breakdown '' of the U.S. armed forces, especially among combat troops, as reflecting the opinions of `` angry colonels '' who deplored the erosion of traditional military values during the Vietnam War. Although acknowledging serious problems, he questions the alleged `` near mutinous '' conduct of junior officers and enlisted men in combat. Investigating one combat refusal incident, a journalist declared, `` A certain sense of independence, a reluctance to behave according to the military 's insistence on obedience, like pawns or puppets... The grunts ( infantrymen ) were determined to survive... they insisted of having something to say about the making of decisions that determined whether they might live or die. '' The morale and discipline problems and resistance to conscription ( the draft ) were important factors leading to the creation of an all - volunteer military force by the United States and the termination of conscription. The last conscript was inducted into the army in 1973. The all - volunteer military moderated some of the coercive methods of discipline previously used to maintain order in military ranks. Effects of U.S. chemical defoliation U.S. helicopter spraying chemical defoliants in the Mekong Delta, South Vietnam, 1969 One of the most controversial aspects of the U.S. military effort in Southeast Asia was the widespread use of chemical defoliants between 1961 and 1971. They were used to defoliate large parts of the countryside to prevent the Viet Cong from being able to hide their weapons and encampments under the foliage. These chemicals continue to change the landscape, cause diseases and birth defects, and poison the food chain. Early in the American military effort, it was decided that since the enemy were hiding their activities under triple - canopy jungle, a useful first step might be to defoliate certain areas. This was especially true of growth surrounding bases ( both large and small ) in what became known as Operation Ranch Hand. Corporations like Dow Chemical Company and Monsanto were given the task of developing herbicides for this purpose. American officials also pointed out that the British had previously used 2, 4, 5 - T and 2, 4 - D ( virtually identical to America 's use in Vietnam ) on a large scale throughout the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s in order to destroy bushes, crops, and trees in effort to deny communist insurgents the concealment they needed to ambush passing convoys. Indeed, Secretary of State Dean Rusk told President John F. Kennedy on 24 November 1961, that `` ( t ) he use of defoliant does not violate any rule of international law concerning the conduct of chemical warfare and is an accepted tactic of war. Precedent has been established by the British during the emergency in Malaya in their use of aircraft for destroying crops by chemical spraying. '' Handicapped children in Vietnam, most of them victims of Agent Orange, 2004 The defoliants, which were distributed in drums marked with color - coded bands, included the `` Rainbow Herbicides '' -- Agent Pink, Agent Green, Agent Purple, Agent Blue, Agent White, and most famously, Agent Orange, which included dioxin as a byproduct of its manufacture. About 11 -- 12 million gallons ( 41.6 -- 45.4 million L ) of Agent Orange were sprayed over southern Vietnam between 1961 and 1971. A prime area of Ranch Hand operations was in the Mekong Delta, where the U.S. Navy patrol boats were vulnerable to attack from the undergrowth at the water 's edge. In 1961 and 1962, the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemicals to destroy rice crops. Between 1961 and 1967, the U.S. Air Force sprayed 20 million U.S. gallons ( 75,700,000 L ) of concentrated herbicides over 6 million acres ( 24,000 km ) of crops and trees, affecting an estimated 13 % of South Vietnam 's land. In 1965, 42 % of all herbicide was sprayed over food crops. Another purpose of herbicide use was to drive civilian populations into RVN - controlled areas. Vietnamese victims affected by Agent Orange attempted a class action lawsuit against Dow Chemical and other US chemical manufacturers, but District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein dismissed their case. They appealed, but the dismissal was cemented in February 2008 by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. As of 2006, the Vietnamese government estimates that there are over 4,000,000 victims of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam, although the United States government denies any conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the Vietnamese victims of dioxin poisoning. In some areas of southern Vietnam, dioxin levels remain at over 100 times the accepted international standard. The US Veterans Administration has listed prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, multiple myeloma, Diabetes mellitus type 2, B - cell lymphomas, soft - tissue sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea tarda, peripheral neuropathy, and spina bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Casualties See also : Vietnam War casualties Cemetery for ten unmarried girls who volunteered for logistical activities, whom died in a B - 52 raid at Đồng Lộc Junction, a strategic junction along the Ho Chi Minh trail Military deaths in Vietnam War ( 1955 -- 1975 ) Year U.S. South Vietnam 1956 -- 1959 n.a. 1960 5 2,223 1961 16 4,004 1962 53 4,457 1963 122 5,665 1964 216 7,457 1965 1,928 11,242 1966 6,350 11,953 1967 11,363 12,716 1968 16,899 27,915 1969 11,780 21,833 1970 6,173 23,346 1971 2,414 22,738 1972 759 39,587 1973 68 27,901 31,219 62 n.a. After 1975 7 n.a. Total 58,220 > 254,256 Estimates of the number of casualties vary, with one source suggesting up to 3.8 million violent war deaths in Vietnam for the period 1955 to 2002. A detailed demographic study calculated 791,000 -- 1,141,000 war - related deaths during the war for all of Vietnam, for both military and civilians. Between 195,000 and 430,000 South Vietnamese civilians died in the war. Extrapolating from a 1969 US intelligence report, Guenter Lewy estimated 65,000 North Vietnamese civilians died in the war. Estimates of civilian deaths caused by American bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder range from 30,000 to 182,000. A 1974 US Senate subcommittee estimates nearly 1.4 million civilians killed and wounded between 1965 and 1974, and attributed over half as resulting ftom US and South Vietnamese government operations. The military forces of South Vietnam suffered an estimated 254,256 killed between 1960 and 1974 and additional deaths from 1954 to 1959 and in 1975. Other estimates point to higher figures of 313,000 casualties. The official US Department of Defense figure was 950,765 PAVN / NLF forces killed in Vietnam from 1965 to 1974. Defense Department officials believed that these body count figures need to be deflated by 30 percent. In addition, Guenter Lewy assumes that one - third of the reported `` enemy '' killed may have been civilians, concluding that the actual number of deaths of PAVN / PLAF military forces was probably closer to 444,000. According to figures from internal PAVN / PLAF figures released by the Vietnamese government there was 849,018 military deaths on the PAVN / NLF side during the war. The Vietnamese government released its estimate of war deaths for the more lengthy period of 1955 to 1975. This figure includes battle deaths of Vietnamese soldiers in Laos and Cambodia and 1 / 3 of the figure are non-combat deaths, but does not include deaths of South Vietnamese and allied soldiers. It is estimated that around 220,000 `` enemy KIA '' from battle operational reports across South Vietnam were actually civilians. US operational reports of `` enemy KIA '', referred to as body count were thought to have been subject to `` falsification and glorification '', and a true estimate PAVN / NLF combat deaths may be difficult to assess from US records due to victories being assessed by having a `` greater kill ratio ''. It was difficult to distinguish between civilians and military personnel on the Viet Cong side as many persons were part - time guerrillas or impressed labourers who did not wear uniforms and civilians actually killed were oftentimes written off as enemy KIA, with one example being the My Lai Massacre, written off as a victory. There was standard practice that `` VC Killed '' and `` NVA Killed '' reported in MACV operations reports rarely made a distinction between civilians killed and actual combatants, drastically inflating the numbers of `` enemies killed '' as it was directly tied to promotions and commendation. Other practices also include inflation of enemy body counts, for example claims that even notable battles like Ia Drang had US Command inflate `` body - counts '' by an order of four, and other actions were a `` body - count '' of two was inflated to 200. or reporting civilians killed in air - strikes as `` enemy KIA ''. Stone plaque with photo of the `` Thương tiếc '' statue, originally, installed at the Republic of Vietnam National Military Cemetery in Bien Hoa. The original statute was demolished in April 1975. Between 275,000 and 310,000 Cambodians died during the war. 20,000 -- 62,000 Laotians also died, and 58,318 U.S. military personnel were killed, of which 1,598 are still listed as missing as of 2018. Nearly 3 million Cambodians were internally displaced by the civil war. Unexploded ordnance, mostly from U.S. bombing, continue to detonate and kill people today. According to the Vietnamese government, ordnance has killed some 42,000 people since the war officially ended. According to the government of Laos, unexploded ordnance has killed or injured over 20,000 Laotians since the end of the war. Statute of Đặng Thùy Trâm, a Vietnamese doctor who enlisted in the Southern battlefield, and was killed in action near Quảng Ngãi. In popular culture The Vietnam War has been featured extensively in television, film, video games, and literature in the participant countries. In Vietnam, one notable film made during Operation Linebacker II was the film Girl from Hanoi ( 1975 ) depicting war - time life in Hanoi. Another notable work was the diary of Đặng Thùy Trâm, a Vietnamese doctor who enlisted in the Southern battlefield, and was killed at the age of 27 by US forces near Quảng Ngãi. Her diaries were later published in Vietnam as Đặng Thùy Trâm 's Diary ( Last Night I Dreamed Of Peace ), where it had became a best - seller and was later made into a film Đừng Đốt ( Do n't Burn ). In Vietnam the diary has often been compared to The Diary of a Anne Frank and both are used in literary education. In American popular culture, the `` Crazy Vietnam Veteran '', who was suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, became a common stock character after the war. One of the first major films based on the Vietnam War was John Wayne 's pro-war film, The Green Berets ( 1968 ). Further cinematic representations were released during the 1970s and 1980s, including Michael Cimino 's The Deer Hunter ( 1978 ), Francis Ford Coppola 's Apocalypse Now ( 1979 ), Oliver Stone 's Platoon ( 1986 ) -- based on his service in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, Stanley Kubrick 's Full Metal Jacket ( 1987 ), Hamburger Hill ( 1987 ), and Casualties of War ( 1989 ). Later films would include We Were Soldiers ( 2002 ) and Rescue Dawn ( 2007 ). The war also influenced a generation of musicians and songwriters in Vietnam and the United States, both anti-war and pro / anti-communist. The band Country Joe and the Fish recorded `` I - Feel - Like - I 'm - Fixin ' - To - Die Rag '' / The `` Fish '' Cheer in 1965, and it became one of the most influential anti-Vietnam protest anthems. Many songwriters and musicians supported the anti-war movement, including Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Peggy Seeger, Ewan MacColl, Barbara Dane, The Critics Group, Phil Ochs, John Lennon, Nina Simone, Neil Young, Tom Paxton, Jimmy Cliff and Arlo Guthrie. Commemoration On May 25, 2012, President Barack Obama issued a proclamation of the commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War. On November 10, 2017, President Donald Trump issued an additional proclamation commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War. See also Vietnam portal United States portal War portal Cold War portal 1950s portal 1960s portal 1970s portal Aircraft losses of the Vietnam War Awards and decorations of the Vietnam War Battle of Quang Tri ( 1968 ) Counterculture of the 1960s Củ Chi tunnels Đắk Sơn massacre Draft lottery ( 1969 ) Kit Carson Scouts List of Medal of Honor recipients for the Vietnam War List of United States servicemembers and civilians missing in action during the Vietnam War ( 1968 -- 69 ) McNamara Line Major General Michael D. Healy Operation Wheeler / Wallowa Patrol Craft Fast Political midlife crisis Protests of 1968 The Sixties Unplugged United States Air Force in Thailand United States Army Special Forces in popular culture U.S. news media and the Vietnam War Vietnam War Crimes Working Group Files Weapons of the Cambodian Civil War Winter Soldier Investigation Lai Đại Hàn General : History of Cambodia History of Laos List of conflicts in Asia Annotations ^ Jump up to : Due to the early presence of U.S. troops in Vietnam the start date of the Vietnam War is a matter of debate. In 1998, after a high level review by the Department of Defense ( DoD ) and through the efforts of Richard B. Fitzgibbon 's family the start date of the Vietnam War according to the US government was officially changed to 1 November 1955. U.S. government reports currently cite 1 November 1955 as the commencement date of the `` Vietnam Conflict '', because this date marked when the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group ( MAAG ) in Indochina ( deployed to Southeast Asia under President Truman ) was reorganized into country - specific units and MAAG Vietnam was established. Other start dates include when Hanoi authorized Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam to begin a low - level insurgency in December 1956, whereas some view 26 September 1959 when the first battle occurred between the Viet Cong and the South Vietnamese army, as the start date. ^ Jump up to : The figures of 58,220 and 303,644 for U.S. deaths and wounded come from the Department of Defense Statistical Information Analysis Division ( SIAD ), Defense Manpower Data Center, as well as from a Department of Veterans fact sheet dated May 2010 ; the total is 153,303 WIA excluding 150,341 persons not requiring hospital care the CRS ( Congressional Research Service ) Report for Congress, American War and Military Operations Casualties : Lists and Statistics, dated 26 February 2010, and the book Crucible Vietnam : Memoir of an Infantry Lieutenant. Some other sources give different figures ( e.g. the 2005 / 2006 documentary Heart of Darkness : The Vietnam War Chronicles 1945 -- 1975 cited elsewhere in this article gives a figure of 58,159 U.S. deaths, and the 2007 book Vietnam Sons gives a figure of 58,226 ) Jump up ^ The Military Assistance Advisory Group, Indochina ( with an authorized strength of 128 men ) was set up in September 1950 with a mission to oversee the use and distribution of US military equipment by the French and their allies. Jump up ^ On 8 March 1965 the first American combat troops, the Third Marine Regiment, Third Marine Division, began landing in Vietnam to protect the Da Nang airport. Notes Jump up ^ `` Cornell University Library Digital Collections ''. digital.library.cornell.edu. ^ Jump up to : Rohn, Alan ( November 26, 2012 ). `` What countries involved in the Vietnam War ? ''. The Vietnam War. Retrieved April 8, 2018. ^ Jump up to : `` America Was n't the Only Foreign Power in the Vietnam War ''. Military History Now. October 2, 2013. Retrieved April 8, 2018. Jump up ^ The Cuban Military Under Castro, 1989. p. 76 Jump up ^ Cuba in the World, 1979. p. 66 Jump up ^ `` Cesky a slovensky svet ''. Svet.czsk.net. Retrieved 24 February 2014. Jump up ^ `` Bilaterální vztahy České republiky a Vietnamské socialistické republiky Mezinárodní vztahy e-Polis -- Internetový politologický časopis ''. E-polis.cz. Retrieved 24 February 2014. Jump up ^ `` Project MUSE -- l Sailing in the Shadow of the Vietnam War : The GDR Government and the `` Vietnam Bonus '' of the Early 1970s '' ( PDF ). Jump up ^ `` Stasi Aid and the Modernization of the Vietnamese Secret Police ''. 20 August 2014. ^ Jump up to : Radvanyi, Janos ( 1980 ). `` Vietnam War Diplomacy : Reflections of a Former Iron Curtain Official '' ( PDF ). Paramaters : Journal of the US Army War College. Carlise Barracks, Pennsylvania. 10 ( 3 ) : 8 -- 15. Jump up ^ `` Download Limit Exceeded ''. citeseerx.ist.psu.edu. ^ Jump up to : `` Documents '' ( PDF ). www.cia.gov. Jump up ^ `` Foreign Affairs in the 1960s and 1970s ''. Library of Congress. 1992. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Bulgaria gave official military support to many national liberation causes, most notably in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, ( North Vietnam )... Jump up ^ Crump 2015, p. 183 Jump up ^ `` Why did Sweden support the Viet Cong ? ''. HistoryNet. 25 July 2013. Retrieved 20 July 2016. Jump up ^ `` Sweden announces support to Viet Cong ''. HISTORY.com. Retrieved 20 July 2016. In Sweden, Foreign Minister Torsten Nilsson reveals that Sweden has been providing assistance to the Viet Cong, including some $550,000 worth of medical supplies. Similar Swedish aid was to go to Cambodian and Laotian civilians affected by the Indochinese fighting. This support was primarily humanitarian in nature and included no military aid. ^ Jump up to : Friedman, Herbert. `` Allies of the Republic of Vietnam ''. psywarrior.com. Retrieved April 8, 2018. ^ Jump up to : Moïse 1996, pp. 3 -- 4. ^ Jump up to : Weil, Thomas E. et. al. Area Handbook for Brazil ( 1975 ), p. 293 Jump up ^ `` Chapter Three : 1957 -- 1969 Early Relations between Malaysia and Vietnam '' ( PDF ). University of Malaya Student Repository. p. 72. Retrieved 17 October 2015. Jump up ^ Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al - Haj ( Profiles of Malaysia 's Foreign Ministers ) ( PDF ). Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations ( IDFR ), Ministry of Foreign Affairs ( Malaysia ). 2008. p. 31. ISBN 978 - 9832220268. Archived ( PDF ) from the original on 16 October 2015. Retrieved 17 October 2015. The Tunku had been personally responsible for Malaya 's partisan support of the South Vietnamese regime in its fight against the Vietcong and, in reply to a Parliamentary question on 6 February 1962, he had listed all the used weapons and equipment of the Royal Malaya Police given to Saigon. These included a total of 45,707 single - barrel shotguns, 611 armoured cars and smaller numbers of carbines and pistols. Writing in 1975, he revealed that `` we had clandestinely been giving ' aid ' to Vietnam since early 1958. Published American archival sources now reveal that the actual Malaysian contributions to the war effort in Vietnam included the following : `` over 5,000 Vietnamese officers trained in Malaysia ; training of 150 U.S. soldiers in handling Tracker Dogs ; a rather impressive list of military equipment and weapons given to Viet - Nam after the end of the Malaysian insurgency ( for example, 641 armored personnel carriers, 56,000 shotguns ) ; and a creditable amount of civil assistance ( transportation equipment, cholera vaccine, and flood relief ) ''. It is undeniable that the Government 's policy of supporting the South Vietnamese regime with arms, equipment and training was regarded by some quarters, especially the Opposition parties, as a form of interfering in the internal affairs of that country and the Tunku 's valiant efforts to defend it were not convincing enough, from a purely foreign policy standpoint. Jump up ^ DoD 1998 Jump up ^ Lawrence 2009, p. 20. ^ Jump up to : Olson & Roberts 1991, p. 67. ^ Jump up to : Origins of the Insurgency in South Vietnam, 1954 -- 1960, The Pentagon Papers ( Gravel Edition ), Volume 1, Chapter 5, ( Boston : Beacon Press, 1971 ), Section 3, pp. 314 -- 46 ; International Relations Department, Mount Holyoke College. Jump up ^ Victory in Vietnam : The Official History of the People 's Army of Vietnam, 1954 -- 1975. Translated by Merle Pribbenow, Lawerence KS : University of Kansas Press, 2002, p. 211 : `` By the end of 1966 the total strength of our armed forces was 690,000 soldiers. ''. According to Hanoi 's official history, the Viet Cong was a branch of the People 's Army of Vietnam. Jump up ^ Doyle, The North, pp. 45 -- 49 ^ Jump up to : The A to Z of the Vietnam War. The Scarecrow Press. 2005. ISBN 978 - 1461719038. Jump up ^ Spencer C. Tucker ( 2011 ). The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War : A Political, Social, and Military History. ABC - CLIO. p. 376. ISBN 978 - 1 - 85109 - 960 - 3. Jump up ^ ( 1 ) ^ Jump up to : `` China admits 320,000 troops fought in Vietnam ''. Toledo Blade. Reuters. 16 May 1989. Retrieved 24 December 2013. Jump up ^ Roy, Denny ( 1998 ). China 's Foreign Relations. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 27. ISBN 978 - 0847690138. ^ Jump up to : Womack, Brantly ( 2006 - 02 - 13 ). China and Vietnam. ISBN 978 - 0521618342. Jump up ^ Pham Thi Thu Thuy ( 1 August 2013 ). `` The colorful history of North Korea - Vietnam relations ''. NK News. Retrieved 3 October 2016. Jump up ^ Le Gro, p. 28. Jump up ^ Tucker, Spencer ( 2011 ). The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War : A Political, Social, and Military History, 2nd Edition. ABC - CLIO. p. xlv. ISBN 978 - 1851099610. Jump up ^ ( 2 ) Jump up ^ `` The rise of Communism ''. www.footprinttravelguides.com. Jump up ^ `` Hmong rebellion in Laos ''. Jump up ^ Pike, John. `` Cambodia Civil War, 1970s ''. www.globalsecurity.org. Jump up ^ `` Archived copy ''. Archived from the original on 2 August 2016. Retrieved 2 August 2016., accessed 7 Nov 2017 Jump up ^ Pike, John. `` Pathet Lao Uprising ''. ^ Jump up to : Charles Hirschman et al., `` Vietnamese Casualties During the American War : A New Estimate '', Population and Development Review, December 1995. ^ Jump up to : Lewy 1978, pp. 450 -- 53. Jump up ^ `` Battlefield : Vietnam - Timeline ''. www.pbs.org. ^ Jump up to : `` Chuyên đề 4 CÔNG TÁC TÌM KIẾM, QUY TẬP HÀI CỐT LIỆT SĨ TỪ NAY ĐẾN NĂM 2020 VÀ NHỮNG NĂM TIẾP THEO ''. ^ Jump up to : `` Công tác tìm kiếm, quy tập hài cốt liệt sĩ từ nay đến năm 2020 và những năn tiếp theo ''. Ministry of National Defense - Government of Vietnam. Jump up ^ NAM, ĐẢNG CỘNG SẢN VIỆT. `` Đời đời nhớ ơn các anh hùng liệt sĩ ! ''. dangcongsan.vn ( in Vietnamese ). Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 11. ^ Jump up to : Lewy, Guenter ( 1978 ). America in Vietnam. Oxford University Press. pp. 450 -- 1. ISBN 9780199874231. Jump up ^ Soames, John. A History of the World, Routledge, 2005. Jump up ^ `` North Korea fought in Vietnam War ''. BBC News. 31 March 2000. Retrieved 18 October 2015. ^ Jump up to : Thayer 1985, chap. 12. Jump up ^ Clarke, Jeffrey J. ( 1988 ), United States Army in Vietnam : Advice and Support : The Final Years, 1965 -- 1973, Washington, D.C : Center of Military History, United States Army, p. 275 : `` The Army of the Republic of Vietnam suffered 254,256 recorded combat deaths between 1960 and 1974, with the highest number of recorded deaths being in 1972, with 39,587 combat deaths '' Jump up ^ Rummel, R.J ( 1997 ), `` Table 6.1 A. Vietnam Democide : Estimates, Sources, and Calculations '' ( GIF ), Freedom, Democracy, Peace ; Power, Democide, and War, University of Hawaii System ^ Jump up to : Tucker, Spencer E. The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War : A Political, Social, and Military History ABC - CLIO. ISBN 1851099611 ^ Jump up to : Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund ( 29 May 2017 ). `` 3 new names added to Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall '' ( Press release ). Associated Press. Jump up ^ America 's Wars ( PDF ) ( Report ). Department of Veterans Affairs. May 2010. Archived from the original ( PDF ) on 24 January 2014. Jump up ^ Anne Leland ; Mari -- Jana `` M-J '' Oboroceanu ( 26 February 2010 ). American War and Military Operations : Casualties : Lists and Statistics ( PDF ) ( Report ). Congressional Research Service. Jump up ^ Lawrence 2009, pp. 65, 107, 154, 217 Jump up ^ Aaron Ulrich ( editor ) ; Edward FeuerHerd ( producer and director ) ( 2005, 2006 ). Heart of Darkness : The Vietnam War Chronicles 1945 -- 1975 ( Box set, Color, Dolby, DVD - Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Dolby, Vision Software ) ( Documentary ). Koch Vision. Event occurs at 321 minutes. ISBN 1417229209. Jump up ^ Kueter, Dale. Vietnam Sons : For Some, the War Never Ended. AuthorHouse ( 21 March 2007 ). ISBN 978 - 1425969318 Jump up ^ T. Lomperis, From People 's War to People 's Rule ( 1996 ) Jump up ^ `` Australian casualties in the Vietnam War, 1962 -- 72 Australian War Memorial ''. Awm.gov.au. Retrieved 29 June 2013. Jump up ^ Tucker, Spencer C. ( 20 May 2011 ). `` The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War : A Political, Social, and Military History, 2nd Edition ( 4 volumes ) : A Political, Social, and Military History ''. ABC - CLIO -- via Google Books. Jump up ^ `` Overview of the war in Vietnam VietnamWar.govt.nz, New Zealand and the Vietnam War ''. Vietnamwar.govt.nz. 16 July 1965. Archived from the original on 26 July 2013. Retrieved 29 June 2013. Jump up ^ `` America Was n't the Only Foreign Power in the Vietnam War ''. Retrieved 10 June 2017. Jump up ^ `` Chapter III : The Philippines ''. History.army.mil. Archived from the original on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 24 February 2014. Jump up ^ `` Asian Allies in Vietnam '' ( PDF ). Embassy of South Vietnam. March 1970. Retrieved 18 October 2015. Jump up ^ Shenon, Philip ( 23 April 1995 ). `` 20 Years After Victory, Vietnamese Communists Ponder How to Celebrate ''. The New York Times. Retrieved 24 February 2011. The Vietnamese government officially claimed a rough estimate of 2 million civilian deaths, but it did not divide these deaths between those of North and South Vietnam. Jump up ^ `` fifty years of violent war deaths : data analysis from the world health survey program : BMJ ''. 23 April 2008. Retrieved 5 January 2013. From 1955 to 2002, data from the surveys indicated an estimated 5.4 million violent war deaths... 3.8 million in Vietnam ^ Jump up to : Obermeyer, Murray & Gakidou 2008. ^ Jump up to : Heuveline, Patrick ( 2001 ). `` The Demographic Analysis of Mortality in Cambodia ''. Forced Migration and Mortality. National Academy Press. pp. 102 -- 04, 120, 124. ISBN 978 - 0309073349. As best as can now be estimated, over two million Cambodians died during the 1970s because of the political events of the decade, the vast majority of them during the mere four years of the ' Khmer Rouge ' regime... Subsequent reevaluations of the demographic data situated the death toll for the ( civil war ) in the order of 300,000 or less. ^ Jump up to : Banister, Judith ; Johnson, E. Paige ( 1993 ). `` After the Nightmare : The Population of Cambodia ''. Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia : The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and the International Community. Yale University Southeast Asia Studies. p. 87. ISBN 978 - 0938692492. An estimated 275,000 excess deaths. We have modeled the highest mortality we can justify for the early 1970s. ^ Jump up to : Sliwinski, Marek ( 1995 ). Le Génocide Khmer Rouge : Une Analyse Démographique. Paris : L'Harmattan. pp. 42 -- 43, 48. ISBN 978 - 2 - 738 - 43525 - 5. ^ Jump up to : Factasy. `` The Vietnam War or Second Indochina War ''. PRLog. Retrieved 29 June 2013. Jump up ^ `` Vietnam War ''. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 5 March 2008. Meanwhile, the United States, its military demoralized and its civilian electorate deeply divided, began a process of coming to terms with defeat in its longest and most controversial war Jump up ^ Lind, Michael ( 1999 ). `` Vietnam, The Necessary War : A Reinterpretation of America 's Most Disastrous Military Conflict ''. The New York Times. Retrieved 17 January 2014. ^ Jump up to : Wyatt - Brown, Bertram ( 2014 - 01 - 01 ). `` Chapter 8 : Honor and Shame in Vietnam and Iraq ''. A Warring Nation : Honor, Race, and Humiliation in America and Abroad. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 9780813934754. ^ Jump up to : Nguyen, Lien - Hang T. ( 2012 ). Hanoi 's War : An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam. The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9781469601663. ^ Jump up to : `` Vietnam : Explaining America 's Lost War Reviews in History ''. www.history.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 01. Jump up ^ Elliott, David W.P. ( 2007 ). The Vietnamese War : Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930 - 1975. M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 9780765606037. Jump up ^ C, Donnell, John ; J, Pauker, Guy ; J, Zasloff, Joseph ( March 1965 ). `` Viet Cong Motivation and Morale in 1964 : A Preliminary Report ''. Jump up ^ Nguyen, Nathalie Huynh Chau ( 2016 ). South Vietnamese Soldiers : Memories of the Vietnam War and After. ABC - CLIO, LLC. ISBN 9781440832413. Jump up ^ Wiest, Andrew ( October 2009 ). Vietnam 's Forgotten Army : Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN. NYU Press. ISBN 9780814794678. Jump up ^ Digital History ; Steven Mintz. `` The Vietnam War ''. Digitalhistory.uh.edu. Archived from the original on 30 October 2011. Retrieved 31 October 2011. Jump up ^ Major General George S. Eckhardt, Vietnam Studies Command and Control 1950 -- 1969, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C. ( 1991 ), p. 6 Jump up ^ `` Could Vietnam have been nuked in 1954 ? ''. 5 May 2014 -- via www.bbc.com. ^ Jump up to : `` Vietnam War Allied Troop Levels 1960 - 73 ''. www.americanwarlibrary.com. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 01. Jump up ^ Vietnam War Statistics and Facts 1, 25th Aviation Battalion website. Jump up ^ `` McNamara becomes Vietnam War skeptic, Oct. 14, 1966 ''. POLITICO. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 01. Jump up ^ Stanton, Shelby L. ( 2003 ). The Rise and Fall of an American Army. Random House Publishing Group. ISBN 9780891418276. Jump up ^ Ward, Geoffrey C. ( 2017 ). The Vietnam War : An Intimate History. Alfred A. Knopf. p. 411. ISBN 9780307700254. ^ Jump up to : Warren, James A. ( 2013 - 09 - 24 ). Giap : The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam. St. Martin 's Press. ISBN 9781137098917. Jump up ^ Pilger, John ( 2001 ). Heroes. South End Press. ISBN 9780896086661. Jump up ^ Goscha, Christopher ( 2016 - 06 - 30 ). The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam : A History. Penguin UK. ISBN 9780141946658. Jump up ^ Warren, James A. ( 2013 - 09 - 24 ). Giap : The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam. St. Martin 's Press. pp. 189 -- 194. ISBN 9781137098917. Jump up ^ `` War for Peace in Vietnam HistoryNet ''. www.historynet.com. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 01. Jump up ^ Zimmerman, Bill ( 2017 - 10 - 24 ). `` Opinion The Four Stages of the Antiwar Movement ''. The New York Times. ISSN 0362 - 4331. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 01. Jump up ^ Thee, Marek ( 1976 ). `` The Indochina Wars : Great Power Involvement -- Escalation and Disengagement ''. Journal of Peace Research. Sage Publications. 13 ( 2 ) : 117. doi : 10.1177 / 002234337601300204. ISSN 1460 - 3578. JSTOR 423343. ( Subscription required ( help ) ). Jump up ^ Marlantes, Karl ( 2017 ). `` Opinion Vietnam : The War That Killed Trust ''. The New York Times. ISSN 0362 - 4331. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 01. Jump up ^ Klimke, Martin ; Pekelder, Jacco ; Scharloth, Joachim, eds. ( 2011 ). Between Prague Spring and French May : Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960 - 1980 ( NED - New edition, 1 ed. ). Berghahn Books. pp. 103 -- 115. ISBN 9781782380511. Jump up ^ Klimke, Martin ; Pekelder, Jacco ; Scharloth, Joachim, eds. ( 2011 ). Between Prague Spring and French May : Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960 - 1980 ( NED - New edition, 1 ed. ). Berghahn Books. pp. 116 -- 131. ISBN 9781782380511. Jump up ^ Kolko 1985, pp. 457, 461ff. Jump up ^ Moore, Harold. G and Joseph L. Galloway We Are Soldiers Still : A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam ( p. 57 ). Jump up ^ `` Asian - Nation : Asian American History, Demographics, & Issues : : The American / Viet Nam War ''. Retrieved 18 August 2008. The Viet Nam War is also called ' The American War ' by the Vietnamese Jump up ^ Tucker, Spencer C. ( 2011 ) The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War : A Political, Social, and Military History ABC - CLIO. ISBN 1851099611, p. xli Jump up ^ Ellsberg, Daniel. `` The doomsday machine - Talks at Google ( February 2018 ) ''. Talks at google. Google / Daniel Ellsberg. Retrieved 1 June 2018. ^ Jump up to : McNamara 1999, pp. 377 -- 79. Jump up ^ `` The Vietnam War Seeds of Conflict 1945 -- 1960 ''. The History Place. Retrieved 13 May 2013. Jump up ^ Pentagon Papers, Gravel, ed, Chapter 2, ' U.S. Involvement in the Franco - Viet Minh War ', p. 54. ^ Jump up to : Ang, Cheng Guan, The Vietnam War from the Other Side, p. 14. Routledge ( 2002 ). ^ Jump up to : `` The History Place -- Vietnam War 1945 -- 1960 ''. Retrieved 11 June 2008. Jump up ^ Herring 2001, p. 18. Jump up ^ Zinn, A People 's History of the United States, p. 471. ^ Jump up to : Vietnam The Ten Thousand Day War, Thames 1981, Michael Maclear, p. 57. Jump up ^ Vietnam at War : The History : 1946 -- 1975, ISBN 978 - 0195067927, p. 263. ^ Jump up to : Tucker 1999, p. 76 Jump up ^ The U.S. Navy : a history, Naval Institute Press, 1997, Nathan Miller, ISBN 978 - 1557505958, pp. 67 -- 68. ^ Jump up to : The Pentagon Papers. Gravel, ed. vol. 1, pp. 391 -- 404. Jump up ^ `` China Contributed Substantially to Vietnam War Victory, Claims Scholar ''. Wilson Center. 2001 - 01 - 01. Retrieved 2018 - 05 - 20. Jump up ^ `` Echoes from the Past : An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Vietnam War - Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History ''. www.armstrong.edu. Retrieved 2018 - 05 - 20. Jump up ^ Press release by the Embassy of the Republic of Vietnam, quoted from the Washington, D.C. press and Information Service, vol I. no. 18 ( 22 July 1955 ) and no. 20 ( 18 August 1955 ), in Chapter 19 of Gettleman, Franklin and Young, Vietnam and America : A Documented History, pp. 103 -- 05. Jump up ^ Jacobs, pp. 45 -- 55. Jump up ^ Kinzer, Stephen ( 2013 - 10 - 01 ). The Brothers : John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War. Macmillan. pp. 195 -- 96. ISBN 978 - 1429953528. Jump up ^ Patrick, Johnson, David ( 2009 ). Selling `` Operation Passage to Freedom '' : Dr. Thomas Dooley and the Religious Overtones of Early American Involvement in Vietnam ( Thesis ). University of New Orleans. Jump up ^ Fall 1967, p.. Jump up ^ Vietnam Divided by B.S.N. Murti, Asian Publishing House, 1964. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 238. Jump up ^ Kolko 1985, p. 98. Jump up ^ 1 Pentagon Papers ( The Senator Gravel Edition ), 247, 328 ( Boston, Beacon Press, 1971 ). Jump up ^ John Prados, `` The Numbers Game : How Many Vietnamese Fled South In 1954 ? ''. The VVA Veteran ( January / February 2005 ). Archived from the original on 27 May 2006. Retrieved 11 May 2017. Jump up ^ Turner 1975, p. 143. Jump up ^ cf. Gittinger, J. Price, `` Communist Land Policy in Viet Nam '', Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 29, No. 8, 1957, p. 118. Jump up ^ Courtois, Stephane ; et al. ( 1997 ). The Black Book of Communism. Harvard University Press. p. 569. ISBN 978 - 0674076082. Jump up ^ Dommen, Arthur J. ( 2001 ), The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans, Indiana University Press, p. 340, gives a lower estimate of 32,000 executions. Jump up ^ `` Newly released documents on the land reform ''. Vietnam Studies Group. Archived from the original on 20 April 2011. Retrieved 15 July 2016. Vu Tuong : There is no reason to expect, and no evidence that I have seen to demonstrate, that the actual executions were less than planned ; in fact the executions perhaps exceeded the plan if we consider two following factors. First, this decree was issued in 1953 for the rent and interest reduction campaign that preceded the far more radical land redistribution and party rectification campaigns ( or waves ) that followed during 1954 -- 1956. Second, the decree was meant to apply to free areas ( under the control of the Viet Minh government ), not to the areas under French control that would be liberated in 1954 -- 1955 and that would experience a far more violent struggle. Thus the number of 13,500 executed people seems to be a low - end estimate of the real number. This is corroborated by Edwin Moise in his recent paper `` Land Reform in North Vietnam, 1953 -- 1956 '' presented at the 18th Annual Conference on SE Asian Studies, Center for SE Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley ( February 2001 ). In this paper Moise ( 7 -- 9 ) modified his earlier estimate in his 1983 book ( which was 5,000 ) and accepted an estimate close to 15,000 executions. Moise made the case based on Hungarian reports provided by Balazs, but the document I cited above offers more direct evidence for his revised estimate. This document also suggests that the total number should be adjusted up some more, taking into consideration the later radical phase of the campaign, the unauthorized killings at the local level, and the suicides following arrest and torture ( the central government bore less direct responsibility for these cases, however ). cf. Szalontai, Balazs ( November 2005 ). `` Political and Economic Crisis in North Vietnam, 1955 -- 56 ''. Cold War History. 5 ( 4 ) : 395 -- 426. doi : 10.1080 / 14682740500284630. cf. Vu, Tuong ( 2010 ). Paths to Development in Asia : South Korea, Vietnam, China, and Indonesia. Cambridge University Press. p. 103. ISBN 978 - 1139489010. Clearly Vietnamese socialism followed a moderate path relative to China... Yet the Vietnamese ' land reform ' campaign... testified that Vietnamese communists could be as radical and murderous as their comrades elsewhere. Jump up ^ Appy 2006, pp. 46 -- 47. Jump up ^ The Pentagon Papers ( 1971 ), Beacon Press, vol. 3, p. 134. Jump up ^ The Pentagon Papers ( 1971 ), Beacon Press, vol. 3, p. 119. ^ Jump up to : The Pentagon Papers ( 1971 ), Beacon Press, vol. 3, p. 140. Jump up ^ The Pentagon Papers ( 1971 ), Beacon Press, vol. 3, pp. 570 -- 71. Jump up ^ Dwight D. Eisenhower. Mandate for Change. Garden City, New Jersey. Doubleday & Company, 1963, p. 372. Jump up ^ Turner, Robert F. ( 1990 ). `` Myths and Realities in the Vietnam Debate ''. The Vietnam Debate : A Fresh Look at the Arguments. University Press of America. ISBN 978 - 0819174161. Jump up ^ Woodruff 2005, p. 6 states : `` The elections were not held. South Vietnam, which had not signed the Geneva Accords, did not believe the Communists in North Vietnam would allow a fair election. In January 1957, the International Control Commission ( ICC ), comprising observers from India, Poland, and Canada, agreed with this perception, reporting that neither South nor North Vietnam had honored the armistice agreement. With the French gone, a return to the traditional power struggle between north and south had begun again. '' Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 224. Jump up ^ Gerdes ( ed. ) Examining Issues Through Political Cartoons : The Vietnam War p. 19. Jump up ^ Turner 1975, pp. 193 -- 94, 202 -- 03, 215 -- 17 Jump up ^ McNamara 1999, p. 19. Jump up ^ John F. Kennedy. `` America 's Stakes in Vietnam ''. Speech to the American Friends of Vietnam, June 1956. Archived 26 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Jump up ^ McNamara 1999, pp. 200 -- 01. Jump up ^ `` The Pentagon Papers Gravel Edition Volume 1, Chapter 5, `` Origins of the Insurgency in South Vietnam, 1954 -- 1960 '' ``. Mtholyoke.edu. Retrieved 31 October 2011. Jump up ^ Kolko 1985, p. 89. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 230. Jump up ^ Excerpts from Law 10 / 59, 6 May 1959 Archived 23 July 2008 at the Wayback Machine. Jump up ^ Marilyn Young, The Vietnam Wars : 1945 -- 1990 ( New York : Harper Perennial, 1991 ), p. 73 ^ Jump up to : Ang, Cheng Guan ( 2002 ). The Vietnam War from the Other Side. RoutledgeCurzon. pp. 16, 58, 76. ISBN 0700716157. Jump up ^ Olson & Roberts 1991, p. 67. This decision was made at the 11th Plenary Session of the Lao Dong Central Committee. Jump up ^ Military History Institute of Vietnam, ( 2002 ) Victory in Vietnam : The Official History of the People 's Army of Vietnam, 1954 -- 1975, translated by Merle L. Pribbenow. University Press of Kansas. p. 68. ISBN 0700611754. Jump up ^ `` The History Place -- Vietnam War 1945 -- 1960 ''. Retrieved 11 June 2008. Jump up ^ Victory in Vietnam, p. xi. Jump up ^ Prados 2006. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 264. Jump up ^ The Avalon Project at Yale Law School. Inaugural Address of John F. Kennedy. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 265 : `` Kennedy sidestepped Laos, whose rugged terrain was no battleground for American soldiers. '' Jump up ^ The case of John F. Kennedy and Vietnam Presidential Studies Quarterly. Jump up ^ Mann, Robert. A Grand Delusion, Basic Books, 2002. Jump up ^ VTF 1969, IV. B. 4., pp. 1 -- 2 Jump up ^ McNamara 1999, p. 369. Jump up ^ Stavins, Ralph L. ( 1971 - 07 - 22 ). `` A Special Supplement : Kennedy 's Private War ''. The New York Review of Books. ISSN 0028 - 7504. Retrieved 2017 - 12 - 02. Jump up ^ John Kenneth Galbraith. `` Memorandum to President Kennedy from John Kenneth Galbraith on Vietnam, 4 April 1962. '' The Pentagon Papers. Gravel. ed. Boston, Massachusetts Beacon Press, 1971, vol. 2. pp. 669 -- 71. Jump up ^ `` Vietnam War ''. Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Archived from the original on 3 August 2016. Jump up ^ Tucker 2011, p. 1070. Jump up ^ Sheehan 1989, pp. 201 -- 66. Jump up ^ Live interview by John Bartlow Martin. Was Kennedy Planning to Pull out of Vietnam ? New York City. John F. Kennedy Library, 1964, Tape V, Reel 1. Jump up ^ James Gibson, The Perfect War : Technowar in Vietnam ( Boston / New York : The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986 ), p. 88. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 326. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 327. Jump up ^ FRUS, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961 -- 1963, Vol. IV, Vietnam, August -- December 1863, Document 304 Jump up ^ McNamara 1999, p. 328. ^ Jump up to : Demma 1989. Jump up ^ Blaufarb 1977, p. 119. Jump up ^ Herring 2001, p. 103. Jump up ^ Schandler 2009, p. 36 Jump up ^ U.S. Special Forces : A Guide to America 's Special Operations Units : the World 's Most Elite Fighting Force, By Samuel A. Southworth, Stephen Tanner, Published by Da Capo Press, 2002, ISBN 978 - 0306811654. Jump up ^ Shooting at the Moon by Roger Warner -- The history of CIA / IAD 'S 15 - year involvement in conducting the secret war in Laos, 1960 -- 1975, and the career of CIA PMCO ( paramilitary case officer ) Bill Lair. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, pp. 336 -- 39. Johnson viewed many members that he inherited from Kennedy 's cabinet with distrust because he had never penetrated their circle during Kennedy 's presidency ; to Johnson 's mind, those like W. Averell Harriman and Dean Acheson spoke a different language. Jump up ^ Shortly after the assassination of Kennedy, when McGeorge Bundy called LBJ on the phone, LBJ responded : `` Goddammit, Bundy. I 've told you that when I want you I 'll call you. '' Brian VanDeMark, Into the Quagmire ( New York : Oxford University Press, 1995 ), 13. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 339. Before a small group, including Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the new president also said, `` We should stop playing cops and robbers ( a reference to Diệm 's failed leadership ) and get back to... winning the war... tell the generals in Saigon that Lyndon Johnson intends to stand by our word... ( to ) win the contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy. '' Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 339 : `` At a place called Hoa Phu, for example, the strategic hamlet built during the previous summer now looked like it had been hit by a hurricane... Speaking through an interpreter, a local guard explained to me that a handful of Viet Cong agents had entered the hamlet one night and told the peasants to tear it down and return to their native villages. The peasants complied without question. '' Jump up ^ Hunt, Michael ( 2016 ). The World Transformed -- 1945 to the Present. New York City : Oxford. pp. 169 -- 71. ISBN 978 - 0199371020. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 340. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 341. Jump up ^ Young 1991, p. 172. Jump up ^ McNamara 1999, p. 48. Jump up ^ Kolko 1985, p. 124. Jump up ^ Kutler 1996, p. 249. Jump up ^ Scott Shane ( 31 October 2005 ). `` Vietnam Study, Casting Doubts, Remains Secret ''. The New York Times. Retrieved 13 September 2013. Jump up ^ Moïse 1996, p. 78. ^ Jump up to : Healy 2009, p. 91. Jump up ^ Palmer 1978, p. 882. Jump up ^ Simon, Dennis M. ( August 2002 ). `` The War in Vietnam, 1965 -- 1968 ''. Archived from the original on 26 April 2009. Retrieved 7 May 2009. Jump up ^ Nalty 1998, pp. 97, 261. Jump up ^ Earl L. Tilford, Setup : What the Air Force did in Vietnam and Why. Maxwell Air Force Base AL : Air University Press, 1991, p. 89. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 468. Jump up ^ Kiernan, Ben ; Owen, Taylor ( 26 April 2015 ). `` Making More Enemies than We Kill ? Calculating U.S. Bomb Tonnages Dropped on Laos and Cambodia, and Weighing Their Implications ''. The Asia - Pacific Journal. Retrieved 18 September 2016. Jump up ^ Gen. Curtis E LeMay. Jump up ^ Vietnam War After Action Reports. BACM Research. ^ Jump up to : The United States in Vietnam : An analysis in depth of the history of America 's involvement in Vietnam by George McTurnan Kahin and John W. Lewis, Delta Books, 1967. Jump up ^ Moyar 2006, p. 339 Jump up ^ McNeill 1993, p. 58. Jump up ^ McNeill 1993, p. 94. Jump up ^ `` Vietnam : A Television History ; Vietnamizing the War ( 1968 - 1973 ) ; Interview with Bui Diem ( 1 ), 1981 ''. openvault.wgbh.org. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 17. Jump up ^ `` Generations Divide Over Military Action in Iraq ''. Pew Research Center. October 2002. ( archived from the original on 2 February 2008 ). ( The archived link is dead, and the original link is towards another article. ) ^ Jump up to : McNamara 1999, pp. 349 -- 51. Jump up ^ U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. -- Vietnam Relations vol. 4, p. 7. Jump up ^ McNamara 1999, p. 353. Jump up ^ U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. -- Vietnam Relations vol. 5, pp. 8 -- 9. Jump up ^ U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. - Vietnam Relations vol. 4, pp. 117 -- 19. and vol. 5, pp. 8 -- 12. Jump up ^ Public Papers of the Presidents, 1965. Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office, 1966, vol. 2, pp. 794 -- 99. ^ Jump up to : McNamara 1999, pp. 353 -- 54. Jump up ^ Mohr, Charles. `` MCNAMARA ON RECORD, RELUCTANTLY, ON VIETNAM ''. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 453. ^ Jump up to : Karnow 1997, p. 556. Jump up ^ Peter Church. ed. A Short History of South - East Asia. Singapore, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, p. 193. ^ Jump up to : Elliott, Mai ( 2018 ). `` The Terrible Violence of ' Pacification ' ''. The New York Times. ISSN 0362 - 4331. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 08. ^ Jump up to : Ward, Geoffrey C. ( 2017 ). The Vietnam War : An Intimate History. Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 153 -- 156. 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Retrieved 2016 - 09 - 19. Jump up ^ `` Disarmament ''. The United Nations Office at Geneva. United Nations. November 2011. Retrieved 20 September 2013. Jump up ^ Greenberg, Jon ( 2014 - 09 - 11 ). `` Kissinger : Drones have killed more civilians than the bombing of Cambodia in the Vietnam War ''. Politifact.com. Retrieved 2016 - 09 - 18. Jump up ^ Robbers, Gerhard ( 30 January 2007 ). Encyclopedia of world constitutions. Infobase Publishing. p. 1021. ISBN 978 - 0816060788. Retrieved 1 July 2011. Jump up ^ Elliot, Duong Van Mai ( 2010 ). `` The End of the War ''. RAND in Southeast Asia : A History of the Vietnam War Era. RAND Corporation. pp. 499, 512 -- 13. ISBN 978 - 0833047540. A study by Jacqueline Desbarats and Karl D. Jackson estimated that 65,000 South Vietnamese were executed for political reasons between 1975 and 1983, based on a survey of 615 Vietnamese refugees who claimed to have personally witnessed 47 executions. However, `` their methodology was reviewed and criticized as invalid by authors Gareth Porter and James Roberts. '' 16 of the 47 names used to extrapolate this `` bloodbath '' were duplicates ; this extremely high duplication rate ( 34 % ) strongly suggests Desbarats and Jackson were drawing from a small number of total executions. Rather than arguing that this duplication rate proves there were very few executions in post-war Vietnam, Porter and Roberts suggest it is an artifact of the self - selected nature of the participants in the Desbarats - Jackson study, as the authors followed subjects 's recommendations on other refugees to interview. See Elliot, Duong Van Mai ( 2010 ). `` The End of the War ''. RAND in Southeast Asia : A History of the Vietnam War Era. RAND Corporation. pp. 512 -- 13. ISBN 978 - 0833047540. cf. Porter, Gareth ; Roberts, James ( Summer 1988 ). `` Creating a Bloodbath by Statistical Manipulation : A Review of A Methodology for Estimating Political Executions in Vietnam, 1975 -- 1983, Jacqueline Desbarats ; Karl D. Jackson ''. Pacific Affairs. 61 ( 2 ) : 303 -- 10. JSTOR 2759306. Nevertheless, there exist unverified reports of mass executions ( see Nguyen Cong Hoan ' testimony in `` Human Rights in Vietnam : Hearings Before the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations : House of Representatives, Ninety - Fifth Congress, First Session ''. U.S. Government Printing Office : 149, 153. 1977 - 07 - 26. ; see also Desbarats and Jackson. `` Vietnam 1975 -- 1982 : The Cruel Peace '' The Washington Quarterly 8, no. 4 ( September 1985 ) : p. 117 ) Jump up ^ Sagan, Ginetta ; Denney, Stephen ( October -- November 1982 ). `` Re-education in Unliberated Vietnam : Loneliness, Suffering and Death ''. The Indochina Newsletter. Retrieved 2016 - 09 - 01. Jump up ^ See also Nghia M. Vo, The Bamboo Gulag : Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam ( McFarland, 2004 ). Jump up ^ Amnesty International Report, 1979 Amnesty International Publications. 1979. p. 116. Retrieved 26 March 2018. Jump up ^ Huy, Đức. Bên Thắng Cuộc. OsinBook. Jump up ^ `` Read Gabriel García Márquez 's Moving Vietnam Piece ''. Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2018 - 04 - 25. Jump up ^ Times, Special To the New York ( 1977 - 09 - 21 ). `` Vietnam Is Admitted to the U.N. As 32d General Assembly Opens ''. The New York Times. ISSN 0362 - 4331. Retrieved 2018 - 04 - 27. Jump up ^ Kenton Clymer, The United States and Cambodia, 1969 - 2000 : A Troubled Relationship ( Routledge ), p. 73 - 74 Jump up ^ Sharp, Bruce ( 1 April 2005 ). `` Counting Hell : The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia ''. Retrieved 15 July 2016. The range based on the figures above extends from a minimum of 1.747 million, to a maximum of 2.495 million. Jump up ^ The Documentation Center of Cambodia has mapped some 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3 million suspected victims of execution ; execution is believed to account for roughly 60 % of the full death toll. See : Seybolt, Taylor B. ; Aronson, Jay D. ; Fischoff, Baruch ( 2013 ). Counting Civilian Casualties : An Introduction to Recording and Estimating Nonmilitary Deaths in Conflict. Oxford University Press. p. 238. ISBN 9780199977314. Jump up ^ Ben Kiernan cites a range of 1.671 to 1.871 million excess deaths under the Khmer Rouge. See Kiernan, Ben ( December 2003 ). `` The Demography of Genocide in Southeast Asia : The Death Tolls in Cambodia, 1975 - 79, and East Timor, 1975 - 80 ''. Critical Asian Studies. 35 ( 4 ) : 585 -- 597. doi : 10.1080 / 1467271032000147041. Jump up ^ Farrell, Epsey Cooke ( 1998 ). The Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the law of the sea : an analysis of Vietnamese behavior within the emerging international oceans regime. The Hague : Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ISBN 90 - 411 - 0473 - 9. Jump up ^ Courtois, Stephane ; et al. ( 1997 ). The Black Book of Communism. Harvard University Press. pp. 575 -- 76. ISBN 978 - 0674076082. ^ Jump up to : Wright, Rebecca ( 2016 - 09 - 06 ). `` ' My friends were afraid of me ' : What 80 million unexploded US bombs did to Laos ''. CNN. Retrieved 2016 - 09 - 18. Jump up ^ Nguyen, Lien - hang T. Hanois War : an International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam ( New Cold War History ). University of North Carolina Press. p. 317. Jump up ^ `` Migration in the Asia - Pacific Region ''. Stephen Castles, University of Oxford. Mark J. Miller, University of Delaware. July 2009. Jump up ^ Robinson, William Courtland ( 1998 ). Terms of refuge : the Indochinese exodus & the international response. Zed Books. p. 127. ISBN 1856496104. Jump up ^ Courtois, Stephane ; et al. ( 1997 ). The Black Book of Communism. Harvard University Press. p. 575. ISBN 978 - 0674076082. Jump up ^ Associated Press, 23 June 1979, San Diego Union, 20 July 1986. See generally Nghia M. Vo, The Vietnamese Boat People ( 2006 ), 1954 and 1975 -- 1992, McFarland. Jump up ^ Rose, Hilary A., and Stephen P. Rose. `` Chemical Spraying as Reported by Refugees from South Vietnam. '' Science. 177.4050 ( 1972 ) : Science. Web. Jump up ^ Ngo, Anh D., Richard Taylor, Christine L. Roberts, and Tuan V. Nguyen. `` Association between Agent Orange and Birth Defects : Systematic Review and Meta - analysis. '' International Journal of Epidemiology. Oxford University Press, 13 Feb. 2006. Web. 01 Nov. 2015. Jump up ^ `` The Children of Agent Orange -- ProPublica ''. ProPublica. Charles Ornstein, Hannah Fresques. 2016 - 12 - 16. Retrieved 2018 - 02 - 23. Jump up ^ `` U.S. starts its first Agent Orange cleanup in Vietnam ''. Reuters. 9 August 2012. Jump up ^ Dacy, Douglas C. ( 1986 ), Foreign aid, war, and economic development : south Vietnam 1955 -- 1975, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, p. 242 ; `` CRS report for Congress : Costs of Major Wars '', accessed 22 October 2015 Jump up ^ Gerdes ( ed ). Examining Issues Through Political Cartoons : The Vietnam War pp. 14 -- 15. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 23. Jump up ^ Taylor paraphrases Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith. Oxford, UK. Oxford University Press, 1963. ^ Jump up to : Hagopian, Patrick ( September 2011 ). The Vietnam War in American Memory : Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing. Univ of Massachusetts Press. p. 10. ISBN 1558499024. Jump up ^ `` President Richard Nixon 's Role in the Vietnam War ''. Vietnam War. Archived from the original on 31 March 2009. Retrieved 17 October 2009. Jump up ^ McNamara 1999, p. 368. Jump up ^ Karnow 1997, p. 17. ^ Jump up to : Quoted in Bob Buzzano. `` 25 Years After End of Vietnam War, Myths Keep Us from Coming to Terms with Vietnam ''. The Baltimore Sun Times. 17 April 2000. Archived from the original on 5 June 2008. Retrieved 11 June 2008. Jump up ^ `` Lessons of Vietnam -- Secret Memoranda to The President of the United States by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ( ca. 12 May 1975 ) ''. p. 3. Archived from the original on 9 May 2008. Retrieved 11 June 2008. Jump up ^ Nguyen, Lien - Hang T. ( 2012 ). Hanoi 's War : An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam. Univ of North Carolina Press. pp. 1 -- 10. ISBN 9780807835517. Jump up ^ Nguyen, Lien - Hang T. ( 2012 ). Hanoi 's War : An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam. Univ of North Carolina Press. pp. 48 -- 52, 297. ISBN 9780807835517. Jump up ^ Victory in Europe 56 Years Ago Gallup News Service 8 May 2001 Jump up ^ `` How Much Did The Vietnam War Cost ? - The Vietnam War ''. The Vietnam War. 2014 - 01 - 22. Retrieved 2018 - 05 - 17. ^ Jump up to : `` CQ Almanac Online Edition ''. library.cqpress.com. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 14. Jump up ^ `` Echoes of Combat : The Vietnam War in American Memory ''. Stanford University. Jump up ^ Westheider 2007, p. 78. Jump up ^ `` US still making payments to relatives of Civil War veterans, analysis finds ''. Fox News. Associated Press. 20 March 2013. Jump up ^ Jim Lobe ( 30 March 2013 ). `` Iraq, Afghanistan Wars Will Cost U.S. 4 -- 6 Trillion Dollars : Report ''. Inter Press Service. ^ Jump up to : The War 's Costs. Digital History. Jump up ^ Combat Area Casualty File, November 1993. ( The CACF is the basis for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, i.e. The Wall ), Center for Electronic Records, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Jump up ^ Kueter, Dale ( 2007 ). Vietnam Sons : For Some, the War Never Ended. AuthorHouse. ISBN 1425969313. Jump up ^ `` War Resisters Remain in Canada with No Regrets ''. ABC News. 19 November 2005. Retrieved 26 February 2010. Jump up ^ Vietnam War Resisters in Canada Open Arms to U.S. Military Deserters Archived 12 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine... Pacific News Service. 28 June 2005. Jump up ^ `` Proclamation 4483 : Granting Pardon for Violations of the Selective Service Act ''. Retrieved 11 June 2008. By The President of the United States of America, A Proclamation Granting Pardon For Violations of the Selective Services Act, 4 August 1964 To 28 March 1973. 21 January 1977. Jump up ^ Heinl, Jr., Col. Robert D. ( 1971 ), `` The Collapse of the Armed Forces '', Armed Forces Journal, 7 June 1971 Jump up ^ Flitton, Dave. `` Battlefield Vietnam : Peace with Honour ''. PBS. Event occurs at 13 : 00. Retrieved 2 August 2015. Jump up ^ Mohr, Charles. `` MCNAMARA ON RECORD, RELUCTANTLY, ON VIETNAM ''. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 03. Jump up ^ Milam, Ron ( 2009 ), Not A Gentleman 's War : An Inside View of Junior Officers in the Vietnam War, Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, p. 172 Jump up ^ Shkurti, William J. ( 2011 ), Soldiering on in a Dying War : The True Story of the Firebase Pace Incidents and the Vietnam Drawdown, Lawrence : University of Kansas Press, p. 95 Jump up ^ `` Military draft system stopped ''. The Bulletin. Bend, Oregon. UPI. 27 January 1973. p. 1. Jump up ^ `` Military draft ended by Laird ''. The Times - News. Hendersonville, North Carolina. Associated Press. 27 January 1973. p. 1. Jump up ^ Lepre, p. 183 Jump up ^ Palmer 2007 ; Stone 2007. Jump up ^ Lynne Peeples ( 10 July 2013 ). `` Veterans Sick From Agent Orange - Poisoned Planes Still Seek Justice ''. The Huffington Post. Retrieved 4 September 2013. Jump up ^ Bruce Cumings ( 1998 ). The Global Politics of Pesticides : Forging Consensus from Conflicting Interests. Earthscan. p. 61. Jump up ^ `` Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961 -- 1963 Volume I, Vietnam, 1961, Document 275 ''. History.state.gov. Retrieved 24 February 2014. Jump up ^ Michael F. Martin ( 13 November 2015 ). U.S. Agent Orange / Dioxin Assistance to Vietnam ( PDF ) ( Report ). Congressional Research Service. Jump up ^ Kolko 1985, pp. 144 -- 45. Jump up ^ Roberts 2005, p. 380. In his 234 - page judgment, Weinstein observed : `` Despite the fact that Congress and the President were fully advised of a substantial belief that the herbicide spraying in Vietnam was a violation of international law, they acted on their view that it was not a violation at the time. '' Jump up ^ Crook 2008. Jump up ^ Anthony Faiola ( 13 November 2006 ). `` In Vietnam, Old Foes Take Aim at War 's Toxic Legacy ''. The Washington Post. Retrieved 8 September 2013. Jump up ^ `` Veterans ' Diseases Associated with Agent Orange ''. va.gov. Archived from the original on 9 May 2010. Retrieved 4 September 2013. Jump up ^ `` Statistical Information about Fatal Casualties of the Vietnam War, Electronic Records Reference Report ''. U.S. National Archives. DCAS Vietnam Conflict Extract File record counts by HOME OF RECORD STATE CODE ( as of 29 April 2008 ). ( generated from the Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System ( DCAS ) Extract Files ( as of 29 April 2008 ) Jump up ^ Clarke, Jeffrey J. ( 1988 ), United States Army in Vietnam : Advice and Support : The Final Years, 1965 -- 1973, Washington, D.C. : Center of Military History, United States Army, p. 275 Jump up ^ `` fifty years of violent war deaths : data analysis from the world health survey program : BMJ ''. 23 April 2008. Retrieved 5 January 2013. From 1955 to 2002, data from the surveys indicated an estimated 5.4 million violent war deaths... 3.8 million in Vietnam. Jump up ^ Tucker, Spencer, ed. ( 2011 ). Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War : A Political, Social, and Military History. Volume Two. Santa Barbara, CA, p. 176 Jump up ^ Tucker, Spencer, ed. ( 1998 ). Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War : A Political, Social, and Military History. Volume Two. Santa Barbara, CA : ABC - CLIO. p. 617. ISBN 0874369835. Jump up ^ `` Battlefield : Vietnam Timeline ''. Pbs.org. Retrieved 31 October 2011. Jump up ^ Clarke, p. 275 Jump up ^ NAM, ĐẢNG CỘNG SẢN VIỆT. `` Đời đời nhớ ơn các anh hùng liệt sĩ ! ''. dangcongsan.vn ( in Vietnamese ). Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 11. Jump up ^ KỶ NIỆM 68 NĂM NGÀY THƯƠNG BINH, LIỆT SĨ ( 27.7. 1947 - 27.7. 2015 ) : Phát huy thế `` kiềng 3 chân '' trong thực hiện chính sách người có công Jump up ^ Shenon, Philip, `` 20 Years After Victory, Vietnamese Communists Ponder How to Celebrate, The New York Times, 23 April 1995 Jump up ^ Bellamy, Alex J. ( 2017 - 09 - 29 ). East Asia 's Other Miracle : Explaining the Decline of Mass Atrocities. Oxford University Press. pp. 33 -- 34. ISBN 9780191083785. Jump up ^ `` Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement by John Kerry ''. www2.iath.virginia.edu. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 03. Jump up ^ KEMPSTER, NORMAN ( 1991 - 01 - 31 ). `` In This War, Body Count Is Ruled Out : Casualties : Gen. Schwarzkopf makes it clear he 's not repeating a blunder made in Vietnam ''. Los Angeles Times. ISSN 0458 - 3035. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 03. Jump up ^ Aman, Mohammed M. ( April 1993 ). `` General H. Norman Schwarzkopf : The Autobiography : It Does n't Take a Hero ; H. Norman Schwarzkopf with Peter Petre ''. Digest of Middle East Studies. 2 ( 2 ) : 90 -- 94. doi : 10.1111 / j. 1949 - 3606.1993. tb00951. x. ISSN 1060 - 4367. Jump up ^ Willbanks, James H. ( 2008 ). The Tet Offensive : A Concise History. New York : Columbia University Press. p. 32. ISBN 023112841X. Jump up ^ Rand Corporation `` Some Impressions of Viet Con Vulnerabilities, an Interim Report '' 1965 Jump up ^ James J.F. Forest Countering Terrorism and Insurgency in the 21st Century 2007 ISBN 978 - 0275990343 Jump up ^ Prados, John ; Currey, Cecil B. ; Colvin, John ( July 1997 ). `` Victory at Any Cost : The Genius of Viet Nam 's Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap ''. The Journal of Military History. 61 ( 3 ) : 649. doi : 10.2307 / 2954074. ISSN 0899 - 3718. Jump up ^ Kelman, H.C ; Hamilton, V. The My Lai Massacre : A Military Crime of Obedience. Crimes of Obedience : Towards a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility. http://ls-tlss.ucl.ac.uk/course-materials/POLS6016_65225 : Yale University Press. pp. 1 -- 12. ISBN 9780300048131. ^ Jump up to : `` Declassification of the BDM Study, `` The Strategic Lessons Learned in Vietnam '' '' ( PDF ). Defense Technical Center. pp. 225 -- 234. Jump up ^ `` Vietnam - era unaccounted for statistical report '' ( PDF ). 5 April 2018. Jump up ^ `` Vietnam Refugees Put at 1.4 Million ''. The New York Times. 1975. ISSN 0362 - 4331. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 08. Jump up ^ `` Vietnam War Bomb Explodes Killing Four Children ''. The Huffington Post. 3 December 2012. Jump up ^ Vietnam war shell explodes, kills two fishermen The Australian ( 28 April 2011 ) Jump up ^ http://vov.vn/ ( 2014 - 12 - 10 ). `` Amsterdam Mayor visits Hanoi - Amsterdam High School ''. VOV - VOV Online Newspaper. Retrieved 2018 - 06 - 17. Jump up ^ Office of the Press Secretary ( May 25, 2017 ). `` Presidential Proclamation Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War ''. whitehouse.gov. Washington, D.C. : White House. Retrieved November 13, 2017. Jump up ^ `` Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War '' ( PDF ). Federal Register. Washington, D.C. : National Archives and Records Administration. May 25, 2012. Archived from the original on November 13, 2017. Retrieved November 11, 2017. 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Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978 - 0742566972. Schell, Jonathan. The Time of Illusion ( 1976 ). Schulzinger, Robert D. A Time for War : The United States and Vietnam, 1941 -- 1975 ( 1997 ). Sheehan, Neil ( 1989 ). A Bright Shining Lie : John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. New York : Vintage. ISBN 978 - 0679724148. Sorley, Lewis, A Better War : The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America 's Last Years in Vietnam ( 1999 ), based upon still classified tape - recorded meetings of top level US commanders in Vietnam, ISBN 0156013096 Spector, Ronald. After Tet : The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam ( 1992 ), very broad coverage of 1968. Stanton, Shelby L. ( 2003 ). Vietnam order of battle ( 2003 ed. ). Stackpole Books. ISBN 0811700712. Stone, Richard ( 2007 ). `` Agent Orange 's Bitter Harvest ''. Science. 315 ( 5809 ) : 176 -- 179. doi : 10.1126 / science. 315.5809. 176. JSTOR 20035179. PMID 17218503. Stuart - Fox, Martin ( 1997 ). A History of Laos. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978 - 0521592352. Summers, Harry G. On Strategy : A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, Presidio press ( 1982 ), ISBN 0891415637 ( 225 pages ) Thayer, Thomas C. ( 1985 ). War Without Fronts : The American Experience in Vietnam. Boulder, Colorado : Westview Press. ISBN 978 - 0813371320. Tucker, Spencer. ed. Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War ( 1998 ) 3 vol. reference set ; also one - volume abridgement ( 2001 ). -- -- -- ( 1999 ). Vietnam. London : UCL Press. ISBN 978 - 1857289213. Tucker, Spencer ( 2011 ) ( 1998 ). The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War : A Political, Social, and Military History. ABC - CLIO. ISBN 978 - 1851099603. Turner, Robert F. ( 1975 ). Vietnamese Communism : Its Origins and Development. Stanford, California : Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 978 - 0817964313. Turse, Nick ( 2013 ). Kill Anything That Moves : The Real American War in Vietnam. New York : Metropolitan Books. ISBN 978 - 0805086911. Vietnam Task Force ( 1969 ). Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force. Washington, D.C. : Office of the Secretary of Defense. Westheider, James E. ( 2007 ). The Vietnam War. Westport, Connecticut : Greenwood Press. ISBN 978 - 0313337550. Willbanks, James H. ( 2009 ). Vietnam War almanac. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978 - 0816071029. Witz, James J. The Tet Offensive : Intelligence Failure in War ( 1991 ). Woodruff, Mark ( 2005 ). Unheralded Victory : The Defeat of The Viet Cong and The North Vietnamese. Arlington, Virginia : Presidio Press. ISBN 0891418660. Young, Marilyn B. ( 1991 ). The Vietnam Wars, 1945 -- 1990. New York : HarperPerennial. ISBN 978 - 0060921071. Xiaoming, Zhang. `` China 's 1979 War With Vietnam : A Reassessment '', China Quarterly. Issue no. 184, ( December 2005 ) `` CJO -- Abstract -- China 's 1979 War with Vietnam : A Reassessment ''. Retrieved 11 June 2008. Primary sources Carter, Jimmy. By The President Of The United States Of America, A Proclamation Granting Pardon For Violations Of The Selective Service Act, 4 August 1964 To 28 March 1973 ( 21 January 1977 ) Central Intelligence Agency. `` Laos '', CIA World Factbook ' Cora Weiss Collection ( materials related to war resistance and peace activism movements during the Vietnam War ), Lloyd Sealy Library Special Collections, John Jay College of Criminal Justice Eisenhower, Dwight D. Mandate for Change. ( 1963 ) a presidential political memoir Ho, Chi Minh. `` Vietnam Declaration of Independence '', Selected Works. ( 1960 -- 1962 ) selected writings LeMay, General Curtis E. and Kantor, MacKinlay. Mission with LeMay ( 1965 ) autobiography of controversial former Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force Kissinger, United States Secretary of State Henry A. `` Lessons on Vietnam '', ( 1975 ) secret memoranda to U.S. President Ford O'Connell, Kim A. ( 2006 ). Primary Source Accounts of the Vietnam War. Berkeley Heights, New Jersey : MyReportLinks.com. ISBN 978 - 1598450019. McCain, John. Faith of My Fathers : A Family Memoir ( 1999 ) ISBN 0060957867 Marshall, Kathryn. In the Combat Zone : An Oral History of American Women in Vietnam, 1966 -- 1975 ( 1987 ) ISBN 0316547077 Martin, John Bartlow. Was Kennedy Planning to Pull out of Vietnam ? ( 1964 ) oral history for the John F. Kennedy Library, tape V, reel 1. Myers, Thomas. Walking Point : American Narratives of Vietnam ( 1988 ) ISBN 0195053516 Public Papers of the Presidents, 1965 ( 1966 ) official documents of U.S. presidents. Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. Robert Kennedy and His Times. ( 1978 ) a first - hand account of the Kennedy administration by one of his principal advisors Sinhanouk, Prince Norodom. `` Cambodia Neutral : The Dictates of Necessity. '' Foreign Affairs. ( 1958 ) describes the geopolitical situation of Cambodia Tang, Truong Nhu. A Viet Cong Memoir ( 1985 ), revealing account by senior NLF official Terry, Wallace, ed. Bloods : An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans ( 1984 ) Truong, Như Tảng ; David Chanoff, Van Toai Doan ( 1985 ). A Vietcong memoir ( 1985 ed. ). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 978 - 0151936366. Total pages : 350 The landmark series Vietnam : A Television History, first broadcast in 1983, is a special presentation of the award - winning PBS history series, American Experience. The Pentagon Papers ( Gravel ed. 5 vol 1971 ) ; combination of narrative and secret documents compiled by Pentagon. excerpts U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States ( multivolume collection of official secret documents ) vol 1 : 1964 ; vol 2 : 1965 ; ; vol 4 : 1966 ; U.S. Department of Defense and the House Committee on Armed Services. U.S. -- Vietnam Relations, 1945 -- 1967. Washington, D.C. Department of Defense and the House Committee on Armed Services, 1971, 12 volumes. Historiography Hall, Simon, `` Scholarly Battles over the Vietnam War '', Historical Journal 52 ( September 2009 ), 813 -- 29. External links Find more aboutVietnam Warat Wikipedia 's sister projects Definitions from Wiktionary Media from Wikimedia Commons Quotations from Wikiquote Textbooks from Wikibooks Learning resources from Wikiversity Data from Wikidata A Vietnam Diary 's Homecoming Video produced by the PBS Series History Detectives Detailed bibliography of Vietnam War Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy -- Vietnam primary sources on U.S. involvement Fallout of the War from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives Glossary of Military Terms & Slang from the Vietnam War Impressions of Vietnam and descriptions of the daily life of a soldier from the oral history of Elliott Gardner, U.S. Army Stephen H. Warner Southeast Asia Photograph Collection at Gettysburg College Timeline US -- Vietnam ( 1947 -- 2001 ) in Open - Content project The U.S. Army in Vietnam the official history of the United States Army The Vietnam War at The History Channel UC Berkeley Library Social Activism Sound Recording Project : Anti-Vietnam War Protests Vietnam war timeline comprehensive timeline of the Vietnam War Virtual Vietnam Archive -- Texas Tech University 1965 -- 1975 Another Vietnam ; Unseen images of the war from the winning side -- Mashable Archival collections about the Vietnam War, University Archives and Special Collections, Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston hide Vietnam War Participants North Vietnam ( Viet Minh / PAVN, Viet Cong ) South Vietnam ( ARVN ) United States Related conflicts Laotian Civil War Cambodian Civil War Cold War ( 1962 -- 79 ) Background French Indochina Japanese occupation State of Vietnam ( 1949 -- 1955 ) First Indochina War ( Viet Minh, Battle of Dien Bien Phu ) 1954 Geneva Conference 1955 referendum North Vietnamese invasion of Laos 1960 South Vietnamese coup attempt Events 1962 : Strategic Hamlet Program 1963 : Buddhist crisis Coup against Diem 1964 : Gulf of Tonkin Incident / Resolution December coup 1965 : U.S. escalation / `` Americanization '' 1965 South Vietnamese coup Bombing of North Vietnam 1968 : Tet Offensive ( Khe Sanh, Hue ) 1970 : Cambodian Campaign 1971 : Vietnamization policy, ARVN campaign in Laos 1972 : Easter Offensive Christmas bombings 1973 : Paris Peace Accords 1974 : Invasion and capture of the Central Highlands 1975 : 1975 Spring Offensive Fall of Saigon Aftermath Cambodian -- Vietnamese War Sino - Vietnamese War Vietnamese boat people Vietnam Veterans Memorial Normalization of US -- Vietnam relations Other topics Agent Orange Australia in the Vietnam War Ho Chi Minh trail Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War Pentagon Papers SEATO Sihanouk Trail South Korea in the Vietnam War United States news media and Vietnam Vietnam War in film Vietnam War in games War crimes ( Hue, My Lai, Đắk Sơn ) Weapons of the Vietnam War Củ Chi tunnels Category Battles and operations show Vietnam War timeline ↓ Battle of Saigon ↓ ARVN Formed ↓ Hòa Hảo defeated ↓ HCM trail established ↓ Laos Invasion ↓ NLF Formed ↓ 1960 Coup Attempt ↓ US Role Expanded ↓ Palace Bombing ↓ Buddhist Crisis ↓ 1963 Coup ↓ Gulf of Tonkin Incident ↓ Laos Bombing Begin ↓ US Forces Deployed ↓ Buddhist Uprising ↓ Sihanouk Trail Created ↓ Tet Offensive ↓ US Begins Withdrawal ↓ PRG Formed ↓ Cambodian Campaign ↓ Lam Son 719 ↓ Easter Offensive ↓ Paris Accords ↓ Spring Offensive ↓ Fall of Saigon ↓ Cambodian War Widens ↓ Christmas Bombings U.S President : Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson Richard Nixon G. Ford RVN Presidents : Ngô Đình Diệm Instability Nguyễn Văn Thiệu Trần Văn Hương DRV General Secretary : Lê Duẩn / President : Ho Chi Minh General Secretary : Lê Duẩn / President : Tôn Đức Thắng NLF Chairman : Nguyễn Hữu Thọ PRG President : Nguyễn Hữu Thọ │ 1955 │ 1956 │ 1957 │ 1958 │ 1959 │ 1960 │ 1961 │ 1962 │ 1963 │ 1964 │ 1965 │ 1966 │ 1967 │ 1968 │ 1969 │ 1970 │ 1971 │ 1972 │ 1973 │ │ hide 20th century in Vietnam World War I Interwar World War II First Indochina War Vietnam War Subsidy phase Đổi Mới Topics related to Vietnam War Armed conflicts involving the United States Armed Forces listed chronologically Domestic Shays ' Rebellion Whiskey Rebellion John Fries Rebellion German Coast Uprising Mormon War Dorr Rebellion Bleeding Kansas Utah War Civil War Brooks -- Baxter War Range War Lincoln County War Johnson County War Coal Creek War Homestead strike Battle of Blair Mountain Bonus Army Battle of Athens Foreign Revolutionary War Cherokee War of 1776 Northwest Indian War Cherokee War of 1786 Coldwater Indian War Cherokee - 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fly zones Somali Civil War Bosnian War Operation Uphold Democracy Kosovo War Operation Infinite Reach USS Cole bombing Afghanistan War Al - Qaeda insurgency in Yemen Operation Enduring Freedom -- Horn of Africa Iraq War Second Liberian Civil War United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti War in North - West Pakistan Insurgency in the Maghreb Libyan Civil War Operation Enduring Freedom -- Philippines Intervention against ISIL Iraq Syria Cameroon Libya Yemeni Civil War Related articles List of conflicts in the U.S. List of wars involving the U.S. Timeline of U.S. military operations Length of U.S. participation in major wars Overseas expansion Military history Covert regime - change actions Casualties of war Peace movement List of anti-war organizations Conscientious objector War on Terror Cold War USA USSR ANZUS NATO Non-Aligned Movement SEATO Warsaw Pact Cold War II 1940s Morgenthau Plan Hukbalahap Rebellion Dekemvriana Percentages agreement Yalta Conference Guerrilla war in the Baltic states Forest Brothers Operation Priboi Operation Jungle Occupation of the Baltic states Cursed soldiers Operation Unthinkable Operation Downfall Potsdam Conference Gouzenko Affair Division of Korea Operation Masterdom Operation Beleaguer Operation Blacklist Forty Iran crisis of 1946 Greek Civil War Baruch Plan Corfu Channel incident Turkish Straits crisis Restatement of Policy on Germany First Indochina War Truman Doctrine Asian Relations Conference May 1947 Crises Marshall Plan Comecon 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état Tito -- Stalin Split Berlin Blockade Western betrayal Iron Curtain Eastern Bloc Western Bloc Chinese Civil War ( Second round ) Malayan Emergency Albanian Subversion 1950s Papua conflict Bamboo Curtain Korean War McCarthyism Egyptian Revolution of 1952 1953 Iranian coup d'état Uprising of 1953 in East Germany Dirty War ( Mexico ) Bricker Amendment 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état Partition of Vietnam Vietnam War First Taiwan Strait Crisis Geneva Summit ( 1955 ) Bandung Conference Poznań 1956 protests Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Suez Crisis `` We will bury you '' Operation Gladio Arab Cold War Syrian Crisis of 1957 1958 Lebanon crisis Iraqi 14 July Revolution Sputnik crisis Second Taiwan Strait Crisis 1959 Tibetan uprising Cuban Revolution Kitchen Debate Sino - Soviet split 1960s Congo Crisis 1960 U-2 incident Bay of Pigs Invasion 1960 Turkish coup d'état Soviet -- Albanian split Berlin Crisis of 1961 Berlin Wall Portuguese Colonial War Angolan War of Independence Guinea - Bissau War of Independence Mozambican War of Independence Cuban Missile Crisis Sino - Indian War Communist insurgency in Sarawak Iraqi Ramadan Revolution Eritrean War of Independence Sand War North Yemen Civil War Aden Emergency 1963 Syrian coup d'état Vietnam War Shifta War Guatemalan Civil War Colombian conflict Nicaraguan Revolution 1964 Brazilian coup d'état Dominican Civil War South African Border War Transition to the New Order Domino theory ASEAN Declaration Laotian Civil War 1966 Syrian coup d'état Argentine Revolution Korean DMZ Conflict Greek military junta of 1967 -- 74 Years of Lead ( Italy ) USS Pueblo incident Six - Day War War of Attrition Dhofar Rebellion Al - Wadiah War Protests of 1968 French May Tlatelolco massacre Cultural Revolution Prague Spring 1968 Polish political crisis Communist insurgency in Malaysia Invasion of Czechoslovakia Iraqi Ba'athist Revolution Goulash Communism Sino - Soviet border conflict CPP -- NPA -- NDF rebellion Corrective Move 1970s Détente Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Black September in Jordan Corrective Movement ( Syria ) Cambodian Civil War Koza riot Realpolitik Ping - pong diplomacy Uganda -- Tanzania War 1971 Turkish military memorandum Corrective Revolution ( Egypt ) Four Power Agreement on Berlin Bangladesh Liberation War 1972 Nixon visit to China North Yemen - South Yemen Border conflict of 1972 Yemenite War of 1972 NDF Rebellion Eritrean Civil Wars 1973 Chilean coup d'état Yom Kippur War 1973 oil crisis Carnation Revolution Spanish transition Metapolitefsi Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Rhodesian Bush War Angolan Civil War Mozambican Civil War Oromo conflict Ogaden War Ethiopian Civil War Lebanese Civil War Sino - Albanian split Cambodian -- Vietnamese War Sino - Vietnamese War Operation Condor Dirty War ( Argentina ) 1976 Argentine coup d'état Korean Air Lines Flight 902 Yemenite War of 1979 Grand Mosque seizure Iranian Revolution Saur Revolution New Jewel Movement 1979 Herat uprising Seven Days to the River Rhine Struggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union 1980s Soviet -- Afghan War 1980 and 1984 Summer Olympics boycotts 1980 Turkish coup d'état Peruvian conflict Casamance conflict Ugandan Bush War Lord 's Resistance Army insurgency Eritrean Civil Wars 1982 Ethiopian -- Somali Border War Ndogboyosoi War United States invasion of Grenada Able Archer 83 Star Wars Iran -- Iraq War Somali Rebellion 1986 Black Sea incident 1988 Black Sea bumping incident South Yemen Civil War Bougainville Civil War 8888 Uprising Solidarity Soviet reaction Contras Central American crisis RYAN Korean Air Lines Flight 007 People Power Revolution Glasnost Perestroika Nagorno - Karabakh War Afghan Civil War United States invasion of Panama 1988 Polish strikes Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 Revolutions of 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall Velvet Revolution Romanian Revolution Peaceful Revolution Die Wende 1990s Mongolian Revolution of 1990 German reunification Yemeni unification Fall of communism in Albania Breakup of Yugoslavia Dissolution of the Soviet Union Dissolution of Czechoslovakia Frozen conflicts Abkhazia China - Taiwan Korea Nagorno - Karabakh South Ossetia Transnistria Sino - Indian border dispute North Borneo dispute Foreign policy Truman Doctrine Containment Eisenhower Doctrine Domino theory Hallstein Doctrine Kennedy Doctrine Peaceful coexistence Ostpolitik Johnson Doctrine Brezhnev Doctrine Nixon Doctrine Ulbricht Doctrine Carter Doctrine Reagan Doctrine Rollback Sovereignty of Puerto Rico during the Cold War Ideologies Capitalism Chicago school Keynesianism Monetarism Neoclassical economics Reaganomics Supply - side economics Thatcherism Communism Marxism -- Leninism Castroism Eurocommunism Guevarism Hoxhaism Juche Maoism Trotskyism Naxalism Stalinism Titoism Other Fascism Islamism Liberal democracy Social democracy Third - 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Yin ( 1965 ) Third Taiwan Strait Crisis ( 1995 -- 96 ) Others vs USSR Sino - Soviet border conflict ( 1969 ) vs United States and allies Korean War ( 1950 -- 53 ) Vietnam War ( 1965 -- 70 ) vs India Sino - Indian War ( 1962 ) Chola incident ( 1967 ) Sino - Indian skirmish ( 1987 ) Sino - Indian Standoff ( 2017 ) vs South Vietnam / Vietnam Paracel Islands ( 1974 ) Sino - Vietnamese War ( 1979 ) Sino - Vietnamese conflicts 1979 -- 90 Johnson South Reef Skirmish ( 1988 ) See also Incorporation of Tibet into the People 's Republic of China Incorporation of Xinjiang into the People 's Republic of China Armed conflicts involving Russia ( incl. Imperial and Soviet times ) Internal Razin 's Rebellion Bulavin Rebellion Pugachev 's Rebellion Decembrist revolt Russian Civil War August Uprising Bitch Wars Coup d'état attempt ( 1991 ) 1993 Russian constitutional crisis First Chechen War War of Dagestan Second Chechen War Insurgency in the North Caucasus Pre-17th century Muscovite -- Volga Bulgars war ( 1376 ) First Muscovite -- Lithuanian War ( 1492 -- 94 ) Russo - Swedish War ( 1495 -- 97 ) Second Muscovite -- Lithuanian War ( 1500 -- 03 ) Third Muscovite -- Lithuanian War ( 1507 -- 08 ) Fourth Muscovite -- Lithuanian War ( 1512 -- 22 ) Fifth Muscovite -- Lithuanian War ( 1534 -- 37 ) Russo - Crimean Wars Russo - Kazan Wars Russo - Swedish War ( 1554 -- 57 ) Livonian War Russian Conquest of Siberia ( 1580 -- 1747 ) Russo - Swedish War ( 1590 -- 95 ) Polish -- Muscovite War ( 1605 -- 18 ) and the Time of Troubles Ingrian War Smolensk War Russo - Persian War ( 1651 -- 53 ) Sino - Russian border conflicts ( 1652 -- 89 ) Russo - Polish War ( 1654 -- 67 ) Deluge Second Northern War Russo - Turkish War ( 1676 -- 81 ) Russo - Turkish War ( 1686 -- 1700 ) 18th -- 19th century Great Northern War Russo - Turkish War ( 1710 -- 11 ) Russo - Persian War ( 1722 -- 23 ) War of the Polish Succession ( 1733 -- 38 ) Austro - Russian -- Turkish War ( 1735 -- 39 ) War of the Austrian Succession ( 1740 -- 48 ) Russo - Swedish War ( 1741 -- 43 ) Seven Years ' War Russo - Turkish War ( 1768 -- 74 ) Bar Confederation Russo - Turkish War ( 1787 -- 92 ) Russo - Swedish War ( 1788 -- 90 ) Russo - Polish War ( 1792 ) Kościuszko Uprising Russo - Persian War ( 1796 ) War of the Second Coalition War of the Third Coalition Russo - Persian War ( 1804 -- 13 ) War of the Fourth Coalition Russo - Turkish War ( 1806 -- 12 ) Anglo - Russian War Finnish War War of the Fifth Coalition French invasion of Russia War of the Sixth Coalition War of the Seventh Coalition Russian conquest of the Caucasus Caucasian War Russo - Circassian War Murid War Russo - Persian War ( 1826 -- 28 ) Russo - Turkish War ( 1828 -- 29 ) November Uprising Russian conquest of Bukhara Hungarian Revolution of 1848 Crimean War January Uprising Russo - Turkish War ( 1877 -- 78 ) Boxer Rebellion Russian invasion of Manchuria 20th century Russo - Japanese War Russian Invasion of Tabriz, 1911 World War I Russian Civil War Ukrainian -- Soviet War Finnish Civil War Heimosodat Soviet westward offensive of 1918 -- 19 Estonian War of Independence Latvian War of Independence Lithuanian -- Soviet War Polish -- Soviet War Red Army invasion of Azerbaijan Red Army invasion of Armenia Red Army invasion of Georgia Red Army intervention in Mongolia Sino - Soviet conflict ( 1929 ) Soviet -- Japanese border conflicts Soviet invasion of Xinjiang Xinjiang War ( 1937 ) World War II Soviet invasion of Poland Winter War Soviet occupation of the Baltic states ( 1940 ) Continuation War Eastern Front ( World War II ) Anglo - Soviet invasion of Iran Soviet -- Japanese War Guerrilla war in the Baltic states Ili Rebellion First Indochina War Korean War Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Eritrean War of Independence War of Attrition Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia Sino - Soviet border conflict Vietnam War Ogaden War South African Border War Soviet -- Afghan War Post-Soviet Nagorno - Karabakh War Transnistria War Georgian Civil War Tajikistani Civil War Russo - Georgian War Intervention in Ukraine Annexation of Crimea War in Donbass Intervention in Syria Military history of Russia Russian Winter Russian Revolution Cold War Sphere of influence Armed conflicts involving Cuba External & international Ten Years ' War Cuban War of Independence Spanish -- American War World War I World War II 1952 Cuban Coup Cuban Revolution Escambray Rebellion Congo Crisis Bay of Pigs Invasion Sand War Cuban Missile Crisis Vietnam War Ñancahuazú Guerrilla Eritrean War of Independence South African Border War Yom Kippur War Ethiopian Civil War Angolan Civil War Ogaden War Nicaraguan Revolution Salvadoran Civil War Invasion of Grenada Related articles Military history Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces Cold War Sphere of influence Intervention in Angola BNF : cb11937639v ( data ) GND : 4063516 - 8 LCCN : sh85143277 NARA : 10643608 NDL : 00560641 Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vietnam_War&oldid=846585768 '' Categories : Vietnam War 1950s conflicts 1960s conflicts 1970s conflicts Cambodian Civil War Cold War conflicts Communism - based civil wars Counterculture of the 1960s History of Vietnam Imperialism Indochina Wars Laotian Civil War Presidency of Dwight D. 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Question: why did the united states send troops to fight in vietnam
Answer: to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam