​The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was also known as the Second Indochina War. It was a Cold War-era that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from December 1956 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. Involvement from Vietnam surrounding territories and North America and surrounding territories influenced the war. The Viet Cong fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region. As the war wore on, the part of the Viet Cong in the fighting decreased as the role of the NVA grew. 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, and over time the North Vietnamese airspace became the most heavily defended airspace of any in the world. The U.S. government viewed American involvement in the war as a way to prevent a Communist takeover of South Vietnam. This was part of a wider containment strategy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread of communism. According to the U.S. domino theory, if one state went Communist, other states in the region would follow, and U.S. knew the spread of Communist across all of Vietnam was unacceptable. While the North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam under communist rule. Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962. The U.S. involvement increased further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. Regular U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Bordering areas of Laos and Cambodia were heavily bombed by U.S. forces as American involvement in the war peaked in 1968, the same year that the Communist side launched the Tet Offensive. Although the Tet Offensive failed in its goal of overthrowing the South Vietnamese government but became the turning point in the war, as it showed that South Vietnam was unable to fend for itself against the North, even with many years of enormous U.S. military aid. Despite the Paris Peace Accord, which was signed by all parties in January 1973, the fighting continued. In the U.S. and the Western world a large anti-Vietnam War movement developed. This movement was both part of a larger counter culture of the 1960s and also fed into it. Direct U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973 as a result of the Case Church Amendment passed by the U.S. Congress. The capture of Saigon at the hands of 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 left a huge human cost in terms of fatalities.