Vietnam War

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: The North Vietnamese communist government fought South Vietnam and its main ally, the United States, in the lengthy, expensive, and contentious Vietnam War. The ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union exacerbated the issue. Over 3 million people died in the Vietnam War, and more than half of them were Vietnamese civilians (including over 58,000 Americans).

When Did the Vietnam War Start?

Although there had been persistent violence in the region for many years before 1954, the Vietnam War and the United States' direct participation in it did not. The armed struggle between the northern and southern troops persisted after Ho's communist forces seized control in the north until the northern Viet Minh won the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. French colonial control in Indochina came to an end after the conflict when they lost. Vietnam was divided by the following treaty, which was signed in July 1954 at a meeting in Geneva, along the 17th Parallel (17 degrees north latitude), with Ho in charge in the North and Bao in the South. The pact also mandated that countrywide reunification elections take place in 1956.

WHAT WAS THE CAUSE OF THE WAR

Generally speaking, historians have pinpointed a number of various factors for the Vietnam War, such as the Cold War's role in the development of communism, American containment, and European imperialism in Vietnam.

Consequences of the War for Vietnam:

The massive death toll of the Vietnam War was its most noticeable immediate result. An estimated 2 million Vietnamese civilians, 1.1 million North Vietnamese soldiers, and 200,000 South Vietnamese soldiers perished in the conflict. Between 1965 and 1973, America unleashed 8 million tons of bombs during the air war. The kind of bombs used varied; they included napalm used in airstrikes on communities that were suspected of harboring the NLF and high explosive bombs. High-explosive bombs continued to pose issues even after the war was over because many of them did not explode upon impact.