Although the Vietnam war started in 1946, it dragged out during the Cold War as communist North Vietnamese forces were attacking South Vietnamese forces in an attempt to establish the South as a communist state. Ho Chi Minh. the communist leader of the North, maintained communist forces in the North known as the Viet Minh, as well as communist forces in the South known as the Vietcong. The war started when the French attacked North Vietnam and offered the people independence and claimed that the true leader of Vietnam was Bao Dai, but communist Eastern European countries and the Russians claimed that Ho Chi Minh was the true leader of Vietnam. The French were struggling, as they found it difficult to suppress the guerrilla forces of the Viet Minh. The French, in 1953, sent troops to Dien Bien Phu in North Vietnam, where they were met with North Vietnamese forces, forced to surrender, and then forced to remove their troops from Vietnam altogether.
Vietnam was split into North Vietnam and South Vietnam by means of the Geneva Accords, and agreement in 1954 between the world powers. In this agreement, the 17th parallel was established as the division line of the North and the South. Ho Chi Minh was elected leader of the North, and Ngo Dinh Diem was elected as leader of the South. Ngo Dinh Diem captured American support due to his strong opposition to communist ideals, yet his human rights beliefs were controversial. Even after the Geneva Accords, North Vietnamese were attacking the South more viciously. Communist forces used the Ho Chi Minh trail to travel from the North to the South, attacking Southern Vietnamese regions._ The Vietnam War, even though not a direct war between the Soviets and Americans, was a proxy war in which the United States aided South Vietnam and the USSR aided communist China, who then aided North Vietnam. However, in 1961, American forces were sent into South Vietnam, a decision made by President John F. Kennedy. After thousands of casualties, including a huge amount of Americans, and multiple destructive and savage battles, American involvement in the war drew to a close once President Richard M. Nixon ordered the withdrawal and process of "Vietnamization" of American forces from Vietnam in 1969. The war finally ended with the communist Northern forces' invasion of the South's capital city Saigon, uniting North and South Vietnam under a communist government and renaming Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City. America's intervention in Vietnam was unsuccessful, dampening the American public's confidence in America's power. _ |