How long was vietnam

In July , a treaty to split the county along the 17th parallel was reached. However, the treated also called for an election two years later to unify the country. A year later, anti-communist leader Ngo Dinh Diem ousted emperor Bao from power and became the president of South Vietnam.

By , the United States had committed half a million troops to Vietnam. It is estimated that approximately 58, Americans were killed while another , were wounded. Two million Vietnamese died and another twelve million became refugees. In , the country was united as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It is worth noticing that Vietnam invaded Cambodia in the wake of the Vietnam War to overthrow the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in the war which would last until September What was the impact of the Vietnam War?

Previous Post: What happened after the Vietnam war? Next Post: How did the Vietnam War end? Show us some Love If you've found our articles helpful, please like , comment, share and make a small donation to support our work. Gulf of Tonkin incident. Viet Cong establishment.

But while Ho and his supporters wanted a nation modeled after other communist countries, Bao and many others wanted a Vietnam with close economic and cultural ties to the West. The Vietnam War and active U. The French loss at the battle ended almost a century of French colonial rule in Indochina.

The subsequent treaty signed in July at a Geneva conference split Vietnam along the latitude known as the 17th Parallel 17 degrees north latitude , with Ho in control in the North and Bao in the South. The treaty also called for nationwide elections for reunification to be held in Eisenhower had pledged his firm support to Diem and South Vietnam. Though the NLF claimed to be autonomous and that most of its members were not communists, many in Washington assumed it was a puppet of Hanoi.

A team sent by President John F. Kennedy in to report on conditions in South Vietnam advised a build-up of American military, economic and technical aid in order to help Diem confront the Viet Cong threat. By , the U. A coup by some of his own generals succeeded in toppling and killing Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, in November , three weeks before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

Congress soon passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution , which gave Johnson broad war-making powers, and U. The bombing campaign was meant to disrupt the flow of supplies across the Ho Chi Minh trail into Vietnam and to prevent the rise of the Pathet Lao, or Lao communist forces. The U. In March , Johnson made the decision—with solid support from the American public—to send U. By June, 82, combat troops were stationed in Vietnam, and military leaders were calling for , more by the end of to shore up the struggling South Vietnamese army.

Despite the concerns of some of his advisers about this escalation, and about the entire war effort amid a growing anti-war movement , Johnson authorized the immediate dispatch of , troops at the end of July and another , in In contrast to the air attacks on North Vietnam, the U. Westmoreland pursued a policy of attrition, aiming to kill as many enemy troops as possible rather than trying to secure territory. Heavy bombing by B aircraft or shelling made these zones uninhabitable, as refugees poured into camps in designated safe areas near Saigon and other cities.

Even as the enemy body count at times exaggerated by U. Additionally, supported by aid from China and the Soviet Union, North Vietnam strengthened its air defenses. By November , the number of American troops in Vietnam was approaching ,, and U.

The later years of the war saw increased physical and psychological deterioration among American soldiers—both volunteers and draftees—including drug use , post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD , mutinies and attacks by soldiers against officers and noncommissioned officers. Between July and December , more than , U.

Bombarded by horrific images of the war on their televisions, Americans on the home front turned against the war as well: In October , some 35, demonstrators staged a massive Vietnam War protest outside the Pentagon.

Opponents of the war argued that civilians, not enemy combatants, were the primary victims and that the United States was supporting a corrupt dictatorship in Saigon. On January 31, , some 70, DRV forces under General Vo Nguyen Giap launched the Tet Offensive named for the lunar new year , a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than cities and towns in South Vietnam.

Taken by surprise, U. Reports of the Tet Offensive stunned the U. With his approval ratings dropping in an election year, Johnson called a halt to bombing in much of North Vietnam though bombings continued in the south and promised to dedicate the rest of his term to seeking peace rather than reelection.

Despite the later inclusion of the South Vietnamese and the NLF, the dialogue soon reached an impasse, and after a bitter election season marred by violence, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency.

In an attempt to limit the volume of American casualties, he announced a program called Vietnamization : withdrawing U.