who won the vietnam war?

On September 30, 1964, the first large-scale antiwar demonstration took place in America, on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. Even though they were once enemy combatants, North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese women veterans deserve an important place in our history of the Vietnam War. At the 1973 Paris Peace talks, Nguyen Thi Binh (1927), who negotiated on behalf of the Viet Cong, was credited for advancing the peace process thanks to her diplomatic skills. We used shovels because I was afraid a digger would cut [my teammates] bodies into pieces. She described how she looked after her team, trying to make an inhumane situation bearable. (America basically fought the war for South Vietnam). For protection, when the U.S. began dropping people-sniff bombstree-like heat-sensor bombs that detected body movements in the jungle they built individual bomb shelters by the roadside. Its primary goal was to demoralize the North Vietnamese and diminish their manufacturing and transportation abilities. The peasants resented being forced from their ancestral lands, and consolidating them gave the VC better targets. There was no smell so we knew there were no more body parts to find. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. In the First Major Offensive of the Vietnam War, Both Sides Claimed Victory. (Ten times as many Vietnamese had fled the north, where the Communist Party was killing off its rivals, seizing property, and oppressing the large Catholic population.) Its army lacked reserves, while the NVA was growing. Which country agreed to give up its claims to the Oregon territory in the Adams-onis treaty? However, the legacy of the war on South Vietnam has been disastrous, and the benefits of victory have not been forthcoming. Congress swiftly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that removed most restrictions from the president in regards to Vietnam. President Johnson, watching the broadcast, said, If weve lost Walter Cronkite, weve lost the country. In May, Johnson announced he would not run for reelection. Tensions between blacks and whites had been intensifying for years as African Americans sought to change centuries-old racial policies. Diem fell from favor with his American patrons, partly over disagreements in how to handle the war against the VC and partly because of his unpopular suppression of religious sects and anyone he feared threatened his regime. What years of time was the separate but equal doctrine the law of the land in the US? Post-war, the French tried to re-establish control but faced organized opposition from the Viet Minh (short for Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi, or League for the Independence of Vietnam), led by Ho Chi Minh and Giap. The US claimed to have achieved peace with honour when the peace agreement was formally signed in Paris on January 27th 1973, however due to the purely military focus of the agreement, there was no long-term solution proposed, and both North and South Vietnamese forces continued to battle after the agreement was signed. North Vietnam spent two years rebuilding its military; South Vietnam was hamstrung in its responses by a fear the U.S. Congress would cut off all aid if it took military action against communist buildup. On January 27, 1973, peace accords were signed between North Vietnam and the U.S. Young, Marilyn. During World War II, American involvement began to escalate under President John F. Kennedys administration (January 1961November 1963). WebVietnam War Failure. Some 80,000 Vietnamese from the south had moved to the north after the Geneva Agreements were signed. Vietnam had been a part of French Indochina prior to World War II, and was occupied by the Japanese during the war. In any event, North Vietnamese women, although drafted into roles behind the lines ended up on the front lines of the U.S. air war that targeted the whole of North Vietnam, obliterating coastal towns into as many little Dresdens (and beyond into Laos and Cambodia) from the East Sea to the Truong Son Mountains. The pilot of an F-8E Crusader did not see any ships in the area where the enemy was reported, and years later crew members said they never saw attacking craft. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson had not been heavily involved with policy toward Vietnam; however, upon becoming president, Johnson immediately focused on the war. WebAnswer (1 of 19): North Vietnam defeated South Vietnam in 1975 with the Fall of Saigon. Military personnel, including nurses, were warned not to wear their uniforms in the States. U.S. popular culture did even worse. This comes to less than 300,000 losses. Guerrilla warfare (asymmetrical warfare) does not permit such clear-cut data. South Vietnam The insurgency was called the National Liberation Front (PLF); however, its soldiers and operatives became more commonly known by their opponents as the Viet Cong (VC), short for Vietnamese Communists. This would be a war without a front or a rear; it would involve full-scale combat units and individuals carrying out terrorist activities such as the Brink Hotel bombing. Some enlisted. The North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong, however, are said to have lost more than a million soldiers and two million civilians. In less than two weeks, these strategic bombers had shattered the norths defenses. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. North Vietnam won the Vietnam War. Two U.S. helicopter units arrived in Saigon in 1961. You live once and you die once, she replied. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemys intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. Yet, fifty years on, the history of the women who defeated a superpower, while celebrated in Vietnam, remains largely unrecognized and undocumented in our history of the war. There is considerable debate over whether he was primarily nationalist or communist, but he was not especially anti-Western. Frances military involvement in Vietnam began when it sent warships in 1847, ostensibly to protect Christians from the ruling emperor Gia Long. The war was hard for women, she said. The United States committed some 550,000 troops to the Vietnam front at the height of the conflict, suffered more than 58,000 casualties, and engaged in battle after battle with communist forces in the region until its withdrawal in 1973. How the Claymore mine became one of the most iconic explosive devices of the post-World War II era. Over 500,000 wounded, Explore articles from the HistoryNet archives about Vietnam War. However, the economic performance of Vietnam since reunification has been poor, and the country remains one of the poorest in the world as the result of the destruction caused by the war, and subsequent economic sanctions placed against the Communist nation. What are the key features and benefits of Vision Engineering products in the UK? In terms of body count, the U.S. and South Vietnam won a clear victory. Due to their forced withdrawal from Vietnam, it is fairly clear that the US lost the Vietnam War in a military sense. Turnbull, C.M. It claimed,In one day of ferocious fighting we had eliminated from the field of battle a total of 919 American troops, had knocked out 22 enemy vehicles and 13 helicopters, and had captured one M-14 rifle. Marine losses actually were 45 dead, 203 wounded, and a few vehicles damaged. It divided the nation more than any other issue since the civil war, and destroyed its overwhelming sense of supremacy. Its origins were complex, its lessons disputed, its legacy still to be assessed by future generations. In a military sense, it is clear that the North Vietnamese troops defeated those of South Vietnam in April 1975, with the fall of Saigon and the eventual reunification of Vietnam. That same month, Kennedy himself was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Updates? Nguyn Th Kim Hu remembered the April 1966 bombing when more than half her team perished. The ARVN bent but did not break. He has written that he was prepared for a 25-year war; he realized he did not have to achieve military victory; he only had to avoid losing. Why did President Eisenhower support the new anticommunist government of South Vietnam. How co2 is dissolve in cold drink and why? Originally published at http://portal.jarbury.net/essay/vietnam.html, Posted in 20th century History, Asian History, Tagged Cold War, Communism, Domino theory, French Indochina, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Soviet Union, United States, Vietnam, Vietnam War. Civilian deaths during that time period were estimated at 2 million, but the U.S. estimate of civilians killed in the north at 30,000. The will of the US government, and the people, was definitely waning by 1970 as the public became increasingly opposed to the war. When the war ended in 1945, there was increased pressure for independence while the French sought to reassert their control over the area. Im the News & Social Editor at HistoryNet and a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill, Spitfires, and Michigan football. This grew into the operation known as Rolling Thunder that began on March 2, 1965, and continued to November 2, 1968. The U.S. Air Force and Navy dropped over 7 million tons of bombs over North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, more than twice the total of U.S. bombings over Europe and Asia during World War II. The domino fell but did not take down any of those around it. Kelley Tells Black Working Class History Through Family, Review: J.T. After the bombings, she searched for teammates buried in the explosions to give them a decent burial. We had to rebuild the road every day because there were so many bombs The worst B-52 attacks were in 1966. This was not necessarily unexpected, as the Communist forces saw the struggle against America and its South Vietnamese allies as another chapter in the nations thousands of years of resistance to Chinese and, later, French rule. He closed by saying: To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. Clearly, the reluctance of the US to continue fighting the Vietnam War played right into the hands of the Communist forces, as they knew how weak and unstable the South Vietnamese regime was. Population in the south was mostly clustered in a few areas along the coast; the north always enjoyed a larger population. South Korea: 50,000 General Westmoreland had been promoted to Army Chief of Staff and replaced in Vietnam by Gen. Creighton Abrams. China conquered the northern part of modern Vietnam in 111 BC and retained control until 938 AD; it continued to exert some control over the Vietnamese until 1885. One example, cited in Grab Their Belts to Fight Them: The Viet Congs Big-Unit War Against the U.S., 19651966, by Warren Wilkins, is a description of the first major battle between the VC and American ForcesU.S. (Part 2, by WilliamMiles), http://portal.jarbury.net/essay/vietnam.html. Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. Through their huge technical advantage, the US expected to be able to beat the Communists easily. Ruling out an invasion of North Vietnam assured that a purely military victory would not be possible, a fact that was at odds with many Americans expectations for the war. They helped defeat two superpowersthe French in 1954 and the Americans in 1975whose armed forces were made up primarily of men. By the time of World War II, a number of groups sought Vietnamese independence but as Vo Nguyen Giapwho would build Vietnams postWWII armyexpressed it, the communists were the best organized and most action-oriented of these groups. Eventually a ceasefire agreement was reached on October 8 1972, this agreement allowed all Communist troops to remain in position while US troops would be withdrawn and prisoners of war exchanged. Support for the war eroded further. A month after she enlisted in 1965, the U.S. unleashed Operation Rolling Thunder, a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam intended to interdict transportation routes and stop the spread of communism. Through their huge technical They responded quickly, recapturing lost ground and decimating an enemy who had finally come out to fight in the open. Communist losses were extremely heavy. The U.S. Strategic Air Command B-52 bombers dropped some The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) advised that was not the caseAmerica had a strong military presence in the Pacific that would serve as a deterrent. The South Vietnamese government they attempted to bolster through vast amounts of aid, clearly lacked leadership and commitment of their troops and almost inevitably seemed doomed to lose against their northern countrymen. How does SPSS help for dissertation and thesis writing? A cadre was drawn from those who went north; they were trained, equipped and sent back to the south to aid in organizing and guiding the insurgency. the war between Vietnam and the USA the winner was Vietnam. They struck at least 30 provincial capitals and the major cities of Saigon and Hue. In retaliation for the invasion, and in hopes of forcing Hanoi to negotiate in good faith, Nixon ordered Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam to be mined and he intensified bombing of North Vietnam. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress sole authority to issue declarations of war. Usually it refers to the period when the United States and other members of the SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) joined the forces with the Republic of South Vietnam to contest communist forces, comprised of South Vietnamese guerrillas and regular-force units, generally known as Viet Cong (VC), and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). The Vietnam War, Basingtoke, 1998. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. Although publicly the war in the south was described as a civil war within South Vietnam, it was guided, equipped and reinforced by the communist leadership in Hanoi. For the first time, MACV worked with South Vietnams government to create annual plans. Ho Chi Minh, Stalin and Churchill introduced the draft for women only when they were needed to replace men fighting on the frontlines. By nearly every metric, the Vietnam War was, in the common sense of the word, a war. She invited me in to talk about her harrowing days defending the Trail where she had served as the leader of a majority-female platoon between 1965 and 1967. North Vietnam defeated South Vietnam; the North won the war. That changed in August 1964. Both the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN) and the VC used torture, to extract information or to cowl opposition. This began a series of destabilizing changes in government leadership. The 800,000 women who served in the Soviet Armed Forces in World War II, were recently given a place in history thanks to Svetlana Alexievichs ground-breaking The Unwomanly Face of War (Penguin 2015) which won the Nobel Prize for Literature. To alleviate period pain, they gathered medicinal plants in the jungle. Then, on March 30, 1972, the North Vietnamese attacked across the 17th parallel with 14 divisions and additional individual regiments. Women fighters in North Vietnam played a key role in stopping the most intense bombing in modern times. North Vietnam was a prodigy of both the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Red China. War is not always the answer. How far do you agree? The VC was effectively finished; it would not field more than 25,00040,000 troops at any time for the remainder of the war. This presented the new MACV commander (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam), General William C. Westmoreland with a thorny challenge: how to show the American people progress was being made. A notable exception was Even The Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam (Wiley, 1998), a scholarly treatment by Karen Gottschang Turner with Phan Thanh Hao. And they were prepared to accept unlimited losses to achieve their sacred objective., The North Vietnamese quickly realised that they did not have the military strength to drive the US from Vietnam; instead they sought to break the will of the US government to continue the conflict. Youth Volunteer brigades were in charge of decommissioning unexploded bombs to keep the truck convoys moving south. Corruption and instability in South Vietnams government did not instill confidence in its people, or in the Americans working with it. Two nights later, Maddox and the destroyer USS Turner Joy were on patrol in the Gulf and reported they were under attack. Supported financially by the US, France fought a war against the Vietnamese from 1946-1954, where they lost a decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu. How much should a book with more than 3,000 words sell for? In the early 20th century, Vietnamese nationalism began to rise, clashing with the French colonial rulers. The war was a political war, with the military severely limited on who or what they could attack. Who won the Vietnam War? During President Dwight Eisenhowers administration (19531961), financial aid was given to pay South Vietnams military forces and American advisors were sent to help train them. Was the Vietnam War an undeclared or declared war? President Harry S. Truman subsidized their effort to take back their Indochina colonies. Undoubtedly, news media played an important role in Americans saying, Enough. Indeed, Vo Nyugen Giap had always envisioned using media as one of his spear points for victory. One of the lingering legacies of the Vietnam War is the widespread belief in America that the media cost us the war in Vietnam. Images such as the burning monk; South Vietnamese Police Chief Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan about to pull the trigger of a pistol pointed at the head of a bound VC prisoner; of a naked young girl running crying down a road after an American napalm strike that left her badly burnedthese images and others became seared into the minds of Americans on the homefront, and in those of civilians in allied nations such as Australia. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Recording and teaching the other side of war, while a step towards peace through our understanding of the other side, may appear to disrespect Americas veterans and the fallen. By years end, 23,000 American military personnel would be in South Vietnam. Learn about Vietnam War protests, the Tet Offensive, the My Lai Massacre, the Pentagon Papers What is the main reason for delay in marriage? In 1972 a poll determined he was the most trusted man in America.. The world won the war. Tet Offensive, attacks staged by North Vietnamese forces beginning in the early hours of January 31, 1968, during the Vietnam War. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. North Vietnamese officers, after the war, said the only thing they feared was an American-led invasion of the north, but the U.S. was not going to risk starting World War III, and at the time that seemed to loom as a distinct possibility. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. After thirty years of war it became clear how different the two Vietnams had become, with the North being run by a centralised party state in direct contrast to the South still swollen by the legacy of the US. Most historians, journalists and commentators who covered and wrote about the Vietnam War from our side are men. (An American medic treated him during World War II, probably saving his life.) The Vietnamese nationalists were winning their fight for independence under Funds, commodities and technicians were poured into South Vietnam during the early 1960s, in an attempt to win the hearts and minds of the [South Vietnamese] people. In 1965, US president Lyndon Johnson escalated the war; by introducing US combat troops to counter the advance of Communist forces. No. Even some former Communist officials such as Dr. Duong Quynh Hoa have admitted, Communism has been catastrophic. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. The US did not know the terrain in the Vietnam. The US lost the American Public and therefore the Vietnam War. The Gold and Dollar 1968 Economic Crisis contributed to the US losing the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War saw a Severely Limited Bombing Campaign. Losing the Hearts and Minds caused the Vietnam War to fail. Moreover, the withdrawal of US troops was exactly what the North Vietnamese had attempted to do, by frustrating the military as well as the US public, the North Vietnamese managed to get an army to withdraw, where they knew there was no way they have enough firepower to drive the US out of South Vietnam. Although Americas war in Vietnam failed to salvage the Republic of South Vietnam, it bought time in which neighboring countries improved their economies and defensive capabilities, and it may have discouraged greater communist activism in places like the Philippines. The young women had left home for the first time to take up their posts in the malaria-infested jungle of the Truong Son Mountains where they lived in caves and underground tunnels. In the eyes of many today, Vietnam can still be seen as a country ravaged by two generations of almost uninterrupted conflict, its problems exacerbated by the blunders of its geriatric leaders who knew little else than war. The income per capita of Vietnam is less than US$300 a year, making it one of the poorest countries in the world pragmatic reform undertaken out of almost desperation during the early 1990s has led to an improvement in the standard of living, but the legacy of the war still lives on. Of course, that's not the reason the U.S. lost the war. The The immense toll on Vietnamese society, which they still face today as one of the worlds poorest nations, has only been made worse by ideological leaders stuck in the nineteenth century. Congress did that, and thereby caused the deaths of many South Vietnam people They provided their teams with food, clothing, medicine and a decent burial, a holistic approach to be emulated in the military today. 170,000220,000 military Seven more such immolations occurred that year. Party officials have never understood the need for rational development. The answer is that North Vietnam may have won the war, but not over US forces.

Military W2 Employee Address, Who Are Virginia Senators And Representatives, Cogic Pastors And Elders Manual, News With Percentages, Property Lines Map California, British Attack Copenhagen Ww2,