Tung on Guerrilla Warfare). In both wars the guerrilla fighters established their base away from the cities where they knew the terrain and had the support of the people. The Vietnamese, Viet Cong and Vietminh saw the Americans as neo-colonialist or imperialists occupying their country, relocating them from their ancestral land as the French and Japanese had done before, (www.historynet.com/vietnam war). They were defending someone who was corrupt and against the will of the people who wanted a united Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh started phase one of Mao's Guerilla Warfare as a counter resistance to Diem policies, by organizing fighters, support bases and soliciting support from the peasants. The British Soldier's presence in the colonies were
On the 19th of December 1946, The Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh leadership launched a rebellion against the French authority governing the colonies of French Indochina. The first few years of the war were a low-level rural insurgency against French authority. However, after the Chinese communists reached the Northern border of Vietnam in 1949 the conflict became a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons. These were supplied by the Chinese communist and Russian communist.
American soldiers either volunteered or got drafted to serve their country. Most soldiers feared or hated the Vietnamese. While most wars are fought through conventional means, there were basically two wars that took place in Vietnam; the traditional war from 1964 – 1968 and the unconventional war from 1968 – 1972. “From the American G.I.’s point of view, the enemy was the North Vietnamese army whose members could be easily recognized and thus killed legally. The G.I.’s could related
The Vietnam War was first derived from the gradual oppression of the communist party of the north over the region of South Vietnam. The North Communist party was supported mainly by China and the Soviet Union whiles the Anti-Communist party of South Vietnam was supported by United States and France. The communist party group, as known as the Viet Cong, was recognized for their guerilla war strategies within the region of South Vietnam, intended to fully expand and unify Vietnam under Communist rule. U.S. involvement with the Vietnam War starting in November 1, 1955, develops from the theory of the domino effect, stating that if one country falls into communism, a threat that can develop into the encouragement and spread of communism throughout the world in the future. It is basically viewed as a potential harm to the welfare of the United Sates. Therefore, due to the conflicting forces of the historical, political, economic and cultural nature of the war itself, it is known to be the longest enduring war in United States history that altered many lives of the Vietnamese and American community, leading to suffrage and acts of courage.
soldiers were fighting because they had been drafted. They just wanted to survive and go home. They would not have to face any direct consequences of losing the war. The Viet Minh, however, were fighting for a cause, and used much the same tactics as the United States in their war for independence. The American Revolution used guerilla warfare tactics to defeat the superior power of the British army. The U.S. could have taken from this experience, and perhaps fared better in Vietnam.
According to Tim O 'Brien, the Viet Cong 's and United States ' fighting tactics were a waste of people 's lives. The Viet Cong used guerrilla warfare tactics which resulted in Americans being killed and in turn caused innocent civilians to die. The Viet Cong planted mines along the paths and in the jungles to injure American soldiers. The Viet Cong were never out in the open and had the sympathy of the Vietnamese living there. Many young Vietnamese children and women planted mines, spied, and killed American soldiers. The American soldiers could not tell the difference between the enemy and the innocent, so the soldiers indiscriminately killed everybody. The American strategy was to find the Viet Cong and kill them. The American soldiers walked from village to village in search of the Viet Cong. As they went from place to place, soldiers would
You could never tell who was the enemy was therefore you treated everyone with suspicion- Thomas Giltner, US Soldier Contested SpacesThe foreign US soldiers had no knowledge of the geography of Vietnam (jungles, mountains, rainforests, and climate) but the VC did, and used it to their advantage. The US, by engaging in massive firepower, killing many non-combatants, destroyed the US credibility in the minds of the people. The VC sympathised with the peoples hardships and this was effective as they won the people over. The VC had extensive knowledge of guerrilla warfare, it was their war, and the US fought tractional conventional warfare which did have some effected, but eventually the US ran out of will. The military operations were
The Vietnam War was fought between North Vietnam communists led by their leader Ho Chi Minh and South Vietnam anti-communists led by their president Ngo Dinh Diem. North Vietnam was trying to taking over South Vietnam to make it a communist country. That is when the U.S. came knocking on South Vietnam’s door and gave them much needed help in 1950. In Eric Foner’s and John A Garraty’s essay, “Vietnam War,” they explain, “from Washington’s perspective, . . . [a]ny communist anywhere, at home or abroad, was, by definition, an enemy of the United States” because of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “domino theory” (Foner). Eisenhower’s “domino theory,” was a theory that if communists took over Vietnam, they would gradually control all of Southeast Asia. The first aid given by the U.S. was to France. Willbanks explains in his essay that the U.S. provided France, a South Vietnamese ally, $2.6
Vietnamese people wanted freedom and communist Ho Chi Minh wanted freedom for Vietnam therefore people supported him. But they all know that Vietnam belong to the French. Ho fought with French his army was in the north and he tried to get US to help him but US didn’t because he was communist and were afraid that communism would spread throughout South
The North Vietnamese soldiers were dedicated to fight for their independence and for communism. They were conscripted forces and they were aggressively faithful to their leader, Ho Chi Minh. The Viet Cong were more motivated to fight and win the war than the Americans as they were defending their own motherland. The Viet Cong were aided by the North Vietnamese leaders with military supplies and philosophy support. They also had the backing from China and the Soviet Union who were also communist
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era conflict that started in 1946 and ended in 1974, taking nearly 30 years to resolve. The war was fundamentally a conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, where the North was communist and South was not. The United States, France, the United Kingdom and other non-communist allies supported the non-communist South Vietnam. China, Russia (USSR), Cuba, Cambodia and other Communist allies supported the regime in the north. North Vietnam saw the United States involvement in the North as foreign aggression, so they fought guerilla wars against the anti-communist forces in the region. Guerilla forces (the Viet Cong) and the regular North Vietnamese Army were responsible for fighting the anticommunist forces. The conflict mainly consisted of small battles until the onset of air attacks -- part of an overall strategy of massive bombing and search-and-destroy operations, which South Vietnam and the Americans hoped would win the war.
Fighting in Vietnam started well before the actual “Vietnam War”. The Vietnamese people had been under French rule for several decades until Japan invaded in 1940. In 1941, when Ho Chi Minh came back from his travels there were two foreign powers occupying the Vietnam territory, the French and Japanese. Ho Chi Minh established the Viet Minh in hopes to rid Vietnam of these two powers. On September 2, 1945 the Viet Minh established the Democratic Republic of China after getting support in northern Vietnam. This action spawned the French to fight back to keep control of their colony. Ho Chi Minh wanted support from the United States against the French; he went as far as to supply the United States with information about the Japanese during WWII. The United States kept with their Cold War foreign policy of containment as to prevent the spread of Communism, fearing the “Domino Theory” that said “if one country in Asia fell to Communism then surrounding countries would soon fall”.
When the war started, North Vietnam took side with the communist party which includes China, Viet Cong, and supported by many other communist countries such as the USSR as the main supporter of armour vehicles, explosive, and weaponries such as Type 59, Type 62, T-55, T-54, T-34, however tanks such as those were proven inefficient due to jungled biome and the needs to cut down trees could jeopardise secret operations and ambushes. Guerrilla warfare was proposed by Viet Cong it helped the communist to attack or defend territory with repeat succession when fighting against the
The North Vietnamese Communist leadership's ability to reassess and adapt during the Vietnam War was reflected in how well they combined guerilla and conventional operations to achieve their strategic goal of unifying Vietnam under communist rule. Throughout the conflict, the Viet Cong (VC) were employed to conduct guerilla operations while North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and VC "main force" units were used to transition to conventional operations. Guerilla operations enabled Hanoi to inflict a steady flow of casualties on US forces which increased anti-war sentiment in America. NVA and VC main force conventional operations reinforced the US Army's conventional approach to the fight which caused the Americans to alienate the people of South
In 1958, Communist-led guerrillas, eventually known as the Viet Cong, began to battle the government of the South Vietnamese. The United States then sent 2,000 military advisors t support South Vietnam’s government. This number grew to 16,3000 by 1963. The military force slowly deteriorated. By 1963 the fertile Mekong Delta was lost to the overpowering Viet Cong. The war rose in 1965, when President Johnson issued commencing air strikes on North Vietnam and ground forces, which had risen to 536,000 by 1968. The Tet Offensive by North Vietnam turned many Americans against the waging war. President Nixon, following Johnson, promoted Vietnamization, the withdrawing of American troops and handing over the great responsibility of the war to South Vietnam. Protesting of the war dramatically increased, especially after Nixon’s attempt to slow North Vietnam forces and supplies into the South by sending American forces to destroy supply bases in Cambodia in 1970, which violated Cambodian neutrality. This provoked antiwar protests on many of the United Stats’ college campuses. In 1968 through 1973 attempts were made to end the ongoing conflict through diplomacy. Then in January 1973, an agreement was reached. U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam and the U.S. POWs were released. In April 1975, South Vietnam surrendered to the North and Vietnam was once again united. The Vietnam War ended, but it took the lives of 58,000
The conflict in Vietnam for the United States started when President Dwight D. Eisenhower went along with the domino theory and sent in military advisors in South Vietnam to stop the communist movement from taking place in South Vietnam. The Vietnam conflict was between the communist’s and the United States. North Vietnam was led by Ho Chi Minh, and Ho Chi Minh led the Viet Cong, a guerilla group to help spread communism. The United States were supporters of the South Vietnam because they wanted them to maintain their government rather than falling to the domino theory of communism. After Eisenhower’s term ended John F. Kennedy became president and took control of the situation of Vietnam but on November 22, 1963, Kennedy was