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The Effects Of Music In The Vietnam War

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The Vietnam War was one of the most important wars throughout history, as it was one of the longest conflicts in the history and as it was part of the cold war and the Indochina wars. There are many versions of how many soldiers and civilians were killed in the war; the Vietnamese government assuring there were 3.1 million people killed, but a demographic study demonstrated that the total numbers of casualties, including civilians and soldiers from both sides, were around 800,000. The war started due to the civil war created by the Vietcong, a communist group, which was trying to do an uprising against the South Vietnam government in 1957. As many wars of the time, there was an encounter between a communist side and a capitalist side. The war was held in the middle of the cold war, which meant that the U.S and the Soviet Union were involved in the conflict. The U.S, joined by other …show more content…

Music has always been a form of union, and in previous wars the soldiers used music as a way of bonding or relaxing, using it as an inspiration to continue in battle. The best example of music as a way of bonding is in World War II. The soldiers that were involved in the war listened to similar music, and they used it to encourage themselves and as a way of relaxing. But there was something different between the Vietnam War and World War II. During WW2, there was union in the cause, in the reason the soldiers were fighting. It was a union against Nazism and fascism, and the soldiers felt the cause. This did not happen during the final stages of the Vietnam War, as many soldiers did not share cause which they were fighting for, they did not have the unity of purpose. This led, for the first time, to soldiers listening to protest songs instead of unity songs. For the first time in history, the music was not used as a supportive resource but as a way to remind soldiers that they did not want to

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