Vietnam War: Ho Chi Minh

Blood, gore, intense combat, little sleep, death. These are some words that describe the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War had 240 days of combat in one year. World War II had forty days of combat in four years(Interesting Facts). That statistic shows how rough the Vietnam War was. The fighting was constant between the two sides. This war was fought over politics and had many gruesome battles.

Ho Chi Minh otherwise known as Nguyen Sinh Cung was very important and divisive in the history of Vietnam.

During the Vietnam War, United States involvement was for personal reasons and fear of communism. Neither the United States or the Soviet Union should have been involved. The War was just used as a cover up for the actual silent, passive aggressive war between the United States and the Soviet. The Vietnam war was started by the North “Viet Cong” and their desire to unify Vietnam under communist rule. The South was against communism, making tensions grow until eventually, a war broke out on November 1, 1955. Five years later in the 1960s, the war was escalated with the involvement of foreign countries. While the North was supported by its communist allies such as China and the Soviet Union. The South was supported by the United States of America. The Americans wanted to halt or prolong the spread of communism. The “domino theory” compelled the U.S. to get involved as soon as possible because if not, the rest of Asia would fall to communism like “dominoes”. The U.S. involvement only started with Eisenhower administration when Vietnam split in half. This action of the United States was only for their own well being and their main goal was not for the good of Vietnam. During this time period the Vietnamese had just united and established the state of Vietnam. The war ended up lasting 9 years with long periods of bitter guerrilla warfare in the rugged jungles of Vietnam which would eventually result in the victory of the North and longed unification of Vietnam

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

The Vietnam war, also called the Indochina War , may be said to have started in 1957 when Communist-led rebels began mounting terrorists attacks against the government of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). The rebel forces, commonly called the Vietcong, were later aided by troops of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). American combat personnel were formally committed to the defense of the South in 1965. An agreement calling for a ceasefire was signed in January 1973, and by March the few remaining U.S. millitary personnel in Vietnam were withdrawn. However, the war between the two Vietnamese sides persisted inconclusively for two additional years before South Vietnamese resistance

The leader of this communist introduction and development in Vietnam was Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh, born Nguyen Tat Thanh, grew up with a passion for freeing his country of the French. Ho Chi Minh worked hard on his French when his tutor told him, “If you want to defeat the French, you must understand them. To understand the French you must study the French language.” Ho Chi Minh’s patriotism developed mainly from his Chinese-language instructor, Hoang Thong, who was anti- French himself. Thong believed that losing one’s family was worse than losing one’s country. Ho Chi Minh’s first involvement against political action came on May 9, 1908 when he joined a peasant uprising as a translator. Attempting to translate in the front of the crowd, he was beaten and forced to hide at his friend’s house at night to prevent being arrested. In the following years, Ho Chi Minh yearned to go overseas; he said to journalist Anna Louise Strong, “The people of Vietnam, including my own father, often wondered who would help them to remove them the yoke of French control…I saw that I must go abroad to see for myself. After I had found out how they lived, I

In the 1960s and 1970s, the most controversial war the United States had ever been involved in during its rich two-hundred year history would engulf the country, ultimately leading to the collapse of a president, and the division of a nation. The Vietnam War was a military struggle fought in Vietnam and neighboring countries from 1959-1975 involving the North Vietnamese and NLF (National Liberation Front) versus the United States and the South Vietnamese ("The Vietnam..."). In 1969, newly elected President Richard M. Nixon, aiming to achieve "peace with honor" in Vietnam, began to put his "Vietnamization" policy into place -- removing the number of American military personnel in the country and transferring combat roles to the South

A small country such as North Vietnam was able to win a war against a superpower like the United States of America, through, namely, tactics – such as Guerrilla Warfare -, the ignorance of their enemy, the attitude of the South Vietnamese, as well as a strong leader such as Ho Chi Minh. The Vietnam War was a major conflict (of the Cold War) which lasted from 1959 to 1975 , with US involvement from 1964 to 1973 . US reasons for their involvement in the war was their fear of “The Domino Effect” - or – the US fear that communism would spread to Vietnam and Southeast Asia, making them a major threat to national security. The Fall of Saigon marked the end of the war in 1975.

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.

In 1963, the United States sent in 2,000 military advisors to support the South Vietnamese government in the war (Digital History). At the beginning of the war, many Americans believed that defending South Vietnam from communist aggression was in the country’s favor, although as the war continued, that opinion drastically changed (“The Antiwar Movement”). In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson escalated the war by starting air strikes on North Vietnam. Later on in the war, the 1968 Tet Offensive turned many Americans against the war. This was a large series of attacks resulting in many South Vietnamese and American casualties (Digital History). President Richard Nixon served from 1969 to 1974 and when he was inaugurated the nation was deeply divided by the war and over what was going to happen next. As the war continued more and more Americans grew impatient over the increasing amount of casualties and escalating costs throughout the war. There were large gatherings of anti-war protesters that helped bring attention to the public resentment of the US involvement in the Vietnam War. By the late 1960s, peaceful demonstrations became violent and the anti-war movement was rapidly growing (“The Antiwar Movement”). Protests across the country were part of opposition against the military draft and US

The Vietnam war started with a governmental conflict that would cause major problems across the country. The North Vietnamese wanted Communism and the South wanted to avoid Communism at all costs, because of Southern Vietnam’s stance of anti-communism they would be joined by America in their attempts to get rid of Communism. America involved

The Vietnam War escalated from a Vietnamese civil war into a limited international conflict, in which the United States was deeply involved. The Vietnam War was fought in South Vietnam between government forces aided by the United States and guerilla forces aided by the North Vietnamese. Despite increased American military involvement and signed peace agreements in 1973, the Vietnam War did not end until North Vietnam's successful invasion of South Vietnam in 1975. The Vietnam War may have been the longest war in American history, but after South Vietnam collapsed, America was left to question their highly controversial involvement in a lost cause.

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

Ho Chi Minh Ho Chi Minh was a Communist, who had announced Vietnam independent. He was a Marxist and believed in “national Communism ". Throughout the war with the French, Ho Chi Minh took refuge in northern Vietnam and settled there with his followers. He founded the Indochina Communist Party and the Viet Minh. North Vietnam was a deprived area and was cut off from the agricultural profit of South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was forced to ask assistance from main Communist allies, the Soviet Union and China. Both aided North Vietnam before and during the war. (Dong Si Nguyen, Duong xuyen Truong son: hoi uc.  Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 1999). Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. This had been a tremendously significant event in world history perhaps the most important event since the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. It marked the first occasion in human history in which a radical national movement under Communist leadership had succeeded in overthrowing the influence of a colonial state and establishing and maintaining its own new, independent form of social and political system. However, Ho’s type of communism was markedly different than that of Marxist ideology that had been the metaphorical icon of the October Revolution. alike to Jose Antonio’s fascist movement, the hierarchical communist party (later renamed the Vietminh) conformed intimately to the ideas of the person at its head, but unlike Antonio’s movement, did not

The Vietnam War was Armed Conflict, costly, long, which opposed the communist regime of North Vietnam and the southern allies, known as the Viet Cong against South Vietnam and its main ally, the United States. Controversial war, increasingly unpopular at home, and ended with the withdrawal of US troops in 1973 and the unification of Vietnam under communist control two years later. More than 3 million people, including 58,000 Americans