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War In Vietnam: The Causes Of The Vietnam War

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Vietnam had been a French colony since the 1880s and they fought for their independence and won in 1954. The country was then split into communist North Vietnam and non-communist South Vietnam. (Education Place )The war in Vietnam occurred during the Cold war and is often considered to be an indirect way of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, with each nation and its allies supporting each side. (Hickman, 2015) This war lasted ten years, when the United States were defeated and were forced to withdraw (J. Bottaro, In Search Of History, 2013)
The causes of the Vietnam War were created from the side effects of the Cold war. The Vietnam War centres around a belief held by America that communism were trying to expand all over south East Asia. (Trueman, 2015)
Before WWII Vietnam had been part of the French empire, however during WWII the country was occupied by the Japanese. (Hickman, The Vietnam War: Origins, 2013) Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh (which is a resistance group), were inspired by Chinese and Soviet communism (Spector, 2016) and this led them to resist the Japanese oppressors and increase their power throughout Vietnam. The increased power of the resistance movement led to the surrendering of the Japanese. (Editors, 2005. ) The Viet Minh took the opportunity to establish their own government led by Ho Chi Minh.
Following the …show more content…

(Trueman, 2015) This led to the French shelling the city of Haiphong to gain entrance into the capital city of North Vietnam. This action lead to the start of the First Indochina War (Hickman, The Vietnam War: Origins, 2013). It looked as if the French were going to win but the Viet MinH had been educating and training people underground. Many countries felt sympathetic towards the Vietnamese including the US, however in 1949 when a communist government game into power over China their attitude changed. (J. Bottaro, 2013, p.

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