Why Did the French Loose the War in Vietnam?

Before the Vietnam war, Vietnam was in a revolution because they did not want to be ruled by France. Vietnam wanted to be independent right after World War II ended in 1945. Japan had control of them, when Japan surrendered to the Allies the French never left Vietnam and claimed it as a territory(Mintz).

The Vietnamese were not willing to give in too easily, under the leadership of the influential Ho Chi Min. The Vietnamese were aware that the French had previously lost their

For the sake of conciseness, and in order to focus the bulk of the content on the main topic, this essay will make certain assumptions. Most importantly, the essay assumes that the conflict in Vietnam was, indeed, lost by the US. It also presupposes that � due to the political climate in the US � the war itself was unavoidable. Finally, the essay takes for granted

President Dwight Eisenhower conditionally pledged to support South Vietnam’s new nation in 1955. In the time period between 1955-1961 the United States pumped seven billion dollars in aid so that Vietnam would not “go over quickly” like a “row of dominoes” (McNamara 31). In the next 6 years Vietnam would cost America billions of dollars, thousands of lives, and the disaffection of much of the United States public. Yet in the end, South Vietnam would fall to the North less than 2 years after the United States military involvement ceased.

military was the Vietcong’s use of guerilla warfare tactics. Guerilla warfare is defined as the use of hit-and-run tactics by small, mobile groups of irregular forces operating in territory controlled by a hostile, regular force. A lot of the Vietcong's fighting was done through ambushing, booby traps and mines, use of tunnel systems, but did include some pitched combat with the Americans when necessary. The Vietcong’s guerrilla warfare also made it really hard for the U.S. military to find the enemy, especially when they blended in as everyday Vietnamese citizens. They would use their environment to attack the Americans quickly and then dip out. Whether it was through the over two hundred mile long tunnel systems, or escaping deep into the Vietnamese forests.

The United States battle tactics did not fare well against an unseen enemy, who rarely presented himself in a full-scale battle, but rather picked at units one by one. A conversation between a colonel in the U.S. army and a colonel in the Vietnamese communist army summed up the guerilla warfare tactics used: "You know you never defeated us on the battlefield," said the American Colonel. The North Vietnamese Colonel pondered this remark for a moment. "That may be so," he replied, " but that is also irrelevant." The revolutionaries in Vietnam used hit and run attacks. They would assault small groups of soldiers, by sneaking up on them. This worked well, because it allowed the Viet Minh to avoid bigger battles, which they were not trained for. They knew that the U.S. soldiers were unfamiliar with the battlegrounds and jungles, so they used this weakness to their advantage, by being able to move more quickly and stealthily than the U.S. troops. They also knew how to

The Vietnamese victory against the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 brought about dramatic changes to Indochina. These changes took place in the Geneva Conference which shortly happened after the battle of Dien Bien Phu. General Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh who were the Vietminh’s leader had only one goal and that was to unify Vietnam and declare independence from colonial rule but however their goals were not achieved at the end of the Geneva Conference due to a number of reasons.

The United States played a very crucial role in the conflict that occurred in Southeast Asia between the U.S.-backed democratic South Vietnam, and Soviet-backed communist North Vietnam. Following the defeat of its French administration in 1954, North Vietnam, led by Communist leader Ho Chi Minh, wanted to reunify the country with the help of its rebel allies in the south, known as the Viet Cong. Out of this chaos emerged a difficult situation for the United States, as Cold War sentiments were present within this proxy war between the two powerful nations and the third party of Vietnam. The United States wanted to support Ngo Dinh Diem, leader of South Vietnam, in order to ensure his government would not fall into ruins and be taken control by the communists, but President Eisenhower was also hesitant to get his troops involved in this large scale conflict in Southeast Asia.

“The war in vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.” Martin Luther King, Jr. once said. The Vietnam War was considered one of America’s greatest defeats of all time. Not only did the US failed to stop the spread of communism, but they also embarrassed this country as a whole with the outcome of this war. The overall outcome from this war will be remembered for years to come. In this essay, I will be talking about how the United States would have won the Vietnam war if the home front was for the war, if the the US was more familiar with the land, and the U.S.’s goal was not successful.

Many people choose to answer the question "Why did America lose the Vietnam War?", but the deeper subject today is, "What did America lose in the Vietnam War?” You can argue with many things, but I have narrowed it down to 3 main things. First, you have the trust that was lost in the U.S. Government by the American citizens. Then there was the changing and loss of some morals and hope in the American people. Lastly, we look at what the Veterans of Vietnam lost and yet how it is still making an impact on them so many years later.

The Vietnam War lasted from November of 1955 to April of 1975. The war was fought between the United States and South Vietnam, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand, Canada, West Germany and the United Kingdom against North Korea, China, the Soviet Union, North Korea, and Cuba. North Vietnam won the war after 20 years. The United States had five presidents throughout the war, South Vietnam had two leaders, and North Vietnam had two leaders.

The history of recent years in the Indochina conflict has been an eventful one. It will exhibit to the eyes of the future student some of the most remarkable instances of a ruthlessness and indifference to common humanity. Moreover, it will, I believe, demonstrate that North Vietnam has, for a long time, steadily pursued a communist regime which was deliberately designed to produce a subjugation of other countries by the threat of communism.

One of the key points that the war experts in this period did not measure is why France was defeated so significantly. What was the crucial advantage that Minh`s small army had? The Vietnam conflict can be reviewed like unconventional and insurgency war.

---After WWII and until 1955, France fought hard to regain their former territories in the region, but with a poorly organized army and little determination among the troops, their efforts soon collapsed. The French were finally defeated at Dien Bien Phu on the 8th of May 1954 by the communist general Vo Nguyen Giap. The French troops withdrew, leaving a buffer zone separating the North and South and set up elections in order to form a government in the South. The communist regime set up its headquarters in Hanoi under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. Many North Vietnamese left the country and fled south where the self-proclaimed president, Ngo Dinh Diem had formed the Republic of Vietnam.

After France fully colonized Vietnam in 1885, a racial hierarchy-based colonial system was established in Vietnam. However, the outbreak of the war shook such foundation by recruiting indigenous soldiers to fight in Europe. These soldiers’ arrival and their experience in Europe broke the so-called “the superiority of European” and thus delegitimized the French rule in Vietnam. In this sense, the outbreak of the Great War provided Indochina with momentum for change and transformation, as Xu Guoqi argues in Asia and the Great War: A Shared History.