The Vietnam War

Ho Chi Minh Declares Independence

Hours after Japan's surrender ended World War II, the communist leader Ho Chi Minh stood in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square and proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, opening with words borrowed from the American Declaration of Independence: 'All men are created equal.'

Why it matters: It was the opening act of thirty years of war. France meant to reclaim its colony, setting Vietnamese nationalism on a collision course with the Western powers.

The First Indochina War

When negotiations with France collapsed in late 1946, Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh launched a guerrilla war against French colonial forces. As the Cold War hardened, the United States bankrolled France's war while China and the USSR backed the Viet Minh.

Why it matters: A colonial war became a Cold War proxy fight, drawing the United States into Vietnam a decade before it sent combat troops.

Defeat at Dien Bien Phu

The Viet Minh, under General Vo Nguyen Giap, besieged and overran the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in a stunning victory that shattered France's will to continue the war.

Why it matters: One of the great anticolonial victories of the 20th century, Dien Bien Phu ended French rule in Indochina and forced a peace conference at Geneva.

The Geneva Accords Divide Vietnam

The 1954 Geneva Conference split Vietnam at the 17th parallel — Ho Chi Minh's communists in the North, a Western-backed state in the South — with nationwide reunification elections promised for 1956. Those elections were never held.

Why it matters: A supposedly temporary line became a permanent border, and the failure to reunify the country peacefully set the stage for a second, far larger war.

Diem and the Two Vietnams

In the South, the staunchly anti-communist Ngo Dinh Diem declared the Republic of Vietnam in 1955 and, with U.S. support, refused to hold the 1956 reunification elections he expected to lose. His narrow, often repressive Catholic rule alienated the Buddhist majority.

Why it matters: Diem's refusal to reunify — and his growing unpopularity — helped ignite the southern insurgency that became the Vietnam War.

The Viet Cong Rise Up

In 1960, communist-led guerrillas in the South formed the National Liberation Front — the Viet Cong — and waged an insurgency against Diem's government, supported and increasingly directed by North Vietnam.

Why it matters: The Viet Cong's guerrilla war turned South Vietnam into a battlefield and drew the United States ever deeper into the conflict.

Kennedy's War: The Advisers

President John F. Kennedy sharply expanded the U.S. commitment, sending thousands of military 'advisers' — over 16,000 by 1963 — along with helicopters and the flawed 'Strategic Hamlet' program to relocate peasants away from the Viet Cong.

Why it matters: Short of a declared war, the United States was now fighting in Vietnam in all but name, its prestige committed to South Vietnam's survival.

The Overthrow of Diem

With Diem's rule collapsing amid Buddhist protests — including monks self-immolating in the streets — South Vietnamese generals staged a U.S.-condoned coup in November 1963. Diem was assassinated; three weeks later, so was President Kennedy.

Why it matters: The coup removed South Vietnam's founding leader but brought only chaos and a revolving door of unstable governments, deepening American responsibility for the war.

The Gulf of Tonkin

After U.S. destroyers reported clashes with North Vietnamese boats in the Gulf of Tonkin, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964, giving President Johnson sweeping authority to wage war without a formal declaration.

Why it matters: The resolution became the legal foundation for full-scale American war in Vietnam — obtained on a pretext that would later fuel deep public distrust.

How we know: Doubts later emerged, and declassified records indicate the reported second attack on August 4 almost certainly never occurred.

Americanization: The Ground War Begins

In 1965 President Johnson launched Operation Rolling Thunder, a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam, and landed the first U.S. combat troops at Da Nang. By year's end nearly 200,000 Americans were in Vietnam, fighting a war of attrition under General Westmoreland.

Why it matters: This was the moment the conflict became an American war — a massive commitment of firepower and manpower measured grimly in enemy 'body counts.'

The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Air War

North Vietnam funneled troops and supplies south along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a vast network of paths through Laos and Cambodia. The U.S. dropped more bombs on Indochina than were used in all of World War II, yet never severed the trail.

Why it matters: The trail's resilience exposed the limits of American air power against a determined guerrilla enemy — and spread the war into neighboring countries.

The War at Home: The Antiwar Movement

As casualties and draft calls climbed, opposition surged across America — teach-ins, mass marches, draft-card burnings and slogans like 'Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?' Civil-rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. joined the protest.

Why it matters: Vietnam was the first 'living-room war,' its violence beamed nightly into American homes, splitting the nation and reshaping a generation.

The Tet Offensive

During the Tet holiday in January 1968, communist forces launched surprise attacks on more than 100 cities and towns across South Vietnam, even briefly penetrating the U.S. embassy in Saigon. They were beaten back with heavy losses.

Why it matters: A military defeat for the North became a psychological victory: Americans who had been told the enemy was collapsing lost faith in the war, marking its great turning point.

The My Lai Massacre

U.S. soldiers murdered hundreds of unarmed civilians — women, children and the elderly — in the hamlet of My Lai. The atrocity was covered up for over a year before investigative reporting exposed it; only Lieutenant William Calley was convicted.

Why it matters: My Lai became the war's moral nadir, a symbol of how a brutal, disorienting conflict corroded the army fighting it and further turned Americans against the war.

How we know: The cover-up was broken by journalist Seymour Hersh in 1969, and the killings were documented in the U.S. Army's own Peers Inquiry.

1968: Johnson Bows Out

Shaken by Tet and trailing in the primaries, President Lyndon Johnson stunned the nation on March 31, 1968, announcing a partial bombing halt, a push for peace talks — and that he would not seek re-election.

Why it matters: The war had consumed a presidency. Johnson's withdrawal opened one of the most turbulent years in modern American history.

Nixon and Vietnamization

President Richard Nixon began 'Vietnamization' — gradually withdrawing U.S. troops while building up South Vietnam's army — even as he secretly expanded bombing into neutral Cambodia to hit communist sanctuaries.

Why it matters: Nixon sought 'peace with honor,' but widening the war into Cambodia while claiming to end it deepened the credibility gap between the government and the public.

Kent State and the Cambodia Incursion

When Nixon sent U.S. troops into Cambodia in 1970, campuses erupted. At Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen opened fire on protesters, killing four students and wounding nine.

Why it matters: The image of American soldiers shooting American students seared the nation, triggering a wave of campus strikes and hardening opposition to the war.

The Pentagon Papers

In 1971 analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, a secret Defense Department history revealing that successive administrations had misled the public about the war. The Supreme Court upheld newspapers' right to publish them.

Why it matters: The leak confirmed the government had lied for years, cementing public distrust and marking a landmark victory for press freedom.

The Paris Peace Accords

After years of talks and Nixon's massive 'Christmas Bombing' of the North, the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973. The United States withdrew its remaining troops and recovered its prisoners of war; the fighting between North and South did not stop.

Why it matters: The accords let America exit the war, but left South Vietnam to fend for itself against a North Vietnam that had no intention of abandoning reunification.

The Fall of Saigon

With U.S. forces gone, North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon on April 30, 1975. As the city fell, desperate crowds mobbed the U.S. embassy for a last helicopter evacuation. South Vietnam surrendered, ending the war.

Why it matters: The fall of Saigon was America's first clear defeat in a major war — a wrenching end that reshaped how the nation saw itself and its power in the world.

Reunification and the War's Toll

In 1976 Vietnam was reunified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The war had killed an estimated two to three million Vietnamese and more than 58,000 Americans, left the land poisoned by Agent Orange, and driven waves of refugees to flee by boat.

Why it matters: The human and environmental cost was staggering on every side — a devastation whose scars, from unexploded ordnance to dioxin, Vietnam still lives with today.

The Wall: Vietnam Veterans Memorial

In 1982 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial opened in Washington, D.C. Designed by 21-year-old student Maya Lin, its stark black granite wall is inscribed with the names of more than 58,000 Americans who died or went missing in the war.

Why it matters: After a war that bitterly divided the country and where returning veterans were often shunned, 'the Wall' became a place of national mourning and, slowly, reconciliation.

America and Vietnam Reconcile

Two decades after Saigon fell, President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1995. Former enemies became trading partners, and by the 21st century the U.S. and Vietnam were close economic and strategic partners.

Why it matters: The reconciliation closed one of the most painful chapters in American history — turning a bitter war into an unlikely partnership between the two former foes.