The Vietnam War was a decades-long armed conflict between North Vietnam's communist government and South Vietnam and their allies the United States.
Though Vietnam was traditionally dominated by China, the country was under French colonial rule from 1862 to 1954, at which point the communist Vietminh fought for independence and defeated the French. Vietnam was partitioned in 1954 along the 17th parallel, thus creating a division between the communist North and the capitalist, democratic South.
The North's attempt to unite the country as a communist state played into Cold War fears over the spread of communism. To stop communism from taking over Southeast Asia, the US Army sent forces to Vietnam in 1964 and bombed North Vietnamese forces and areas of Cambodia. In 1968, North Vietnam's General Vo Nguyen Giap launched the Tet Offensive—named for the lunar new year—which involved a coordinated series of attacks on over one hundred cities and towns in South Vietnam. The carnage of the attacks bolstered the growing anti-war movement in the United States, and President Johnson changed tacks and announced an effort to further peace talks. However, Nixon was elected the next year. Nixon tried to deflate the anti-war movement by insisting a "silent majority" of Americans supported the war.
More massacres and mass protests finally led to the US's total withdrawal of troops in 1973. Fighting between the North and South continued until the North Vietnamese captured the southern capital Saigon in 1975, marking the end of the war. The country reunified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976.
The Vietnam War resulted in the deaths of 58,220 US soldiers and two million Vietnamese, many of them civilians. In addition, three million Vietnamese were wounded, and twelve million became refugees.
