Vietnam War

Vietnam War
Part of the Indochina Wars and the Cold War
Clockwise from top left: American Huey helicopters insert South Vietnamese ARVN troops, 1970. North Vietnamese soldiers in action c. 1966. American marines use a flamethrower, 1967. non-communist South Vietnamese general Nguyễn Ngọc Loan summarily executes Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém during the Tet Offensive. Two Douglas A-4C Skyhawk fly past the anti-submarine aircraft carrier USS Kearsarge (CVS-33), 1964. Dead civilians from the Massacre at Huế are buried.
Date 1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975 (19 years, 5 months, 4 weeks and 1 day)[A 1][5] Location South Vietnam North Vietnam Cambodia Laos South China Sea Gulf of Thailand (spillover conflict in China, and Thailand) Result North Vietnamese victory Territorial changes Reunification of North Vietnam and South Vietnam into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976
Belligerents
North Vietnam Viet Cong Pathet Lao GRUNK (1970–1975) Khmer Rumdo Khmer Rouge Khmer Issarak	South Vietnam  United States  Cambodia (1967 - 1970) Khmer Republic (1970 - 1975) Khmer Serei Khmer Sa  South Korea  Australia  New Zealand Kingdom of Laos  Thailand  Philippines  Taiwan
Commanders and leaders
Hồ Chí Minh Lê Duẩn Võ Nguyên Giáp Phạm Văn Đồng Trần Văn Trà Souphanouvong Kaysone Pheromone Nouhak Phomsavanh Norodom Sihanouk (1970 - 1975) Penn Nouth (1970 - 1975) Son Sann (1970 - 1975) Pol Pot Khieu Samphan Ieng Sary Ieng Thirith Hu Nim Nuon Chea Ta Mok Son Sen Yun Yat	Ngô Đình Diệm X [A 2] Nguyễn Văn Thiệu Nguyễn Cao Kỳ John F. Kennedy (1961 - 1963) Lyndon B. Johnson[A 3] Richard Nixon Robert McNamara William Westmoreland[A 4] Creighton Abrams Henry Kissinger Norodom Sihanouk (1967 - 1970) Penn Nouth (1967 - 1970) Lon Nol Lon Non Cheng Heng In Tam Hang Thun Hak Long Boret Sak Suthaksan Sisowath Sirik Matak Sosthène Fernandez Son Ngoc Thanh Park Chung-Hee Robert Menzies Harold Holt Keith Holyoake Souvanna Phouma Boun Oum Vang Pao Bhumibol Adulyadej Sarit Thanarat Thanom Kittikachorn Khieu Samphan Ferdinand Marcos Chiang Kai-shek
Strength
≈860,000 (1967) North Vietnam: 690,000 (1966, including PAVN and Viet Cong)[A 5] Viet Cong: ~200,000 (estimated, 1968)[7] China: 170,000 (1968) 320,000 total[8][9][10] Khmer Rouge: 70,000 (1972)[11]: 376  Pathet Lao: 48,000 (1970)[12] Soviet Union: ~3,000[13] North Korea: 200[14]	≈1,420,000 (1968) South Vietnam: 850,000 (1968) 1,500,000 (1974–1975)[15] United States: 2,709,918 serving in Vietnam total Peak: 543,000 (April 1969)[11]: xlv  Khmer Republic: 200,000 (1973)[source?] Laos: 72,000 (Royal Army and Hmong militia)[16][17] South Korea: 48,000 per year (1965–1973, 320,000 total) Thailand: 32,000 per year (1965–1973) (in Vietnam[18] and Laos)[source?] Australia: 50,190 total (Peak: 8,300 combat troops)[19] New Zealand: Peak: 552 in 1968[20]: 158  Philippines: 2,061 Spain: 100-130 total (Peak: 30 medical troops and advisors) .[21]
Casualties and losses
North Vietnam & Viet Cong 30,000–182,000 civilian dead[11]: 176 [22][23]: 450–453 [24] 849,018 military dead (per Vietnam; 1/3 non-combat deaths)[25][26][27] 666,000–950,765 dead (US estimated 1964–1974)[A 6][22][23]: 450–451  232,000+ military missing (per Vietnam)[25][28] 600,000+ military wounded[29]: 739  Khmer Rouge: Unknown Pathet Lao: Unknown  China: ~1,100 dead and 4,200 wounded[10]  Soviet Union: 16 dead[30]  North Korea: 14 dead[31][32] Total military dead/missing: ≈1,100,000 Total military wounded: ≈604,200 (excluding GRUNK/Khmer Rouge and Pathet Lao)	South Vietnam: 195,000–430,000 civilian dead[22][23]: 450–453 [33] Military dead: 313,000 (total)[34] 254,256 combat deaths (between 1960 and 1974)[35]: 275  1,170,000 military wounded[11] ≈ 1,000,000 captured[36]  United States: 58,281 dead[37] (47,434 from combat)[38][39] 303,644 wounded (including 150,341 not requiring hospital care)[A 7]  Laos: 15,000 army dead[44] Khmer Republic: Unknown South Korea: 5,099 dead; 10,962 wounded; 4 missing  Australia: 521 dead; 3,129 wounded[45]  Thailand: 351 dead[11]  New Zealand: 37 dead[46]  Republic of China: 25 dead[47] 17 captured[48] Philippines: 9 dead;[49] 64 wounded[50] Total military dead: 333,620 (1960–1974) – 392,364 (total) Total military wounded: ≈1,340,000+[11] (excluding FARK and FANK) Total military captured: ≈1,000,000+
Vietnamese civilian dead: 405,000–2,000,000[23]: 450–453 [51][52] Vietnamese total dead: 966,000[22]–3,010,000[52] Cambodian Civil War dead: 275,000–310,000[53][54][55] Laotian Civil War dead: 20,000–62,000[52] Non-Indochinese military dead: 65,494 Total dead: 1,326,494–3,447,494 For more information see Vietnam War casualties and Aircraft losses of the Vietnam War
FULRO fought an insurgency against both South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the Viet Cong and was supported by Cambodia for much of the war.

The Vietnam War (also known as Second Indochina War, Vietnamese-American War or American War in Vietnam) lasted from 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975. It was fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea, and South Vietnam was set up by the United States and supported by South Korea, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. People from other countries also went to fight but not in their own national armies. The conflict between communist and capitalist countries was part of the Cold War.

The Viet Cong, also known as the National Liberation Front or NLF, was a South Vietnamese communist force that was helped by North Vietnam. It fought a guerrilla war against non-communist South Vietnamese forces. The People's Army of Vietnam (also known as the North Vietnamese Army) engaged in a more conventional war by at times putting large forces to battle.

The Vietnam War was very controversial, especially in the United States. It was the first war to feature live television coverage and the first major armed conflict that the United States lost. The war became so unpopular in the United States that President Richard Nixon eventually agreed to send American soldiers home in 1973.

1. ↑ "Name of Technical Sergeant Richard B. Fitzgibbon to be added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial". Department of Defense (DoD). Archived from the original on 20 October 2013.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Lawrence, A.T. (2009). Crucible Vietnam: Memoir of an Infantry Lieutenant. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-4517-2.
3. ↑ Olson & Roberts 2008, p. 67. sfn error: no target: CITEREFOlsonRoberts2008 (help)
4. ↑ "Chapter 5, Origins of the Insurgency in South Vietnam, 1954–1960". The Pentagon Papers (Gravel Edition), Volume 1. Boston: Beacon Press. 1971. Section 3, pp. 314–346. Archived from the original on 19 October 2017. Retrieved 17 August 2008 – via International Relations Department, Mount Holyoke College.
5. ↑ The Paris Agreement on Vietnam: Twenty-five Years Later (Conference Transcript). Washington, DC: The Nixon Center. April 1998. Archived from the original on 1 September 2019. Retrieved 5 September 2012 – via International Relations Department, Mount Holyoke College.
6. ↑ Military History Institute of Vietnam 2002, p. 182 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFMilitary_History_Institute_of_Vietnam2002 (help). "By the end of 1966 the total strength of our armed forces was 690,000 soldiers."
7. ↑ Doyle, Edward; Lipsman, Samuel; Maitland, Terence (1986). The Vietnam Experience The North. Time Life Education. pp. 45–49. ISBN 978-0-939526-21-5.
8. ↑ "China admits 320,000 troops fought in Vietnam". Toledo Blade. Reuters. 16 May 1989. Retrieved 24 December 2013.
9. ↑ Roy, Denny (1998). China's Foreign Relations. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-8476-9013-8.
10. ↑ ^{10.0 10.1} Womack, Brantly (2006). China and Vietnam. Cambridge University Press. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-521-61834-2.
11. ↑ ^{11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5} Tucker, Spencer C (2011). The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-85109-960-3.
12. ↑ "Area Handbook Series Laos". Retrieved 1 November 2019.
13. ↑ O'Ballance, Edgar (1982). Tracks of the bear: Soviet imprints in the seventies. Presidio. p. 171. ISBN 978-0-89141-133-8.
14. ↑ Pham Thi Thu Thuy (1 August 2013). "The colorful history of North Korea-Vietnam relations". NK News. Archived from the original on April 24, 2015. Retrieved 3 October 2016.
15. ↑ Le Gro, William (1985). Vietnam from ceasefire to capitulation (PDF). US Army Center of Military History. p. 28. ISBN 978-1-4102-2542-9. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 2, 2023.
16. ↑ "The rise of Communism". www.footprinttravelguides.com. Archived from the original on 17 November 2010. Retrieved 31 May 2018.
17. ↑ "Hmong rebellion in Laos". Members.ozemail.com.au. Archived from the original on April 4, 2023. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
18. ↑ "Vietnam War Allied Troop Levels 1960–73". Archived from the original on 2 August 2016. Retrieved 2 August 2016., accessed 7 November 2017
19. ↑ Doyle, Jeff; Grey, Jeffrey; Pierce, Peter (2002). "Australia's Vietnam War – A Select Chronology of Australian Involvement in the Vietnam War" (PDF). Texas A&M University Press. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 10, 2022.
20. ↑ Blackburn, Robert M. (1994). Mercenaries and Lyndon Johnson's "More Flage": The Hiring of Korean, Filipino, and Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War. McFarland. ISBN 0-89950-931-2.
21. ↑ Marín, Paloma (2012-04-09). "Spain's secret support for US in Vietnam". El País.
22. ↑ ^{22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3 22.4} Hirschman, Charles; Preston, Samuel; Vu, Manh Loi (December 1995). "Vietnamese Casualties During the American War: A New Estimate" (PDF). Population and Development Review. 21 (4): 783. doi:10.2307/2137774. ISSN 0098-7921. JSTOR 2137774. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 12, 2013.
23. ↑ ^{23.0 23.1 23.2 23.3 23.4} Lewy, Guenter (1978). America in Vietnam. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-987423-1.
24. ↑ "Battlefield:Vietnam – Timeline". PBS. Archived from the original on June 4, 2023.
25. ↑ ^{25.0 25.1} Moyar, Mark. "Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965–1968." Encounter Books, December 2022. Chapter 17 index: "Communists provided further corroboration of the proximity of their casualty figures to American figures in a postwar disclosure of total losses from 1960 to 1975. During that period, they stated, they lost 849,018 killed plus approximately 232,000 missing and 463,000 wounded. Casualties fluctuated considerably from year to year, but a degree of accuracy can be inferred from the fact that 500,000 was 59 percent of the 849,018 total and that 59 percent of the war's days had passed by the time of Fallaci's conversation with Giap. The killed in action figure comes from "Special Subject 4: The Work of Locating and Recovering the Remains of Martyrs From Now Until 2020 And Later Years," downloaded from the Vietnamese government website datafile on 1 December 2017. The above figures on missing and wounded were calculated using Hanoi's declared casualty ratios for the period of 1945 to 1979, during which time the Communists incurred 1.1 million killed, 300,000 missing, and 600,000 wounded. Ho Khang, ed, Lich Su Khang Chien Chong My, Cuu Nuoc 1954–1975, Tap VIII: Toan Thang (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 2008), 463."
26. ↑ "Chuyên đề 4 CÔNG TÁC TÌM KIẾM, QUY TẬP HÀI CỐT LIỆT SĨ TỪ NAY ĐẾN NĂM 2020 VÀ NHỮNG NĂM TIẾP THEO". Datafile.chinhsachquandoi.gov.vn. Archived from the original on April 4, 2023. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
27. ↑ "Công tác tìm kiếm, quy tập hài cốt liệt sĩ từ nay đến năm 2020 và những năn tiếp theo" [The work of searching and collecting the remains of martyrs from now to 2020 and the next] (in Vietnamese). Ministry of Defence, Government of Vietnam. Archived from the original on 17 December 2018. Retrieved 11 June 2018.
28. ↑ Joseph Babcock (29 April 2019). "Lost Souls: The Search for Vietnam's 300,000 or More MIAs". Pulitzer Centre. Archived from the original on November 10, 2022. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
29. ↑ Hastings, Max (2018). Vietnam an epic tragedy, 1945–1975. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-06-240567-8.
30. ↑ James F. Dunnigan; Albert A. Nofi (2000). Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War: Military Information You're Not Supposed to Know. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-25282-3.
31. ↑ "North Korea fought in Vietnam War". BBC News Online. 31 March 2000. Archived from the original on March 12, 2023. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
32. ↑ Pribbenow, Merle (November 2011). "North Korean Pilots in the Skies over Vietnam" (PDF). Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. p. 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 5, 2023. Retrieved 3 March 2023.
33. ↑ Thayer, Thomas C. (1985). War Without Fronts: The American Experience in Vietnam. Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-7132-0.
34. ↑ Rummel, R.J (1997), "Table 6.1A. Vietnam Democide : Estimates, Sources, and Calculations", Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War, University of Hawaii System, archived from the original (GIF) on March 13, 2023
35. ↑ Clarke, Jeffrey J. (1988). United States Army in Vietnam: Advice and Support: The Final Years, 1965–1973. Center of Military History, United States Army. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam suffered 254,256 recorded combat deaths between 1960 and 1974, with the highest number of recorded deaths being in 1972, with 39,587 combat deaths
36. ↑ "The Fall of South Vietnam" (PDF). Rand.org. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 29, 2023. Retrieved 11 April 2021.
37. ↑ Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (4 May 2021). "2021 NAME ADDITIONS AND STATUS CHANGES ON THE VIETNAM VETERANS MEMORIAL" (Press release). Archived from the original on April 29, 2023.
38. ↑ National Archives–Vietnam War U.S. Military Fatal Casualties, 15 August 2016, retrieved 29 July 2020
39. ↑ "Vietnam War U.S. Military Fatal Casualty Statistics: HOSTILE OR NON-HOSTILE DEATH INDICATOR." U.S. National Archives. 29 April 2008. Accessed 13 July 2019.
40. ↑ America's Wars (PDF) (Report). Department of Veterans Affairs. May 2010. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 January 2014.
41. ↑ Anne Leland; Mari–Jana "M-J" Oboroceanu (26 February 2010). American War and Military Operations: Casualties: Lists and Statistics (PDF) (Report). Congressional Research Service. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 14, 2023.
42. ↑ Aaron Ulrich (editor); Edward FeuerHerd (producer and director) (2005, 2006). Heart of Darkness: The Vietnam War Chronicles 1945–1975 (Box set, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Dolby, Vision Software) (Documentary). Koch Vision. Event occurs at 321 minutes. ISBN 1-4172-2920-9.
43. ↑ Kueter, Dale (2007). Vietnam Sons: For Some, the War Never Ended. AuthorHouse. ISBN 978-1-4259-6931-8.
44. ↑ T. Lomperis, From People's War to People's Rule (1996)
45. ↑ "Australian casualties in the Vietnam War, 1962–72". Australian War Memorial. Archived from the original on February 14, 2023. Retrieved 29 June 2013.
46. ↑ "Overview of the war in Vietnam". New Zealand and the Vietnam War. 16 July 1965. Archived from the original on 26 July 2013. Retrieved 29 June 2013.
47. ↑ "America Wasn't the Only Foreign Power in the Vietnam War". 2 October 2013. Archived from the original on April 18, 2023. Retrieved 10 June 2017.
48. ↑ "Vietnam Reds Said to Hold 17 From Taiwan as Spies". The New York Times. 1964. Archived from the original on March 7, 2023.
49. ↑ Larsen, Stanley (1975). Vietnam Studies Allied Participation in Vietnam (PDF). Department of the Army. ISBN 978-1-5176-2724-9. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 6, 2023.
50. ↑ "Asian Allies in Vietnam" (PDF). Embassy of South Vietnam. March 1970. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 21, 2023. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
51. ↑ Shenon, Philip (23 April 1995). "20 Years After Victory, Vietnamese Communists Ponder How to Celebrate". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 27, 2023. Retrieved 24 February 2011. The Vietnamese government officially claimed a rough estimate of 2 million civilian deaths, but it did not divide these deaths between those of North and South Vietnam.
52. ↑ ^{52.0 52.1 52.2} Obermeyer, Ziad; Murray, Christopher J L; Gakidou, Emmanuela (23 April 2008). "Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: analysis of data from the world health survey programme". British Medical Journal. 336 (7659): 1482–1486. doi:10.1136/bmj.a137. PMC 2440905. PMID 18566045. From 1955 to 2002, data from the surveys indicated an estimated 5.4 million violent war deaths ... 3.8 million in Vietnam
53. ↑ Heuveline, Patrick (2001). "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises: The Case of Cambodia, 1970–1979". Forced Migration and Mortality. National Academies Press. pp. 102–104, 120, 124. ISBN 978-0-309-07334-9. As best as can now be estimated, over two million Cambodians died during the 1970s because of the political events of the decade, the vast majority of them during the mere four years of the 'Khmer Rouge' regime. ... Subsequent reevaluations of the demographic data situated the death toll for the [civil war] in the order of 300,000 or less.
54. ↑ Banister, Judith; Johnson, E. Paige (1993). Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and the International Community. Yale University Southeast Asia Studies. p. 97. ISBN 978-0-938692-49-2. An estimated 275,000 excess deaths. We have modeled the highest mortality that we can justify for the early 1970s.
55. ↑ Sliwinski, Marek (1995). Le Génocide Khmer Rouge: Une Analyse Démographique [The Khmer Rouge genocide: A demographic analysis]. L'Harmattan. pp. 42–43, 48. ISBN 978-2-7384-3525-5.