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The Vietnam War and active U.S. involvement in the war began in 1954, though ongoing conflict in the region had stretched back several decades.

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The Vietnam War and active U.S. involvement in the war began in 1954, though ongoing conflict in the region had stretched back several decades.

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1954

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The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States.

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Why Did America Fight the Vietnam War? | 5 Minute Video

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Vietnam War (video) | 1960s America | Khan Academy

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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There were 6 Free World nations and 2 communist allies that officially sent men and material support to South and North Vietnam respectively. In total, there were at least 21 countries

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There were 6 Free World nations and 2 communist allies that officially sent men and material support to South and North Vietnam respectively. In total, there were at least 21 countries

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Related question:

The main countries involved in the Vietnam War were North and South Vietnam. South Vietnam was backed by anti-communist countries and members of the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) which included the United States, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, New Zealand, Thailand, Khmer Republic (later overthrown by Khmer Rouge), Kingdom of Laos and Republic of China (Taiwan). North Vietnam was backed by the communist allies which included People's Republic of China, Soviet Union, Pathet Lao (Laotian Communist insurgents), Khmer Rouge (Cambodian Communist insurgents) and North Korea.

There were 6 Free World nations and 2 communist allies that officially sent men and material support to South and North Vietnam respectively. In total, there were at least 21 countries* reported to get involved in the entire wars in Vietnam - from the First Indochina war (December 19, 1946 - August 1, 1954) to the Vietnam war (the Second Indochina war) (November 1, 1955 to April 30, 1975):

1. France

2. Japan

3. The United Kingdom (members of Allied Control Commission (ACC))

4. India (members of ACC)

5. Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam)

6. Soviet Union

7. People's Republic of China

8. North Korea

9. Cuba

10. Laos (Kingdom of Laos and Pathet Lao)

11. Cambodia (Khmer Republic and Khmer Rouge)

12. Republic of Vietnam ( aka South Vietnam (1955 - 1975) succeeded State of Vietnam (1949 - 1955) )

13. The United States

14. South Korea

15. Australia

16. New Zealand

17. Thailand

18. Philippines

19. Taiwan

20. Spain

21. Canada and the ICC (later ICCS)

* Most of the communist allies hardly disclose any details of their activities during the conflict although their involvement in Vietnam was apparent. Some countries such as Cuba and Taiwan provided secret supports to their respective allies while others such as Czechoslovakia, East and West Germany although did not officially participate offered military advisors, engineers and doctors in their allies' forces. There were also members of the International Control Commission (ICC) and International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) who albeit supposedly neutral took sides and even offered aid to them such as Poland and Canada. Therefore, their roles and involvement remain unclear.

Key belligerents

I. Communist Allies

People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China (PRC) was the first country that recognized the Democratic republic of vietnam (DRV) led by Ho Chi Minh back in January 1950. In the same year, they also sent weapons and military advisors to assist the viet Minh in their war against the French. Prior to the recognition and support, the Chinese communists and Viet Minh had been co-operating in their respective struggles during 1946-49, up until the Chinese communists won the civil war in 1949.

In the 1954 Geneva Accords, following the Soviet Union, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai urged the Viet Minh to accept a temporary partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel. China continued to provide military aid and support to North Vietnam years after the first Indochina war.

The Chinese interpreted American "aggression" against North Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin incident as their own and threatened to militarily intervene in North Vietnam if American forces crossed the DMZ. This was reinforced by a treaty signed during a Hanoi delegation's visit in Beijing in July 1965 to provide Hanoi enough economic support and necessary equipment for national defense. In December, another Beijing-Hanoi pact was signed granting a series of loans of undetermined amounts to North Vietnam.

Since 1965, China also began to send AAA divisions and engineering units to help Hanoi counter U.S. overwhelming air strikes during Operation Rolling Thunder, repair the destruction caused by American bombing as well as rebuild roads, railroads and defend critical infrastructure in the North.

Meanwhile, the relationships between China and Soviet Union began to deteriorate through the 1960s. Sino-Soviet relations went from bad to worse after the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and reached its nadir with an armed conflict at Sino-Soviet border in March 1969. Despite the tensions, both Beijing and Moscow shared the same view on the conflict in Vietnam. The Chinese allowed Soviet materiel across China for the North to prosecute wage the war.

At the same time, Sino-Vietnamese relationship also soured as Hanoi refused to cut relations with Moscow as per Beijing's demand as well as disagreement in Paris peace negotiations and particularly U.S. President Nixon's visit to China in 1972.

Since then, China played a decreasing and more passive role in helping their former close allies. Chinese troops in North Vietnam would eventually withdraw, for the most part, by 1970. Besides, China also began to fund, arm and train the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia as a counterbalance to the Vietnamese communists.

Nonetheless, during 1972 - 1975, China continued to provide the sinews of modern war that would enable NVA to launch two modern and large-scale offensives against South Vietnam in both 1972 and 1975 which eventually ended the Vietnam War.

To conclude, China played an active and crucial role in supporting their communist ally in the Vietnam war the with more than 320,000 Chinese troops stationed in North Vietnam between 1965 and 1971, peaking in 1967 with around 170,000 Chinese in the DRV. An approximately 1,000 Chinese were killed in North Vietnam in the late 1960s.

However, it's worth noticing that after China's ally Khmer Rouge conducted some savage raids along the border between Vietnam and Cambodia during 1975-1978 and Vietnam responded with an invasion that overthrew them, China decided to launch a brief, punitive border invasion of Vietnam in 1979 sometimes known as the Third Indochina War to "teach them a lesson".

Soviet Union

In the aftermath of the World War II, the Soviet Union paid little attention to the communist movement (Viet Minh) in Vietnam who was largely outside Moscow's sphere of influence. The situation changed dramatically when the Chinese communist won the civil in mainland china in October 1949 and fostered the communist movement further to Asia.

Although Moscow belatedly recognized Ho's government in January 1950, they rejected his request to back North Vietnamese movement for independence against the French. Instead, Joseph Stalin encouraged Mao Zedong to assist North Vietnam, which he did in the First Indochina War and through the rest of the 1950s.

The death of Stalin in March 1953 and the stabilization of events in Europe drew Moscow's attention back to Southeast Asia. Similar to Beijing, Moscow who feared U.S. direct intervention in Vietnam urged Ho Chi Minh to accept the temporary division of Vietnam of the 1954 Geneva Accords and focus on building the country's military and economy instead.

The Soviet Union remained indifferent with the conflict in Vietnam in early 1960s under Nikita Khrushchev even after the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Things changed when Khrushchev was out of power and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev who favored more direct involvement to aid North Vietnam.

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What countries involved in the Vietnam War? - The Vietnam War

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Related question: Who was in the Vietnam War? Who fought in the Vietnam War? The main countries involved in the Vietnam War were North and South Vietnam. South Vietnam was backed by anti-communist countries and members of the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) which included the United States, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, New ...

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The two countries finally resumed formal diplomatic relations in 1995.

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The two countries finally resumed formal diplomatic relations in 1995.

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1995

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Vietnam War, (1954-75), a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. Called the "American War" in Vietnam (or, in full, the "War Against the Americans to Save the Nation"), the war was also part of a larger regional conflict ( see Indochina wars) and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies.

At the heart of the conflict was the desire of North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial administration of Vietnam in 1954, to unify the entire country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China. The South Vietnamese government, on the other hand, fought to preserve a Vietnam more closely aligned with the West. U.S. military advisers, present in small numbers throughout the 1950s, were introduced on a large scale beginning in 1961, and active combat units were introduced in 1965. By 1969 more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and China poured weapons, supplies, and advisers into the North, which in turn provided support, political direction, and regular combat troops for the campaign in the South. The costs and casualties of the growing war proved too much for the United States to bear, and U.S. combat units were withdrawn by 1973. In 1975 South Vietnam fell to a full-scale invasion by the North.

The human costs of the long conflict were harsh for all involved. Not until 1995 did Vietnam release its official estimate of war dead: as many as 2 million civilians on both sides and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war. In 1982 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., inscribed with the names of 57,939 members of U.S. armed forces who had died or were missing as a result of the war. Over the following years, additions to the list have brought the total past 58,200. (At least 100 names on the memorial are those of servicemen who were actually Canadian citizens.) Among other countries that fought for South Vietnam on a smaller scale, South Korea suffered more than 4,000 dead, Thailand about 350, Australia more than 500, and New Zealand some three dozen.

Vietnam emerged from the war as a potent military power within Southeast Asia, but its agriculture, business, and industry were disrupted, large parts of its countryside were scarred by bombs and defoliation and laced with land mines, and its cities and towns were heavily damaged. A mass exodus in 1975 of people loyal to the South Vietnamese cause was followed by another wave in 1978 of " boat people," refugees fleeing the economic restructuring imposed by the communist regime. Meanwhile, the United States, its military demoralized and its civilian electorate deeply divided, began a process of coming to terms with defeat in what had been its longest and most controversial war. The two countries finally resumed formal diplomatic relations in 1995.

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Vietnam War | Facts, Summary, Years, Timeline, Casualties, Combatants, & Facts

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Vietnam War (1954-75), conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. It was part of a larger regional conflict as well as a manifestation of the Cold War.

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The Vietnam War pitted communist North Vietnam and the Viet Cong against South Vietnam and the United States. The war ended when U.S. forces withdrew in 1973 and Vietnam unified under Communist control two years later.

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The Vietnam War pitted communist North Vietnam and the Viet Cong against South Vietnam and the United States. The war ended when U.S. forces withdrew in 1973 and Vietnam unified under Communist control two years later.

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1973

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Vietnam Background: Uneasy French Rule *&nbsp;1887: France imposes a colonial system over Vietnam, calling it French Indochina. The system includes Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China and Cambodia. Laos is added in 1893. *&nbsp;1923-25: Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh is trained in the Soviet Union as an agent of the Communist International (Comitern). *&nbsp;February 1930: Ho Chi [...]
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Vietnam War: Dates and Timeline | HISTORY

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The Vietnam War lasted about 40 years and involved several countries. Learn about Vietnam War protests, the Tet Offensive, the My Lai Massacre, the Pentagon Papers and more.

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The war lasted 19 years and three countries became communist states regardless of US involvement. 

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The war lasted 19 years and three countries became communist states regardless of US involvement. 

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