THE WORLD ATLAS

War · 1955 – 30 April 1975

Vietnam War

The 1954 Geneva Accords ended French rule in Indochina and temporarily divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel, with nationwide elections promised for 1956. They were never held.

In the South, Ngo Dinh Diem proclaimed the Republic of Vietnam in 1955 with US backing, while the communist North under Ho Chi Minh supported a southern insurgency led by the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong). Fearing communist expansion across Asia, the United States sent advisers, then, after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, bombers and combat troops, reaching about 543,000 soldiers in 1969, joined by South Korean, Australian, New Zealand and Thai forces. China and the Soviet Union supplied the North. The 1968 Tet Offensive failed militarily but turned American opinion against the war. Under Nixon's 'Vietnamization' US forces withdrew, leaving after the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. Fighting continued, and on 30 April 1975 North Vietnamese tanks entered Saigon. Vietnam was reunified under communist rule in 1976, and communist movements also took power in Cambodia and Laos in 1975.

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Dates
1955 – 30 April 1975
Casualties
An estimated 966,000 to 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died, more than 58,000 Americans were killed, and total deaths including Cambodia and Laos are estimated at 1.3 to 3.4 million.

The sides

North Vietnam and its allies

South Vietnam and its allies

Timeline of the Vietnam War

  1. Diem proclaims the Republic of Vietnam

    The Geneva Accords of July 1954, which followed the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, left Ho Chi Minh's communists in control of the North and a non-communist government in the South. In October 1955 the South's prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, held a referendum that was rigged to give him 98 percent of the vote, deposed the emperor Bao Dai, and declared the Republic of Vietnam with himself as president. With US support he refused to hold the reunification elections due in 1956.

  2. National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) founded

    Diem's government suppressed communists and other opponents in the South, and from 1959 Hanoi backed armed struggle there, sending men and supplies down what became the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In December 1960 the National Liberation Front was formally created to lead the southern insurgency; its opponents called its fighters the Viet Cong. Its guerrillas spread their control over much of the South's countryside.

  3. Viet Cong defeat South Vietnamese troops at Ap Bac

    In the Mekong Delta village of Ap Bac, a Viet Cong force of a few hundred fought a much larger South Vietnamese army force backed by US helicopters, artillery and armoured carriers. The Viet Cong lost 18 men, while the South Vietnamese lost 83 soldiers and five US helicopters were brought down. American advisers and reporters saw the battle as evidence that the South's army could not defeat the insurgency.

  4. Diem overthrown and killed in a military coup

    Diem's favouritism towards Catholics provoked the Buddhist crisis of 1963, which began in May when government forces killed nine Buddhists in Hue; protests, including monks' self-immolations, followed. With tacit US approval, South Vietnamese generals overthrew Diem on 1–2 November, and he and his brother were killed. A series of unstable military governments followed in Saigon, and the insurgency gained ground in the countryside, drawing the United States towards direct intervention.

  5. Gulf of Tonkin incident

    On 2 August the US destroyer Maddox, on an intelligence mission off North Vietnam's coast, exchanged fire with North Vietnamese torpedo boats. A second attack reported on 4 August was later shown not to have happened. President Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes, and on 7 August Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving him broad authority to use military force in Southeast Asia without a declaration of war.

  6. Operation Rolling Thunder begins

    After Viet Cong attacks on US bases in February 1965, the United States began a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam on 2 March. Rolling Thunder aimed to raise southern morale, pressure Hanoi to stop supporting the insurgency, and destroy the North's transport, industry and air defences. It continued, with pauses, until 31 October 1968, but failed to stop the flow of men and supplies south.

  7. US Marines land at Da Nang

    On 8 March 1965, 3,500 US Marines came ashore near Da Nang, officially to guard the air base: the first American ground combat units in Vietnam. Their role soon expanded to offensive operations, and troop numbers rose rapidly. Allied contingents followed, including South Korean divisions from September 1965 and an Australian battalion, which had arrived in June 1965 alongside a New Zealand artillery battery.

  8. Battle of Ia Drang

    In the Central Highlands, the US 1st Cavalry Division landed by helicopter in the Ia Drang valley and fought North Vietnamese regulars from 14 to 18 November, the first major battle between the US Army and the People's Army of Vietnam. Both sides suffered heavy losses and both claimed victory. The battle set the pattern of the war: US reliance on helicopters, artillery and air power against an enemy that fought at close range to blunt it.

  9. Australians fight the Battle of Long Tan

    Australia had sent military advisers to South Vietnam from 1962 and combat troops from 1965, based at Nui Dat in Phuoc Tuy province. On 18 August 1966 a company of about 100 Australian soldiers was caught in a rubber plantation near Long Tan by a much larger Viet Cong and North Vietnamese force. Supported by artillery, they held out through a monsoon storm until relieved. Eighteen Australians were killed; it became Australia's best-known battle of the war.

  10. The Tet Offensive

    During the Tet lunar new year holiday, about 77,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops attacked more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 of 44 provincial capitals and Saigon, where they briefly entered the US Embassy grounds. The hoped-for popular uprising did not come, and the attackers were driven back with heavy losses; in Hue, held for 26 days, thousands of civilians were executed. Militarily a defeat for Hanoi, Tet shocked the American public and pushed Johnson towards negotiations, which opened in Paris on 10 May.

  11. My Lai massacre

    On 16 March 1968 soldiers of Charlie Company, Americal Division, killed between 347 and 504 unarmed villagers, mostly women, children and elderly men, in the hamlets of My Lai and My Khe in Quang Ngai province. The killings were covered up until the journalist Seymour Hersh revealed them in November 1969. Of 26 soldiers charged, only Lieutenant William Calley was convicted, and the massacre deepened opposition to the war.

  12. US and South Vietnamese forces invade Cambodia

    Under 'Vietnamization', President Nixon began withdrawing US troops in 1969 while building up South Vietnam's army. In March 1970 Cambodia's ruler Prince Sihanouk was overthrown, and the new pro-US Khmer Republic faced North Vietnamese forces and the communist Khmer Rouge. On 30 April Nixon ordered US and South Vietnamese troops to attack North Vietnamese bases inside Cambodia. The expansion of the war set off protests in the United States, where National Guardsmen killed four students at Kent State University on 4 May.

  13. North Vietnam launches the Easter Offensive

    With most US ground troops gone, North Vietnam launched a three-pronged conventional invasion of the South in late March 1972, using tanks and artillery across the demilitarised zone into Quang Tri province, in the Central Highlands and north of Saigon. South Vietnamese forces, backed by massive US air power, held most key cities and retook Quang Tri city by September, but the North kept large areas along the border.

  14. US B-52s carry out the 'Christmas bombing'

    Peace talks in Paris had nearly produced an agreement in October 1972, but they broke down over objections from South Vietnam and new demands from both sides. On 14 December President Nixon ordered massive B-52 raids on North Vietnam, carried out in the second half of the month in what became known as the Christmas bombing. Negotiations resumed in early January 1973, and the agreement was quickly concluded.

  15. Ceasefire under the Paris Peace Accords

    The United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Viet Cong signed the Paris Peace Accords on 27 January 1973, and a ceasefire took effect across Vietnam at midnight GMT that day. US and allied forces were to leave within 60 days and prisoners of war were to be exchanged, but North Vietnamese troops were allowed to remain in the South. The negotiators Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Tho declined it.

  16. Last US and South Korean combat troops leave

    South Korea, whose forces had numbered about 50,000 at their peak, withdrew its last troops on 23 March 1973. Within the 60 days set by the accords, the last US combat troops left South Vietnam at the end of March, and American prisoners came home in Operation Homecoming. The ceasefire never fully held, and fighting between North and South Vietnamese forces resumed while US aid to Saigon was cut back.

  17. North Vietnamese capture Buon Ma Thuot

    In early 1975 North Vietnam launched an offensive in the Central Highlands. The capture of Buon Ma Thuot on 10 March prompted President Nguyen Van Thieu to order a withdrawal from the highlands, which collapsed into a chaotic retreat under fire, jammed with soldiers and civilians. The speed of the South's disintegration surprised Hanoi, which accelerated its plans to take Saigon before the rainy season.

  18. Hue and Da Nang fall

    As panic spread in the northern provinces, Hue fell on 25 March and Da Nang, South Vietnam's second city, on 28 March. Hundreds of thousands of refugees and soldiers crowded the roads and beaches trying to escape south by sea. South Vietnamese troops made a last stand at Xuan Loc, east of Saigon, from 9 to 21 April, and Thieu resigned on 21 April.

  19. Khmer Rouge capture Phnom Penh

    In Cambodia, the communist Khmer Rouge had besieged the capital for months after the US ended its bombing there in 1973. The US embassy evacuated its staff on 12 April, and on 17 April the city's last defences fell. The Khmer Rouge immediately ordered the entire population to leave the city, beginning a regime under which an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians would die by 1979.

  20. Fall of Saigon

    North Vietnamese forces encircled Saigon in late April. As the city fell, Operation Frequent Wind evacuated the remaining Americans and tens of thousands of South Vietnamese by helicopter. On the morning of 30 April North Vietnamese tanks broke through the gate of the Presidential Palace, and President Duong Van Minh, in office for two days, surrendered. Vietnam was formally reunified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976.

Related

Other wars of the time

Sources