Vietnam War

The United States and South Vietnam (the Republic of Vietnam), with smaller allied contingents, fought North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, communist guerrillas in the South. North Vietnam was led by Ho Chi Minh. The war spread into neighboring Laos and Cambodia.

After World War II, the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, fought to end French colonial rule; the United States, fearing that communism would spread from country to country like falling dominoes, helped finance the French war. The French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and the Geneva Conference divided Vietnam temporarily, pending elections. Expecting a communist victory, the United States backed South Vietnam’s leader Ngo Dinh Diem when he refused to hold the elections. A communist insurgency grew; by 1963 President Kennedy had sent some 16,000 military advisers, and that November Diem was overthrown and killed by his own generals.

Escalation (1964–1967). In August 1964 Johnson reported that North Vietnamese boats had attacked U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. The first attack, on August 2, occurred; a reported second attack on August 4 later proved not to have happened, and the Maddox had been on an intelligence mission. Congress nonetheless passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution on August 7, authorizing the president to use force. Marines landed in March 1965, beginning the ground war. Under General William Westmoreland, U.S. forces measured progress by “body counts,” while bombing failed to break the North.

Tet and the turning point (1968). In January 1968 communist forces attacked more than one hundred sites across South Vietnam, including the U.S. embassy in Saigon. They were driven back with heavy losses, but Tet exposed the “credibility gap” between official optimism and reality. On March 31 Johnson announced he would not seek reelection.

Vietnamization (1969–1973). President Richard Nixon began withdrawing troops while building up South Vietnam’s forces, and secretly bombed North Vietnamese bases in Cambodia. News of attacks on communist supply lines in Laos and Cambodia renewed antiwar demonstrations; in 1970 National Guard troops and police killed six students at Kent State in Ohio and Jackson State in Mississippi. After years of negotiation, the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973.

Collapse of the South (1975). When fighting resumed, North Vietnamese forces quickly overwhelmed the South, and by 1975 Vietnam was united under a communist government.

• The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964): gave the president a blank check for war.
• The Tet Offensive (1968): turned American opinion decisively against the war.
• Johnson’s withdrawal from the 1968 race: marked the political cost of the war.
• The Paris Peace Accords (1973): ended direct U.S. military involvement.

The United States failed to preserve an independent, noncommunist South Vietnam. More than 58,000 American military personnel died, along with millions of Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians.

The war shattered public trust in government. Revelations such as the My Lai massacre of civilians and the Pentagon Papers — a secret Defense Department history showing that presidents had misled the public about the war — deepened disillusionment. Congress repealed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1971 and in 1973 passed the War Powers Resolution to limit the president’s ability to wage war without congressional consent. The antiwar movement shaped a generation, while many other Americans continued to see the war as just.