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THE VIETNAM WAR FROM 1955 TO 1975
The Vietnam War was a military conflict in which communist forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) and the indigenous National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, (also known as the Viet Cong, "Victor Charlie" or "Charlie" for short, "VC" or "Cong" or "Mr. Charlie" or "Mr. Charles") fought the anti-communist forces of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN or South Vietnam) and its allies — most notably the United States (U.S.) — in a successful effort to unify Vietnam into a single independent, communist state. It is also known as the Vietnam Conflict, the Second Indochina War and, in the U.S. colloquially, as Vietnam, The Nam or simply Nam. Vietnamese communists often referred to it as the American War.
The chief cause of the war was the failure of Vietnamese nationalists, in the form of the Viet Minh, to gain control of southern Vietnam both during and after their struggle for independence from France in the First Indochina War of 1946-1954.
The allies of the Vietnamese communists included the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. South Vietnam's main anti-communist allies were the United States, South Korea, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, and New Zealand. The U.S. in particular, deployed large numbers of military personnel to South Vietnam. U.S. military advisors first became involved in Vietnam as early as 1950, when they began to assist French colonial forces. In 1956, these advisors assumed full responsibility for training the Army of the Republic of Vietnam or ARVN. Large numbers of American combat troops began to arrive in 1965 and the last left the country in 1973.
At various stages the conflict involved clashes between small units patrolling the mountains and jungles, guerrilla attacks in the villages and cities, and finally, large-scale conventional battles. U.S. aircraft also conducted substantial aerial bombing campaigns, targeting both logistical networks and the cities and transportation arteries of North Vietnam. Large quantities of chemical defoliants were also sprayed from the air in an effort to reduce the cover available to enemy combatants.
To some degree the Vietnam War was a "proxy war," one of several that erupted during the Cold War period that followed the conclusion of the Second World War and decolonization. These wars usually grew from localized conflicts that expanded to include the U.S. and its Western allies on one side and the Soviet Union and/or the People's Republic of China on the other. The Korean Conflict, for example, was another such war. Proxy wars occurred because the major players - especially the U.S. and the Soviet Union - were unwilling to engage each other directly due to the threat of escalation into a nuclear exchange.
The Vietnam War was finally concluded on 30 April 1975, with the fall of the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces. The war claimed perhaps 2-2.5 million Southeast Asian lives, a large number of whom were civilians.
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