when did the war in vietnam actually start
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (Vietnamese: Chiến tranh Việt Nam), also known as the Second Indochina War,[76] and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America (Vietnamese: Kháng chiến chống Mỹ) or simply the American War, was a conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955[A 1] to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese army was supported by the Soviet Union, China,[37] and other communist allies; the South Vietnamese army was supported by the United States, South Korea, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies.[77] The war is considered a Cold War-era proxy war by some US perspectives.[78] The majority of Americans believe the war was unjustified.[79] The war would last roughly 19 years and would also form the Laotian Civil War as well as the Cambodian Civil War, which also saw all three countries become communist states in 1975.
Vietnam War Kennedy advisors Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow recommended that U.S. troops be sent to South Vietnam disguised as flood relief workers.[132] Kennedy rejected the idea but increased military assistance yet again. In April 1962, John Kenneth Galbraith warned Kennedy of the "danger we shall replace the French as a colonial force in the area and bleed as the French did."[133] By November 1963, there were 16,000 American military personnel in South Vietnam, up from Eisenhower's 900 advisors.[134]
North Vietnam After the failure to reunify Vietnam by elections, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam attempted to unify the country by force in the Vietnam War (1955–75). North Vietnam and the Việt Cộng insurgents supported by their communist allies, including the Soviet Union and China, fought against the military of South Vietnam, the United States and other anti-communist military forces, including South Korea, Australia, Thailand, and smaller players. North Vietnam also supported indigenous communist rebels in Cambodia and Laos against their respective U.S.-backed governments. The war ended when North Vietnamese forces and the Việt Cộng defeated the Republic of Vietnam and in 1976 united the two parts of the country into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The expanded Democratic Republic retained North Vietnam's political culture under Soviet influence and continued its existing memberships in international organisations such as Comecon.
History of Vietnam Full-scale war broke out between the Việt Minh and France in late 1946 and the First Indochina War officially began. Realizing that colonialism was coming to an end worldwide, France decided to bring former emperor Bảo Đại back to power, as a political alternative to Ho Chi Minh. A Provisional Central Government was formed in 1948, reuniting Annam and Tonkin, but the complete reunification of Vietnam was delayed for a year because of the problems posed by Cochinchina's legal status. In July 1949, the State of Vietnam was officially proclaimed, as a semi-independent country within the French Union, with Bảo Đại as Head of State. France was finally persuaded to relinquish its colonies in Indochina in 1954 when Viet Minh forces defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu. The 1954 Geneva Conference left Vietnam a divided nation, with Hồ Chí Minh's communist DRV government ruling the North from Hanoi and Ngô Đình Diệm's Republic of Vietnam, supported by the United States, ruling the South from Saigon. Between 1953 and 1956, the North Vietnamese government instituted various agrarian reforms, including "rent reduction" and "land reform", which resulted in significant political oppression. During the land reform, testimony from North Vietnamese witnesses suggested a ratio of one execution for every 160 village residents, which extrapolated nationwide would indicate nearly 100,000 executions. Because the campaign was concentrated mainly in the Red River Delta area, a lower estimate of 50,000 executions became widely accepted by scholars at the time.[33][34][35][36] However, declassified documents from the Vietnamese and Hungarian archives indicate that the number of executions was much lower than reported at the time, although likely greater than 13,500.[37] In the South, Diem went about crushing political and religious opposition, imprisoning or killing tens of thousands.[38]