Why did the Vietnamwar begin?

Answer 1

1950- President Truman authorized economic and military aid to France in what was then Indochina. That was our first involvement. Things escalated from there.

Learn more here ...
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/vietnam/causes.htm

(An interesting side note, Roosevelt did NOT want to give Indochina back to France after WWII and so stated at the Terheran conference in 1943. He noted "after 100 years of French rule in Indochina, the inhabitants were worse off than they had been before." However, Truman caved after the war in order to get France's cooperation in other matters. More interesting stuff here: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=919)

Answer 2

Vietnam wanted its independence, it used communism as a means to an ends.
Ho Chi Minh pleaded repeatedly for Vietnamese independence, only to be rebuffed or ignored.
France wanted to regain its colonies and got caught got in a civil war between the colonialists and the nationalists. We sided with the French.

The best analogy would be France siding with the Brits in the American Revolution. At the time, we didn't see this. All we saw was a Communist expansion into the third world, where the reality was a war for Vietnamese independence.

Answer 3

After the war, the US wanted Vietnam to return to its status as being a puppet of French Indochina. When the locals did not like that, the US used force to help the French. When the French left, the US was resolute in not allowing the Vietnamese to control themselves.

Answer 4

Communist were trying to spread all though Vietnam. The French tried to fight it but failed. So the U.S.A. Stepped in and got all tangled up in another person's war.

Answer 5

communism