Vietnam war?

Question

how can you explain the vietnam war in a paragraph or two?

Answer 1

I assume you are talking about the Second Indochina War where the US were involved directly, as distinct from the First Indochina War where the Vietnamese were fighting the French for independence, and where the US was giving assistance. I hope the following is of assistance.

The Vietnam war was a fight to reunite Vietnam that had been separated in 1954 by the Geneva Agreements into two temporary military demarcation areas, with the Viet Minh (Nationalists) to go north and the French to go to the south. There was supposed to be national elections to take place over the entire country prior to July 1956 but this was refused by the US installed President Ngo Diem, a catholic anti-communist former seminary student in the US. The US also violated the 1954 Geneva agreements by sending arms to the illegally formed government in the south along with advisers.

President Diem, as mentioned a Catholic, persecuted the Buddhist monks and any other opposition to his rule, and in December 1959 numerrous groups came together and formed the 'National Liberation Front' (NLF) which started their military campaign against the Diem government in 1960. The US started sending in more advisors then more troops until there were over 600,000 US troops on active service within Vietnam. The US started to reduce troops by 1971 and most were gone by 1973 while the war finished in 1975 when the soldiers of both the NLF and the PLAV (Peoples Liberation Army of Vietnam [North Vietnamese]) entered Saigon.

Answer 2

The Vietnamese fought long and hard, but after 30 years of fighting (1945-1975) the French and the Americans - they finally unified their country.

Answer 3

It was an intense conflict to counter communist take-over of the country.