The siege and fall of a French garrison in a north-western valley in May 1954 (1954)
Dien Bien Phu, which ended French rule in Indochina.
History · The 20th century
The Vietnam War
1955–1975
Cold War proxy conflict in south-east Asia, and America's longest war to that date
The war fought between the communist North, backed by the Soviet Union and China, and the southern republic backed by the United States, after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and the partition of the country at the 17th parallel. American involvement escalated from advisers to combat troops after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964, peaking at more than half a million personnel in 1968. The Tet Offensive of that year, though a military setback for the communists, shattered American confidence; Nixon's policy of Vietnamisation withdrew troops, the Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 ended direct American involvement, and northern forces took Saigon on 30 April 1975.
How to spot them
- ▸A French garrison in a valley, besieged and taken in May 1954
- ▸A partition at the 17th parallel agreed at Geneva
- ▸A naval incident in a gulf in August 1964, and the congressional resolution that followed
- ▸A new year offensive in January 1968 that changes American opinion though it fails militarily
- ▸A helicopter on a rooftop in April 1975, and a city renamed
What happened
The 1954 conference that divided the country at the 17th parallel, pending elections that were never held (1954)
The Geneva Accords.
A naval incident of August 1964 that produced a near-unanimous congressional resolution (1964)
The Gulf of Tonkin incident and Resolution, which authorised escalation without a declaration of war.
The three-year bombing campaign begun in March 1965, whose codename suggested rolling thunder (1965–68)
Operation Rolling Thunder.
The lunar new year offensive of January 1968, including the attack on the American embassy in Saigon (1968)
The Tet Offensive; the ancient city of Huế was held for 25 days.
The killing of hundreds of unarmed villagers by American soldiers on 16 March 1968, in Quang Ngai province (1968)
The My Lai massacre; Lieutenant William Calley was the only man convicted.
Nick Ut's 1972 photograph of a girl fleeing a napalm strike at Trảng Bàng (1972)
"The Terror of War", which won a Pulitzer Prize.
The capture of Saigon on 30 April 1975 and the evacuation of the American embassy by helicopter (1975)
The city was renamed Ho Chi Minh City; Operation Frequent Wind was the final evacuation.
Quick-fire facts
- •Ho Chi Minh led the North until his death in September 1969; Ngo Dinh Diem led the South until his assassination in November 1963
- •The National Liberation Front in the South was known to its enemies as the Viet Cong
- •The Ho Chi Minh trail ran supplies south through Laos and Cambodia
- •American strength peaked at about 540,000 personnel in 1968–69
- •The Paris Peace Accords were signed on 27 January 1973; Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that year, and Tho declined it
- •The 1970 incursion into Cambodia set off protests at which four students were shot dead at Kent State University
- •The Pentagon Papers, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, revealed how far successive administrations had misled the public
- •Around 58,000 American service personnel died; Vietnamese military and civilian deaths are estimated in the millions, with figures much disputed
- •The defoliant Agent Orange was sprayed over large areas and left a long legacy of illness and birth defects
- •Maya Lin's memorial wall in Washington, dedicated in 1982, lists the American dead in the order they died
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Sources
- Max Hastings — Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945–1975
- Fredrik Logevall — Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam