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Vietnam War: A Visual History

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Visual history of a war

Twenty years, over three million dead, more bombs than all of World War II, and a superpower's first outright defeat.

Fought
1955 to 1975
Duration
20 years
Deaths
Roughly 1.5 to 3.5 million Vietnamese; 58,220 Americans
North and allies
North Vietnam, Viet Cong, with Soviet and Chinese aid
South and allies
South Vietnam, United States, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Philippines
Peak US troops
About 543,000 (April 1969)
Result
North Vietnamese victory; Vietnam reunified 1976

The Vietnam War (in Vietnam, the Resistance War against America) was fought between communist North Vietnam and its southern allies, the Viet Cong, and South Vietnam backed by the United States. It grew out of the First Indochina War against France and the 1954 partition of Vietnam. American involvement escalated from advisers in the late 1950s to over half a million troops by 1968. Unable to defeat an enemy fighting a guerrilla war with sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia, and facing collapsing support at home, the United States withdrew in 1973. North Vietnamese tanks entered Saigon on 30 April 1975 and the country was reunified under communist rule.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Vietnam War. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

14001500160017001800190020002100Vietnam War (1955 to 1975)Open: Spanish EmpireSpanish Empire (1492 to 1976)Open: British EmpireBritish Empire (1583 to 1997)Open: Dutch EmpireDutch Empire (1602 to 1975)Open: United StatesUnited States (1776 to present)Open: Second French colonial empireSecond French colonial empire (1830 to 1980)Open: Soviet Union (USSR)Soviet Union (USSR) (1922 to 1991)Open: First Indochina WarFirst Indochina War (1946 to 1954)Open: Cold WarCold War (1947 to 1991)Open: Myanmar conflictMyanmar conflict (1948 to present)Open: Korean WarKorean War (1950 to 1953)Open: Cambodian Civil WarCambodian Civil War (1967 to 1975)Open: Third Indochina WarThird Indochina War (1978 to 1991)

US troop strength in Vietnam

US military personnel in South Vietnam at the end of each year, from Department of Defense figures.

0137.5275412.55501960: 0.91961: 3.21962: 11.31963: 16.31964: 23.31965: 1841966: 3851967: 4861968: 5361969: 4751970: 3351971: 1571972: 241973: 0.051960196519701973thousands of personnel (year end)

Timeline of the Vietnam War

  1. 1954
    Dien Bien Phu; Geneva AccordsFrance defeated; Vietnam divided at the 17th parallel.
  2. 1955
    Republic of VietnamDiem takes power in the South; US support grows.
  3. 1960
    Viet Cong formedThe National Liberation Front.
  4. 1963
    Diem overthrownKilled in a US-approved coup.
  5. 1964
    Gulf of TonkinCongress authorises escalation.
  6. 1965
    US combat troops arriveRolling Thunder bombing begins.
  7. 1968
    Tet Offensive; My LaiThe turning point in American opinion.
  8. 1969
    Peak US strengthOver 540,000 troops; Vietnamisation begins.
  9. 1970
    Cambodia invadedKent State shootings.
  10. 1972
    Easter Offensive; Christmas bombingLinebacker campaigns.
  11. 1973
    Paris Peace AccordsUS troops withdraw.
  12. 1975
    Fall of Saigon30 April; the war ends.

From French Indochina to a divided country

Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence in September 1945, quoting the American Declaration of Independence. France tried to reimpose colonial rule and lost the First Indochina War, ending at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. The Geneva Accords divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel pending elections in 1956 that were never held; Ngo Dinh Diem's anti-communist South, backed by Washington, refused to take part.

Communist insurgency in the South, organised as the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) from 1960, was supplied down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and Cambodia. Kennedy raised the number of US advisers to 16,000. Diem's repression of Buddhists and his own unpopularity led to a US-approved coup in November 1963 in which he was killed, three weeks before Kennedy himself was assassinated.

Escalation, 1964-1968

After reported attacks on US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964, Congress gave President Johnson a blank cheque. Sustained bombing of the North (Operation Rolling Thunder) began in March 1965 and the first Marines landed at Da Nang the same month. By 1968 there were over 500,000 American troops in Vietnam fighting a war of attrition, measured in body counts, in jungles and villages where the enemy was hard to distinguish from the population.

The Tet Offensive of January 1968 saw the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese attack over 100 cities and towns at once, including the US embassy in Saigon. Militarily it was a disaster for the communists, who lost tens of thousands; politically it was a triumph, convincing much of the American public that the war could not be won. Johnson announced he would not seek re-election.

Vietnamisation and withdrawal, 1969-1973

Richard Nixon promised 'peace with honour' and pursued Vietnamisation, handing the fighting to the South Vietnamese army while pulling out American troops. At the same time he secretly bombed Cambodia, invaded it in 1970 (triggering the Kent State shootings) and backed an invasion of Laos in 1971. The My Lai massacre of March 1968, revealed in 1969, and the Pentagon Papers in 1971 deepened the domestic crisis.

North Vietnam's Easter Offensive of 1972 was beaten back by South Vietnamese troops and massive US air power, and the Christmas bombing of Hanoi that December brought the North back to the table. The Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 ended direct US involvement; the last American combat troops left in March, and the prisoners of war came home.

The fall of Saigon

The peace was a truce, not a settlement. With American aid cut by Congress and Nixon gone after Watergate, the South Vietnamese army crumbled when the North launched its final offensive in March 1975. Hue and Da Nang fell within weeks. On 29-30 April helicopters evacuated Americans and some Vietnamese from Saigon rooftops; North Vietnamese tanks smashed through the presidential palace gates on 30 April.

Vietnam was reunified as the Socialist Republic in July 1976. Hundreds of thousands of southerners passed through re-education camps and over a million fled as boat people. Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge and Laos to the Pathet Lao the same year. In the United States the war left a legacy of distrust in government, an all-volunteer army and the 'Vietnam syndrome' that shaped foreign policy for a generation.

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Empires of the same era and region

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10 surprising things about the Vietnam War

  1. The United States dropped more than 7 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, roughly three times the total dropped by all sides in World War II.
  2. Laos became the most heavily bombed country per capita in history, and unexploded ordnance still kills people there every year.
  3. The average age of a US soldier in Vietnam was about 22, not 19 as the famous song claims.
  4. Ho Chi Minh worked as a pastry chef in London and a photo retoucher in Paris before becoming a revolutionary, and reportedly petitioned Woodrow Wilson at Versailles in 1919.
  5. The Vietnamese never called it the Vietnam War; officially it is the Resistance War against America to Save the Nation.
  6. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was not one trail but a network of over 16,000 km of roads and paths, some paved, with fuel pipelines and rest stations.
  7. The Viet Cong tunnels at Cu Chi ran to over 200 km, with kitchens, hospitals and living quarters, some directly beneath a US base.
  8. Only about a quarter of the Americans who served in Vietnam were draftees; two thirds volunteered, though many enlisted to avoid being drafted into the infantry.
  9. The last two Americans killed in Vietnam, Marines Charles McMahon and Darwin Judge, died in a rocket attack on Saigon airport the day before the city fell.
  10. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington was designed by a 21 year old Yale student, Maya Lin, and was initially attacked as a 'black gash of shame'.

Sources

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