History: Vietnam War

For five years during World War II, Indochina was a French-administered possession of Japan. On Sept. 22, 1940, Jean Decoux, the French governor-general appointed by the Vichy government after the fall of France to the Nazis, concluded an agreement with the Japanese that permitted the stationing of 30,000 Japanese troops in Indochina and the use of all major Vietnamese airports by the Japanese military. The agreement made Indochina the most important staging area for all Japanese military operations in Southeast Asia.

The August Revolution of 1945 was an attempt by Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh to claim Vietnamese independence and self-government. Though successful at first, the Viet Minh was soon supplanted by Allied forces, which occupied Vietnam at the conclusion of World War II.

The First Indochina War, fought between December 1946 and August 1954, was a struggle between the Viet Minh and the French for control of the country. In the West this conflict is usually referred to as the First Indochina War; in Vietnam it is called the Anti-French War.

Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the decisive engagement in the first Indochina War (1946–54). It consisted of a struggle between French and Viet Minh (Vietnamese Communist and nationalist) forces for control of a small mountain outpost on the Vietnamese border near Laos. The Viet Minh victory in this battle effectively ended the eight-year-old war.

n an effort to resolve several problems in Asia, including the war between the French and Vietnamese nationalists in Indochina, representatives from the world's powers meet in Geneva. The conference marked a turning point in the United States' involvement in Vietnam.

The Vietnam war is sometimes seen as a proxy for the war that could not be fought between the USA and Russia.

In April 1960 a group of nationalist politicians and intellectuals drafted and signed the ‘Caravelle manifesto’, a document criticising Diem’s rule and demanding immediate political reform.

On January 31, 1968, some 70,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched the Tet Offensive (named for the lunar new year holiday called Tet), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam.

The Mỹ Lai Massacre was the Vietnam War mass murder of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968, committed by the U.S. Army soldiers. Victims included women, men, children, and infants.
The massacre, took place in two hamlets of Son My village.

On April 30, 1975, Saigon, capital of the Republic of Vietnam, falls to Communist troops from North Vietnam, marking the end of the Vietnam War.

On This Day: Saigon Falls to Vietcong, Ending Vietnam War

Professor Donald Stoker gave a lecture in his “Strategy and War” course at the U.S. Naval War College in Monterey, California. The course examines the relationship between political goals and the use of military force. During this class he used slides as he talked about North Vietnamese strategy during the Vietnam War.

The People's Army of Vietnam published an official history in Hanoi in 1994 that has shed light on a number of crucial actions taken by the North Vietnamese leadership.