♪ ♪
NARRATOR: What kind of conflict was the Vietnam War,
and who were the opponents?
According to the United States,
it was a war against communist "Aggression from the North."
According to the North Vietnamese,
it was a war against the American imperialists
and their South Vietnamese puppets.
The truth is more complicated.
The Vietnam War started as a civil war—
a battle over what kind of country Vietnam would become.
There were communists and noncommunists all over the map,
in the north and the south,
city and countryside,
sometimes even under the same roof.
The divisions started in the late 1800s,
after France invaded Vietnam,
divided the country into regions,
and subjugated it to brutal colonial rule.
Vietnamese resistance was fierce.
Different groups staged revolts.
They all wanted to liberate Vietnam,
but they had different ideologies.
Some wanted to build a western-style republic.
Others believed communism was the answer.
The French violently suppressed these independence movements.
Many patriots, like Nguyen Thai Hoc,
were executed or imprisoned.
Others, like Ho Chi Minh, went into exile and waited.
In 1940, Japanese troops invaded Vietnam.
France, defeated by Germany,
began losing control over its colony.
It was then that Ho Chi Minh made his move.
He returned to Vietnam and formed the Viet Minh.
This independence coalition of communists and noncommunists
grew popular because they fought the French and Japanese.
When the north was hit by devastating famine,
the Viet Minh seized rice and distributed it to the people.
The noncommunists nationalists were less organized
and had less popular support.
In 1945, Japan took complete control of Vietnam.
But just a few months later,
Japan was defeated by the Allies.
The Viet Minh seized control
before France could reassert its claim on Vietnam.
The day Emperor Hirohito surrendered,
Ho Chi Minh declared independence.
Once in power, the Viet Minh hunted down
and murdered rival nationalists.
Survivors went into hiding.
But there were other rivals.
The French weren't giving up without a fight.
Skirmishes and guerrilla attacks evolved into full-scale war,
backed by the United States and the Soviet Union.
[gunfire]
In 1954, after a brutal seven-year battle,
the French surrendered at Dien Bien Phu.
The Geneva Agreement that ended the war partitioned Vietnam
at the 17th parallel.
The division was supposed to be temporary.
North Vietnam was controlled by a communist government
based in Hanoi.
South Vietnam was ruled by a noncommunist government
based in Saigon.
After partition,
Viet Minh soldiers stationed in the South moved north
and formed the People's Army of North Vietnam.
Many communist organizers and sympathizers stayed behind.
Vietnamese soldiers who fought for the French
regrouped in the South
and formed the basis of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.
In 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem
was elected President of South Vietnam.
The United States backed his government.
In 1956, Diem announced
that he would not hold the national elections
called for by the Geneva Agreement,
and the communist stay-behinds started an insurgency.
Because Hanoi wanted to focus on rebuilding in the North,
it was reluctant to support the "Viet Cong,"
as it was called by the Americans.
But Diem had decimated them.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Diem built a powerful army as a bulwark
against the communist guerrillas in the North.
NARRATOR: In 1960, Hanoi finally authorized
limited self-defense activities
and officially recognized southern guerrillas
as the People's Liberation Armed Forces.
Some communist troops returned to the South to help.
As Diem's unpopular regime faltered,
the PLAF gained control in many rural areas.
Diem was assassinated in a coup in November 1963.
At this point, Hanoi tried to win the war outright.
It began sending North Vietnamese Army Units
down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The United States responded with bombs.
♪ ♪
The first American ground troops arrived in 1965,
and by 1967 there were over 500,000
American military personnel in Vietnam.
The 1968 Tet Offensive
stunned the United States and South Vietnam,
but they quickly gained the upper hand.
The Viet Cong did most of the fighting for the communists
and most of the dying.
After Tet, the North Vietnamese Army took over,
and the war became a conventional ground war.
Under public pressure,
Nixon drew down American troops.
The South Vietnamese Army
carried on with U.S. air support.
The Viet Cong regained control of parts of the South
after the Americans left.
The Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973,
but the communists were allowed
to keep their territory in the South,
and the fighting continued.
In early March 1975,
North Vietnamese Army troops began their final offensive.
They encountered little resistance
and quickly captured several provinces and major cities
before advancing to Saigon on April 30th.
Many South Vietnamese fled,
putting thousands of miles between
the country of their birth,
their family, and their ancestors.
The communists had won.
After almost 30 years of war,
Vietnam was reunified.
♪ ♪