How did the Vietnam War start?

How a former French colony became the
deadliest Cold War battleground

In Depth

The conflict in Vietnam, which began as a colonial uprising in
the 1940s, would eventually become a devastating multinational
war involving troops from the US, Australia, New Zealand, China,
South Korea and Thailand.

So how did it happen?

In 1941, as part of their imperialist ambition
for control of Southeast Asia, Japanese forces occupied the French
colonial territory of Indochina – modern-day Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos.

France was allowed to remain in nominal control
of Indochina until the fall of the pro-German Vichy government in
1945. Fearing an Allied counterattack, the Japanese launched a
surprise coup, driving out French colonial troops and
administrators, and proclaiming an independent Viet Nam.

In August 1945, Ho Chi Minh, leader of the
communist Viet Minh independence movement, was declared prime
minister.

For nine years, the French battled to regain
their former colony, meeting unexpectedly tough
resistance.

At the same time, an anti-communist opposition
movement had taken over control of South Vietnam, where the French
colonial presence had been strongest.

When the gruelling First Indochina War ended, in 1954, it was
agreed that the country should be temporarily partitioned until
1956 when democratic elections would determine the future of a
united Vietnam.

Deteriorating relations between the two
governing factions meant that the elections never
materialised.

In South Vietnam, President Ngo Dinh Diem attempted to
consolidate his power through brutal repression of communists,
Buddhists and opposition groups.

Meanwhile, Ho’s government formed a guerilla
movement, commonly known as the Viet Cong, to infiltrate South
Vietnam and foment an uprising.

Why did the US become involved?

After the Second World War, the US and the Soviet Union emerged
as rival superpowers, their opposing ideologies competing for
domination on the world stage.

The US saw itself as the guardian of Western democracy,
capitalism and freedom, a bastion against the spread of godless,
tyrannical communism.

Central to Cold War foreign policy was the “domino
theory” which held that “if one country fell to Communism, the
surrounding countries would fall, like dominoes”, says the website
of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and
Museum.

As the opposing communist and pro-Western
factions emerged in Vietnam in the 1950s, the country became a
battleground for an ideological proxy war that eventually escalated
into a deadly multinational conflict.

How did the US intervene?

The belief in Washington was that a strong show
of American backing for Diem’s regime would spook Ho into backing
off. In reality, this policy led to a “slippery slope” of
escalating US involvement.

The Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations both
provided support for Diem’s efforts to defeat the Viet Cong
insurgency, including military hardware, financial backing and the
deployment of American military advisors to train South Vietnamese
forces.

In 1963, the increasingly unpopular Diem was
assassinated by a group of army officers. “To help deal with the
post-coup chaos, Kennedy increased the number of US advisors in
South Vietnam to 16,000,” says ThoughtCo.

In 1964, the Johnson administration approved air
strikes on North Vietnam, using a now-disputed attack on two US
destroyers as a pretext.

“Each succeeding step was taken in the optimistic belief that a
little more effort – a bit more aid, a few more troops, a slight
intensification of the bombing – would turn things around by
signaling American resolve to stay the course,” says The Conversation.

“By 1965, North Vietnamese offensives left President
Johnson with two choices: escalate US involvement or withdraw,”
says the History Channel website.

He chose the former. On 8 March 1965, 3,500 US
Marines disembarked at Da Nang, the first American combat troops to
join the Vietnam War. Another 2.7 million American servicemen, a
third of them draftees, would follow them before President Nixon
ordered the withdrawal of US forces in 1973.

By the time the war ended, in 1975, with Ho’s
communist forces victorious, at least 2.5 million
people, including nearly 60,000 US service personnel, had
lost their lives.