Background of Vietnam War
Early 1945, Japan controlled Vietnam during World War II. When Japan was completely defeated in August 1945, Vietnam was freed from Japan. After Japan French wanted to take control Indochina; Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in 1945 after the World War II. So French started the war to colonialize Cambodia and Laos.
French army occupy the big cities like Hanoi and Hai Phong. It seems to be ended soon but the 400,000 French army broken by the 50,000 Vietnamese. French did not have enough economic capacity to continue the war.
After the battle of the Dien Bien Phu, French make an agreement of Geneva convention and decided to marked the end of the involvement in Vietnam .
Vietnam was divided; North Vietnam and Sounth Vietnam. The Communist countries supported
the army in North Vietnam, also known as Viet Cong. French and the other Anti-Communist countries supported South Vietnam.
Quotes about the Vietnam War
“We discovered in that depressing, hellish place where death was our constant
companion that we loved each other. We killed for each other, we died for each
other and we wept for each other. And in time we came to love each other as
brothers. In battle our world shrank to the man on our left and the man on our
right and the enemy all around. We held each other's lives in our hands and we
learned to share our fears, our hopes, our dreams as readily as we shared what
little else good came our way. We were the children of the 1950's and John F.
Kennedy's young stalwarts of the early 1960's. He told the world that Americans
would go anywhere, pay any price, bear any burden in the defense of freedom.
We were the down payment on that costly contract, but the man who signed it was
not there when we fulfilled his promise. John F. Kennedy waited for us on a hill in
Arlington National Cemetery, and in time, by the thousands, we came to fill
those slopes with our white marble markers and to ask on the murmur of the wind
if that was truly the future he had envisioned for us.”
― General Hal Moore (We Were Soldiers)
“You will kill ten of us, we will kill one of you, but in the end, you will tire
of it first.”
― Hồ Chí Minh