Vietnam War, (1954–75), a protracted conflict that pitted the 

communist government of North
Vietnam, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States.
The war was also part of a larger regional conflict and a manifestation of the Cold War between the
United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies.

At the heart of the conflict was the desire of North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial
administration of Vietnam in 1954, to unify the entire country under a single communist regime
modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China. The South Vietnamese government, on the
other hand, fought to preserve a Vietnam more closely aligned with the West. U.S. military
advisers, present in small numbers throughout the 1950s, were introduced on a large scale
beginning in 1961, and active combat units were introduced in 1965. By 1969 more than 500,000
U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and China poured
weapons, supplies, and advisers into the North, which in turn provided support, political direction,
and regular combat troops for the campaign in the South. The costs and casualties of the growing
war proved too much for the United States to bear, and U.S. combat units were withdrawn by 1973.
In 1975 South Vietnam fell to a full-scale invasion by the North.

The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died
in the war. 57,939 members of U.S. armed forces who had died or were missing as a result of the
war.

Vietnam emerged from the war as a potent military power within Southeast Asia, but its agriculture,
business, and industry were disrupted, large parts of its countryside were scarred by bombs and
laced with land mines, and its cities and towns were heavily damaged. 

 the United States, its military demoralized and its civilian electorate deeply divided, began a
process of coming to terms with defeat in what had been its longest and most controversial war. The
two countries finally resumed formal diplomatic relations in 1995.
To the new administration of U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy, who took office in 1961, Vietnam
represented both a challenge and an opportunity. Kennedy and some of his close advisers believed
that Vietnam presented an opportunity to test the United States’ ability to conduct a
“counterinsurgency” against communist subversion and guerrilla warfare. Kennedy accepted
without serious question the so-called domino theory, which held that the fates of all Southeast
Asian countries were closely linked and that a communist success in one must necessarily lead to
the fatal weakening of the others. A successful effort in Vietnam—in Kennedy’s words, “the
cornerstone of the free world in Southeast Asia”—would provide to both allies and adversaries
evidence of U.S. determination to meet the challenge of communist expansion in the Third World.
Though never doubting Vietnam’s importance, the new president was obliged, during much of his
first year in office, to deal with far more pressing issues—the construction of the Berlin Wall,
conflicts between the Laotian government and the communist-led Pathet Lao, and the humiliating
failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Because of these other, more widely known crises, it
seemed to some of Kennedy’s advisers all the more important to score some sort of success in
Vietnam.

The My Lai massacre was one of the most horrific incidents of violence
committed against unarmed civilians during the Vietnam War. A company
of American soldiers brutally killed most of the people—women, children
and old men—in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968. More than 500
people were slaughtered in the My Lai massacre, including young girls
and women who were raped and mutilated before being killed. U.S. Army
officers covered up the carnage for a year before it was reported in the
American press, sparking a firestorm of international outrage. The
brutality of the My Lai killings and the official cover-up fueled anti-war
sentiment and further divided the United States over the Vietnam War.