Cause And Effects Of The Vietnam War

“During the Vietnam War more than three million people, including fifty eight thousand Americans were killed in the fight” (History.com, 2016). The Vietnam War was a fight in which the United States sided with the South to stop the North’s desire to be communist. The war took place from 1955-1975, with the United States becoming fully involved in 1964 as a result of the USS Maddox being fired at while patrolling the waters outside of North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin (Henretta, Hinderaker, Edwards, Self, 2015). The Vietnam War ruined both North and South Vietnam leaving the country still divided into two sides. There were many causes and effects related to the Vietnam War, and when Americans became involved it directly affected the nation.

During World War II Japan occupied Vietnam which was French colony. A nationalist movement in Vietnam was sparked by Ho Chi Minh in 1941 to confront the Japanese. In early stages of World War II the United States shared a common enemy with Ho Chi Minh as they both disfavored Japan. At the duration of the World War II Japan began to support Vietnam and ultimately admitted the Vietnamese as an independent country. But the Japanese weren’t on the victorious side of the war, so there admission of independence to the Vietnamese was not supported by the French (Henretta, Hinderaker, Edwards, Self, 2015). The French being unwilling to give Vietnam their independence caused a disagreement between them and the Viet Minh which would become known as the First Indochina War. The war was fought predominately in the North, where the North Vietnamese destroyed the French army in a completely lopsided battle. The Geneva Conference ultimately settled the North and South disputed by divided the country in two along the 17th parallel (History.com, 2016). The Vietnamese was controlled by a communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, in the North and the South had a non-communist government controlled by Ngo Dinh Diem. The division of North and South lasted until the election of 1956. The United States originally supported Ngo Dinh Diem but because of his lack of support from his people and the outbreak of

One reason was that because of the media these veterans knew that they were fighting in a very unpopular war and this caused many soldiers to think, “Why are we even here?” American men were losing their lives defending rice farmers in a country that the majority of them had never even heard of. Because the war was so unpopular many veterans felt as if they were unappreciated and sometimes forgotten. In the fighting fifty eight thousand Americans were killed, two thousand were captured, and nearly three hundred and fifty thousand were wounded or pronounced missing in action. Many American Vietnam veterans faced injury and the ones who remain alive are still having to coupe with these disabilities to this day. The majority of the soldiers fighting in Vietnam were volunteers, that is until the supply lines were running low and the American government had to implement a draft. Most of the draftees came straight out of high school and sent into the ferocious battle of Vietnam (The Psychological Effects of the Vietnam War, 2016). This played a huge mental roll in the soldier’s psychological ways of life, especially for the soldiers who lived and got to come home. Fighting for a cause that not many of a soldier’s friends and family support significantly effects a person mentally especially after just experiencing there brothers dying for a “lost cause”. Many men that did return home faced