The Vietnam War

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The Vietnam War was a war between the Capitalist United States and the Communist North Vietnamese army. This war started in 1964 and it ended in 1975, when the US withdrew its soldiers. The US joined the war to stop the spreading of Communism, because they didn’'t want Russia to gain more allies, as they had been in a cold war with them for years.

In my opinion, an event is significant if it is still remembered today, meaning that it is used in films, written about in books, and when people watch these films or read books, it could raise issues in their mind which also makes an event significant. If it was really important at the time, like all the soldiers died, which was only important to the US and Vietnam at the time but as for the entire country in the long term it was not important. Significance is more than just how important an event is. It describes the impact of the event on other countries involved as well as the world as a whole. In my essay I will explain how far I agree with the statement, by looking at the ways the Vietnam War was significant in both the long and short term.

A lot of people believe that the Vietnam War was mostly significant in the short term, it had an impact and effects on a number of different people in many countries.

In the USA for example, 58,000 US soldiers died in the Vietnam War and about 300,000 were injured. In the short term this meant that people had their families broken up and that some of the returning soldiers with serious injuries could no longer serve in the army or work. This may not have been the case for ever but certainly affected their lives in the years immediately after the war. While this certainly had an impact in the short term, I do not think it was significa...

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...hat some of the families were broken up and also that some of the returning soldiers who were seriously injured so they couldn’t work which meant that they had no money and perhaps ended up on the street and became homeless. In Vietnam 4 million people died and also a lot of people left the country so they wouldn’t get killed by US soldiers. This meant that the country had a decrease of income and population. This is significant in the short term for the country as a lot of farmers were killed which led to people being short on food and some starved to death. The war had an impact on the long term but that alone does not make it significant. I think although it is remembered in the USA, this is mostly due to the fact that the country is at war again now and people compare it to Vietnam rather than the fact the war is still a significant part of people’s lives today.

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