In 1946, the Vietnamese people began fighting for independence from the French colonial rulers of their land, which at the time was known as Indochina. By the mid-1950s, the French had been defeated, and separate governments were set up in North Vietnam and South Vietnam pending elections to unify the country. Those elections never took place. The American government supported South Vietnam, wanting to prevent the spread of communism from North Vietnam. Small numbers of U.S. troops were sent to help South Vietnam at first, but by the late 1960s more than 500,000 American soldiers were fighting in the jungles of Vietnam, and the conflict had spilled into the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos. This book in the MAJOR U.S. HISTORICAL WARS series examines the events that led up to the Vietnam War. It discusses the political and military strategies that the U.S. and Vietnamese employed, and provides information about key people, battles, and events. The Vietnam War would finally end in 1975 with a victory for the North. More than 2 million people, including over 58,000 Americans, died in Vietnam.
