The Vietnam War: Baggrund og konsekvenser

The Vietnam War was also known as the second Indochina war. The Indochina war was actually in two parts.

The first Indochina war ended in 1954 when the Vietnamese won the liberation war against France. Vietnam had been a French colony but was in 1954 a free nation. But the peace treaty meant that the country should be divided into two countries which after free elections should unite to one country. The division resulted in a communist North Vietnam and a western oriented South Vietnam. That resulted in that terrible war known as the second Indochina war or the Vietnam war.

The war was caracterized by the facts that communist Soviet Union supported North Vietnam with weapons and the U.S.A. supported South Vietnam with both weapons and with there own thousands of soldiers.

The meaning of the Vietnam War

From the North Vietnamese point of view the meaning of the war was to reunite North Vietnam with South Vietnam without foreign interference and make it a communist country in alliance with the Soviet Union. On the other hand the U.S.A. saw the war as defend of democracy against communism.

The Vietnam War

The U.S.A. had more than 500.000 soldiers in Vietnam when the war was most brutal. That was in 1969. The troops achieved limited results but committed several war crimes against the civil population and this was gradually known in western media.