The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. Did the United States win or lose the Vietnam War? After World War II Japan withdrew from Vietnam, giving Ho Chi Minh the opportunity to take control. By R. Cort Kirkwood After the end of the Vietnam War, it was widely accepted that the United States had left many POWs behind, but high-ranking members of government said no, despite the evidence. Vietnam War - Vietnam War - The fall of South Vietnam: On March 29, 1973, the last U.S. military unit left Vietnam. The United States supported the South, while China and Russia supported the North. : 184 The task of the "stay-behinds" was political activism to ensure a victory for Ho Chi Minh in the national elections called for in 1956 in the Geneva Accords. Nearly all of the fighting in the Vietnam War took place in South Vietnam, with some of it in neighboring Cambodia and Laos. The Communists in North Vietnam actually signed a peace treaty, effectively surrendering. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. We are taught that it was a resounding loss for America, one that proves that intervening in the affairs of other nations is usually misguided. Nguyen, Lien-Hang T. Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam. But when they returned to the U.S. after the regular one-year tour of duty, they inclined to turn against the war, in part because they could now think about it without the psychological trauma of admitting they were facing death for no good reason, and in part because by 1968 the antiwar … In 1975, two years after the last American troops left Vietnam, United States about 2,700,000 men and women from this country fought in the war about 58,000 died. In 1949, France tried to set up the state of Vietnam and chose Saigon as the capital. The Vietnamese civil war began in 1959. By that time the communists and South Vietnamese were already engaged in what journalists labeled the “postwar war.” Both sides alleged, more or less accurately, that the other side was continuously violating the terms of the peace agreements. Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam. In 1965, the United States officially entered the war in response to North Vietnam's attack on a U.S. military ship. Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War. His forces took over the city of Hanoi and declared it the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The truth is that our military won the war, but our politicians lost it. North Vietnam left behind in South Vietnam 8,000 to 10,000 covert civilian and military personnel, most of them members of the communist party. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. 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