The+Vietnam+War+by+Julio+Salinas

T h e V i e t n a m W a r

The Vietnam War is also known as the Second Indochina War the Vietnam Conflict, and, in Vietnam, the American War, occurred from 1956 to April 30, 1975. The war was fought between the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam ( North Vietnam ) and its communist allies and the US-supported Republic of Vietnam ( South Vietnam ). It concluded with the defeat and dissolution of South Vietnam after North Vietnam violated the 1973 cease-fire agreement and invaded the South in 1975 after US forces had largely withdrawn. For the United States, the war effectively ended in the withdrawal of American troops and the failure of its foreign policy in Vietnam. Over 1.4 million military personnel were killed in the war (of which 6 percent were members of the United States armed forces), while estimates of civilian fatalities range up to 2 million. On April 30, 1975, the capital of South Vietnam , Saigon , fell to the communist forces of North Vietnam , effectively ending the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was the longest and most popular war in which Americans ever fought. There is no reckoning the cost. The toll in suffering, sorrow, in rancorous national turmoil can never be tabulated. No one wants ever to see America so divided again. For many of the more than two million American veterans of the war, the wounds of Vietnam will never heal. Some of the survivors had nightmares after the war ended they called it The Vietnam syndrome in which many cases was unstoppable for the U.S soldiers to keep on thinking about.

(http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/vietnam/index.cfm)