How long did the vietnam war last

An air war was the most that could be done north of the 17th parallel, because the use of ground troops had been ruled out. On July 9, , China had announced it would step in if the U. North Vietnamese officers, after the war, said the only thing they feared was an American-led invasion of the north, but the U. By the end of , there were , American troops in Vietnam, and the military draft was set to call up , young men in the coming year, an increase of 72, over But the war news was hopeful.

The South Vietnamese Army was showing improvement, winning 37 of their last 45 major engagements. American troops had won every major battle they fought, and General Nguyen Van Thieu had come to power in South Vietnam in September; he would remain in office until , bringing a new measure of stability to the government, though he could not end its endemic corruption.

Antiwar protests continued across America and in many other countries, but on April 28, , Gen. Westmoreland became the first battlefield commander ever to address a joint session of Congress in wartime, and Time magazine named him Man of the Year. In an interview he was asked if there was light at the end of the tunnel, and he responded that the U. They struck at least 30 provincial capitals and the major cities of Saigon and Hue. American intelligence knew an attack was coming, though the Army had downplayed a New York Times report of large communist troop movements heading south.

The VC was effectively finished; it would not field more than 25,—40, troops at any time for the remainder of the war. The NVA had to take over. It was one of the most resounding defeats in all of military history—until it became a victory. News footage showed the fighting in Saigon and Hue.

The Tet Offensive shocked Americans at home, who thought the war was nearing victory. Initially, however, homefront support for the war effort grew, but by March Americans, perceiving no change in strategy that would bring the war to a conclusion, became increasingly disillusioned. In a February 27, , broadcast he summed up what he had found during his return trip to the war zone. He closed by saying:. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.

To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Tensions between blacks and whites had been intensifying for years as African Americans sought to change centuries-old racial policies. That disparity would decline before the war ended, but the racial tensions at home began to insert themselves into the military in Vietnam, damaging unit morale.

Even white troops were beginning to protest. One day in October , fifteen members of the Americal Division wore black armbands while they were on patrol, the symbol antiwar protestors wore in the states. Earlier, in March , the Americal Division had been involved in what became known as the My Lai Massacre , in which over men, women and children were killed.

Similar, even larger, atrocities were conducted by VC and NVA units—such as an NVA attack on a Buddhist orphanage at An Hoa in September or the execution of 5, people at Hue during the Tet Offensive—but the concept of American soldiers killing civilians in cold blood was more than many Americans could bear. Support for the war eroded further. Some antiwar protestors blamed the men and women who served in Vietnam, taunting them and spitting on them when they came home.

Military personnel, including nurses, were warned not to wear their uniforms in the States. However, polls consistently showed the majority of Americans supported the war. Republican Richard Nixon won the presidency in the fall elections. Creighton Abrams. Security was improving even as American forces were in the process of withdrawing. Then, on March 30, , the North Vietnamese attacked across the 17th parallel with 14 divisions and additional individual regiments.

Better armed than ever before, thanks to increased aid from the Soviet Union, they employed tanks for the first time. The ARVN bent but did not break. By June they had stalled the invasion, with the help of American airpower. The NVA suffered some , casualties. American drawdown continued, with only 43, personnel left in-country by mid-August. In retaliation for the invasion, and in hopes of forcing Hanoi to negotiate in good faith, Nixon ordered Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam to be mined and he intensified bombing of North Vietnam.

Hanoi offered to restart peace talks, yet remained intransigent in its demands. On January 27, , peace accords were signed between North Vietnam and the U. North Vietnam spent two years rebuilding its military; South Vietnam was hamstrung in its responses by a fear the U. He knew that ending this war honorably was essential to his success in the presidency.

He expected that the American people would give him a year to end U. In his first months in office, Nixon directed the U. He expected to complement this military pressure with conciliatory negotiating terms in the newly begun negotiations, and with diplomatic pressure on the Soviet Union, hoping the Soviet Union would encourage their North Vietnamese allies to engage in serious negotiations. These forms of pressure, however, brought him no closer to ending the war.

From that point on, the U. It quickly became apparent that the public peace talks in Paris were being used as propaganda theater by both sides, and that any productive negotiations would have to be done in private. He would meet with North Vietnamese Politburo member Le Duc Tho intermittently over the following months, with no apparent progress toward a settlement.

The administration would continue its dual strategy of Vietnamization and negotiation. In March the fall of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in Cambodia destroyed the fragile neutrality of that state, as his successor Lon Nol demanded the North Vietnamese withdraw from their base camps along the South Vietnamese border.

The North Vietnamese reacted by extending their presence toward the west. Limited by Nixon to a kilometer strip along the border, and limited in time to the end of June, this action sparked violent protests on campuses across the United States. These culminated in the deaths of four students at Kent State University on May 4.

Over , patients were airlifted nearly half were American. The average time lapse between wounding to hospitalization was less than one hour. As a result, less than one percent of all Americans wounded, who survived the first 24 hours, died. The helicopter provided unprecedented mobility. Without the helicopter it would have taken three times as many troops to secure the mile border with Cambodia and Laos the politicians thought the Geneva Conventions of and the Geneva Accords or would secure the border.

The Vietnamese pilot who dropped the napalm in error is currently living in the United States. News media have reported tha an American commander ordered the air strike that burned Kim Phuc. Those are incorrect.

There were no Americans involved in any capacity. During that same Census count, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served was: 9,, As of the current Census taken during August, , the surviving U. Vietnam Veteran population estimate is: 1,, During this Census count, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country is: 13,, This makes calculations of those alive, even in , difficult to maintain.

Corrections and confirmations to this errored index resulted in the addition of U. Isolated atrocities committed by American Soldiers produced torrents of outrage from anti-war critics and the news media while Communist atrocities were so common that they received hardly any media mention at all. The United States sought to minimize and prevent attacks on civilians while North Vietnam made attacks on civilians a centerpiece of its strategy.

Americans who deliberately killed civilians received prison sentences while Communists who did so received commendations. From to , the National Liberation Front assassinated 36, Vietnamese and abducted another 58, The death squads focused on leaders at the village level and on anyone who improved the lives of the peasants such as medical personnel, social workers, and school teachers.

The last American troops departed in their entirety 29 March How could we lose a war we had already stopped fighting? We fought to an agreed stalemate. The peace settlement was signed in Paris on 27 January It called for release of all U. The , evacuees in April during the fall of Saigon consisted almost entirely of civilians and Vietnamese military, NOT American military running for their lives.

There were almost twice as many casualties in Southeast Asia primarily Cambodia the first two years, after the fall of Saigon in , than there were during the ten years the U. Thanks for the perceived loss and the countless assassinations and torture visited upon Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians goes mainly to the American media and their undying support-by-misrepresentation of the anti-War movement in the United States.

As with much of the Vietnam War, the news media misreported and misinterpreted the Tet Offensive.