9781422278987

increasingly open warfare. The Vietnam War was the first major military defeat suffered by the United States of America, and as such was a very considerable psychological and emotional blow to a nation accustomed to success, but already socially and culturally riven by the anti-war movement, in the media as well as among major segments of the American population, which had played such a significant part in undermining the resolve of the American forces in South-East Asia. Something in the order of 1.4 million military personnel, about one in 17 of them American, lost their lives in the war, and civilian deaths have been estimated variously as between 2 and 5 million or slightly more for the two Vietnams, to which have to be added up to 700,000 Cambodian and 50,000 Laotian civilians. The war was fought between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, The Origins of Conflict in the Vietnam War

The term Vietnam War is that which is most generally used in the English-speaking world, but falsely suggests that it was fought wholly inside the two Vietnams, and so tacitly ignores the fact that the conflict spilled over into Cambodia and Laos. Finally, the term most generally used in North Vietnam, and in the unified country until recent times, is the Resistance War against the Americans to Save the Nation. This is more a propaganda slogan than a real name, and in many ways mirrors the USSR’s use of the term Great Patriotic War to describe its part in the Second World War. On the final day of the war, the Communist forces under North Vietnamese leadership took Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, even as the last U.S. forces were being pulled out by air to vessels awaiting offshore, sealing the North Vietnamese military victory after more than 15 years of

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