Pre-Vietnam War Period

Vietnam has a long history of being ruled by foreign powers, and this led many Vietnamese to see the United States’ involvement in their country as neo-colonialism. China conquered the northern part of modern Vietnam in 111 BC and retained control until 938 AD; it continued to exert some control over the Vietnamese until 1885. Originally, Vietnam ended at the 17th parallel, but it gradually conquered all the area southward along the coastline of the South China Sea and west to Cambodia. Population in the south was mostly clustered in a few areas along the coast; the north always enjoyed a larger population. The two sections were not unlike North and South in the United States prior to the Civil War; their people did not fully trust each other.

During the Second World War, Vichy France could do little to protect its colony from Japanese occupation. Post-war, the French tried to re-establish control but faced organized opposition from the Viet Minh (short for Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi, or League for the Independence of Vietnam), led by Ho Chi Minh and Giap. The French suffered a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, leading to negotiations that ended with the Geneva Agreements, July 21, 1954. Under those agreements, Cambodia and Laos—which had been part of the French colony—received their independence. Vietnam, however, was divided at the 17th parallel. Ho Chi Minh led a communist government in the north (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) with its capital at Hanoi, and a new Republic of South Vietnam was established under President Ngo Dinh Diem, with its capital at Saigon.

The division was supposed to be temporary: elections were to be held in both sections in 1956 to determine the country’s future. When the time came, however, Diem resisted the elections; the more populous north would certainly win. Hanoi re-activated the Viet Minh to conduct guerilla operations in the south, with the intent of destabilizing President Diem’s government. In July 1959, North Vietnam’s leaders passed an ordinance called for continued socialist revolution in the north and a simultaneous revolution in South Vietnam.

Some 80,000 Vietnamese from the south had moved to the north after the Geneva Agreements were signed. (Ten times as many Vietnamese had fled the north, where the Communist Party was killing off its rivals, seizing property, and oppressing the large Catholic population.) A cadre was drawn from those who went north; they were trained, equipped and sent back to the south to aid in organizing and guiding the insurgency. Although publicly the war in the south was described as a civil war within South Vietnam, it was guided, equipped and reinforced by the communist leadership in Hanoi. The insurgency was called the National Liberation Front. However, its soldiers and operatives became more commonly known by their opponents as the Viet Cong, short for Vietnamese Communists. The VC were often supplemented by units of the People’s Army of Vietnam, more often called simply the North Vietnamese Army by those fighting against it. Following the Tet Offensive of 1968, the NVA had to assume the major combat role because the VC was decimated during the offensive.

https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-history