Initially siding with future enemy Ho Chi Minh, America aided this Vietnamese nationalist and communist leader during World War II in exchange for information about Japanese troop movements in the area. Aid to French-controlled South Vietnam (until1954) slowly increased, as America’s foreign policy was to try to contain the spread of Communism. Thus America’s eventual large-scale intervention into Vietnam was, like Korea, part of the Cold War.

In the early 1960’s, under the Kennedy administration, American troops served as advisors aiding South Vietnam’s military fight against the communist north. By 1965, President Johnson faced with a deteriorating South Vietnamese government and army, escalated American involvement in the fight against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong (South Vietnamese allied with the communists) troops. By 1968, American troop strength rose to over one-half million and casualties climbed into the tens of thousands. America fought a war of attrition, hoping its vast resources and technological superiority would eventually overwhelm its opponents who opted for guerilla tactics. American leadership’s positive pronouncements about the war’s progress eventually proved wrong. In the United States the war had become increasingly unpopular. By 1975, America had withdrawn the bulk of its troops and the North Vietnamese had conquered the south.