1954-1975: The Vietnam War and anti-war activism (jun 1, 1954 – jul 2, 1976)

Description:

The Vietnam War, (1954–75) was a protracted conflict that set the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The war was also part of a larger regional conflict involving Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, and was an extension of the Cold War and the proxy warfare between the United States and the Soviet Union, and their respective allies and satellite states.

By the early 1970s, stagnation and setbacks in the grueling jungle war, the ineffectiveness of the South Vietnamese government and its forces at self-defense, along with the surprising battle fitness of the Communist forces, were causing concern in US leadership. Students protested widely at US universities. One of these protests at Kent State in Ohio was met with armed National Guard troops, who fired live ammunition at protesters, killing four.

Counter-protests framed the anti-war movement as friendly to Communism, unpatriotic, and anti-American. Slogans like "AMERICA: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT" and "MY COUNTRY, RIGHT OR WRONG" were seen on bumper stickers. The anti-war movement and its opposing movement merged with the polemic over the anti-traditional, counter-culture movements of the 1960s where mod clothing, hair styles, rock and folk music, marijuana, and psychedelic drug use had already defined a cultural schism in America.

After long negotiations and a series of broken agreements, the North Vietnamese, the remnant of South Vietnamese government, and the US came to an agreement in Paris for the US to withdraw forces. The last US troops left Vietnam on March 29, 1973. The "post-war war" between the North and the South began, with the negotiated agreements and limitations on the North's troop movements, positions and resupply broken at once; unimpeded warfare resumed over the undefined regions of control of the North and the South.

On April 30, 1976, the remaining South Vietnamese government and its forces around the southern capital of Saigon surrendered to the North, and on July 2, 1976, the country was officially united as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam with its capital in Hanoi. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

Added to timeline:

Date:

Images: