The US
aided the French by supplying them $1 to arm them with 300,000 small arms in
order to help the French train Vietnamese soldiers. The Vietnam War was a long,
costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its
southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its
principal ally, the United States. The war began in 1954 (though conflict in
the region stretched back to the mid-1940s), after the rise to power of Ho Chi
Minh and his communist Viet Minh party in North Vietnam, and continued against
the backdrop of an intense Cold War between two global superpowers: the United
States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including 58,000
Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War; more than half were Vietnamese
civilians. By 1969, at the peak of U.S. involvement in the war, more than
500,000 U.S. military personnel were involved in the Vietnam conflict. Growing
opposition to the war in the United States led to bitter divisions among
Americans, both before and after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal
of U.S. forces in 1973. In 1975, communist forces seized control of Saigon,
ending the Vietnam War, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic
of Vietnam the following year.
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