Timeline of the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was the second longest war in the history of the US, second to the war in Afghanistan, and was an extremely unpopular war to the American population at the time. As a result of the war, there was almost 60,000 American deaths and an estimated 2 million Vietnamese deaths. There are still many questions about the war, whether it was a smart situation to enter and the reasoning for it. In the end, the US failed to accomplish their goal of defeating the communist regime and once the US left the region, the country fell to the Viet Minh, exactly what the US was there to prevent.
There were many key figures in the war. On the Vietnamese side, there was Ho Chi Minh, who was the communist leader of North Vietnam until he died in 1969, and Vo Nguyen Giap, who was the North Vietnamese general who planned the Tet and Easter Offensives. On the American side, there was General Westmoreland, who was the commander of US forces in Vietnam from 1964-1968, and General Abrahms who was the commander of US forces in Vietnam from 1968-1973. Lastly, there were four US presidents during the Vietnam War. Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961), John F. Kennedy (1961-1963), Lyndon Johnson (1963 – 1969), and Richard Nixon (1969-1974). Under Johnson, US troops first entered Vietnam, and they finally left after a hard fought war under Nixon.
