Prelude to War
Long before American soldiers arrived in Vietnam in the 1960s, the Vietnamese people had endured centuries of violent struggle for control of their country. The most recent of these struggles took place from 1946 to 1954, when Vietnamese Communists—known as Viet Minh—fought to free the country from more than one hundred years of French colonial rule.
In 1954 war-weary France gave up its claims on Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh and his lieutenants rejoiced at their victory and prepared to establish Communist rule over the entire nation. But the United States and other democratic nations objected to this plan because they did not want Vietnam controlled by Communists. The view at the time was that if one country fell to Communist control, others would follow. As a result, Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese Communists were...
[The entire page is 337 words long]
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