The Viet Cong Strategy Against the United States Military Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash The Viet Cong had a well developed strategy which the world would see employed in the decades after the Viet Nam war in every major conflict. The Vietnamese had a long standing history of the French occupying Vietnam since the mid 1800s which helped the Vietnamese to get an understanding of guerrilla tactics which would become the key to beating the US in the 1960s. The Vietnamese honed their skills and developed their strategies and tactics over the decades prior to the Vietnam war against the French, culminating in the French defeat to the Viet Minh’s during the siege of Din Bin Phu. Din Bin Phu had been surrounded by the Viet Minh and it was attacked perpetually until the French finally surrendered. It was at Din Bin Phu that the Vietnamese had learned how they could take their small scale guerrilla forces and mass them up to perform a large operational group to strike at a s...
If the Vietnam war began in 1955, does that mean it lasted 20 years, it ended in 1975? Photo by Sander Sammy on Unsplash No, the Vietnam War began in 1858 when the French first invaded the country. The war with the French then took a short break over 1941–1945 when Japan had invaded Vietnam and when Japan surrendered the territory went back to the French despite Ho Chi Minhs calls for support of Vietnam’s independence. As a result, in 1945 Ho Chi Minh created the Viet Minh which fought the French until the siege of 1954 when the French surrendered in Dien Bien Phu. Americans, had a fear of communism spreading due to the stupid ‘Domino theory’ which had absolutely no basis in fact and might as well been a joke card pulled from a crackerjack box. The Americans decided that with the French pulling out of Vietnam, then with Ho Chi Minh by this time firmly with the Communists, the US had felt it prudent to ensure that Vietnam did not turn to communism. Ultimately the...