The Vietnam War: The Longest War in U.S. History

The Vietnam War escalated too a point the United States would never have imagined.  The war was between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam(North Vietnam) with the Viet Cong and the Republic of Vietnam(South Vietnam) with help from the United States.  This war took place around 1945 and ended in 1975 lasting 30 years making it the longest war in U.S. history.  The war also helped fuel the Cold War that was going on due to the fact that the U.S. and Soviets aided opposing sides of Vietnam.  Ho Chi Minh led the North by sending the Viet Cong to use it's guerrilla warfare tactics against the South to try and make the entire country communist.  This lead to the United States eventually sending troops in to help stop the spread of communism.  The war escalated to a point the U.S. thought it never would, leading to President Johnson actually decided not to run to be reelected.  When President Nixon was elected he decided that the U.S. wanted to let Vietnam work out their own problems due to the large amount of causalities they were taken on.  Thus the U.S. began to recall their troops, and on January 27, 1974 a peace treaty was reached only to be broken within the year.  However, after the U.S. had left, the North invaded again and ended up capturing Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam at the time; this lead to the unification of Vietnam in the year on April 30, 1975.

Casualties of the War

One of the major reasons for the recall of U.S. troops was the large amount of casualties in the war.  In fact the U.S. had about 58,000 casualties.  While the South Vietnam who lost the war had about 230,000 casualties.  While North Vietnam did conquer South Vietnam in the war they did pay the price of having around 1,000,000 causalities.