Fought between the Communist North and the anti-Communist South, the Vietnam War lasted for nearly 20 years and price over three million lives. The Americans, who saw the conflict as component of the Cold War, also joined in, blasting North Vietnam with much more bombs than had been dropped within the whole of World War II.

For almost 60 years, Vietnam was part of Indo-China, a French-ruled region in South-East Asia which also included Laos and Cambodia. During Globe War II, the French had been driven out and Vietnam was occupied by the Japanese. When the Japanese were defeated in 1945, the French regained control in the south, but clashed with a Communist regime, led by Ho Chi Minh, which had been set up in the north.

Matters came to a head in May 1954, when the French suffered a disastrous defeat at Dien Bien Phu. At a peace conference held within the Swiss city of Geneva, it was agreed that Vietnam should be divided into two independent states – the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) within the North, and also the Republic of Vietnam within the South. This division was intended to be temporary, until an election was held in both states to choose regardless of whether or not they should come together once again.

Polling was scheduled for July 1956, but had to be called off simply because of opposition by the South Vietnamese government, which claimed that the Communists had no intention of allowing a totally free vote in the North. Unable to reunite the country via the ballot box, Ho and his supporters resorted once again to the gun.

A Communist-led guerrilla movement, the Vietcong, was soon making rapid headway within the South. The South Vietnamese government was corrupt and unpopular, and its troops had been badly led and ill-trained. The regime was overthrown by a military coup in November 1963 and President Ngo Dingh Diem was assassinated. But Diem’s successors were also incapable of crushing the Vietcong, and they relied increasingly on their chief ally, the United States.