Vietnam War
The Vietnam War
No military conflict in American history generated so much confusion and controversy. Vietnam became a symbol of political and military misjudgments which, however well-intentioned, continue years later to trouble those who were there and those who remember.
Seeds of War: 1945-54
The Vietnam War began with France's failure to restore its colonial domination over Indochina after World War Two.
The Nation Divides
Ho Chi Minh, an avowed Communist, emerged after the war as the driving force behind a nationalist political and military organization known as the Viet Minh. He was elected President of a newly-proclaimed Republic of Vietnam shortly after Japan's surrender in 1945, but he failed to gain an agreement from France for national independence. Fighting broke out between the Viet Minh and French troops in 1946. Ho Chi Minh relocated his government to Hanoi in the industrial north, while France kept their colonial administration in Saigon and the agricultural south.
France Withdraws
Although the French had superior weapons and equipment, the Viet Minh successfully waged insurgent warfare, frustrating the French and denying them popular support. France ended its colonial rule after its devastating loss in a major battle at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. A peace agreement reached in the summer of 1954 at Geneva divided French Indochina into four parts: Laos and Cambodia were to become separate nations; Vietnam was to be temporarily divided along the seventeenth parallel with the north governed by Ho Chi Minh and the south by a French puppet, emperor Bao Dai. A referendum was to be held in 1956 to determine if the country should then be reunited under a single government.
An Election is Cancelled
When the French left in 1956, a self-proclaimed premier, Ngo Dinh Diem, emerged in the south as a strong, anti-Communist leader. He attracted the support of the Eisenhower administration, which feared that Ho Chi Minh and his Communist government would win the popular referendum called for in the Geneva Agreement. As the date for the referendum approached, Diem cancelled the elections on the grounds that neither he nor his American allies had signed the agreement. The seeds of war were sown. Fighting soon erupted between North and South Vietnam.
Minnesota and the War
More than 68,000 Minnesotans served in Vietnam.
Several thousand were wounded; 1,022 were killed; 42 remain missing in action.
This map shows the hometown of each of the Minnesota veterans who died during the Vietnam War.