The Prequel to America’s Involvement in Vietnam
America’s involvement in Vietnam was the second time that a Western country fought there after World War II. To us, our involvement there is “the” Vietnam War. To the Vietnamese, it was the second round of the country’s independence fight. The background for the earlier conflict began in WWII. After the French surrendered to the Germans, France – and her colonial empire overseas – were left in a weakened state. Japan took advantage of that, and seized Indochina from France in 1940. When the French returned to resume charge after Japan’s surrender and the end of WWII, things had changed.
The colonial subjects were not eager to resubmit to foreign rule, and had already declared their independence. They organized themselves into the Viet Minh, a national front created by the Indochinese Communist Party. When the French tried to re-impose their rule, the result was the First Indochina War (1946 – 1954). As that conflict wore on, France’s grip on her Southeast Asian colonies was loosened by the increasingly assertive Viet Minh. On the plus side for the French, they had a significant firepower edge against the Vietnamese. On the negative side, as seen below, that was not enough.