North Vietnam (1954-1975) was a Marxist-Leninist social republic located in the northern half of the present-day country of Vietnam in Southeast Asia, with its capital at Hanoi. A communist state that was aligned with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, North Vietnam was assisted in taking over South Vietnam during the 1959-1975 Vietnam War. They had 16,000,000 people in 1960 and 24,000,000 in 1974.
History[]
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam was founded in 1954 in the Geneva Convention, which divided French Indochina into the DRV (North Vietnam), Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the Kingdom of Laos, and Cambodia. North Vietnam's capital was Hanoi, and the country had 16,000,000 people in 1960. Its first leader and progenitor was Ho Chi Minh, a former poor peasant who won independence from France after a long war from 1946 to 1954 that ended in an inspiring victory at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. North Vietnam was a Marxist-Leninist social republic, or, put more simply, a communist state. It had a government similar to the Soviet Union and was friendly towards the People's Republic of China, both of whom were ready to assist them in uniting Vietnam under a communist banner.
In September 1959, the North Vietnamese Army assisted the Pathet Lao communists in invading Laos, taking power in large areas of the country (especially Phong Saly and Sam Neua). This was the first battle of the Vietnam War, a war between communism and nationalism in Southeast Asia. North Vietnam was supplied with Soviet tanks and artillery and Chinese maps and equipment, and they had a brilliant weapon; the Viet Cong. The Viet Cong (National Liberation Front) consisted of South Vietnamese communist guerrillas commanded by North Vietnamese generals, and they assisted the North Vietnamese in combat. In August 1964, the United States intervened in Vietnam to assist the South Vietnamese after USS Maddox clashed with Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The United States fought the NVA for the first time in the Battle of Ia Drang in November 1965, beginning a long war that would last until 1975.
North Vietnam had the advantage of having the risk of a third world war looming over the United States at every turn - as the USA was a powerful nation, they could be held responsible for all of their actions in Southeast Asia. North Vietnam had the Ho Chi Minh Trail running through Laos and Vietnam and the Sihanouk Trail in Cambodia, and the Americans faced red tape when they bombed these routes. The USA could not invade North Vietnam due to the risk of Chinese intervention, so they began a bombing campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder in 1965, targeting North Vietnamese naval facilities, cities, and ports. In 1968, the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive failed militarily, but they proved the USA wrong in that they could win the war within four years of beginning it. By 1972, the North Vietnamese had defeated an American invasion of Laos and Cambodia and launched the Easter Offensive against South Vietnam, nearly overrunning their country - only USAF air superiority prevented them from taking over.
From 1968 to 1972, President Richard Nixon of the United States negotiated a peace treaty with North Vietnam in Paris, with both sides launching offensives to gain a negotiation advantage. The USA stepped up their bombings of North Vietnam as they withdrew their troops, and by August 1972 all ground troops were out of Vietnam. North Vietnam was still strong, wuth a population of 24,000,000 by 1974. Although the Paris Peace Accords ended the Vietnam War in 1973, North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam in 1975 and finished the war, occupying Saigon and renaming it "Ho Chi Minh City". On 2 July 1976, North Vietnam and South Vietnam were officially united as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.