Vietnam War: Introduction

Please note the below contents are not my own words. I have gathered the data from many sites and placed it here for your information. At the end of every war story I would be placing links to the respective sites related to that particular war.
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In the 1950's, the United States began to send troops to Vietnam,
during the following 25-year period, the ensuing war would create some
of the strongest tensions in US history. Almost 3 million US men and
women were sent thousands of miles to fight for what was a questionable
cause. In total, it is estimated that over 2,5 million people on both
sides were killed.

For much of Vietnam's history it has been under foreign rule, primarily
by the Chinese. In 1860, France began its domination of the area and
had, by the late 19th century, implemented its colonization in a number
of regions around the Gulf of Tonkin. During WWII, the Japanese
government took control of much of the area and set up a puppet regime
that was eventually forced out by the Vietnamese at the end of that war
in 1945.

After WWII and until 1955, France fought hard to regain their former
territories in the region, but with a poorly organized army and little
determination among the troops, their efforts soon collapsed. The
French were finally defeated at Dien Bien Phu on the 8th of May 1954 by
the communist general Vo Nguyen Giap. The French troops withdrew,
leaving a buffer zone separating the North and South and set up
elections in order to form a government in the South. The communist
regime set up its headquarters in Hanoi under the leadership of Ho Chi
Minh. Many North Vietnamese left the country and fled south where the
self-proclaimed president, Ngo Dinh Diem had formed the Republic of
Vietnam.

Between 1955 and 1960, the North Vietnamese with the assistance of the
southern communist Vietcong, tried to take over the government in South
Vietnam, and in November 1963 President Diem was overthrown and
executed. The following year, the North Vietnamese began a massive
drive to conquer the whole country aided by China and Russia.
Fearing a communist takeover of the entire region, the United States
grew more and more wary of the progress of Ho Chi Minh and the
Vietcong. Communism had become the evil menace in the United States and
with expansion of Soviet rule into Eastern Europe, Korea and Cuba, the
Americans were bent on stopping communism from spreading any further.