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The French had ruled Indochina all the way from the late 1800s (around 1880) until 1945, when they won their independence. Indochina mainly consisted of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. French colonists encountered growing unrest among the Vietnamese "peasants" (those who worked on the fields).
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The Indo-Chinese Communist Party, founded in 1930, was an organisation founded by Ho Chi Minh, a Vietnamese leader. The French condemned him so far as to push for his death because he was a rebellious figure against the French. Later, he fled Vietnam and eventually organised the modern independence movement in Vietnam from the Soviet Union, and later, China itself. -
The Japanese took control of Vietnam in 1940, and later, in 1941, Minh returned to Vietnam, eventually founding and creating the "Vietminh", which is a pretty self-explanatory name - gaining independence from any amount of foreign rule under Minh's rule. -
The Allied Party, composed of Russia, France, and Great Britain, defeated the Japanese in August 1945, forcing them to flee. Later, on September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh stood on a pedestal, looked out at the crowd, and declared Vietnam a free country, marking the official end of World War II. -
In the last quarter of 1945, after Vietnam declared their independence on September 2, the French troops stormed back into Vietnam to attempt to regain control. It succeeded, and Vietnam was now under French rule again. The French owned the cities in Vietnam along with the country's southern half. Minh vowed to liberate the South from French control, ready to fight from the North to regain control. -
In 1949, four years after the end of World War II, Mao Zedong, the former president of the People's Republic of China and the founder of the Chinese Communist Party from 1949 to 1976, along with his army of men, infiltrated China and seized it. The next year, in 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea. -
In 1950, the same year that North Korea invaded South Korea, the U.S. entered an era called the "Vietnam Struggle", despite AOSS (American Office of Strategic Services) operative A. Peter Dewey's warnings five years prior, before he was shot and killed by the Communist Party on September 26, 1945. In this year alone, President Truman sent a total of $15 million to France as economic aid after the Korean War, and over the next four years, the U.S. paid the war that the French were having. -
The U.S. dished out a total of $1 billion to fight against Mao Zedong, somebody that the U.S. had, ironically, previously supported. During World War II, the U.S. made an alliance with Minh, aiding him in resisting Japanese force. It wasn't until 1950 that America realised that China was not a Capitalist sympathiser.
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In 1954, from May to July, France, the USSR, Laos, China, the U.S, Cambodia, and Great Britain congregated in Geneva, Switzerland to officially divide Vietnam along the 17th parallel. The Communists, under rule of Minh, controlled the northern part of Vietnam from Hanoi. The anti-Communists, on the other hand, controlled the southern. -
In 1956, South Vietnam's president, Ngo Dinh Diem, refused to be a part of the country's election. The United States also supported cancelling elections and figured that if they were to partake in the elections, Ho Chi Minh would win. -
The Ho Chi Minh Trail was established in 1959. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a network of paths throughout Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This was one of the most direct forms of movement throughout the countries, and this is the path that the North Koreans took to invade South Korea.
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