9781422287590

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An American helicopter hovers over troops on a combat patrol in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam, 1970. The VietnamWar was a brutal conflict that took a terrible toll on both the Vietnamese people and on the young American soldiers forced to fight in the war.

The Vietnam War

T he roots of the war in Vietnam go back to the late 1940s, just after the end of World War II. For many years, the French had ruled Vietnam, a small country in Southeast Asia. But the Vietnamese people wanted to rule themselves. Led by a man named Ho Chi Minh, they began a fight for freedom, not unlike the U.S. war against Britain almost 200 years earlier. It took nine years, but the Vietnamese people won their war for independence. Although the French gave up their claim to rule the country, it did not mean the end of problems for the Vietnamese people. Ho Chi Minh and his followers wanted a government like the Soviet Union and China had at the time. But some citizens did not want such an oppressive govern-

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