Using equipment supplied by the Soviet Union and China, the North Vietnamese Army and the South Vietnamese communists, known as the Viet Cong, were able to frustrate the Americans who were rarely able to draw their opponents into open battle. ![]() But as the war dragged on, and as ever increasing numbers of American soldiers were deployed to Vietnam, it became apparent that the Vietnamese communists were a tougher, more resourceful enemy than had been imagined. American military planners and political leaders – from the wealthiest, most technologically and militarily advanced nation on earth – expected to defeat the communists in Vietnam – a land peopled mainly by rural peasants – with relative ease. Some three million United States personnel served in Vietnam over the ten years of American involvement. United States military intervention in Vietnam began in 1961, when advisers were sent to South Vietnam to bolster that country's defences against a communist-backed insurgency sponsored by North Vietnam. ![]() ![]() In this way the conflict between communist forces in South Vietnam and the North Vietnamese Army on one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other, is distinguished from the eight-year-long war against France that ended in 1954 and the five-year-long Japanese occupation during the Second World War. The war that is known around the world as the 'Vietnam War' is referred to in Vietnam as the 'American War'.
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