From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
The
Vietnam War (also known as the
Second Indochina War, the
American War in Vietnam and the
Vietnam Conflict) occurred from
1959 to
April 30 1975 in
Vietnam. The war successfully reunified the Vietnamese under a communist government which consisted of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) and the indigenous
National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, which was also known, derogatively, as the Việt Cộng or VC, or to US forces as Victor Charlie, or simply Charlie, from the
NATO phonetic alphabet names for these letters. To a degree, the war may be viewed as a
Cold War conflict between the U.S., its allies, and South Vietnam on one side, and the
Soviet Union, its allies, the
People's Republic of China, and North Vietnam on the other. Others, however, viewed the conflict as a
civil war between communist and non-communist Vietnamese factions.