Title: Vietnam After the War | Asia Pacific Curriculum
Headings: Vietnam After the War
Vietnam After the War
Overview
Prologue: The End of the “American War”
Introduction: The Challenges of Reconciliation
Background: The Road to War and Partition
Consolidating Political Control
Building a Socialist Economy
Resistance and Escape
Putting Post-War Vietnam in Context
Doi Moi and the “New” New Vietnam
Vietnamese Youth: Writing the Next Chapter
Acknowledgement

Content: These elections, it was believed, would unite the country under one of the two governments (Ho Chi Minh was heavily favoured). But this was not to be. In 1955, an anti-communist nationalist in the south named Ngo Dinh Diem transformed the State of Vietnam into the Republic of Vietnam and opposed unification with the communist north. 6 The existence of two Vietnams was now more entrenched: a communist North Vietnam and an authoritarian non-communist South Vietnam. Map 1: The Two Vietnams, Early 1975. By 1960, a civil war was brewing, especially after the North created the National Liberation Front (NLF), a political organization and army, better known as the Viet Cong, in the south. The NLF included both communists and non-communists, and its purpose was to bring down the Ngo Dinh Diem government and unify the country on the North’s terms. As the Viet Cong expanded its control over the south, the U.S. responded by sending more military advisers.