- 7. Mai 2023
- Posted by:
- Category: Allgemein
Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge would eventually kill 13 million Cambodians out of a population of around 8million, in one of the bloodiest genocides in history.[64][303][304][305]. On November 1, 1963, the South Vietnamese government was overthrown. [40]:106107 In December 1960, North Vietnam formally created the Viet Cong with the intent of uniting all anti-GVN insurgents, including non-communists. Which President Sent Troops To Vietnam First? - CLJ John F. Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. [219] President Dng Vn Minh, who had succeeded Huong two days earlier, surrendered to Lieutenant colonel Bi Vn Tng, the political commissar of the 203rd Tank Brigade. and vol. [342] As of 2006[update], the Vietnamese government estimates that there are over 4,000,000 victims of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam, although the United States government denies any conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the Vietnamese victims of dioxin poisoning. Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969. [71]:16 U.S. involvement increased under President John F. Kennedy, from just under a thousand military advisors in 1959 to 23,000 by 1964. Heightened opposition to the war was one of the major factors in Johnson's decision not to run for re-election in 1968. Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution that gave President Lyndon B. Johnson broad authority to increase U.S. military presence in Vietnam, without a formal declaration of war. They were however criticized for ignoring the political nature of the insurgency. "[146] Due to the particularly heavy impact of cluster bombs during this war, Laos was a strong advocate of the Convention on Cluster Munitions to ban the weapons, and was host to the First Meeting of States Parties to the convention in November 2010. [160]:153156 Despite the continual conductance of major operations, which the Viet Cong and PAVN would typically evade, the war was characterised by smaller-unit contacts or engagements. It was additionally aimed at bolstering the morale of the South Vietnamese. Once again, Hanoi was surprised by the speed of their success. [208] Lon Nol began rounding up Vietnamese civilians in Cambodia into internment camps and massacring them, provoking harsh reactions from both the North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese governments. 4, p. 7. 32(1). Racial incidents, drug abuse, combat disobedience, and crime reflected growing idleness, resentment, and frustration the fatal handicaps of faulty campaign strategy, incomplete wartime preparation, and the tardy, superficial attempts at Vietnamization. The costs of the war loom large in American popular consciousness; a 1990 poll showed that the public incorrectly believed that more Americans died in Vietnam than in World War II. North Vietnam invaded Laos in 1958, establishing the Ho Chi Minh Trail to supply and reinforce the VC. On 2 August 1964, USSMaddox, on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam's coast, allegedly fired upon and damaged several torpedo boats that had been stalking it in the Gulf of Tonkin. [75]:308309 Further north, at Qung Tr City, the ARVN Airborne Division, the 1st Division and a regiment of the US 1st Cavalry Division had managed to hold out and overcome an assault intended to capture the city. At the Geneva Conference, the French negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Viet Minh, and independence was granted to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.[90][91]. The two countries fought a brief border war, known as the Sino-Vietnamese War. [256] 155,000 refugees fleeing the final North Vietnamese Spring Offensive were reported to have been killed or abducted on the road to Tuy Ha in 1975. [276] Webb would be the first Western journalist to be captured and released, as well as cover the perspective of the Viet Cong in her memoir On The Other Side. Negotiations stagnated for five months, until Johnson gave orders to halt the bombing of North Vietnam. The Air Force ran many missions of this kind to secure additional funding during budget negotiations, so the tonnage expended does not directly correlate with the resulting damage. [77], Various names have been applied to the conflict. Group 559 was headquartered in Na Kai, Houaphan province in northeast Laos close to the border. [166], The Tet Offensive began on 30 January 1968, as over 100 cities were attacked by over 85,000 VC/PAVN troops, including assaults on key military installations, headquarters, and government buildings and offices, including the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Nixon's National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, had continued secret negotiations with North Vietnam's L c Th and in October 1972 reached an agreement. The U.S. war in Vietnam officially began in 1964 under President Lyndon B. Johnson. It was formed in Memot, Cambodia, and directed through COSVN. The National Liberation Front had made great progress and was close to declaring provisional revolutionary governments in large areas.[126]. [319] This resulted in a large federal budget deficit. Although they were originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional Soviet invasion of Europe, Kennedy believed that the guerrilla tactics employed by special forces such as the Green Berets would be effective in a "brush fire" war in Vietnam. President Ronald Reagan coined the term "Vietnam Syndrome" to describe the reluctance of the American public and politicians to support further military interventions abroad after Vietnam. An entire American army was sacrificed on the battlefield of Vietnam. 11719. They also had 1,400 aircraft and a two-to-one numerical superiority in combat troops over the PAVN/VC. By 1973, approximately 7,500 women had served in Vietnam in the Southeast Asian theater. [71]:58 Despite this, the North Vietnamese leadership approved tentative measures to revive the southern insurgency in December 1956. After North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked two U.S. destroyers on Aug. 5, 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin,. In 1968, North Vietnamese forces launched the Tet Offensive; though it was a military defeat for them, it became a political victory, as it caused U.S. domestic support for the war to fade. For a full history of wars in Vietnam, see. [40]:218219 Lyndon Johnson commented to Undersecretary of State George Ball that "those sailors out there may have been shooting at flying fish. Richard Nixon and Vietnam Richard Nixon campaigned for the presidency with a "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam. [72][40]:131. 90% of herbicide use was directed at forest defoliation. To show his support for South Vietnam and force Hanoi back to the negotiating table, Nixon ordered Operation Linebacker II, a massive bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong 1829 December 1972. The past and future of a right-wing myth (Harper's Magazine)", "CJO Abstract China's 1979 War with Vietnam: A Reassessment", Documents Relating to American Foreign PolicyVietnam, Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives, Glossary of Military Terms & Slang from the Vietnam War, Impressions of Vietnam and descriptions of the daily life of a soldier from the oral history of Elliott Gardner, U.S. Army, Stephen H. Warner Southeast Asia Photograph Collection at Gettysburg College, UC Berkeley Library Social Activism Sound Recording Project: Anti-Vietnam War Protests, 19651975 Another Vietnam; Unseen images of the war from the winning side, Archival collections about the Vietnam War, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vietnam_War&oldid=1152595104, Hot Landing Zone. "[121] The quality of the South Vietnamese military, however, remained poor. Although female military nurses lived in a heavily male environment, very few cases of sexual harassment were ever reported. [74], Prior to Tet, in November 1967, Westmoreland had spearheaded a public relations drive for the Johnson administration to bolster flagging public support. By the 1950s, the conflict had become entwined with the Cold War. The identities of the leaders of the organization often were kept secret. The circumstances of the attacks were murky. Many young people protested because they were the ones being drafted, while others were against the war because the anti-war movement grew increasingly popular among the counterculture. Thuc's anniversary celebrations occurred shortly before Vesak had been bankrolled by the government, and Vatican flags were displayed prominently. "[285] The issue was solved in early 1968 with the issuance of the M16A1, featuring a chrome-plated bore, which reduced fouling, and the introduction of a cleaner-burning powder. By 1968, the United States had 548,000 troops in Vietnam and had already lost 30,000 Americans there. Women were enlisted in both the PAVN and the Viet Cong, many joining due to the promises of female equality and a greater social role within society. [97]:238 Dim staffed his government's key posts mostly with northern and central Catholics. On V-J Day, 2 September, the declaration of independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was proclaimed in Hanoi. Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975, while the 1975 spring offensive saw the Fall of Saigon to the PAVN on 30 April, marking the end of the war; North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. [85]:353 Westmoreland outlined a three-point plan to win the war: The plan was approved by Johnson and marked a profound departure from the previous administration's insistence that the government of South Vietnam was responsible for defeating the guerrillas. [222], During the course of the Vietnam War a large segment of the American population came to be opposed to U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. More than 3million Americans served in the Vietnam War, some 1.5million of whom actually saw combat in Vietnam. On 23 September 1945, French forces overthrew the DRV government, and declared French authority restored. Which US president started the Vietnam War? United States Vietnam Relations, 19451967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, vol. [327] Drug use, racial tensions, and the growing incidence of fraggingattempting to kill unpopular officers and non-commissioned officers with grenades or other weaponscreated severe problems for the U.S. military and impacted its capability of undertaking combat operations. [40]:7576 Throughout the conflict, U.S. intelligence estimates remained skeptical of France's chance of success. [188]:649650[352][353], Between 275,000[65] and 310,000[66] Cambodians were estimated to have died during the war including between 50,000 and 150,000 combatants and civilians from US bombings. Ten percent of the population of Ho Chi Minh City was suffering from serious venereal diseases when the war ended, and there were 4 million illiterates throughout the South. In March 1970, Prince Sihanouk was deposed by his pro-American prime minister Lon Nol, who demanded that North Vietnamese troops leave Cambodia or face military action. [citation needed] However, heightened oil prices meant that many of these assets could not be adequately leveraged. actions. The modern classical composer George Crumb composed a string quartet, a threnody, regarding the war in 1970 titled Black Angels. The war exacted an enormous human cost: estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 966,000[33] to 3million. This phase would end when the enemy had been worn down, thrown on the defensive, and driven back from major populated areas. [325] Vietnam veterans suffered from PTSD in unprecedented numbers, as many as 15.2% of Vietnam veterans, because the U.S. military had routinely provided heavy psychoactive drugs, including amphetamines, to American servicemen, which left them unable to process adequately their traumas at the time. The north was supported by the Soviet Union, China,[21] and other communist states, while the south was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies. [330] In 1977, United States president Jimmy Carter granted a full and unconditional pardon to all Vietnam-era draft dodgers with Proclamation 4483. It was hoped these new communities would provide security for the peasants and strengthen the tie between them and the central government. The United States enters the war. [176] Public approval of his overall performance dropped from 48 percent to 36 percent, and endorsement for the war effort fell from 40 percent to 26 percent. In 1967, Thieu became president with Ky as his deputy, after rigged elections. [40]:716, Chaos, unrest, and panic broke out as hysterical South Vietnamese officials and civilians scrambled to leave Saigon. This council was headed by General Dng Vn Minh, whom Stanley Karnow, a journalist on the ground, later recalled as "a model of lethargy". Within the United States, the war gave rise to what was referred to as Vietnam Syndrome, a public aversion to American overseas military involvements,[76] which, together with the Watergate scandal contributed to the crisis of confidence that affected America throughout the 1970s. The war also influenced a generation of musicians and songwriters in Vietnam, the United States, and throughout the world, both pro/anti-war and pro/anti-communist, with the Vietnam War Song Project having identified 5,000+ songs about or referencing the conflict. The PAVN/VC responded with a new strategy hammered out in a series of meetings in Hanoi in March 1973, according to the memoirs of Trn Vn Tr. [165]:4852, In the post-war era, Americans struggled to absorb the lessons of the military intervention. [202], In 1970, Nixon announced the withdrawal of an additional 150,000 American troops, reducing the number of Americans to 265,500. The opponents were locked in a cycle of escalation. "[315] In addition, doubts surfaced about the ability of the military to train foreign forces. [283], The US service rifle was initially the M14. Eisenhower was born in Texas, raised in Kansas then educated at the West Point military academy, graduating in 1915. [240] Rummel estimated that American forces committed around 5,500 democidal killings between 1960 and 1972, from a range of between 4,000 and 10,000 killed. The change in regime was "quite peaceful, a sort of Asiatic 'velvet revolution'"although 30,000 former officials were sent to reeducation camps, often enduring harsh conditions for several years. Although Dim was publicly praised, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles privately conceded that Dim had to be backed because they could find no better alternative. Between the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the U.S. presidential election in November 1964, the situation in Vietnam had changed for the worse. [357] The band Country Joe and the Fish recorded The "Fish" Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag in 1965, and it became one of the most influential anti-Vietnam protest anthems. South Korea would later ask to join the Many Flags program in return for economic compensation. [105], From April to June 1955, Dim eliminated any political opposition in the south by launching military operations against two religious groups: the Cao i and Ha Ho of Ba Ct. The M14 was a powerful, accurate rifle, but it was heavy, hard-recoiling, and especially unwieldy in jungle fighting, as it was unsuited for the combat conditions, often suffering from feed failure. War crimes were committed by both sides during the conflict and included rape, massacres of civilians, bombings of civilian targets, terrorism, the widespread use of torture, and the murder of prisoners of war. By the war's end, 58,220 American soldiers had been killed,[A 8] more than 150,000 had been wounded, and at least 21,000 had been permanently disabled. [165] The first few days were considered a success but the momentum had slowed after fierce resistance. During Dim's presidency, his sister-in-law Madame Nhu was the commander of the WAFC. [117] In April 1960, North Vietnam imposed universal military conscription for adult males. [288]:4,10, The U.S. dropped over 7million tons of bombs on Indochina during the war, more than triple the 2.1million tons of bombs the U.S. dropped on Europe and Asia during all of World War II and more than ten times the amount dropped by the U.S. during the Korean War. Fact check: Which U.S. presidents led the nation into new wars? This joint U.S.South Vietnamese program attempted to resettle the rural population into fortified villages. [156], The American buildup transformed the South Vietnamese economy and had a profound effect on society. [69] It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973. Although they were nominally a civilian government, Ky was supposed to maintain real power through a behind-the-scenes military body. The ostensibly neutral Laos had become the scene of a civil war, pitting the Laotian government backed by the US against the Pathet Lao and its North Vietnamese allies. [187] The failure of Tet in sparking a popular uprising caused a shift in Hanoi's war strategy, and the Gip-Chinh "Northern-First" faction regained control over military affairs from the L Dun-Hong Vn Thi "Southern-First" faction. [85]:353354 The idea that the government of South Vietnam could manage its own affairs was shelved. Official figures from the Vietnamese government estimate 1.1 million dead and 300,000 missing from 1945 to 1979, with approximately 849,000 dead and 232,000 missing from 1960 to 1975. South Vietnam was inundated with manufactured goods. Thieu, mistrustful and indecisive, remained president until 1975, having won a one-candidate election in 1971. [109] Seventeen people were killed in an attack at a bar in Chu c in July, and in September a district chief was killed with his family on a highway. When did U.S. start sending troops to Vietnam? [220][221][222]:9596 Minh was then escorted to Radio Saigon to announce the surrender declaration (spontaneously written by Tung). Between 1969 and 1971 the U.S. Army recorded more than 900 attacks by troops on their own officers and NCOs with 99 killed. [85]:349351. Following an attack on a U.S. Army base in Pleiku on 7 February 1965,[143] a series of airstrikes was initiated, Operation Flaming Dart, while Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin was on a state visit to North Vietnam. "China's 1979 War With Vietnam: A Reassessment", This page was last edited on 1 May 2023, at 05:16. The United States Department of State wanted to encourage a coup, while the Defense Department favored Dim. [290], On 2 July 1976, North and South Vietnam were merged to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. On 24 November 1963, he said, "the battle against communism must be joined with strength and determination. High-profile opposition to the Vietnam War increasingly turned to mass protests in an effort to shift U.S. public opinion. Lyndon Johnson presidency The major initiative in the Lyndon Johnson presidency was the Vietnam War. [24], In a referendum on the future of the State of Vietnam on 23 October 1955, Dim rigged the poll supervised by his brother Ng nh Nhu and was credited with 98.2 percent of the vote, including 133% in Saigon. [145] Between March 1965 and November 1968, Rolling Thunder deluged the north with a million tons of missiles, rockets and bombs. "[177] Thus, the public was shocked and confused when Westmoreland's predictions were trumped by the Tet Offensive. President Diem, refusing an American offer of safety contingent upon his resignation, was assassinated. John F. Kennedy [75]:98 The Viet Minh left roughly 5,000 to 10,000 cadres in the south as a base for future insurgency. Nixon appealed to the "silent majority" of Americans who he said supported the war without showing it in public. $160billion adjusted for inflation in 2022) during the Vietnam War;[23] included in that aid were donations of 5million tons of food to North Vietnam (equivalent to North Vietnamese food production in a single year), accounting for 1015% of the North Vietnamese food supply by the 1970s. [168][167]:495 In the following Battle of Hu American forces employed massive firepower that left 80 percent of the city in ruins. [279], During the early stages of the war, the Viet Cong mainly sustained itself with captured arms; these were often of American manufacture or were crude, makeshift weapons used alongside shotguns made of galvanized pipes. Calculating U.S. The AC-130 was a heavily armed ground-attack aircraft variant of the C-130 Hercules transport plane, while the Huey is a military helicopter powered by a single, turboshaft engine; approximately 7,000 UH-1 aircraft saw service in Vietnam. [265][264] Other women were embedded with troops on the front-lines, serving as doctors and medical personnel. In 1955, however, the strongly anti-communist politician Ngo Dinh Diem pushed Emperor Bao aside to become president of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN), often referred to during. [62] These do not include the estimated 300,000500,000 PAVN/VC missing in action. [358]:373 According to Kuzmarov, Richard Nixon is primarily responsible for creating the drug myth. In the early morning hours of 30 April, the last U.S. Marines evacuated the embassy by helicopter, as civilians swamped the perimeter and poured into the grounds. [155] The change in U.S. policy depended on matching the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong in a contest of attrition and morale. There were over 25,000 South Vietnamese casualties during the ceasefire period. On 21 April, however, the exhausted garrison was ordered to withdraw towards Saigon. Vietnam War, (1954-75), a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. [284] According to a congressional report, the jamming was not related to operator error or to an inherent flaw in the rifle, but instead due to a change in the gunpowder to be used in the rifle's cartridges, which led to rapid powder fouling of the action and failures to extract or feed cartridges. He knew that ending this war honorably was essential to his success in the presidency. See: Due to the early presence of U.S. troops in Vietnam, the start date of the Vietnam War is a matter of debate. [40]:704707 An embittered and tearful president Thieu resigned on the same day, declaring that the United States had betrayed South Vietnam. [358]:376377, On 25 May 2012, President Barack Obama issued a proclamation of the commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War. [40]:35, During the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954), U.S. carriers sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin and the U.S. conducted reconnaissance flights. [97]:340 Lodge, frustrated by the end of the year, cabled home about Minh: "Will he be strong enough to get on top of things?" In the United States, President Dwight Eisenhower, who had warned against the possible expansion of communism in April, obviously opposed the unifying election. [40]:718720, On 30 April 1975, PAVN troops entered the city of Saigon and quickly overcame all resistance, capturing key buildings and installations. Unlike the American women who went to Vietnam, both South and North Vietnamese women were enlisted and served in combat zones. [354] 20,00062,000 Laotians also died,[63] and 58,281 U.S. military personnel were killed,[48] of which 1,584 are still listed as missing as of March 2021.[355]. [204]:240[A 11], Prince Norodom Sihanouk had proclaimed Cambodia neutral since 1955,[207] but permitted the PAVN/Viet Cong to use the port of Sihanoukville and the Sihanouk Trail. [97]:468. [24] Many songwriters and musicians supported the anti-war movement, including Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Peggy Seeger, Ewan MacColl, Barbara Dane, The Critics Group, Phil Ochs, John Lennon, John Fogerty, Nina Simone, Neil Young, Tom Paxton, Jimmy Cliff and Arlo Guthrie. The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist states by 1975. In January 1950, the communist states of China and the Soviet Union recognized the Viet Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam, based in Hanoi, as the legitimate government of Vietnam. [340], Vietnamese victims affected by Agent Orange attempted a class action lawsuit against Dow Chemical and other U.S. chemical manufacturers, but the District Court dismissed their case. [17] It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. [358]:373, Kuzmarov in The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs challenges the popular and Hollywood narrative that US soldiers were heavy drug users,[359] in particular the notion that the My Lai massacre was caused by drug use. Westmoreland predicted victory by the end of 1967. Dung now urged the Politburo to allow him to seize Pleiku immediately and then turn his attention to Kon Tum. In addition to the Catholics flowing south, over 130,000 "Revolutionary Regroupees" went to the north for "regroupment", expecting to return to the south within two years. [88] Nixon, a so-called "hawk" on Vietnam, suggested that the United States might have to "put American boys in". [343], The U.S. Veterans Administration has listed prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, multiple myeloma, Diabetes mellitus type 2, B-cell lymphomas, soft-tissue sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea tarda, peripheral neuropathy and spina bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange. [200]:331 The significant decline in U.S. morale was demonstrated by the Battle of FSB Mary Ann in March 1971, in which a sapper attack inflicted serious losses on the U.S. The bloody conflict had its. [24]:xli. [150]:58 Tellingly, South Vietnamese forces were again defeated in June 1965 at the Battle of ng Xoi. This offensive would also be the first time the PAVN would field-test its combined arms force. [134], President Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963. Operations crossed national borders, and the U.S. bombed North Vietnamese supply routes in Laos and Cambodia. [98]:193194,202203,215217, The domino theory, which argued that if one country fell to communism, then all of the surrounding countries would follow, was first proposed as policy by the Eisenhower administration. [302], By 1975, the North Vietnamese had lost influence over the Khmer Rouge. During that year's presidential campaign, Americans were deeply divided by the deteriorating military and political situation in Vietnam. Instead he emphasized continuity. At the 1954 Geneva Conference, Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel. By 1967, the war had generated large-scale internal refugees, numbering nearly 2.1million in South Vietnam, with 125,000 people evacuated and rendered homeless during Operation Masher alone,[159] which was the largest search and destroy operation in the war up to that point. When Kennedy was informed, Maxwell Taylor remembered that he "rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face. [154] Johnson did not, however, communicate this change in strategy to the media. Cao was a Catholic who had been promoted due to religion and fidelity rather than skill, and his main job was to preserve his forces to stave off coup attempts; he had earlier vomited during a communist attack. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson had not been heavily involved with policy toward Vietnam;[135][A 10] however, upon becoming president, Johnson immediately focused on the war. The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955[A 2] to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. The Vietnam War (1955-1975) was fought between communist North Vietnam, backed by the Soviet Union and China, and South Vietnam, supported by the United States. As the PAVN/VC recovered from their 1968 losses and generally avoided contact, Creighton Abrams conducted operations aimed at disrupting logistics, with better use of firepower and more cooperation with the ARVN. [40]:708 Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975. Only 16 months later, the Cuban Missile Crisis (1628 October 1962) played out on television worldwide. Which president started Vietnam War? Casualties fluctuated considerably from year to year, but a degree of accuracy can be inferred from the fact that 500,000 was 59 percent of the 849,018 total and that 59 percent of the war's days had passed by the time of Fallaci's conversation with Giap. Myths play a central role in the historiography of the Vietnam War, and have become a part of the culture of the United States. [244], R.J. Rummel estimated that 39,000 were killed by South Vietnam during the Diem-era in democide from a range of between 16,000 and 167,000 people; for 1964 to 1975, Rummel estimated 50,000 people were killed in democide, from a range of between 42,000 and 128,000. On 13 December 1974, North Vietnamese forces attacked Phc Long. Another French-speaking journalist, Catherine Leroy, was briefly captured and released by North Vietnamese forces during the Battle of Hu, capturing some famous photos from the battles that would appear on the cover of Life Magazine.