Army
Due to the Geneva Accords, Vietnam was divided temporarily. Citizens were able to move either to the North or South side of Vietnam until 300-day period was over. Then two years later an election was held and government were established for both sides. North side concise of people who supported communism. While the South side was the opposite and was made up of people who were anti-communist .
On the north side, Ho Chi Minh played a huge role before and during the war as a leader in North Vietnam. Before the war, Minh joined communist parties and traveled to Soviet Union. Later on Ho Chi Minh began recruiting people for a group called Vietnamese nationalist movement in Indochina . As Ho Chi Minh's power grew so did his influences of communism, Ho Chi Minh return to vietnam with two of his lieutenants Vo Nguyen Giap and Pham Van Dong. They begin to form a group know as the Viet Minh and later on form other groups like People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and Viet Cong. The PAVN (People's Army of Vietnam ) was the armed forces of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The PAVN included Ground Forces, Navy, Air Force, Vietnam Border Defense Force, and Vietnam Coast Guard, but did not have a specific seperate Ground Forces or Army Branch. During the Vietnam War, however, they were referred to as the NVA (North Vietnam Army).
Vo Nguyen Giap was the commander in chief for PAVN. The ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) or the SVA (South Vietnam Army) were the ground forces of South Vietnam. This army existed from 1955 until the Fall of Saigon in 1975. After they invaded North Vietnam, the ARVN was dissolved. Many of the officers fled, and many former officers were sent to reeducation camps by the communist government.
Ngo Dinh Diem was the first president of South Vietnam due to the Geneva Accords. Diem was anti- communist and refused to join Ho Chi Minh after the French and Vietnamese war. He did not want to hold a countrywide election due to the fact that he might lose to Ho Chi Minh, since many people were supporting his beliefs. Diem was not a very popular leader due to his ruthlessness, because of this many people began to contribue to the rise of Viet Cong and North Vietnam. Diem was later on assassinated by a communist in 1962 in a plane bombing.
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson started to send U.S. ground troops to Vietnam in order to re encourage South Vietnam after their defeat. In the beginning, the U.S. only defended South Vietnam's capitol, Saigon, and other important cities. As the war progressed, the U.S. started sending more and more troops to help South Vietnam and defend their Republic. Throughout the war a total of around 2 million troops were send to Vietnam. Between 1969-1974 Richard Nixon was president and claimed to have a secret plan to the war. Nixon called it "Vietnamization",the method was to train more South Vietnamese troops while slowly pulling Americans out of Vietnam.