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Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone

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The Demilitarised Zone was established as a dividing line between North and South Vietnam as a result of the First Indochina War.

During the Second Indochina War (popularly known as the Vietnam War) It became important as a battleground between North Vietnamese forces on the one hand and US and South Vietnamese forces on the other.

Geography

The DMZ spans the whole width of present-day Vietnam (several hundred kilometres), and is a couple of kilometres wide. It reaches across into a beach on the east. An island nearby was controlled by North Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War.

It is around a hundred kilometres north of the city of Hue.

The First IndoChina War

Main article First Indochina War

The First Indochina War (also called the French Indochina War) was fought in Southeast Asia from 1946 through 1954 between the nation of France and the resistance movement led by Ho Chi Minh, calledthe Viet Minh.

The Viet Minh, seasoned by combat against occupying Japanese soldiers during the Second World War, launched a rebellion against the French authority governing the colony of Indochina. After seven years of bloody conflict, the French made their last stand at Dien Bien Phu, where they were engaged by the forces of General Vo Nguyen Giap. But contemporary military tactics were unable to defeat successive human wave attacks and the subsequent siege of the base; the French were defeated with devastating losses. The war in Indochina was not very popular with the French public, but the political stagnation of the Fourth Republic (following WW II German occupation) resulted in ongoing prosecution of the war. The United States supported the war politically and financially.

Establishing the DMZ

The Geneva Conference on July 21, 1954 recognized the 17th parallel as a "provisional military demarcation line" temporarily dividing the country into two states, Communist North Vietnam and pro-Western South Vietnam.

The Geneva Accords promised elections in 1956 to determine a national government for a united Vietnam. However only France and the North Vietnamese government (DRV) signed the document. The U.S. and the government in Saigon refused to abide by the agreement, believing that the election would result in an easy victory for Ho Chi Minh. Emperor Bao Dai from his home in France appointed Ngo Dinh Diem as Prime Minister of South Vietnam. With American support, in 1955 Diem used a referendum to remove the former Emperor and declare himself as president of the Republic of Vietnam.

Thus the competition for the whole of Vietnam began; Diem's military was unable to prevail in the civil war which escalated, as a result of international intervention, into the Vietnam War, which is also referred to as the Second Indochina War.

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