U.S. military involvement in Vietnam accelerated after the passing of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution by congress in August 1964. The resolution gave President Lyndon B. Johnson the power to use conventional military force in Southeast Asia without a formal declaration of war. By 1968, the United States' military presence had reached its peak at over 500,000 troops deployed. Following the Tet Offensive by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in early 1968, U.S. public opinion shifted dramatically against the war and President Johnson announced his intention to scale back U.S. military presence in the region. As U.S. troops left Southeast Asia, there was an attempt to manage a 'vietnamization' of the conflict, whereby the South Vietnamese military would receive aid and training from the U.S. in order to fill the gap left by the withdrawing U.S. forces. As the numbers of U.S. service personnel dwindled, so too did the number of battle deaths from the conflict, which had also peaked in 1968. The last U.S. military forces left the region in 1973, with the final U.S. personnel leaving with the Fall of Saigon to the communist forces in April 1975.

Throughout the period in which the United States was in an armed conflict with the Communist-led government and insurgency in Vietnam (referred to as the "Vietnam War" in the U.S. and the "Resistance War against the United States" in Vietnam), around 40 percent of the 8.7 million U.S. military service personnel were stationed in South-East Asia. Of these personnel in the theatre of war, around two percent were killed during the conflict.

This war was part of the wider Cold War of the second half of the 20th century, where the rivalry between the superpowers of the United States and Soviet Union dominated the post-World War II era. During this period the U.S. stationed much of its remaining five million service personnel outside of active conflict zones, especially in strategically important countries such as (West) Germany, South Korea, and Japan, in addition to those stationed at home.

The American Civil War is the conflict with the largest number of American military fatalities in history. In fact, the Civil War's death toll is comparable to all other major wars combined, the deadliest of which were the World Wars, which have a combined death toll of more than 520,000 American fatalities. The ongoing series of conflicts and interventions in the Middle East and North Africa, collectively referred to as the War on Terror in the west, has a combined death toll of more than 7,000 for the U.S. military since 2001. Other records In terms of the number of deaths per day, the American Civil War is still at the top, with an average of 425 deaths per day, while the First and Second World Wars have averages of roughly 100 and 200 fatalities per day respectively. Technically, the costliest battle in U.S. military history was the Battle of Elsenborn Ridge, which was a part of the Battle of the Bulge in the Second World War, and saw upwards of 5,000 deaths over 10 days. However, the Battle of Gettysburg had more military fatalities of American soldiers, with almost 3,200 Union deaths and over 3,900 Confederate deaths, giving a combined total of more than 7,000. The Battle of Antietam is viewed as the bloodiest day in American military history, with over 3,600 combined fatalities and almost 23,000 total casualties on September 17, 1862. Revised Civil War figures For more than a century, the total death toll of the American Civil War was generally accepted to be around 620,000, a number which was first proposed by Union historians William F. Fox and Thomas L. Livermore in 1888. This number was calculated by using enlistment figures, battle reports, and census data, however many prominent historians since then have thought the number should be higher. In 2011, historian J. David Hacker conducted further investigations and claimed that the number was closer to 750,000 (and possibly as high as 850,000). While many Civil War historians agree that this is possible, and even likely, obtaining consistently accurate figures has proven to be impossible until now; both sides were poor at keeping detailed records throughout the war, and much of the Confederacy's records were lost by the war's end. Many Confederate widows also did not register their husbands death with the authorities, as they would have then been ineligible for benefits.

The United States military has a long history of ethnic minorities serving in its ranks, with black Americans having served as far back as the Revolutionary War. The Vietnam War took place during a period of changing race relations in the United States, with the Civil Rights Movement reaching its peak in the mid-1960s, and this too was reflected in the military. The Vietnam War was the first major conflict in which black and white troops were not formally segregated, however, discrimination did still occur with black soldiers reporting being subject to overt racism, being unjustly punished, and having fewer promotion opportunities than their white counterparts.

In the early phases of the war, black casualty rates were much higher than for other races and ethnicities, with some reports showing that black soldiers accounted for 25 percent of the casualties recorded in 1965. This declined substantially as the war progressed, however, the proportion of black service personnel among those fallen during the war was still disproportionately high, as black personnel comprised only 11 percent of the military during this era. A smaller number of other ethnic minorities were killed during the war, comprising two percent of the total.

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army was tasked with fighting a ground war against the army of North Vietnam and the communist-led insurgency known as the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. The states with the largest number of inhabitants killed or injured during the Vietnam War were California, New York, and Texas. A smaller number of U.S. army casualties came from organized territories of the United States, notably Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

About this Dataset

Vietnam Conflict Casualties from the National Archives.

Category

Government

Keywords

vietnam,war,military

Row Count

58071

Price

Free

The Tet Offensive was a military operation undertaken by the forces of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong insurgency during the Lunar New Year festival (Tet) in early 1968. The offensive was a surprise attack which targeted the main population centers throughout South Vietnam, with towns, cities, and military bases being seized by communist forces. While initially successful in taking control of areas of strategic importance, the communist forces were not able to hold these positions for more than a couple of days. As the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces re-grouped to fight off the attack, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong armies suffered heavy losses.

Outcome of the offensive

While the number of wounded among the communist forces is unknown, at least 60,000 of their soldiers were killed during the three and a half weeks of the offensive. The U.S. and South Vietnamese forces suffered considerably fewer losses, while the high number of civilian casualties damaged support for the communists among the civilian population of South Vietnam. The decisive repulsion of the attack did little to win support for the war in the United States, as the scale of the offensive was seen as delegitimizing claims that a U.S. victory in the conflict was near at hand. Despite some in the U.S. military command, such as General Westmoreland, wanting to send additional troops in order to strike a decisive blow against the communists, U.S. public opinion had turned decisively against the war effort and a process of 'vietnamization' of the conflict was begun under President Johnson.

Vietnam was colonized by France in the late 19th century (along with Cambodia and Laos as French Indochina), with the French Empire controlling the country as a protectorate from 1883 to 1939, and then as a possession from 1939 to 1945. These territories were occupied by the Japanese during World War II, after which the Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh declared the country's independence in September 1945. France did not recognize the declaration of independence and soon became engaged in a military conflict against the pro-independence forces, which would become known as the First Indochina War (1946-54). The French forces fighting in this conflict came from a diverse range of countries within the French Empire, with the largest number of casualties being among the "regular indigenous" troops - largely ethnic Vietnamese soldiers, who fought on the French side. Casualty statistics for those who fought on the Vietnamese side in the war are not available, however, historians estimate as many as half a million people were killed, including civilians.
The conflict ended in 1954 with the signing of peace agreements at the Geneva Conference, which gave independence to Laos and Cambodia, while Vietnam was partitioned into North Vietnam, controlled by Ho Chi Minh's Communist Party of Vietnam, and South Vietnam, where a regime allied with France and the U.S. was installed. This partition would be the driving cause of the war between North and South Vietnam from 1955, which the United States would join on the South Vietnamese side in 1964.

The Korean War was an international military conflict which lasted from June 1950 until July 1953, which pitted the communist forces of North Korea, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China against South Korea and a U.S.-led UN force comprised of troops from over 20 additional countries. The war was the United States' first major military engagement of the Cold War, the period of rivalry and heightened tension between the world's two superpowers, the U.S. and Soviet Union. While the war was one of the deadliest in the Cold War and the 20th century in general, it resulted in a stalemate between the North and South, with the boundary between the two countries remaining to this day at the 38th parallel line. The two countries remain technically at war to the present day, as the South's dictator, Syngman Rhee, refused to sign the peace agreement which in practice ended the fighting in the war.

U.S. military deaths in Korea

The majority of U.S. military fatalities during the Korean War were battle deaths (63 percent), with a smaller number of deaths while missing (12 percent), deaths while captured (eight percent), or deaths from battle wounds (seven percent). In addition, around three percent of deaths were from airplane crashes which were not caused by hostile forces, with another seven percent dying of other causes unrelated to battle. In total around 36,000 U.S. military servicemembers were killed in Korea, out of a total of around 40,000 deaths for the UN forces combined. The war was the United States' second deadliest conflict of the Cold War, as well as its fifth deadliest ever, after the Vietnam War, World War I, World War II, and the Civil War.

As of 2020, there were approximately 6.3 million veterans of the United States military still alive who served during the period of the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1975. Around 8.75 million service personnel served during the war, with 40% of those stationed in Vietnam and the surrounding Southeast Asian countries. Veterans of this conflict reflect the largest cohort of American veterans still alive in terms of service era.

Vietnam War veterans may still suffer from long-term health effects of their service during the war. These range from mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, to health conditions caused by exposure to toxic chemicals used to clear trees and plants in the Vietnamese jungle during the war. Since the signing of the Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017 by President Donald J. Trump, March 29th is designated in the U.S. as National Vietnam War Veterans Day.

In 1955, the infant mortality rate in Vietnam was just over one hundred deaths per thousand live births, meaning that approximately one of every ten babies born in that year would not survive past their first birthday. Infant mortality would decrease sharply between the 1950s and 1960s, falling to nearly half the 1955 rate by 1970. Declines in infant mortality would slow somewhat in the early 1970s, however, as a decrease of American aid to South Vietnam following President Nixon’s resignation, combined with increasing encroachment by the North Vietnamese army and a recession from the 1973 oil crisis, would place significant strain on many basic health and government services of the South Vietnamese government. Following the fall of Saigon in 1975 and the reunification of Vietnam, child mortality would begin to decline once more, as the country would begin to rapidly modernize in the post-war years. As a result, infant mortality would halve between 1975 and the end of the century, and as infant mortality continues to decline, it is estimated in 2020 that for every thousand children born in Vietnam, over 98% will survive past their first birthday.

The United States' war in Southeast Asia against the communist controlled North Vietnam was one of the key conflicts of the Cold War. At the onset of direct involvement by the U.S. military in the conflict in 1964, public opinion was strongly behind President Lyndon B. Johnson's decision to send troops to defend the U.S.-backed regime in South Vietnam.

As the war progressed and more U.S. military casualties were recorded, however, opinion began to swing against the war, with net opinion becoming negative for the first time in July 1967. The growing anti-war movement at home and media reporting on the activities of some U.S. service personnel and regiments, such as the My Lai Massacre, led to an increasingly negative outlook on the war overall. By the time of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, 31 percent more of Americans surveyed said they thought the war was a mistake, compared to those who thought it was the right course of action.

The anti-war movement in the United States arose during the 1960s in reaction to U.S. actions in Vietnam and the conscription of soldiers into the military through a draft lottery. The movement encompassed a broad swathe of U.S. society, largely stemming from social movements such as Students for a Democratic Society and the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as less conventional sources of dissent (at the time) such as clergy, artists, and military servicemembers themselves.

Protests escalated from 1968 onwards, with particularly notable moments around the 1968 Democratic Party national convention in Chicago, Illinois, and the Kent State University shootings, where four student protesters were killed by National Guard members. Media coverage of events such as the My Lai massacre in 1968, where around 400 unarmed Vietnamese villagers were killed by U.S. soldiers, further galvanized public opinion against the war and spurred on protests.

The Fall of Saigon on the 30th of April 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam War. The war had been fought by communist forces attempting to overthrow the South Vietnamese state and unite the country under the rule of Communist Party of Vietnam since 1955. From 1964 onward, the U.S. entered the conflict in a full military capacity in an attempt to defend their allied regime in South Vietnam. By 1973, the U.S. had signed a peace deal which both the North and South Vietnamese states were parties to. In spite of this supposed end of hostilities, fighting between the communists and South Vietnam resumed shortly afterwards. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong insurgency in the South planned one final offensive for the Spring of 1975 in an attempt to finish the war. Whereas the communist leadership had expected the offensive to take up to two-years, in fact the South Vietnamese state was to last less than two months in the face of the attack. The sudden collapse of the state and military apparatus caught most by surprise, and led to the frantic evacuation of U.S. personnel and citizens, as well as Southern Vietnamese and other allied nationalities, out of Vietnam. The evacuation of Saigon and Operation Frequent Wind Over the course of the month of April 1975, the U.S. Air Force evacuated almost 7,000 U.S. citizens and approximately 45,000 citizens of other countries, mainly South Vietnamese who had worked with the U.S. authorities. As the communist forces advanced towards Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, fear began to spread among supporters and officials of the South Vietnamese regime about how they would be treated if the city were to be captured. Many worried that they would be killed or tortured, leading them to try to flee from the country. At the same time, the U.S. Defense Attaché Office (DAO) began evacuating non-essential personnel at the beginning of the month. The extent of the collapse of the South Vietnamese state became evident with the flight of President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu to Taiwan on April 21st. The Air Force picked up the pace of evacuations in the following days, as more and more people turned up at the DAO's compound, as well as the U.S. embassy, seeking to be flown out of the city by helicopter. Operation Frequent Wind is perhaps the most well remembered of these evacuations, as the U.S. Air Force frantically flew almost 7,000 people out of Saigon on April 29th and 30th. The images broadcast in the media of desperate people crowding into the U.S. embassy in an attempt to get on the last flights out of the city have since become iconic representations of the failure of the United States' intervention in Vietnam to ensure the survival of the South Vietnamese state. The remaining members of the South Vietnamese government surrendered on April 30th, marking the end of almost 20 years of civil war in the country.