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 number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan in 2021 amounted to 13 from the Western coalition, as of October 2021. Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) is a large military operation, being carried out within the framework of the War on Terror.

Afghanistan War

As mentioned above, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, which began in October 7, 2001, caused the deaths of many soldiers during the period from 2001 to 2020. Operation Enduring Freedom is an American term for the Afghanistan War, used by the U.S. government.

Operation Enduring Freedom was a response to the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 and the beginning of the Global War on Terrorism.

Although it has been nearly 20 years since the Americans started the Global War on Terror, there are still many terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. About 1,750 terrorist attacks were counted in the country 2019.

Due to terrorism in Afghanistan, the number of deaths has increased from 1,952 killed people in 2007 up to 5,312 killed people in 2015 by terrorists. In 2019, the number stood at 8,681.

Detailed listing of all U.S. Military Active Duty deaths since 1/1/2001 giving branch of service, age at death, military occupational code, location of death, and casualty category

As of March 2021, 11 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq in 2020. This is a decrease from a peak of 904 casualties in 2007.

Additional information on fatalities in the Iraq War

The invasion of Iraq by the United States and coalition forces in March 2003 saw the beginning of the Iraq War, a conflict that would continue beyond the end of the decade. Fatalities of American forces were highest in the first five years of conflict as soldiers grappled with the Al Qaeda as well as civil war between those groups seeking to fill the power vacuum left by the removal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Casualties progressively decreased from 2008, in part due to attempts by Barack Obama who made the removal of troops from Iraq a central promise of this successful campaign to succeed George W. Bush. In 2013, the majority of Americans considered sending troops to fight in Iraq to be a mistake.

While the number of civilian deaths in the Iraq War was much higher, the trend of numbers decreasing from 2008 onward was in line with the trend for American solider losses. However, civilian deaths rose again from 2013 onward as Iraq returned to heavy conflict with Islamic State.

The high number of American fatalities in the first five years of the Iraq War could be seen as influencing the reluctance of the United States to commit ground troop support in the battle against Islamic State when the issue was discussed in 2015. Not only is the loss of life a tragedy in itself, but the political discourse in the United States surrounding the involvement of their troops in Middle Eastern conflicts has made further involvement unattractive to elected officials. However calls for further ground support are likely to continue as Iraq remained in the top five countries with the most terrorist attacks as of 2019.

Detailed listing of all U.S. Military Active Duty deaths for 2001

Estimates for the total death count of the Second World War generally range somewhere between 70 and 85 million people. The Soviet Union suffered the highest number of fatalities of any single nation, with estimates mostly falling between 22 and 27 million deaths. China then suffered the second greatest, at around 20 million, although these figures are less certain and often overlap with the Chinese Civil War. Over 80 percent of all deaths were of those from Allied countries, and the majority of these were civilians. In contrast, 15 to 20 percent were among the Axis powers, and the majority of these were military deaths, as shown in the death ratios of Germany and Japan. Civilian deaths and atrocities It is believed that 60 to 67 percent of all deaths were civilian fatalities, largely resulting from war-related famine or disease, and war crimes or atrocities. Systematic genocide, extermination campaigns, and forced labor, particularly by the Germans, Japanese, and Soviets, led to the deaths of millions. In this regard, Nazi activities alone resulted in 17 million deaths, including six million Jews in what is now known as The Holocaust. Not only was the scale of the conflict larger than any that had come before, but the nature of and reasoning behind this loss make the Second World War stand out as one of the most devastating and cruelest conflicts in history. Problems with these statistics Although the war is considered by many to be the defining event of the 20th century, exact figures for death tolls have proven impossible to determine, for a variety of reasons. Countries such as the U.S. have fairly consistent estimates due to preserved military records and comparatively few civilian casualties, although figures still vary by source. For most of Europe, records are less accurate. Border fluctuations and the upheaval of the interwar period mean that pre-war records were already poor or non-existent for many regions. The rapid and chaotic nature of the war then meant that deaths could not be accurately recorded at the time, and mass displacement or forced relocation resulted in the deaths of many civilians outside of their homeland, which makes country-specific figures more difficult to find. Early estimates of the war’s fatalities were also taken at face value and formed the basis of many historical works; these were often very inaccurate, but the validity of the source means that the figures continue to be cited today, despite contrary evidence.

In comparison to Europe, estimate ranges are often greater across Asia, where populations were larger but pre-war data was in short supply. Many of the Asian countries with high death tolls were European colonies, and the actions of authorities in the metropoles, such as the diversion of resources from Asia to Europe, led to millions of deaths through famine and disease. Additionally, over one million African soldiers were drafted into Europe’s armies during the war, yet individual statistics are unavailable for most of these colonies or successor states (notably Algeria and Libya). Thousands of Asian and African military deaths went unrecorded or are included with European or Japanese figures, and there are no reliable figures for deaths of millions from countries across North Africa or East Asia. Additionally, many concentration camp records were destroyed, and such records in Africa and Asia were even sparser than in Europe. While the Second World War is one of the most studied academic topics of the past century, it is unlikely that we will ever have a clear number for the lives lost in the conflict.

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Context

This dataset will be used to help users get familiar with Google Data Studio. It's also a great way to mix history with data visualization skills.

Later I will develop a lesson that will help new users get up to speed with Google Data Studio. This dataset is small, but it will be a good dataset to start with. The same concepts learned with this project will be used with larger datasets.

Content

This data comes from wikipedia.

Acknowledgements

wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war

Inspiration

Project based learning. Get it going! Teach kids using data.

The United States military entered the Korean War in July 1950 and fought on the side of South Korea against the communist forces of North Korea and the People's Republic of China until August 1953. In total, the United States military would suffer almost 37,000 deaths through hostilities. Of these, servicemembers in the Army made up the vast majority of deaths (82.19 percent), with most of these being the result of soldiers being killed in action. A smaller number of marines and navy servicemembers were killed in Korea, with the majority also having been killed in action for these groups. For the United States Air Force, the composition of total deaths is quite different, as the majority of pilots killed during the conflict were declared dead after going missing in action. This likely reflects the fact that when an airplane was shot from the sky in battle, the remains of the pilots are not recoverable.

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.

The graph illustrates the number of deaths per day in the United States from 1950 to 2025. The x-axis represents the years, abbreviated from '50 to '24, while the y-axis indicates the daily number of deaths. Over this 75-year period, the number of deaths per day ranges from a low of 4,054 in 1950 to a high of 9,570 in 2021. Notable figures include 6,855 deaths in 2010 and 8,333 in 2024. The data shows a general upward trend in daily deaths over the decades, with recent years experiencing some fluctuations. This information is presented in a line graph format, effectively highlighting the long-term trends and yearly variations in daily deaths across the United States.

The World War II Enlistment and Casualty Records data set contains individual-level information on soldiers who were drafted or volunteered for service in the U.S. armed forces during World War II. The repository consists of three files: The digitized list of fallen soldiers who served in the U.S. Army or Army Air Force by name, state, and county of residence (300,131 observations) The digitized list of fallen soldiers who served in the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard by name, state, and county of residence (65,507 observations) The World War II Army and Army Air Force Enlistment records which were merged with the list of fallen soldiers (8,293,187 observations)

THIS DATASET WAS LAST UPDATED AT 2:11 AM EASTERN ON JULY 15

OVERVIEW

2019 had the most mass killings since at least the 1970s, according to the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings Database.

In all, there were 45 mass killings, defined as when four or more people are killed excluding the perpetrator. Of those, 33 were mass shootings . This summer was especially violent, with three high-profile public mass shootings occurring in the span of just four weeks, leaving 38 killed and 66 injured.

A total of 229 people died in mass killings in 2019.

The AP's analysis found that more than 50% of the incidents were family annihilations, which is similar to prior years. Although they are far less common, the 9 public mass shootings during the year were the most deadly type of mass murder, resulting in 73 people's deaths, not including the assailants.

One-third of the offenders died at the scene of the killing or soon after, half from suicides.

About this Dataset

The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings database tracks all U.S. homicides since 2006 involving four or more people killed (not including the offender) over a short period of time (24 hours) regardless of weapon, location, victim-offender relationship or motive. The database includes information on these and other characteristics concerning the incidents, offenders, and victims.

The AP/USA TODAY/Northeastern database represents the most complete tracking of mass murders by the above definition currently available. Other efforts, such as the Gun Violence Archive or Everytown for Gun Safety may include events that do not meet our criteria, but a review of these sites and others indicates that this database contains every event that matches the definition, including some not tracked by other organizations.

This data will be updated periodically and can be used as an ongoing resource to help cover these events.

Using this Dataset

To get basic counts of incidents of mass killings and mass shootings by year nationwide, use these queries:

Mass killings by year

Mass shootings by year

To get these counts just for your state:

Filter killings by state

Definition of "mass murder"

Mass murder is defined as the intentional killing of four or more victims by any means within a 24-hour period, excluding the deaths of unborn children and the offender(s). The standard of four or more dead was initially set by the FBI.

This definition does not exclude cases based on method (e.g., shootings only), type or motivation (e.g., public only), victim-offender relationship (e.g., strangers only), or number of locations (e.g., one). The time frame of 24 hours was chosen to eliminate conflation with spree killers, who kill multiple victims in quick succession in different locations or incidents, and to satisfy the traditional requirement of occurring in a “single incident.”

Offenders who commit mass murder during a spree (before or after committing additional homicides) are included in the database, and all victims within seven days of the mass murder are included in the victim count. Negligent homicides related to driving under the influence or accidental fires are excluded due to the lack of offender intent. Only incidents occurring within the 50 states and Washington D.C. are considered.

Methodology

Project researchers first identified potential incidents using the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR). Homicide incidents in the SHR were flagged as potential mass murder cases if four or more victims were reported on the same record, and the type of death was murder or non-negligent manslaughter.

Cases were subsequently verified utilizing media accounts, court documents, academic journal articles, books, and local law enforcement records obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Each data point was corroborated by multiple sources, which were compiled into a single document to assess the quality of information.

In case(s) of contradiction among sources, official law enforcement or court records were used, when available, followed by the most recent media or academic source.

Case information was subsequently compared with every other known mass murder database to ensure reliability and validity. Incidents listed in the SHR that could not be independently verified were excluded from the database.

Project researchers also conducted extensive searches for incidents not reported in the SHR during the time period, utilizing internet search engines, Lexis-Nexis, and Newspapers.com. Search terms include: [number] dead, [number] killed, [number] slain, [number] murdered, [number] homicide, mass murder, mass shooting, massacre, rampage, family killing, familicide, and arson murder. Offender, victim, and location names were also directly searched when available.

This project started at USA TODAY in 2012.

Contacts

Contact AP Data Editor Justin Myers with questions, suggestions or comments about this dataset at jmyers@ap.org. The Northeastern University researcher working with AP and USA TODAY is Professor James Alan Fox, who can be reached at j.fox@northeastern.edu or 617-416-4400.

Between 2003 and 2024, the annual number of civilian deaths due to the Iraq war has fluctuated significantly. As of July, there were 210 deaths in 2024. Civilian Deaths in the Iraq WarCivilian casualties are the deaths of non-military individuals as a result of military operations. The number of documented civilian deaths in the Iraq war peaked in 2006 at 29,526 casualties. Since then, the number had fallen to 4,162 casualties documented in the year 2011, and the number of casualties has been decreasing again since 2014. Due to the nature of the Iraq war and of war reporting, data cannot be considered exact. Many civilian deaths that occurred during the war in Iraq may remain unaccounted for. The Iraq war was launched in March 2003 upon the invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces. Eight years later, in December 2011, the U.S. formally declared an end to the Iraq war. From the start of the war in 2003 until September 30, 2015, it is estimated that the United States spent a total of over 819 billion US dollars on war costs in Iraq. This number includes funding requested by the President and appropriated by Congress, and accounts for both military and non-military spending. Spending was highest in 2008, that year over 142 billion US dollars were spent in Iraq by the United States government. As of 2022, around 6,561 U.S. active-duty military personnel were deployed in North Africa, the Near East, and South Asia. The number of US American soldiers killed in Iraq peaked in 2007 with just over nine hundred causalities. In the same year, there were over 25,000 civilian deaths in Iraq.

A dataset to advance the study of life-cycle interactions of biomedical and socioeconomic factors in the aging process. The EI project has assembled a variety of large datasets covering the life histories of approximately 39,616 white male volunteers (drawn from a random sample of 331 companies) who served in the Union Army (UA), and of about 6,000 African-American veterans from 51 randomly selected United States Colored Troops companies (USCT). Their military records were linked to pension and medical records that detailed the soldiers������?? health status and socioeconomic and family characteristics. Each soldier was searched for in the US decennial census for the years in which they were most likely to be found alive (1850, 1860, 1880, 1900, 1910). In addition, a sample consisting of 70,000 men examined for service in the Union Army between September 1864 and April 1865 has been assembled and linked only to census records. These records will be useful for life-cycle comparisons of those accepted and rejected for service. Military Data: The military service and wartime medical histories of the UA and USCT men were collected from the Union Army and United States Colored Troops military service records, carded medical records, and other wartime documents. Pension Data: Wherever possible, the UA and USCT samples have been linked to pension records, including surgeon''''s certificates. About 70% of men in the Union Army sample have a pension. These records provide the bulk of the socioeconomic and demographic information on these men from the late 1800s through the early 1900s, including family structure and employment information. In addition, the surgeon''''s certificates provide rich medical histories, with an average of 5 examinations per linked recruit for the UA, and about 2.5 exams per USCT recruit. Census Data: Both early and late-age familial and socioeconomic information is collected from the manuscript schedules of the federal censuses of 1850, 1860, 1870 (incomplete), 1880, 1900, and 1910. Data Availability: All of the datasets (Military Union Army; linked Census; Surgeon''''s Certificates; Examination Records, and supporting ecological and environmental variables) are publicly available from ICPSR. In addition, copies on CD-ROM may be obtained from the CPE, which also maintains an interactive Internet Data Archive and Documentation Library, which can be accessed on the Project Website. * Dates of Study: 1850-1910 * Study Features: Longitudinal, Minority Oversamples * Sample Size: ** Union Army: 35,747 ** Colored Troops: 6,187 ** Examination Sample: 70,800 ICPSR Link: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/06836

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 First World War saw the mobilization of more than 65 million soldiers, and the deaths of almost 15 million soldiers and civilians combined. Approximately 8.8 million of these deaths were of military personnel, while six million civilians died as a direct result of the war; mostly through hunger, disease and genocide. The German army suffered the highest number of military losses, totaling at more than two million men. Turkey had the highest civilian death count, largely due to the mass extermination of Armenians, as well as Greeks and Assyrians. Varying estimates suggest that Russia may have suffered the highest number of military and total fatalities in the First World War. However, this is complicated by the subsequent Russian Civil War and Russia's total specific to the First World War remains unclear to this day.

Proportional deaths In 1914, Central and Eastern Europe was largely divided between the empires of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia, while the smaller Balkan states had only emerged in prior decades with the decline of the Ottoman Empire. For these reasons, the major powers in the east were able to mobilize millions of men from across their territories, as Britain and France did with their own overseas colonies, and were able to utilize their superior manpower to rotate and replace soldiers, whereas smaller nations did not have this luxury. For example, total military losses for Romania and Serbia are around 12 percent of Germany's total military losses; however, as a share of their total mobilized forces these countries lost roughly 33 percent of their armies, compared to Germany's 15 percent mortality rate. The average mortality rate of all deployed soldiers in the war was around 14 percent.

Unclarity in the totals Despite ending over a century ago, the total number of deaths resulting from the First World War remains unclear. The impact of the Influenza pandemic of 1918, as well as various classifications of when or why fatalities occurred, has resulted in varying totals with differences ranging in the millions. Parallel conflicts, particularly the Russian Civil War, have also made it extremely difficult to define which conflicts the fatalities should be attributed to. Since 2012, the totals given by Hirschfeld et al in Brill's Encyclopedia of the First World War have been viewed by many in the historical community as the most reliable figures on the subject.

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.

This report provides information regarding suicide mortality for the years 2001–2014. It incorporates the most recent mortality data from the VA/Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Suicide Data Repository and includes information for deaths from suicide among all known Veterans of U.S. military service. Data for the Joint VA/DoD Suicide Data Repository were obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics’ National Death Index through collaboration with the DoD, the CDC, and the VA/DoD Joint Suicide Data Repository initiative. Data available from the National Death Index include reports of mortality submitted from vital statistics systems in all 50 U.S. states, New York City, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

This poll, conducted April 11-13, 2003, is part of a continuing series of monthly polls that solicit public opinion on political and social issues. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of President George W. Bush and his overall job performance, his handling of military action against Iraq, his expectations and priorities for the military action, and his handling of the economy. Respondents were asked whether Bush was paying as much attention to the economy as to the war in Iraq, whether he was respected by other foreign leaders, whether his administration had a clear plan concerning the war in Iraq, and whether his administration leaned toward military solutions when dealing with international crises and events. Respondents were also asked to rate the national economic situation, to provide their opinions on whether the economy was improving, and to comment on whether they kept track of world events. Respondents were queried on the most important issue facing the United States, whether the country was headed in a positive direction, whether they thought relations with European countries were better or worse compared to two years ago, whether they thought relations with non-European countries were better or worse compared to two years ago, which party (Democratic or Republican) was better at handling issues concerning the military, the economy, and terrorism, and whether they or an immediate family member had been or was currently a member of the United States military. Other questions focused on the policy of taking military action against a country that may pose a threat to the United States but has not taken any action yet, the involvement of the United States in changing foreign dictatorships, the appropriate role of the United States in international conflicts, whether North Korea was a threat to the United States, and whether any country posed a serious threat to the United States. Opinions were elicited on the effects of military action in Iraq, whether respondents approved of military action in Iraq, whether they felt the potential benefits were worth the possible costs of military and civilian casualties, how they viewed Iraq before the war, whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, why no weapons of mass destruction had been found, whether not finding weapons of mass destruction and/or Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein meant the United States did not win the war, whether Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was alive, whether Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, whether the United States government correctly assessed the amount of resistance the military would encounter from the Iraqi army, whether the number of casualties experienced by the United States military and Iraqi civilians were within expectations, how they viewed the short-term future of Iraq, and whether the United States was providing adequate humanitarian aid to the Iraqi citizens. Respondents were queried for their opinions on the impact of removing Saddam Hussein from power in the Middle East, whether the war against Iraq would bring democracy to the Middle East, the impact of the war against Iraq on the image of the United States in the Arab world, expectations of how long the United States military would be in Iraq, the extent of responsibility the United States had in Iraq, who was winning the war against terrorism, whether the Iraqi citizens were resentful toward the United States or happy that Saddam Hussein was removed from power, whether the war against Iraq was part of the war on terrorism, whether the war against Iraq would increase the threat of terrorism against the United States, and whether success in Iraq would increase the likelihood that the United States military would be sent to intervene in North Korea, Syria, or Iran. Background variables include, age, sex, political orientation,political ideology, marital status, religious orientation, education, ethnicity, family income in 2002, whether the respondent voted in the 2000 United States presidential election, and if so, for whom they voted.

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.