North Vietnam soon declared its intention to reunite with South Vietnam, by military means if necessary, and began a terrorist campaign in South Vietnam with local Communist Viet Cong guerrillas. The North Vietnamese also began supporting Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas in Laos. To meet the growing threat inside South Vietnam, the U.S. began to expand its military assistance, a program, originally begun in 1950 when the French requested help from the U.S. to fight the Vietminh insurgents.
Between 1957 to 1965, the undeclared war was in large part a struggle between the South Vietnamese army and Communist-trained Viet Cong. While the first U.S. - provided military advisors arrived in country in 1961, U.S. troops were not officially committed to the defense of South Vietnam until March 1965. In 1969, president Nixon announced a policy of "Vietnamization" in which South Vietnam would assume a growing responsibility for it's own defense and American forces would gradually be withdrawn. In January 1973 the Paris Peace Accords were signed, in which it was agreed that American forces would be withdrawn, American Prisoners of War would be repatriated, and free elections would be held to unite the country. By March of that year, the last U.S. ground troops had left Vietnam. Despite the treaty providing for a unified Vietnam, the fighting between North and South Vietnam resumed by 1974. The war finally ended when the tanks of the NVA Tank Regiment 203 rolled into the grounds of the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace on April 30th 1975.
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