What is the difference between viet cong and nva

The North Vietnamese saw the South Vietnamese government as a "puppet regime" corrupted by American imperialists. The Americans to them were just another colonial power, as the French had been before them, trying to deprive the Vietnamese of their sovereignty. Robert G. And they were fighting for a unified Vietnam.

Kaiser, Washington Post, January 14, ]. The North Vietnamese were strongly committed to winning to the war. After a 1,year occupation by the Chinese and a years of French rule the last thing many Vietnamese wanted was a bunch of Americans running their country. Ho Chi Minh said, "It was patriotism, not communism that inspired me. When the Americans began to intervene by sending in military advisors in the early s.

I think our most difficult moment came in ," Giap wrote, "when Johnson changed strategy from a limited war with advisors and began bringing in combat divisions.

But Ho wasn't shaken. He was very decisive, very confident. He called a special political congress and ordered our infantry o move south and match the pace of the American escalation.

He mobilized the country around the saying that nothing is more precious than independence and freedom. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient. The Viet Cong were irregular or guerilla forces in South Vietnam.

They wore no uniforms and melted into the local population during the day time. It embraced—and overlapped with—the NVA. But in reality the two groups were not so clear with people from North Vietnam and South Vietnam fighting on both sides.

The NVA operated in larger numbers and were a military unit while VC were guerrilla fighters, squad and platoon strength normally, usually locals from the villages, but could also be regional. When the North ran out of expatriate South Vietnamese Communists that had moved north in when the country was divided they started supplementing them with regular troops from the North Vietnamese Army.

Eventually they stopped making any pretense that the VC were South Vietnamese trying to overthrow their own government, and started sending regular NVA units south.

From on the war was fought by regular units of the NVA. When the North finally overran the South it was the NVA in Russian tanks and trucks, fueled by Russian gas, shooting Russian assault-rifles, supported by Russian artillery, and covered by Russian antiaircraft weapons.

They didn't play hide and seek like the V. When they defended they defended in place. After the north took over the south many of these were put in re-education camps.

Both consisted of Vietnamese from the north and the south who fought against the soldiers of the so-called "Republic of Vietnam" South Vietnam and the Americans. The PAVN were organised into divisions and equipped and armed in the north. The PLAF were not a "Special Forces" group — they were largely peasants who either joined voluntarily or were recruited to defend their villages against the corrupt and brutal regimes of the RVN, or the American invaders.

The PLAF were different from the PAVN, had different arms, different training, were farmers by day and guerrillas by night, and often took part in propaganda acts in order to raise awareness and recruit more soldiers and supporters for the revolution. Both were tightly interwoven and were in turn controlled by the North. Others consider the Viet Cong or "VC" to primarily refer to the armed elements. Collectively, both forces- the southern armed wing and the regulars from the north were part of PAVN.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail, which had been used for several years to supply insurgents in Laos and sympathizers in South Vietnam, was expanded. By some of the 90, Viet Minh troops that had returned to the North following the Geneva Agreements had begun filtering back into the South to take up leadership positions in the insurgency apparat. In , Vietnamese in the south who hated the Diem regime began to take up arms against the South Vietnamese government.

They were supported by the North Vietnamese government, who began feeding them supplies and irregular troops along what became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The United States responded by sending in advisors and army trainers o assist the Diem government.

For many Vietnamese Communism was an expression of nationalism not a political ideology. Ho Chi Minh originally pleaded with the United States and the West for support but his please were rejected. The North Vietnamese welcomed tanks, airplanes, missiles and other weapons from the Soviet Union and China but refused offers to have foreign combat troops stationed on Vietnamese soil and for the most part refused Soviet and Chinese advise on how to conduct the war.

In April universal military conscription was implemented in North Vietnam. In December of the same year Hanoi announced the formation of the National Liberation Front NLF , a political-military group whose objective were the reunification of Vietnam and the ouster of foreign troops.

American GI's later called them "Charlie. In order to keep the NLF from being obviously linked with the Vietnam Workers Party VWP and the North Vietnam, its executive leadership consisted of individuals not publicly identified with the Communists, and the number of party members in leadership positions at all levels was strictly limited.

Furthermore, in order not to alienate patriotic noncommunist elements, the new front was oriented more toward the defeat of the United Statesbacked Saigon government than toward social revolution. These troops expanded in number from fewer than 3, in to more than 15, by , most of whom were assigned to guerrilla units. Southerners trained in the North who infiltrated back into the South composed an important element of this force.

Although they accounted numerically for only about 20 percent of the PLAF, they provided a well-trained nucleus for the movement and often served as officers or political cadres. By late , the PLAF had achieved the capability to attack fixed positions with battalionsized forces. The NLF was also expanded to include , members and perhaps 1 million sympathizers by Land reform programs were begun in liberated areas, and by approximately 1.

In the early stages, only communal lands, uncultivated lands, or lands of absentee landlords were distributed. Despite local pressure for more aggressive land reform, the peasantry generally approved of the program, and it was an important factor in gaining support for the liberation movement in the countryside. The NLF launched its campaign as the Diem government was rapidly losing control of the countryside.

In an effort to prevent infiltration, South Vietnamese villagers in areas of guerrilla activity were rounded up and forcibly placed in "strategic hamlets" where they could watched. The Strategic Hamlets Program, which was implemented in , was based on British tactics in Malaya and similar to the French strategy of creating protected enclaves like Dien Bien Phu. Initially the program was deemed a failure. The villages were infiltrated anyway and the program was dropped after Diem's death.

But years later the North Vietnamese admitted that the program did cause them major problems. The battle at Ap Bac in January has been called "the turning point of the early stages of the war" because it showed the Viet Cong were intent on winning the war and the South Vietnamese army was weak and more concerned about saving its ass than keeping Diem in power and fighting.

At Ap Bac, for the first time, the Viet Cong fought at battalion strength and won a decisive victory against Vietnamese troops supported by American helicopters, armored vehicles, and artillery. One was the commander of the Communist forces. The United States decision to escalate the war was a surprise and a blow to party strategists in Hanoi. At the Twelfth Plenum of the Central Committee in December , the decision was made to continue the struggle for liberation of the South despite the escalated American commitment.

The party leadership concluded that a period of protracted struggle lay ahead in which it would be necessary to exert constant military pressure on the Saigon government and its ally in order to make the war sufficiently unpopular in Washington.

Efforts were to be concentrated on the ARVN troops, which had suffered , desertions in and were thought to be on the verge of disintegration. In early , Hanoi had been encouraged by Moscow's decision to increase its economic and military assistance substantially.

The resulting several hundred million dollars in Soviet aid, including surface- to-air missiles, had probably been tied to a promise by Hanoi to attend an international conference on Indochina that had been proposed by Soviet premier Kosygin in February. As preconditions for these negotiations Hanoi and Washington, however, had each presented demands that were unacceptable to the other side.

Although both Hanoi and Washington had been interested in a negotiated settlement, each had preferred to postpone negotiations until it had achieved a position of strength on the battlefield.

By mid United States forces, now numbering ,, had gained the initiative in several key areas, pushing the communists out of the heavily populated zones of the south into the more remote mountainous regions and into areas along the Cambodian border. Revolutionary forces in the South, under the command of General Nguyen Chi Thanh, responded by launching an aggressive campaign of harassment operations and full-scale attacks by regiment-sized units.

This approach proved costly, however, in terms of manpower and resources, and by late about 5, troops, including main force PAVN units, were being infiltrated from the North each month to help implement this strategy.

At the same time, North Vietnam placed its economy on a war footing, temporarily shelving non-war-related construction efforts. As a consequence of the heavy United States bombing of the North, industries were dismantled and moved to remote areas. Young men were conscripted into the army and their places in fields and factories were filled by women, who also served in home defense and antiaircraft units. Such measures were very effective in countering the impact od the bombing on the North's war effort.

The Johnson administration, however, showed no sign of willingness to change its bombing strategy or to lessen its war effort. During this difficult period, the communists returned to protracted guerrilla warfare and political struggle. The party leadership called for increased efforts to infiltrate moderate political parties and religious organizations.

The underground communist leadership in Saigon was instructed to prepare for a general uprising by recruiting youths into guerrilla units and training women to agitate against the city's poor living conditions and the injustices of the Saigon government.

Total victory, according to the party leadership, would probably occur when military victories in rural areas were combined with general uprisings in the cities. Viet Cong were technically Communist guerilla in South Vietnam.

They were tough, sneaky and committed but according to some American soldiers they "were the worst shots known to mankind. Many Viet Cong fighters wore black pajamas, rubber sandals and straw hats or modified pith helmets. Some had the Vietnamese flag tattooed on their arm with a sewing needle and ink.

NVA soldiers wore green uniforms and green, modified pith helmets. Viet Cong fighter were difficult to distinguish from villagers. Their straw hats and black pajamas, which almost identical to what villagers wore in the villages and hamlets they melted into.

American soldiers by contrast were easy to spot, plus they made a lot of noise. Viet Cong units contained women and children, making fighters even harder to distinguish from villagers.

Village sympathizers who were not soldiers assisted the Viet Cong by offering support and intelligence. Many North Vietnamese fighters—and South Vietnamese ones too—would be classified as child soldiers today. Some of these passed from adolescence into adulthood during the war without seeing their families for four or five years.

Describing a Viet Cong prisoner Nicholas Tomalin wrote, "Our captive can not be more than 16 years old He resembles a tiny, fine-boned wild animal Around the prisoners belt, with four clips of ammunition, is a water bottle without stopper , a tiny roll of bandages, and a propaganda leaflets which later turns out to be a set of Viet Cong songs, with a twenty pastre note folded in it.

As was the case in the American Civil War, brothers fought on different sides. When a Viet Cong soldier died an effort was made to make sure he was buried near water in sight of mountain in accordance with Chinese and Vietnamese burial customs. According to David E. Jones in his book "Women Warriors. Ming Khai, an anti-French Vietnamese fighter in the s, wrote a poem in blood on her prison cell wall. The peasants resented being forced from their ancestral lands, and consolidating them gave the VC better targets.

The program, which had been poorly managed, was abandoned after about two years, following the coup that deposed Diem. Marines landing at Da Nang area beach. Marine Corps. Diem fell from favor with his American patrons, partly over disagreements in how to handle the war against the VC and partly because of his unpopular suppression of religious sects and anyone he feared threatened his regime. He, in turn, called the Buddhists VC sympathizers. Two younger monks poured a mix of gasoline and jet fuel over him and, as the three had planned, set fire to him.

Seven more such immolations occurred that year. To make matters worse, Diem responded by sending troops to raid pagodas.

The administration was caught by surprise, however, when Diem was murdered during the coup, which was led by General Duong Van Minh. This began a series of destabilizing changes in government leadership. That same month, Kennedy himself was assassinated in Dallas , Texas. His successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, inherited the Vietnam situation.

His political party, the Democrats, had been blamed for China falling to communism; withdrawing from Vietnam could hurt them in the elections. On the other hand, Congress had never declared war and so the president was limited in what he could do in Southeast Asia. That changed in August The pilot of an F-8E Crusader did not see any ships in the area where the enemy was reported, and years later crew members said they never saw attacking craft.

Congress swiftly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that removed most restrictions from the president in regards to Vietnam. Though a congressional investigative committee the previous year had warned that America could find itself slipping into in a morass that would require more and more military participation in Vietnam, Johnson began a steady escalation of the war, hoping to bring it to a quick conclusion.

Ironically, the leadership of North Vietnam came to a similar conclusion: they had to inflict enough casualties on Americans to end support for the war on the U. On September 30, , the first large-scale antiwar demonstration took place in America, on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley.

The war became the central rallying point of a burgeoning youth counterculture, and the coming years would see many such demonstrations, dividing generations and families..

This would be a war without a front or a rear; it would involve full-scale combat units and individuals carrying out terrorist activities such as the Brink Hotel bombing. In previous war, progress and setbacks could be shown on maps; large enemy units could be engaged and destroyed.

Guerrilla warfare asymmetrical warfare does not permit such clear-cut data. Westmoreland with a thorny challenge: how to show the American people progress was being made. Westmoreland adopted a search-and-destroy policy to find and engage the enemy and use superior firepower to destroy him.

Every major engagement between U. The body count policy fell into disfavor and was not employed in future American wars; in Vietnam it led officers to inflate enemy casualties. The VC and NVA dragged off as many of their dead and wounded as possible, sometimes impressing villagers into performing this task during battles, so determining their casualties was guesswork based on such things as the number of blood trails.

On the other side, the same thing was occurring, with even more inflated numbers—vastly more. Both sides were fighting a war of attrition, so communist commanders sent Hanoi battle reports that often were pure fantasy. Marines—near Van Truong, from the VC point of view. On February 7, , the U. Air Force began bombing selected sites in North Vietnam. This grew into the operation known as Rolling Thunder that began on March 2, , and continued to November 2, Its primary goal was to demoralize the North Vietnamese and diminish their manufacturing and transportation abilities.

An air war was the most that could be done north of the 17th parallel, because the use of ground troops had been ruled out. On July 9, , China had announced it would step in if the U. North Vietnamese officers, after the war, said the only thing they feared was an American-led invasion of the north, but the U. By the end of , there were , American troops in Vietnam, and the military draft was set to call up , young men in the coming year, an increase of 72, over But the war news was hopeful.

The South Vietnamese Army was showing improvement, winning 37 of their last 45 major engagements. American troops had won every major battle they fought, and General Nguyen Van Thieu had come to power in South Vietnam in September; he would remain in office until , bringing a new measure of stability to the government, though he could not end its endemic corruption. Antiwar protests continued across America and in many other countries, but on April 28, , Gen.

Westmoreland became the first battlefield commander ever to address a joint session of Congress in wartime, and Time magazine named him Man of the Year. In an interview he was asked if there was light at the end of the tunnel, and he responded that the U. They struck at least 30 provincial capitals and the major cities of Saigon and Hue.

American intelligence knew an attack was coming, though the Army had downplayed a New York Times report of large communist troop movements heading south. The VC was effectively finished; it would not field more than 25,—40, troops at any time for the remainder of the war. The NVA had to take over.

It was one of the most resounding defeats in all of military history—until it became a victory. News footage showed the fighting in Saigon and Hue. The Tet Offensive shocked Americans at home, who thought the war was nearing victory. Initially, however, homefront support for the war effort grew, but by March Americans, perceiving no change in strategy that would bring the war to a conclusion, became increasingly disillusioned. In a February 27, , broadcast he summed up what he had found during his return trip to the war zone.

He closed by saying:. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Tensions between blacks and whites had been intensifying for years as African Americans sought to change centuries-old racial policies. That disparity would decline before the war ended, but the racial tensions at home began to insert themselves into the military in Vietnam, damaging unit morale. Even white troops were beginning to protest. One day in October , fifteen members of the Americal Division wore black armbands while they were on patrol, the symbol antiwar protestors wore in the states.

Earlier, in March , the Americal Division had been involved in what became known as the My Lai Massacre , in which over men, women and children were killed. Similar, even larger, atrocities were conducted by VC and NVA units—such as an NVA attack on a Buddhist orphanage at An Hoa in September or the execution of 5, people at Hue during the Tet Offensive—but the concept of American soldiers killing civilians in cold blood was more than many Americans could bear.

Support for the war eroded further. Some antiwar protestors blamed the men and women who served in Vietnam, taunting them and spitting on them when they came home. Military personnel, including nurses, were warned not to wear their uniforms in the States. However, polls consistently showed the majority of Americans supported the war.