The Vietnam War began in good faith, by good people with good intentions.
But a combination of American overconfidence, Cold War tensions and imperialist tendencies the Americans had previously fought so hard against, made the war in Vietnam one of America’s darkest pages in its short but dense history.
By the end of the war, more than 58,000 Americans would die, as too would 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers.
Over 1 million North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong guerillas would also perish as well as over 2 million civilians’ from both the north and the south, and thousands more from Laos and Cambodia.