The Vietnam war was fought in 1955 to 1975, and the Australian military fought in it from 1962 to 1973, and at the time, it was the longest that Australia had participated in all-out war. Just over 60,000 Australia soldiers fought in the war with 521 Australian's killed and approximately 3,000 wounded. The Vietnam War was fought not only in Vietnam but also in surrounding countries such as Cambodia and Laos.
There are many contributing factors for the beginning of the Vietnam War which was all linked to the Cold War. The term ˜Cold War' refers to the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union (Russia) which began after World War II through suspicions and hate between the two superpowers. These two countries never fought against each other because they knew the outcome would be to devastating but used allied countries to fight between themselves, for example; The Vietnam War.
Before World War II Vietnam was part of the French Empire and after the war were given control of the Southern Vietnam while the Chinese were given the Northern Vietnam. The Chinese pulled out from North Vietnam and the French now wanted to take the North Vietnam and quickly were defeated in 1946. In 1954 the French was eliminated for good in Vietnam. The World's powers sat a Geneva Conference to decide the state of Vietnam and the country was split into two at the 17th parallel, southern was democratic and northern was communist. In 1956 an election was going to be used to decide the leader for the whole country but this never happened and the country was split.
War began out between the North and the South with communist countries supporting North Vietnam and democratic countries supporting South Vietnam. Communism is a political system which promotes property and resources to be collectively owned by a society, not individuals. This is used to try to promote the fairest society for everyone as a community.