Partof	the Cold War and the Indochina Wars
Date	– ()
Place	South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos
Causes	Reunification of Vietnam (North Vietnam)Containment Policy and Domino Theory, Gulf of Tonkin Incident (United States)
Territory	Unification of North and South Vietnam into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Result	Communist Vietnamese victory Withdrawal of American forces from Indochina Dissolution of South Vietnam Communist governments take power in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos
Combatant1	Anti-Communist forces: Khmer Republic Kingdom of Laos ''Supported by:'' 23px Spain
Combatant2	Communist forces: NLF Khmer Rouge Pathet Lao People's Republic of China ''Supported by:''
Strength1	~1,830,000 (1968) South Vietnam: 850,000 United States: 536,100 Free World Military Forces: 65,000 Republic of Korea: 50,000 Australia: 7,672 Thailand, Philippines: 10,450 New Zealand: 552
Strength2	~461,000 North Vietnam: 287,465 (Jan 1968) PRC: 170,000 (1969) Soviet Union: 3,000 DPR Korea: 300–600
Commander1	Ngô Đình Diệm Nguyễn Văn Thiệu Nguyễn Cao Kỳ Cao Văn Viên Lyndon B. Johnson Richard Nixon William Westmoreland Creighton Abrams Park Chung Hee Chae Myung Shin Lon Nol ...''and others''
Commander2	Hồ Chí Minh Lê Duẩn Võ Nguyên Giáp Hoàng Văn Thái Văn Tiến Dũng Trần Văn Trà Nguyễn Văn Linh Nguyễn Hữu Thọ...''and others''
Casualties1	South Vietnam220,357 (low est.) – 316,000 dead (highest est.); 1,170,000 wounded United States58,220 dead; the CRS (Congressional Research Service) Report for Congress, American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics, dated February 26, 2010, and the book Crucible Vietnam: Memoir of an Infantry Lieutenant. Some other sources give different figures (e.g. the 2005/2006 documentary ''Heart of Darkness: The Vietnam War Chronicles 1945–1975'' cited elsewhere in this article gives a figure of 58,159 U.S. deaths, The 2007 book ''Vietnam Sons: For Some, the War Never Ended'' gives a figure of 58,226.)|nameUSd&w;|groupA}}

1,687 missing; 303,635 wounded

Total dead: 315,384 – 412,000Total wounded: ~1,490,000+ | |casualties2 = North Vietnam & NLF1,176,000 dead or missing (highest est.); 600,000+ wounded P.R. China1,446 dead; 4,200 wounded Soviet Union16 dead

Total dead: ~1,177,462 (highest est.)Total wounded: ~604,200+ | |casualties3 = Vietnamese civilian dead: ~200,000 – 2,000,000 Cambodian civilian dead: 200,000 – 300,000*|group="A"}} was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 U.S. government reports currently cite 1 November 1955, as the commencement date of the “Vietnam Conflict,” for this was the day when the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Indochina (deployed to Southeast Asia under President Truman), was reorganized into country-specific units and MAAG Vietnam was established. So on 1 November 1955 a Vietnamese MAAG was created.

Other start dates include when Hanoi authorized Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam to begin a low level insurgency in December 1956. Where as some view 26 September 1959 when the first battle occurred between the Communist and South Vietnamese army. |group="A"|name="start date"}} to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The Viet Cong, a lightly armed South Vietnamese communist-controlled common front, largely fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region. The Vietnam People's Army (North Vietnamese Army) engaged in a more conventional war, at times committing large units into battle. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery and airstrikes.

The U.S. government viewed involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam as part of their wider strategy of containment. The North Vietnamese government viewed the war as a colonial war, fought initially against France, backed by the U.S., and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S. puppet state. U.S. military advisors arrived beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with U.S. troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962. U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations spanned borders, with Laos and Cambodia heavily bombed. Involvement peaked in 1968 at the time of the Tet Offensive. After this, U.S. ground forces were withdrawn as part of a policy called Vietnamization. Despite the Paris Peace Accords, signed by all parties in January 1973, fighting continued.

U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973 as a result of the Case–Church Amendment passed by the U.S. Congress. The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese army in April 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam War. North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities (See: Vietnam War casualties). Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from less than one million to more than three million. Some 200,000–300,000 Cambodians, 20,000–200,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict. Thus, in Vietnamese, the war is known as ''Chiến tranh Việt Nam'' (The Vietnam War), or as ''Kháng chiến chống Mỹ'' (Resistance War Against America), loosely translated as ''the American War''.

The main military organizations involved in the war were, on one side, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and the U.S. military, and, on the other side, the Vietnam People's Army (VPA), or North Vietnamese Army (NVA), and the Viet Cong, or National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF), a South Vietnamese communist army.

Background to 1949

France began its conquest of Indochina in the late 1850s, and completed pacification by 1893. The Treaty of Huế, concluded in 1884, formed the basis for French colonial rule in Vietnam for the next seven decades. In spite of military resistance, most notable by the Can Vuong of Phan Dinh Phung, by 1888, the area of the current-day nations of Cambodia and Vietnam was made into the colony of French Indochina (Laos was added later). Various Vietnamese opposition movements to the French rule existed during this period, such as the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang who staged the failed Yen Bai mutiny in 1930, but none were ultimately as successful as the Viet Minh common front, controlled by the Communist Party of Vietnam, founded in 1941 and funded by U.S. and Chinese Nationalist Party in its fight against Japanese occupation.|group=A}}

During World War II, the French were defeated by the Germans in 1940. For French Indochina, this meant that the colonial authorities became Vichy French, allies of the German-Italian Axis powers. In turn this meant that the French collaborated with the Japanese forces after their invasion of French Indochina during 1940. The French continued to run affairs in the colony, but ultimate power resided in the hands of the Japanese. However, they did not have enough power to fight actual battles at first. Ho Chi Minh was suspected of being a communist and jailed for a year by the Chinese national party.

Double occupation by France and Japan continued until the German forces were expelled from France and the French Indochina colonial authorities started holding secret talks with the Free French. Fearing that they could no longer trust the French authorities the Japanese army interned them all on 9 March 1945 and assumed direct control themselves through their puppet state of the Empire of Vietnam under Bảo Đại.

During 1944–1945, a deep famine struck northern Vietnam due to a combination of poor weather and French/Japanese exploitation. 1 million people died of starvation (out of a population of 10 million in the affected area). Exploiting the administrative gap that the internment of the French had created, the Viet Minh in March 1945 urged the population to ransack rice warehouses and refuse to pay their taxes. Between 75 and 100 warehouses were consequently raided. This rebellion against the effects of the famine and the authorities that were partially responsible for it bolstered the Viet Minh's popularity and they recruited many members during this period. After their defeat in the war, the Japanese Army gave weapons to the Vietnamese. To further help the nationalists, the Japanese kept Vichy French officials and military officers imprisoned for a month after the surrender. The Việt Minh had recruited more than 600 Japanese soldiers and given them roles to train or command Vietnamese soldiers.

On 2 September 1945, Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Viet Minh, declared the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam before a crowd of 500,000 in Hanoi. When the British landed in the South, they rearmed the interned French forces as well as parts of the surrendered Japanese forces to aid them in retaking southern Vietnam as they did not have enough troops to do this themselves. In January 1946, the Viet Minh won elections across central and northern Vietnam. On March 6, 1946, Ho Chi Minh signed an agreement allowing French forces to replace Nationalist Chinese forces, in exchange for French recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a "free" republic within the French Union, with the specifics of such recognition to be determined by future negotiation. The French landed in Hanoi by March 1946 and in November of that year they ousted the Viet Minh from the city. British forces departed on 26 March 1946, leaving Vietnam in the hands of the French. Soon thereafter the Viet Minh began a guerrilla war against the French Union forces, beginning the First Indochina War.

The war spread to Laos and Cambodia where Communists organized the Pathet Lao and the Khmer Serei after the model of the Viet Minh. Globally, the Cold War began in earnest, which meant that the rapprochement that existed between the Western powers and the Soviet Union during World War II disintegrated. The Viet Minh fight was hampered by a lack of weapons; this situation changed by 1949 when the Chinese Communists had largely won the Chinese Civil War and were free to provide arms to their Vietnamese allies. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 convinced many Washington policymakers that the war in Indochina was an example of communist expansionism directed by the Kremlin.

PRC military advisors began assisting the Viet Minh in July 1950. PRC weapons, expertise, and laborers transformed the Viet Minh from a guerrilla force into a regular army. In September 1950, the United States created a Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) to screen French requests for aid, advise on strategy, and train Vietnamese soldiers. By 1954, the United States had supplied 300,000 small arms and spent US$1 billion in support of the French military effort and was shouldering 80 percent of the cost of the war.

There were also talks between the French and Americans in which the possible use of three tactical nuclear weapons was considered, though how seriously this was considered and by whom are even now vague and contradictory. One version of plan for the proposed Operation Vulture envisioned sending 60 B-29s from U.S. bases in the region, supported by as many as 150 fighters launched from U.S. Seventh Fleet carriers, to bomb Viet Minh commander Vo Nguyen Giap's positions. The plan included an option to use up to three atomic weapons on the Viet Minh positions. Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave this nuclear option his backing. U.S. B-29s, B-36s, and B-47s could have executed a nuclear strike, as could carrier aircraft from the Seventh Fleet.

U.S. carriers sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin, and reconnaissance flights over Dien Bien Phu were conducted during the negotiations. According to Richard Nixon the plan involved the Joint Chiefs of Staff drawing up plans to use 3 small tactical nuclear weapons in support of the French. President Eisenhower made American participation contingent on British support, but London was opposed. In the end, convinced that the political risks outweighed the possible benefits, Eisenhower decided against the intervention.As an experienced five-star general, Eisenhower was very wary of getting the United States involved in a land war in Asia.

The Viet Minh received crucial support from the Soviet Union and PRC. PRC support in the Border Campaign of 1950 allowed supplies to come from PRC into Vietnam. Throughout the conflict, U.S. intelligence estimates remained skeptical of French chances of success.

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu marked the end of French involvement in Indochina. The Viet Minh and their mercurial commander Vo Nguyen Giap handed the French a stunning military defeat, and on 7 May 1954, the French Union garrison surrendered. Of the 12,000 French prisoners taken by the Viet Minh only 3000 survived. At the Geneva Conference the French negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Viet Minh. Independence was granted to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

Transition period

Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel, and under the terms of the Geneva Convention, civilians were to be given the opportunity to move freely between the two provisional states for a 300-day period. Elections throughout the country were to be held in 1956 to establish a unified government. Around one million northerners, mainly minority Catholics, fled south, fearing persecution by the communists, following an American propaganda campaign using slogans such as "The Virgin Mary is heading south", and aided by a U.S. funded $93 million relocation program, which included ferrying refugees with the Seventh Fleet. It is estimated that as many as two million more would have left had they not been stopped by the Viet Minh. The northern, mainly Catholic refugees were meant to give Diem a strong anti-communist constituency. Diem later went on to staff his administration's key posts mostly with northern and central Catholics.

In addition to the Catholics flowing south, up to 130,000 ‘Revolutionary Regroupees’, went north for "regroupment" expecting to return to the South within 2 years. The Viet Minh left roughly 5,000 to 10,000 cadres in South Vietnam as a "politico-military substructure within the object of its irredentism." The last French soldiers were to leave Vietnam in April 1956. The PRC completed their withdrawal from North Vietnam at around the same time. Around 52,000 Vietnamese civilians moved from south to north.

In the north, the Viet Minh ruled as the DRV and engaged in a drastic land reform program in which an estimated eight thousand perceived "class enemies" were executed. In 1956 the Communist Party leaders of Hanoi admitted to "excesses" in implementing this program and restored a large amount of the land to the original owners.

In the south, former Emperor Bảo Đại's State of Vietnam operated, with Ngô Đình Diệm (appointed in July 1954) as his prime minister. In June 1955, Diem announced that elections would not be held. South Vietnam had rejected the agreement from the beginning and was therefore not bound by it, he said. "How can we expect 'free elections' to be held in the Communist North?" Diem asked. President Dwight D. Eisenhower echoed senior U.S. experts when he wrote that, in 1954, "80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh" over Emperor Bảo Đại.

In April–June 1955, Diem (against U.S. advice) cleared the decks of any political opposition in the south by launching military operations against the Cao Dai religious sect, the Hoa Hao sect of Ba Cut, and the Binh Xuyen organized crime group (which was allied with members of the secret police and some military elements). As broad-based opposition to his harsh tactics mounted, Diem increasingly sought to blame the communists.

In a referendum on the future of the State of Vietnam on 23 October, Diem rigged the poll supervised by his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu and was credited with 98.2 percent of the vote, including 133% in Saigon. His American advisers had recommended a more modest winning margin of "60 to 70 percent." Diem, however, viewed the election as a test of authority. On 26 October 1955, Diem declared the new Republic of Vietnam (ROV), with himself as president. The ROV was created largely because of the Eisenhower administration's desire for an anti-communist state in the region.

Diem era, 1955–1963

The Domino theory, which argued that if one country fell to communist forces, then all of the surrounding countries would follow, was first proposed as policy by the Eisenhower administration. It was, and is still, commonly hypothesized that it applied to Vietnam. John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, said in a speech to the American Friends of Vietnam: "Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam."

Rule

A devout Roman Catholic, Diem was fervently anti-communist, nationalist and socially conservative. Historian Luu Doan Huynh notes, however, that "Diem represented narrow and extremist nationalism coupled with autocracy and nepotism." As a wealthy Catholic, Diem was viewed by many ordinary Vietnamese as part of the elite who had helped the French rule Vietnam; Diem had been interior minister in the colonial government. The majority of Vietnamese people were Buddhist, and were alarmed by actions such as his dedication of the country to the Virgin Mary.

Beginning in the summer of 1955, he launched the "Denounce the Communists" campaign, during which communists and other anti-government elements were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, or executed. Diem instituted a policy of death penalty against any activity deemed communist in August 1956. Opponents were labeled Viet Cong ("Vietnamese communist") by the regime to degrade their nationalist credentials. As a measure of the level of political repression, about 12,000 suspected opponents of Diem were killed in the years 1955–1957 and by the end of 1958 an estimated 40,000 political prisoners had been jailed.

In May, 1957, Diem undertook a ten-day state visit to the United States. President Eisenhower pledged his continued support. A parade in New York City was held in his honor. Although Diem was openly praised, in private Secretary of State John Foster Dulles conceded that he had been selected because there were no better alternatives.

Robert McNamara wrote that the new American patrons were almost completely ignorant of Vietnamese culture. They knew little of the language or long history of the country. There was a tendency to assign American motives to Vietnamese actions, and Diem warned that it was an illusion to believe that blindly copying Western methods would solve Vietnamese problems.

Insurgency in the South, 1956–1960

The Sino-Soviet split led to a reduction in the influence of the PRC, which had insisted in 1954 that the Viet Minh accept a division of the country. Trường Chinh, North Vietnam's pro-PRC party first secretary, was demoted and Hanoi authorized communists in South Vietnam to begin a low level insurgency in December 1956. This insurgency in the south had begun in response to Diem's Denunciation of Communists campaign, in which thousands of local Viet Minh cadres and supporters had been executed or sent to concentration camps, and was in violation of the Northern Communist party line, which had enjoined them not to start an insurrection, but rather engage in a political campaign, agitating for a free all-Vietnam election in accordance with the Geneva accords.

Hồ Chí Minh stated, "Do not engage in military operations; that will lead to defeat. Do not take land from a peasant. Emphasize nationalism rather than communism. Do not antagonize anyone if you can avoid it. Be selective in your violence. If an assassination is necessary, use a knife, not a rifle or grenade. It is too easy to kill innocent bystanders with guns and bombs, and accidental killing of the innocent bystanders will alienate peasants from the revolution. Once an assassination has taken place, make sure peasants know why the killing occurred." This strategy was referred to as "armed propaganda."

Soon afterward, Lê Duẩn, a communist leader who had been working in the South, returned to Hanoi to accept the position of acting first secretary, effectively replacing Trường. Duẩn urged a military line and advocated increased assistance to the insurgency. Four hundred government officials were assassinated in 1957 alone, and the violence gradually increased. While the terror was originally aimed at local government officials, it soon broadened to include other symbols of the ''status quo'', such as schoolteachers, health workers, and agricultural officials. Village chiefs were Diem appointees from outside the villages and were hated by the peasantry for their corruption and abuse.) According to one estimate, 20 percent of South Vietnam's village chiefs had been assassinated by the insurgents by 1958. The insurgency sought to completely destroy government control in South Vietnam's rural villages and replace it with a shadow government.

In January 1959, the North's Central Committee issued a secret resolution authorizing an "armed struggle". This authorized the southern communists to begin large-scale operations against the South Vietnamese military. North Vietnam supplied troops and supplies in earnest, and the infiltration of men and weapons from the north began along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In May, South Vietnam enacted Law 10/59, which made political violence punishable by death and property confiscation.

Observing the increasing unpopularity of the Diem regime, on 12 December 1960, Hanoi authorized the creation of the National Liberation Front as a common front controlled by the communist party in the South.

Successive American administrations, as Robert McNamara and others have noted, overestimated the control that Hanoi had over the NLF. Diem's paranoia, repression, and incompetence progressively angered large segments of the population of South Vietnam. According to a November 1960 report by the head of the U.S. military advisory team, Lieutenant General Lionel C. McGarr, a "significant part" of the population in the south supported the communists. The communists thus had a degree of popular support for their campaign to bring down Diem and reunify the country.

During John F. Kennedy's administration, 1961–1963

When John F. Kennedy won the 1960 U.S. presidential election, one major issue Kennedy raised was whether the Soviet space and missile programs had surpassed those of the United States. As Kennedy took over, despite warnings from Eisenhower about Laos and Vietnam, Europe and Latin America "loomed larger than Asia on his sights." In his inaugural address, Kennedy made the ambitious pledge to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty."

In June 1961, John F. Kennedy bitterly disagreed with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev when they met in Vienna over key U.S.-Soviet issues. The aftermath of the Korean War created the idea of a limited war.

Although Kennedy stressed long-range missile parity with the Soviets, he was also interested in using special forces for counterinsurgency warfare in Third World countries threatened by communist insurgencies. Although they were originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional invasion of Europe, Kennedy believed that the guerrilla tactics employed by special forces such as the Green Berets would be effective in a "brush fire" war in Vietnam.

The Kennedy administration remained essentially committed to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. In 1961, the U.S. had 50,000 troops based in Korea, and Kennedy faced a three-part crisis—the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement. These made Kennedy believe that another failure on the part of the United States to gain control and stop communist expansion would fatally damage U.S. credibility with its allies and his own reputation. Kennedy determined to "draw a line in the sand" and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam, saying, "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place", to James Reston of ''The New York Times'' immediately after meeting Khrushchev in Vienna.

In May 1961, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson visited Saigon and enthusiastically declared Diem the "Winston Churchill of Asia." Asked why he had made the comment, Johnson replied, "Diem's the only boy we got out there." Johnson assured Diem of more aid in molding a fighting force that could resist the communists.

Kennedy's policy toward South Vietnam rested on the assumption that Diem and his forces must ultimately defeat the guerrillas on their own. He was against the deployment of American combat troops and observed that "to introduce U.S. forces in large numbers there today, while it might have an initially favorable military impact, would almost certainly lead to adverse political and, in the long run, adverse military consequences."

The quality of the South Vietnamese military, however, remained poor. Bad leadership, corruption, and political promotions all played a part in emasculating the ARVN. The frequency of guerrilla attacks rose as the insurgency gathered steam. While Hanoi's support for the NLF played a role, South Vietnamese governmental incompetence was at the core of the crisis.

Kennedy advisers Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow recommended that U.S. troops be sent to South Vietnam disguised as flood relief workers. Kennedy rejected the idea but increased military assistance yet again. In April 1962, John Kenneth Galbraith warned Kennedy of the "danger we shall replace the French as a colonial force in the area and bleed as the French did." By 1963, there were 16,000 American military personnel in South Vietnam, up from Eisenhower's 900 advisors.

The Strategic Hamlet Program had been initiated in 1961. This joint U.S.-South Vietnamese program attempted to resettle the rural population into fortified camps. The aim was to isolate the population from the insurgents, provide education and health care, and strengthen the government's hold over the countryside. The Strategic Hamlets, however, were quickly infiltrated by the guerrillas. The peasants resented being uprooted from their ancestral villages. In part, this was because Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, a Diem favourite who was instrumental in running the program, was in fact a communist agent who used his Catholicism to gain influential posts and damage the ROV from the inside.

The government refused to undertake land reform, which left farmers paying high rents to a few wealthy landlords. Corruption dogged the program and intensified opposition.

On 23 July 1962, fourteen nations, including the People's Republic of China, South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, North Vietnam and the United States, signed an agreement promising the neutrality of Laos.

Coup and assassinations

:''See also: Kennedy's role, 1960 South Vietnamese coup attempt, 1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing, Huế Phật Đản shootings and Xa Loi Pagoda raids'' The inept performance of the South Vietnamese army was exemplified by failed actions such as the Battle of Ap Bac on 2 January 1963, in which a small band of Viet Cong beat off a much larger and better equipped South Vietnamese force, many of whose officers seemed reluctant even to engage in combat. The ARVN were led in that battle by Diem's most trusted General Huynh Van Cao, commander of the IV Corps, and a Catholic who had been promoted due to religion and fidelity rather than skill, and whose main job was to preserve his forces to stave off coups; Cao had earlier vomited during a communist attack. Some policymakers in Washington began to conclude that Diem was incapable of defeating the communists and might even make a deal with Ho Chi Minh. He seemed concerned only with fending off coups, and had become more paranoid after attempts in 1960, 1962, which he partly attributed to U.S. encouragement. As Robert F. Kennedy noted, "Diem wouldn't make even the slightest concessions. He was difficult to reason with..."

Discontent with Diem's policies exploded following the Huế Phật Đản shootings of majority Buddhists who were protesting against the ban on the Buddhist flag on Vesak, the Buddha's birthday. This resulted in mass protests against discriminatory policies that gave privileges to the Catholic Church and its adherents. Diem's elder brother Ngo Dinh Thuc was the Archbishop of Huế and aggressively blurred the separation between church and state. Thuc's anniversary celebrations shortly before Vesak had been bankrolled by the government and Vatican flags were displayed prominently. There had also been reports of Buddhist pagodas being demolished by Catholic paramilitaries throughout Diem's rule. Diem refused to make concessions to the Buddhist majority or take responsibility for the deaths. On 21 August 1963, the ARVN Special Forces of Colonel Le Quang Tung, loyal to Diem's younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, raided pagodas across Vietnam, causing widespread damage and destruction and leaving a death toll estimated to range into the hundreds.

U.S. officials began discussing the possibility of a regime change during the middle of 1963. The United States Department of State was generally in favor of encouraging a coup, while the Defense Department favored Diem.

Chief among the proposed changes was the removal of Diem's younger brother Nhu, who controlled the secret police and special forces was seen as the man behind the Buddhist repression and more generally the architect of the Ngo family's rule. This proposal was conveyed to the U.S. embassy in Saigon in Cable 243.

The CIA was in contact with generals planning to remove Diem. They were told that the United States would not oppose such a move nor punish the generals by cutting off aid. President Diem was overthrown and executed, along with his brother, on 2 November 1963. When he was informed, Maxwell Taylor remembered that Kennedy "rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face." He had not approved Diem's murder. The U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, invited the coup leaders to the embassy and congratulated them. Ambassador Lodge informed Kennedy that "the prospects now are for a shorter war".

Following the coup, chaos ensued. Hanoi took advantage of the situation and increased its support for the guerrillas. South Vietnam entered a period of extreme political instability, as one military government toppled another in quick succession. Increasingly, each new regime was viewed as a puppet of the Americans; whatever the failings of Diem, his credentials as a nationalist (as Robert McNamara later reflected) had been impeccable.

U.S military advisers were embedded at every level of the South Vietnamese armed forces. They were, however, almost completely ignorant of the political nature of the insurgency. The insurgency was a political power struggle, in which military engagements were not the main goal. The Kennedy administration sought to refocus U.S. efforts on pacification and "winning over the hearts and minds" of the population. The military leadership in Washington, however, was hostile to any role for U.S. advisers other than conventional troop training. General Paul Harkins, the commander of U.S. forces in South Vietnam, confidently predicted victory by Christmas 1963. The CIA was less optimistic, however, warning that "the Viet Cong by and large retain de facto control of much of the countryside and have steadily increased the overall intensity of the effort".

Paramilitary officers from the CIA's Special Activities Division trained and led Hmong tribesmen in Laos and into Vietnam. The indigenous forces numbered in the tens of thousands and they conducted direct action missions, led by paramilitary officers, against the Communist Pathet Lao forces and their North Vietnamese supporters. The CIA also ran the Phoenix Program and participation Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MAC-V SOG), which was originally named the Special Operations Group, but was changed for cover purposes.

Lyndon B. Johnson escalates the war, 1963–1969

Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), as he took over the presidency after the death of Kennedy, initially did not consider Vietnam a priority and was more concerned with his "Great Society" and progressive social programs. Presidential aide Jack Valenti recalls, "Vietnam at the time was no bigger than a man's fist on the horizon. We hardly discussed it because it was not worth discussing."

On 24 November 1963, Johnson said, "the battle against communism... must be joined... with strength and determination." The pledge came at a time when Vietnam was deteriorating, especially in places like the Mekong Delta, because of the recent coup against Diem.

Johnson had reversed Kennedy's disengagement policy from Vietnam in withdrawing 1,000 troops by the end of 1963 (NSAM 263 on 11 Oct.), with his own NSAM 273 (26 Nov.) to expand the war.

The military revolutionary council, meeting in lieu of a strong South Vietnamese leader, was made up of 12 members headed by General Duong Van Minh—whom Stanley Karnow, a journalist on the ground, later recalled as "a model of lethargy." Lodge, frustrated by the end of the year, cabled home about Minh: "Will he be strong enough to get on top of things?" His regime was overthrown in January 1964 by General Nguyen Khanh. However, there was persistent instability in the military as several coups—not all successful—occurred in a short space of time. On 2 August 1964, the , on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam's coast, allegedly fired upon and damaged several torpedo boats that had been stalking it in the Gulf of Tonkin.

A second attack was reported two days later on the and ''Maddox'' in the same area. The circumstances of the attack were murky. Lyndon Johnson commented to Undersecretary of State George Ball that "those sailors out there may have been shooting at flying fish."

The second attack led to retaliatory air strikes, prompted Congress to approve the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and gave the president power to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without declaring war. In the same month, Johnson pledged that he was not "... committing American boys to fighting a war that I think ought to be fought by the boys of Asia to help protect their own land."

An undated NSA publication declassified in 2005, however, revealed that there was no attack on 4 August. It had already been called into question long before this. "Gulf of Tonkin incident", writes Louise Gerdes, "is an oft-cited example of the way in which Johnson misled the American people to gain support for his foreign policy in Vietnam." George C. Herring argues, however, that McNamara and the Pentagon "did not knowingly lie about the alleged attacks, but they were obviously in a mood to retaliate and they seem to have selected from the evidence available to them those parts that confirmed what they wanted to believe."

"From a strength of approximately 5,000 at the start of 1959 the Viet Cong's ranks grew to about 100,000 at the end of 1964...Between 1961 and 1964 the Army's strength rose from about 850,000 to nearly a million men." The numbers for U.S. troops deployed to Vietnam during the same period were quite different; 2,000 in 1961, rising rapidly to 16,500 in 1964. The National Security Council recommended a three-stage escalation of the bombing of North Vietnam. On 2 March 1965, following an attack on a U.S. Marine barracks at Pleiku, Operation Flaming Dart (initiated when Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin was at a state visit to North Vietnam), Operation Rolling Thunder and Operation Arc Light commenced. The bombing campaign, which ultimately lasted three years, was intended to force North Vietnam to cease its support for the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) by threatening to destroy North Vietnam's air defenses and industrial infrastructure. As well, it was aimed at bolstering the morale of the South Vietnamese. Between March 1965 and November 1968, "Rolling Thunder" deluged the north with a million tons of missiles, rockets and bombs.

Bombing was not restricted to North Vietnam. Other aerial campaigns, such as Operation Commando Hunt, targeted different parts of the NLF and VPA infrastructure. These included the Ho Chi Minh trail, which ran through Laos and Cambodia. The objective of forcing North Vietnam to stop its support for the NLF, however, was never reached. As one officer noted "this is a political war and it calls for discriminate killing. The best weapon... would be a knife... The worst is an airplane." The Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force Curtis LeMay, however, had long advocated saturation bombing in Vietnam and wrote of the Communists that "we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age".

Escalation and ground war

After several attacks upon them, it was decided that U.S. Air Force bases needed more protection. The South Vietnamese military seemed incapable of providing security. On 8 March 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam. This marked the beginning of the American ground war. U.S. public opinion overwhelmingly supported the deployment.

In a statement similar to that made to the French almost two decades earlier, Ho Chi Minh warned that if the Americans "want to make war for twenty years then we shall make war for twenty years. If they want to make peace, we shall make peace and invite them to afternoon tea." As former First Deputy Foreign Minister Tran Quang Co has noted, the primary goal of the war was to reunify Vietnam and secure its independence. The policy of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was not to topple other non-communist governments in South East Asia.

The Marines' assignment was defensive. The initial deployment of 3,500 in March was increased to nearly 200,000 by December. The U.S. military had long been schooled in offensive warfare. Regardless of political policies, U.S. commanders were institutionally and psychologically unsuited to a defensive mission. In December, ARVN forces suffered heavy losses at the Battle of Bình Giã, in a battle that both sides viewed as a watershed. Previously communist forces had utilized hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, however at Binh Gia they had successfully defeated a strong ARVN force in conventional warfare. Tellingly, South Vietnamese forces were again defeated in June, at the Battle of Đồng Xoài.

Desertion rates were increasing, and morale plummeted. General William Westmoreland informed Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, Jr., commander of U.S. Pacific forces, that the situation was critical. He said, "I am convinced that U.S. troops with their energy, mobility, and firepower can successfully take the fight to the NLF [National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam]." With this recommendation, Westmoreland was advocating an aggressive departure from America's defensive posture and the sidelining of the South Vietnamese. By ignoring ARVN units, the U.S. commitment became open-ended. Westmoreland outlined a three-point plan to win the war:

Phase 1. Commitment of U.S. (and other free world) forces necessary to halt the losing trend by the end of 1965.

Phase 2. U.S. and allied forces mount major offensive actions to seize the initiative to destroy guerrilla and organized enemy forces. This phase would end when the enemy had been worn down, thrown on the defensive, and driven back from major populated areas.

Phase 3. If the enemy persisted, a period of twelve to eighteen months following Phase 2 would be required for the final destruction of enemy forces remaining in remote base areas.

The plan was approved by Johnson and marked a profound departure from the previous administration's insistence that the government of South Vietnam was responsible for defeating the guerrillas. Westmoreland predicted victory by the end of 1967. Johnson did not, however, communicate this change in strategy to the media. Instead he emphasized continuity. The change in U.S. policy depended on matching the North Vietnamese and the NLF in a contest of attrition and morale. The opponents were locked in a cycle of escalation. The idea that the government of South Vietnam could manage its own affairs was shelved. The one-year tour of duty deprived units of experienced leadership. As one observer noted "we were not in Vietnam for 10 years, but for one year 10 times." As a result, training programs were shortened.

South Vietnam was inundated with manufactured goods. As Stanley Karnow writes, "the main PX [Post Exchange], located in the Saigon suburb of Cholon, was only slightly smaller than the New York Bloomingdale's..." The American buildup transformed the economy and had a profound impact on South Vietnamese society. A huge surge in corruption was witnessed.

Washington encouraged its SEATO allies to contribute troops. Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines all agreed to send troops. Major allies, however, notably NATO nations Canada and the United Kingdom, declined Washington's troop requests. The U.S. and its allies mounted complex operations, such as operations Masher, Attleboro, Cedar Falls, and Junction City. However, the communist insurgents remained elusive and demonstrated great tactical flexibility.

Meanwhile, the political situation in South Vietnam began to stabilize with the coming to power of Prime Minister Air Marshal Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and figurehead Chief of State, General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, in mid 1965 at the head of a military junta. This ended a series of coups that had happened more than once a year. In 1967, Thieu became president with Ky as his deputy, after rigged elections. Although they were nominally a civilian government, Ky was supposed to maintain real power through a behind-the-scenes military body. However, Thieu outmanoevred and sidelined Ky by filling the ranks with generals from his faction. Thieu was also accused of murdering Ky loyalists through contrived military accidents. Thieu, mistrustful and indecisive, remained president until 1975, having won a one-man election in 1971.

The Johnson administration employed a "policy of minimum candor" in its dealings with the media. Military information officers sought to manage media coverage by emphasizing stories that portrayed progress in the war. Over time, this policy damaged the public trust in official pronouncements. As the media's coverage of the war and that of the Pentagon diverged, a so-called credibility gap developed.

Tet Offensive

Having lured General Westmoreland's forces into the hinterland at Khe Sanh in Quảng Trị Province, in January 1968, the NVA and NLF broke the truce that had traditionally accompanied the Tết (Lunar New Year) holiday. They launched the surprise Tet Offensive in the hope of sparking a national uprising. Over 100 cities were attacked, with assaults on General Westmoreland's headquarters and the U.S. Embassy, Saigon.

Although the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were initially taken aback by the scale of the urban offensive, they responded quickly and effectively, decimating the ranks of the NLF. In the former capital city of Huế, the combined NLF and VPA troops captured the Imperial Citadel and much of the city, which led to the Battle of Huế. Throughout the offensive, the American forces employed massive firepower; in Huế where the battle was the fiercest, that firepower left 80% of the city in ruins. During the interim between the capture of the Citadel and end of the "Battle of Huế", the communist insurgent occupying forces massacred several thousand unarmed Huế civilians (estimates vary up to a high of 6,000). After the war, North Vietnamese officials acknowledged that the Tet Offensive had, indeed, caused grave damage to NLF forces. But the offensive had another, unintended consequence.

General Westmoreland had become the public face of the war. He was featured on the cover of ''Time'' magazine three times and was named 1965's Man of the Year. ''Time'' described him as "the sinewy personification of the American fighting man... (who) directed the historic buildup, drew up the battle plans, and infused the... men under him with his own idealistic view of U.S. aims and responsibilities." In November 1967 Westmoreland spearheaded a public relations drive for the Johnson administration to bolster flagging public support. In a speech before the National Press Club he said that a point in the war had been reached "where the end comes into view." Thus, the public was shocked and confused when Westmoreland's predictions were trumped by Tet. The American media, which had been largely supportive of U.S. efforts, rounded on the Johnson administration for what had become an increasing credibility gap. Despite its military failure, the Tet Offensive became a political victory and ended the career of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who declined to run for re-election. Johnson's approval rating slumped from 48 to 36 percent.

As James Witz noted, Tet "contradicted the claims of progress... made by the Johnson administration and the military." The Tet Offensive was the turning point in America's involvement in the Vietnam War. It had a profound impact on domestic support for the conflict. The offensive constituted an intelligence failure on the scale of Pearl Harbor. Journalist Peter Arnett quoted an unnamed officer, saying of Bến Tre (laid to rubble by U.S. firepower) that "it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it" (though the authenticity of this quote is disputed). According to one source, this quote was attributed to Major Booris of 9th Infantry Division.

Westmoreland became Chief of Staff of the Army in March, just as all resistance was finally subdued. The move was technically a promotion. However, his position had become untenable because of the offensive and because his request for 200,000 additional troops had been leaked to the media. Westmoreland was succeeded by his deputy Creighton Abrams, a commander less inclined to public media pronouncements.

On 10 May 1968, despite low expectations, peace talks began between the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Negotiations stagnated for five months, until Johnson gave orders to halt the bombing of North Vietnam. The Democratic candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was running against Republican former vice president Richard Nixon.

As historian Robert Dallek writes, "Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam divided Americans into warring camps... cost 30,000 American lives by the time he left office, (and) destroyed Johnson's presidency..." His refusal to send more U.S. troops to Vietnam was seen as Johnson's admission that the war was lost. It can be seen that the refusal was a tacit admission that the war could not be won by escalation, at least not at a cost acceptable to the American people.

Vietnamization, 1969–1972

Nixon Doctrine / Vietnamization

Severe communist losses during the Tet Offensive allowed U.S. President Richard Nixon to begin troop withdrawals. His plan, called the Nixon Doctrine, was to build up the ARVN, so that they could take over the defense of South Vietnam. The policy became known as "Vietnamization". Vietnamization had much in common with the policies of the Kennedy administration. One important difference, however, remained. While Kennedy insisted that the South Vietnamese fight the war themselves, he attempted to limit the scope of the conflict.

Nixon said in an announcement, "I am tonight announcing plans for the withdrawal of an additional 150,000 American troops to be completed during the spring of next year. This will bring a total reduction of 265,500 men in our armed forces in Vietnam below the level that existed when we took office 15 months ago."

On 10 October 1969, Nixon ordered a squadron of 18 B-52s loaded with nuclear weapons to race to the border of Soviet airspace to convince the Soviet Union that he was capable of anything to end the Vietnam War.

Nixon also pursued negotiations. Theater commander Creighton Abrams shifted to smaller operations, aimed at communist logistics, with better use of firepower and more cooperation with the ARVN. Nixon also began to pursue détente with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with the People's Republic of China. This policy helped to decrease global tensions. Détente led to nuclear arms reduction on the part of both superpowers. But Nixon was disappointed that the PRC and the Soviet Union continued to supply the North Vietnamese with aid. In September 1969, Ho Chi Minh died at age seventy-nine.

The anti-war movement was gaining strength in the United States. Nixon appealed to the "silent majority" of Americans to support the war. But revelations of the My Lai Massacre, in which a U.S. Army platoon raped and killed civilians, and the 1969 "Green Beret Affair" where eight Special Forces soldiers, including the 5th Special Forces Group Commander were arrested for the murder of a suspected double agent provoked national and international outrage.

The civilian cost of the war was again questioned when U.S. forces concluded Operation Speedy Express with a claimed bodycount of 10,889 Communist guerillas with only 40 U.S. losses; Kevin Buckley writing in ''Newsweek'' estimated that perhaps 5,000 of the Vietnamese dead were civilians.

Beginning in 1970, American troops were being taken away from border areas where much more killing took place, and instead put along the coast and interior, which is one reason why casualties in 1970 were less than half of 1969's totals.

Operation Menu: the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos

Prince Norodom Sihanouk had proclaimed Cambodia neutral since 1955, but the communists used Cambodian soil as a base and Sihanouk tolerated their presence, because he wished to avoid being drawn into a wider regional conflict. Under pressure from Washington, however, he changed this policy in 1969. The Vietnamese communists were no longer welcome. President Nixon took the opportunity to launch a massive secret bombing campaign, called Operation Menu, against their sanctuaries along the Cambodia/Vietnam border.

This violated a long succession of pronouncements from Washington supporting Cambodian neutrality. Richard Nixon wrote to Prince Sihanouk in April 1969 assuring him that the United States respected "the sovereignty, neutrality and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Cambodia..." In 1970, Prince Sihanouk was deposed by his pro-American prime minister Lon Nol. The country's borders were closed, while U.S. forces and ARVN launched incursions into Cambodia to attack VPA/NLF bases and buy time for South Vietnam.

The invasion of Cambodia sparked nationwide U.S. protests. Four students were killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University during a protest in Ohio, which provoked public outrage in the United States. The reaction to the incident by the Nixon administration was seen as callous and indifferent, providing additional impetus for the anti-war movement.

In 1971 the Pentagon Papers were leaked to ''The New York Times''. The top-secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, commissioned by the Department of Defense, detailed a long series of public deceptions. The Supreme Court ruled that its publication was legal.

The ARVN launched Operation Lam Son 719 in February 1971, aimed at cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. The ostensibly neutral Laos had long been the scene of a secret war. After meeting resistance, ARVN forces retreated in a confused rout. They fled along roads littered with their own dead. When they ran out of fuel, soldiers abandoned their vehicles and attempted to barge their way on to American helicopters sent to evacuate the wounded. Many ARVN soldiers clung to helicopter skids in a desperate attempt to save themselves. U.S. aircraft had to destroy abandoned equipment, including tanks, to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Half of the invading ARVN troops were either captured or killed. The operation was a fiasco and represented a clear failure of Vietnamization. As Karnow noted "the blunders were monumental... The (South Vietnamese) government's top officers had been tutored by the Americans for ten or fifteen years, many at training schools in the United States, yet they had learned little."

In 1971 Australia and New Zealand withdrew their soldiers. The U.S. troop count was further reduced to 196,700, with a deadline to remove another 45,000 troops by February 1972. As peace protests spread across the United States, disillusionment and ill-discipline grew in the ranks.

Vietnamization was again tested by the Easter Offensive of 1972, a massive conventional invasion of South Vietnam. The VPA and NLF quickly overran the northern provinces and in coordination with other forces attacked from Cambodia, threatening to cut the country in half. U.S. troop withdrawals continued. But American airpower came to the rescue with Operation Linebacker, and the offensive was halted. However, it became clear that without American airpower South Vietnam could not survive. The last remaining American ground troops were withdrawn in August.

1972 election and Paris Peace Accords

thumb|left|Phan Thị Kim Phúc, center, running down a road near [[Trảng Bàng District|Trảng Bàng, Vietnam, on 8 June 1972, after a napalm bomb was dropped on the village of Trảng Bàng by a plane of the Vietnam Air Force Photo: Nick Ut / The Associated Press]]. The war was the central issue of the 1972 presidential election. Nixon's opponent, George McGovern, campaigned on a platform of withdrawal from Vietnam. Nixon's National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, continued secret negotiations with North Vietnam's Lê Ðức Thọ. In October 1972, they reached an agreement.

However, South Vietnamese President Thieu demanded massive changes to the peace accord. When North Vietnam went public with the agreement's details, the Nixon administration claimed that the North was attempting to embarrass the President. The negotiations became deadlocked. Hanoi demanded new changes.

To show his support for South Vietnam and force Hanoi back to the negotiating table, Nixon ordered Operation Linebacker II, a massive bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong 18–29 December 1972. The offensive destroyed much of the remaining economic and industrial capacity of North Vietnam. Simultaneously Nixon pressured Thieu to accept the terms of the agreement, threatening to conclude a bilateral peace deal and cut off American aid.

On 15 January 1973, Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action against North Vietnam. The Paris Peace Accords on "Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam" were signed on 27 January 1973, officially ending direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. A cease-fire was declared across North and South Vietnam. U.S. POWs were released. The agreement guaranteed the territorial integrity of Vietnam and, like the Geneva Conference of 1954, called for national elections in the North and South. The Paris Peace Accords stipulated a sixty-day period for the total withdrawal of U.S. forces. "This article", noted Peter Church, "proved... to be the only one of the Paris Agreements which was fully carried out."

Opposition to the Vietnam War: 1962–1975

Some advocates within the peace movement advocated a unilateral withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. One reason given for the withdrawal is that it would contribute to a lessening of tensions in the region and thus less human bloodshed. Early opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam was centered around the Geneva conference of 1954. American support of Diem in refusing elections was thought to be thwarting the very democracy that America claimed to be supporting. John Kennedy, while Senator, opposed involvement in Vietnam.

Opposition to the Vietnam War tended to unite groups opposed to U.S. anti-communism, imperialism and colonialism and, for those involved with the New Left such as the Catholic Worker Movement, capitalism itself. Others, such as Stephen Spiro opposed the war based on the theory of Just War. Some wanted to show solidarity with the people of Vietnam, such as Norman Morrison emulating the actions of Thích Quảng Đức. Some critics of U.S. withdrawal predicted that it would not contribute to peace but rather vastly increase bloodshed. These critics advocated U.S. forces remain until all threats from the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army had been eliminated. Advocates of U.S. withdrawal were generally known as "doves", and they called their opponents "hawks", following nomenclature dating back to the War of 1812.

High-profile opposition to the Vietnam War turned to street protests in an effort to turn U.S. political opinion. On 15 October 1969, the Vietnam Moratorium attracted millions of Americans. The fatal shooting of four anti-war protesters at Kent State University led to nation-wide university protests. Riots broke out at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. After explosive news reports of American military abuses, such as the 1968 My Lai Massacre, brought new attention and support to the anti-war movement, some veterans joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Anti-war protests ended with the final withdrawal of troops after the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973. South Vietnam was left to defend itself alone when the fighting resumed. Many South Vietnamese subsequently fled to the United States.

Exit of the Americans: 1973–1975

The United States began drastically reducing their troop support in South Vietnam during the final years of "Vietnamization". Many U.S. troops were removed from the region, and on 5 March 1971, the United States returned the 5th Special Forces Group, which was the first American unit deployed to South Vietnam, to its former base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. |group="A"}}

Under the Paris Peace Accords, between North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Lê Ðức Thọ and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and reluctantly signed by South Vietnamese President Thiệu, U.S. military forces withdrew from South Vietnam and prisoners were exchanged. North Vietnam was allowed to continue supplying communist troops in the South, but only to the extent of replacing materials that were consumed. Later that year the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Kissinger and Thọ, but the Vietnamese negotiator declined it saying that a true peace did not yet exist.

The communist leaders had expected that the ceasefire terms would favor their side. But Saigon, bolstered by a surge of U.S. aid received just before the ceasefire went into effect, began to roll back the Vietcong. The communists responded with a new strategy hammered out in a series of meetings in Hanoi in March 1973, according to the memoirs of Trần Văn Trà.

As the Vietcong's top commander, Trà participated in several of these meetings. With U.S. bombings suspended, work on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and other logistical structures could proceed unimpeded. Logistics would be upgraded until the North was in a position to launch a massive invasion of the South, projected for the 1975–76 dry season. Trà calculated that this date would be Hanoi's last opportunity to strike before Saigon's army could be fully trained. [[Image:93 us house membership.png|thumb|left|300px| {| style="background-color:transparent" ! align=center colspan=2 | In the 1972 Congressional Election, the majority of Americans voted for Democratic Congressmen. This map shows the House seats by party holding plurality in state |- | | |- | | |- | | |}]]

In the November 1972 Election, McGovern lost 49 of 50 states to Richard Nixon, who was re-elected U.S. president. Despite supporting Nixon over McGovern, many American voters split their tickets, returning a Democratic majority to both houses of Congress.

On 15 March 1973, U.S. President Richard Nixon implied that the United States would intervene militarily if the communist side violated the ceasefire. Public and congressional reaction to Nixon's trial balloon was unfavorable and in April Nixon appointed Graham Martin as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. Martin was a second stringer compared to previous U.S. ambassadors and his appointment was an early signal that Washington had given up on Vietnam. During his confirmation hearings in June 1973, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger stated that he would recommend resumption of U.S. bombing in North Vietnam if North Vietnam launched a major offensive against South Vietnam. On 4 June 1973, the U.S. Senate passed the Case-Church Amendment to prohibit such intervention.

The oil price shock of October 1973 caused significant damage to the South Vietnamese economy. The Vietcong resumed offensive operations when dry season began and by January 1974 it had recaptured the territory it lost during the previous dry season. After two clashes that left 55 South Vietnamese soldiers dead, President Thiệu announced on 4 January that the war had restarted and that the Paris Peace Accord was no longer in effect. There had been over 25,000 South Vietnamese casualties during the ceasefire period.

Gerald Ford took over as U.S. president on 9 August 1974 after President Nixon resigned due to the Watergate scandal. At this time, Congress cut financial aid to South Vietnam from $1 billion a year to $700 million. The U.S. midterm elections in 1974 brought in a new Congress dominated by Democrats who were even more determined to confront the president on the war. Congress immediately voted in restrictions on funding and military activities to be phased in through 1975 and to culminate in a total cutoff of funding in 1976.

The success of the 1973–74 dry season offensive inspired Trà to return to Hanoi in October 1974 and plead for a larger offensive in the next dry season. This time, Trà could travel on a drivable highway with regular fueling stops, a vast change from the days when the Ho Chi Minh Trail was a dangerous mountain trek. Giáp, the North Vietnamese defense minister, was reluctant to approve Trà's plan. A larger offensive might provoke a U.S. reaction and interfere with the big push planned for 1976. Trà appealed over Giáp's head to first secretary Lê Duẩn, who approved of the operation.

Trà's plan called for a limited offensive from Cambodia into Phuoc Long Province. The strike was designed to solve local logistical problems, gauge the reaction of South Vietnamese forces, and determine whether U.S. would return to the fray.

On 13 December 1974, North Vietnamese forces attacked Route 14 in Phuoc Long Province. Phuoc Binh, the provincial capital, fell on 6 January 1975. Ford desperately asked Congress for funds to assist and re-supply the South before it was overrun. Congress refused. The fall of Phuoc Binh and the lack of an American response left the South Vietnamese elite demoralized.

The speed of this success led the Politburo to reassess its strategy. It was decided that operations in the Central Highlands would be turned over to General Văn Tiến Dũng and that Pleiku should be seized, if possible. Before he left for the South, Dũng was addressed by Lê Duẩn: "Never have we had military and political conditions so perfect or a strategic advantage as great as we have now."

At the start of 1975, the South Vietnamese had three times as much artillery and twice the number of tanks and armoured cars as the opposition. They also had 1,400 aircraft and a two-to-one numerical superiority in combat troops over their Communist enemies. However, the rising oil prices meant that much of this could not be used. They faced a well-organized, highly determined and well-funded North Vietnam. Much of the North's material and financial support came from the communist bloc. Within South Vietnam, there was increasing chaos. Their abandonment by the American military had compromised an economy dependent on U.S. financial support and the presence of a large number of U.S. troops. South Vietnam suffered from the global recession that followed the Arab oil embargo.

Campaign 275

On 10 March 1975, General Dung launched Campaign 275, a limited offensive into the Central Highlands, supported by tanks and heavy artillery. The target was Buôn Ma Thuột, in Đắk Lắk Province. If the town could be taken, the provincial capital of Pleiku and the road to the coast would be exposed for a planned campaign in 1976. The ARVN proved incapable of resisting the onslaught, and its forces collapsed on 11 March. Once again, Hanoi was surprised by the speed of their success. Dung now urged the Politburo to allow him to seize Pleiku immediately and then turn his attention to Kon Tum. He argued that with two months of good weather remaining until the onset of the monsoon, it would be irresponsible to not take advantage of the situation.

President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, a former general, was fearful that his forces would be cut off in the north by the attacking communists; Thieu ordered a retreat. The president declared this to be a "lighten the top and keep the bottom" strategy. But in what appeared to be a repeat of Operation Lam Son 719, the withdrawal soon turned into a bloody rout. While the bulk of ARVN forces attempted to flee, isolated units fought desperately. ARVN General Phu abandoned Pleiku and Kon Tum and retreated toward the coast, in what became known as the "column of tears".

As the ARVN tried to disengage from the enemy, refugees mixed in with the line of retreat. The poor condition of roads and bridges, damaged by years of conflict and neglect, slowed Phu's column. As the North Vietnamese forces approached, panic set in. Often abandoned by the officers, the soldiers and civilians were shelled incessantly. The retreat degenerated into a desperate scramble for the coast. By 1 April the "column of tears" was all but annihilated.

On 20 March, Thieu reversed himself and ordered Huế, Vietnam's third-largest city, be held at all costs, and then changed his policy several times. Thieu's contradictory orders confused and demoralized his officer corps. As the North Vietnamese launched their attack, panic set in, and ARVN resistance withered. On 22 March, the VPA opened the siege of Huế. Civilians flooded the airport and the docks hoping for any mode of escape. Some even swam out to sea to reach boats and barges anchored offshore. In the confusion, routed ARVN soldiers fired on civilians to make way for their retreat.

On 25 March, after a three-day battle, Huế fell. As resistance in Huế collapsed, North Vietnamese rockets rained down on Da Nang and its airport. By 28 March, 35,000 VPA troops were poised to attack the suburbs. By 30 March 100,000 leaderless ARVN troops surrendered as the VPA marched victoriously through Da Nang. With the fall of the city, the defense of the Central Highlands and Northern provinces came to an end.

Final North Vietnamese offensive

With the northern half of the country under their control, the Politburo ordered General Dung to launch the final offensive against Saigon. The operational plan for the Ho Chi Minh Campaign called for the capture of Saigon before 1 May. Hanoi wished to avoid the coming monsoon and prevent any redeployment of ARVN forces defending the capital. Northern forces, their morale boosted by their recent victories, rolled on, taking Nha Trang, Cam Ranh, and Da Lat.

On 7 April, three North Vietnamese divisions attacked Xuan Loc, 40 miles (64 km) east of Saigon. The North Vietnamese met fierce resistance at Xuan Loc from the ARVN 18th Division, who were outnumbered six to one. For two bloody weeks, severe fighting raged as the ARVN defenders made a last stand to try to block the North Vietnamese advance. By 21 April, however, the exhausted garrison were ordered to withdraw towards Saigon.

An embittered and tearful President Thieu resigned on the same day, declaring that the United States had betrayed South Vietnam. In a scathing attack, he suggested U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had tricked him into signing the Paris peace agreement two years ago, promising military aid that failed to materialise. Having transferred power to Tran Van Huong, he left for Taiwan on 25 April. At the same time, North Vietnamese tanks had reached Bien Hoa and turned toward Saigon, brushing aside isolated ARVN units along the way.

By the end of April, the ARVN had collapsed on all fronts except in the Mekong Delta. Thousand of refugees streamed southward, ahead of the main communist onslaught. On 27 April 100,000 North Vietnamese troops encircled Saigon. The city was defended by about 30,000 ARVN troops. To hasten a collapse and foment panic, the VPA shelled the airport and forced its closure. With the air exit closed, large numbers of civilians found that they had no way out.

Fall of Saigon

Chaos, unrest, and panic broke out as hysterical South Vietnamese officials and civilians scrambled to leave Saigon. Martial law was declared. American helicopters began evacuating South Vietnamese, U.S., and foreign nationals from various parts of the city and from the U.S. embassy compound. Operation Frequent Wind had been delayed until the last possible moment, because of U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin's belief that Saigon could be held and that a political settlement could be reached.

Schlesinger announced early in the morning of 29 April 1975 the evacuation from Saigon by helicopter of the last U.S. diplomatic, military, and civilian personnel. Frequent Wind was arguably the largest helicopter evacuation in history. It began on 29 April, in an atmosphere of desperation, as hysterical crowds of Vietnamese vied for limited space. Martin pleaded with Washington to dispatch $700 million in emergency aid to bolster the regime and help it mobilize fresh military reserves. But American public opinion had soured on this conflict.

In the United States, South Vietnam was perceived as doomed. President Gerald Ford had given a televised speech on 23 April, declaring an end to the Vietnam War and all U.S. aid. Frequent Wind continued around the clock, as North Vietnamese tanks breached defenses on the outskirts of Saigon. In the early morning hours of 30 April, the last U.S. Marines evacuated the embassy by helicopter, as civilians swamped the perimeter and poured into the grounds. Many of them had been employed by the Americans and were left to their fate.

On 30 April 1975, VPA troops overcame all resistance, quickly capturing key buildings and installations. A tank crashed through the gates of the Independence Palace, and at 11:30 a.m. local time the NLF flag was raised above it. President Duong Van Minh, who had succeeded Huong two days earlier, surrendered. His surrender marked the end of 116 years of Vietnamese involvement in conflict either alongside or against various countries, primarily France, China, Japan, Britain, and America.

Other countries' involvement

Pro-Hanoi

People's Republic of China

In 1950, the People's Republic of China extended diplomatic recognition to the Viet Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam and sent weapons, as well as military advisors led by Luo Guibo to assist the Viet Minh in its war with the French. The first draft of the 1954 Geneva Accords was negotiated by French Prime Minister Pierre Mendès France and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai who, fearing U.S. intervention, urged the Viet Minh to accept a partition at the 17th parallel.

China's ability to aid the Viet Minh declined when Soviet aid to China was reduced following the end of the Korean War in 1953. Moreover, a divided Vietnam posed less of a threat to China. China provided material and technical support to the Vietnamese communists worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Chinese-supplied rice allowed North Vietnam to pull military-age men from the paddies and to impose a universal draft beginning in 1960.

In the summer of 1962, Mao Zedong agreed to supply Hanoi with 90,000 rifles and guns free of charge. Starting in 1965, China sent anti-aircraft units and engineering battalions to North Vietnam to repair the damage caused by American bombing, rebuild roads and railroads, and to perform other engineering works. This freed North Vietnamese army units for combat in the South.

Sino-Soviet relations soured after the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968. In October, the Chinese demanded North Vietnam cut relations with Moscow, but Hanoi refused. The Chinese began to withdraw in November 1968 in preparation for a clash with the Soviets, which occurred at Zhenbao Island in March 1969. The Chinese also began financing the Khmer Rouge as a counterweight to the Vietnamese communists at this time. China's withdrawal from Vietnam was completed in July 1970.

The Khmer Rouge launched ferocious raids into Vietnam in 1975–1978. Vietnam responded with an invasion that toppled the Khmer Rouge. In response, China launched a brief, punitive invasion of Vietnam in 1979.

Soviet Union

Soviet ships in the South China Sea gave vital early warnings to NLF forces in South Vietnam. The Soviet intelligence ships would pick up American B-52 bombers flying from Okinawa and Guam. Their airspeed and direction would be noted and then relayed to COSVN headquarters. COSVN using airspeed and direction would calculate the bombing target and tell any assets to move "perpendicularly to the attack trajectory." These advance warning gave them time to move out of the way of the bombers and while the bombing runs caused extensive damage, because of the early warnings from 1968–1970 they did not kill a single military or civilian leader in the headquarter complexes.

The Soviet Union supplied North Vietnam with medical supplies, arms, tanks, planes, helicopters, artillery, anti-aircraft missiles and other military equipment. Soviet crews fired USSR-made surface-to-air missiles at the B-52 bombers, which were the first raiders shot down over Hanoi. Fewer than a dozen Soviet citizens lost their lives in this conflict. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian officials acknowledged that the Soviet Union had stationed up to 3,000 troops in Vietnam during the war.

Some Russian sources give more specific numbers: the hardware donated by the USSR included 2,000 tanks, 7,000 artillery guns, over 5,000 anti-aircraft guns, 158 surface-to-air rocket launchers. Over the course of the war the Soviet money donated to the Vietnamese cause was equal to 2 million dollars a day. From July 1965 to the end of 1974, fighting in Vietnam was attended by some 6,500 officers and generals, as well as more than 4,500 soldiers and sergeants of the Soviet Armed Forces. In addition, military schools and academies of the USSR began training Vietnamese soldiers — more than 10 thousand people.

North Korea

As a result of a decision of the Korean Workers' Party in October 1966, in early 1967 North Korea sent a fighter squadron to North Vietnam to back up the North Vietnamese 921st and 923rd fighter squadrons defending Hanoi. They stayed through 1968, and 200 pilots were reported to have served.

In addition, at least two anti-aircraft artillery regiments were sent as well. North Korea also sent weapons, ammunition and two million sets of uniforms to their comrades in North Vietnam. Kim Il-sung is reported to have told his pilots to "fight in the war as if the Vietnamese sky were their own".

Cuba

The extent of manpower contributions to North Vietnam by the communist Republic of Cuba, under Fidel Castro, is still a matter of debate. Then and since, the communist Vietnamese and Cuban governments have not divulged any information on this matter. There are numerous reports by former U.S. prisoners of war that Cuban military personnel were present at North Vietnamese prison facilities during the war, and that they participated in torture activities, in what is known as the "Cuba Program". Witnesses to this include Senator John McCain, 2008 U.S. Presidential candidate and former Vietnam prisoner of war, according to his 1999 book ''Faith of My Fathers''. That there was at least a small contingent of Cuban military advisors present in North Vietnam during the war is without question. Some, notably Vietnam War POW/MIA issue advocates, claim evidence that Cuba's military and non-military involvement may have run into the "thousands" of personnel.

Pro-Saigon

South Korea

On the anti-communist side, South Korea had the second-largest contingent of foreign troops in South Vietnam after the United States. In November 1961, Park Chung Hee proposed South Korean participation in the war to John F. Kennedy, but Kennedy disagreed. On May 1, 1964 Lyndon Johnson requested South Korean participation. The first South Korean troops began arriving in 1964 and large combat battalions began arriving a year later, with the South Koreans soon developing a reputation for effectiveness. Indeed arguably, they conducted counterinsurgency operations so well that American commanders felt that Korean area of responsibility was the safest.

Approximately 320,000 South Korean soldiers were sent to Vietnam, each serving a one year tour of duty. Maximum troop levels peaked at 50,000 in 1968, however all were withdrawn by 1973. About 5,000 South Koreans were killed and 11,000 were injured during the war. South Korea killed 41,000 Viet Congs. United States paid South Korean soldiers 235,560,000 dollars for their service in Vietnam, and South Korean GNP increased five times during the war.

Australia and New Zealand

Australia and New Zealand, close allies of the United States and members of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the ANZUS military co-operation treaty, sent ground troops to Vietnam. Both nations had gained experience in counterinsurgency and jungle warfare during the Malayan Emergency and World War II. Their governments subscribed to the Domino theory. Australia began by sending advisors to Vietnam in 1962, and combat troops were committed in 1965. New Zealand began by sending a detachment of engineers and an artillery battery, and then started sending special forces and regular infantry which were attached to Australian formations. Australia's peak commitment was 7,672 combat troops and New Zealand's 552. More than 60,000 Australian personnel were involved during the course of the war, of which 521 were killed and more than 3,000 wounded. Approximately 3,000 New Zealanders served in Vietnam, losing 37 killed and 187 wounded. Most Australians and New Zealanders served in the 1st Australian Task Force in Phước Tuy province.

Philippines

Some 10,450 Filipino troops were dispatched to South Vietnam. They were primarily engaged in medical and other civilian pacification projects. These forces operated under the designation PHLCAG-V or Philippine Civic Action Group-Vietnam.

Thailand

Thai Army formations, including the "Queen's Cobra" battalion, saw action in South Vietnam between 1965 and 1971. Thai forces saw much more action in the covert war in Laos between 1964 and 1972, though Thai regular formations there were heavily outnumbered by the irregular "volunteers" of the CIA-sponsored Police Aerial Reconnaissance Units or PARU, who carried out reconnaissance activities on the western side of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Republic of China (Taiwan)

Since November 1967, the Republic of China (Taiwan) secretly operated a cargo transport detachment to assist the United States and the ROV.

Taiwan also provided military training units for the South Vietnamese diving units, later known as the Lien Doi Nguoi Nhai (LDMN) or ''Frogman unit'' in English. In addition to the diving trainers there were several hundred military personnel. Military commandos from Taiwan were captured by communist forces three times trying to infiltrate North Vietnam.

Canada and the ICC

Canada, India and Poland comprised the International Control Commission, which was supposed to monitor the 1954 ceasefire agreement. Officially, Canada did not have partisan involvement in the Vietnam War and diplomatically it was "non-belligerent". Victor Levant suggested otherwise in his book ''"Quiet Complicity: Canadian Involvement in the Vietnam War" (1986)''.

Women in Vietnam

American nurses

During the Vietnam War, women served on active duty doing a variety of jobs. Early in 1963, the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) launched Operation Nightingale, an intensive effort to recruit nurses to serve in Vietnam. Most nurses who volunteered to serve in Vietnam came from predominantly working or middle class families with histories of military service. The majority of these women were white Catholics and Protestants. Because the need for medical aid was great, many nurses underwent a concentrated four-month training program before being deployed to Vietnam in the ANC Due to the shortage of staff, nurses usually worked twelve-hour shifts, six days per week and often suffered from exhaustion. 1st Lieutenant Sharon Lane was the only female military nurse to be killed by enemy gunfire during the war. She died on June 8, 1969.

At the start of the Vietnam War, it was commonly thought that American women had no place in the military. Their traditional place had been in the domestic sphere, but with the war came opportunity for the expansion of gender roles. In Vietnam, women held a variety of jobs which included operating complex data processing equipment and serving as stenographers. Although a small number of women were assigned to combat zones, they were never allowed directly in the field of battle. The women who served in the military were solely volunteers. They faced a plethora of challenges, one of which was the relatively small number of female soldiers. Living in a male-dominated environment created tensions between the sexes. While this high male to female ratio was often uncomfortable for women, many men reported that having women in the field with them boosted their morale. Although this was not the women’s purpose, it was one positive result of the their service.

By 1973, approximately 7,500 women had served in Vietnam in the Southeast Asian theater. In that same year, the military lifted the prohibition on women entering the armed forces. However, women were gradually granted greater mobility within the military, and by the end of 1978, the Coast Guard removed all limitations on assignments based on sex. (334) However, it was not until 1993 that Congress allowed women to serve in combat units in the air force. Women in the army today are still prohibited from serving in combat positions.

American women serving in Vietnam were subject to societal stereotypes. Many Americans either considered female in Vietnam mannish for living under the army discipline, or judged them to be women of questionable moral character who enlisted for the sole purpose of seducing men. To address this problem, the ANC released advertisements portraying women in the ANC as “proper, professional and well protected.” (26) This effort to highlight the positive aspects of a nursing career reflected the ideas of second-wave feminism that occurred during the 1960s-1970s in the United States. Although female military nurses lived in a heavily male environment, very few cases of sexual harassment were ever reported. This does not mean that harassment never occurred; rather, there are few cases that have been officially documented by the military. In 2008, by contrast, approximately one-third of women in the military felt that they had been sexually harassed compared with one-third of men.

Vietnamese women

Unlike the American women who went to Vietnam, Vietnamese women fought in the combat zone as well as provided manual labor to keep the Ho Chi Minh Trail open; they also worked in the rice fields to provide food for their families and the war effort. Women were enlisted in both the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the VietCong guerrilla force in South Vietnam.

Nguyen Thi Dinh was an example of a woman who had fought most of her adult life against foreign forces in her country. She was a member of the Vietminh fighting against the French and was imprisoned in the 1940s but on her release continued to fight and led a revolt in 1945 in Ben Tre and also in 1960 against Diems government. In the mid 1960s, she became a deputy commander of the Viet Cong, the highest ranking combat position held by a woman during the war.

Nguyen Thi Duc Hoan, who would later go on to be an actress-director, also joined the fight at a young age and would later become a guerrilla fighter against the Americans, at the time her own daughter was training in the militia.

Weapons

Communist forces were principally armed with Chinese and Soviet weaponry though some Viet Cong guerrilla units were equipped with Western infantry weapons either captured from French stocks during the first Indochina war or from ARVN units or requisitioned through illicit purchase. The ubiquitous Soviet AK-47 was widely regarded as the best assault rifle of the war and it was not uncommon to see U.S. special forces with captured AK-47s. The American M16, which replaced the M14, was considered more accurate and was lighter than the AK-47 but was prone to jamming. Oftentimes the gun suffered from a jamming flaw known as “failure to extract,” which meant that a spent cartridge case remained lodged in the chamber after a bullet flew out the muzzle. According to a congressional report, the jamming was caused primarily by a change in gunpowder which was done without adequate testing and reflected a decision for which the safety of soldiers was a secondary consideration. The heavily armored, 90mm M48A3 Patton tank tank saw extensive action during the Vietnam War and over 600 were deployed with US Forces. They played an important role in infantry support though there were few actual tank versus tank battles. The M67A1 flamethrower tank (nicknamed the Zippo) was an M48 variant used in Vietnam. Artillery was used extensively by both sides but the Americans were able to ferry the lightweight 105mm M102 howitzer by helicopter to remote locations on quick notice. With its range, the Soviet 130mm M-46 towed field gun was a highly regarded weapon and used to good effect by the NVA. It was countered by the long-range, American 175mm M107 Self-Propelled Gun. The United States had air superiority though many aircraft were lost to surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery. U.S. air power was credited with breaking the siege of Khe Sanh and blunting the 1972 Communist offensive against South Vietnam. At sea, the U.S. Navy had the run of the coastline, using aircraft carriers as platforms for offshore strikes and other naval vessels for offshore artillery support. Offshore naval fire played a pivotal role in the Battle for the city of Hue, providing accurate fire in support of the U.S. counter-offensive to retake the city. The Vietnam War was the first conflict that saw wide scale tactical deployment of helicopters. The Bell UH-1 Iroquois was used extensively in counter-guerilla operations both as a troop carrier and a gunship. |- ! Infantry weapons | MAT-49, SKS, AK-47, RPK, RPD, DShK HMG, RPG-7, RPG-2, B-10 recoilless rifle and B-11 recoilless rifle || M14, M16, M79 grenade launcher, M60 machine gun, M2 Browning, LAW, M18 Claymore anti-personnel mines, TOW, and M40 recoilless rifle, L1A1 SLR (ADF), Owen Gun (ADF) |- ! Air-to-Air Missiles | Vympel K-13 || AIM-9 Sidewinder, AIM-7 Sparrow |- ! Air-to-Surface Missiles | || AGM-45 Shrike anti radiation missile, AGM-12 Bullpup, AGM-78 Standard ARM, AGM-62 Walleye, Zuni rocket |- ! Specialized weapons | IEDs || BLU-82 Daisy Cutter, Laser-guided bombs, Napalm |}

Aftermath

Events in Southeast Asia

Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, commonly known as the Khmer Rouge, on 17 April 1975. Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge enacted a genocidal policy that killed over one-fifth of all Cambodians, or more than a million people. After repeated border clashes in 1978, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) and ousted the Khmer Rouge in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.

In response, China invaded Vietnam in 1979. The two countries fought a brief border war, known as the Third Indochina War or the Sino-Vietnamese War. From 1978 to 1979, some 450,000 ethnic Chinese left Vietnam by boat as refugees or were expelled across the land border with China.

The Pathet Lao overthrew the royalist government of Laos in December 1975. They established the Lao People's Democratic Republic. From 1975 to 1996, the United States resettled some 250,000 Lao refugees from Thailand, including 130,000 Hmong.

More than 3 million people fled from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, many as "boat people". Most Asian countries were unwilling to accept refugees. Since 1975, an estimated 1.4 million refugees from Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries have been resettled to the United States, while Canada, Australia, and France resettled over 500,000.

Effect on the United States

In the post-war era, Americans struggled to absorb the lessons of the military intervention. As General Maxwell Taylor, one of the principal architects of the war, noted "first, we didn't know ourselves. We thought that we were going into another Korean War, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies... And we knew less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this kind of dirty business. It's very dangerous."

Some have suggested that "the responsibility for the ultimate failure of this policy [America's withdrawal from Vietnam] lies not with the men who fought, but with those in Congress..." Alternatively, the official history of the United States Army noted that "tactics have often seemed to exist apart from larger issues, strategies, and objectives. Yet in Vietnam the Army experienced tactical success and strategic failure... The...Vietnam War...legacy may be the lesson that unique historical, political, cultural, and social factors always impinge on the military...Success rests not only on military progress but on correctly analyzing the nature of the particular conflict, understanding the enemy's strategy, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of allies. A new humility and a new sophistication may form the best parts of a complex heritage left to the Army by the long, bitter war in Vietnam."

U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in a secret memo to President Gerald Ford that "in terms of military tactics, we cannot help draw the conclusion that our armed forces are not suited to this kind of war. Even the Special Forces who had been designed for it could not prevail." Even Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara concluded that "the achievement of a military victory by U.S. forces in Vietnam was indeed a dangerous illusion."

Doubts surfaced as to the effectiveness of large-scale, sustained bombing. As Army Chief of Staff Harold Keith Johnson noted, "if anything came out of Vietnam, it was that air power couldn't do the job." Even General William Westmoreland admitted that the bombing had been ineffective. As he remarked, "I still doubt that the North Vietnamese would have relented."

The inability to bomb Hanoi to the bargaining table also illustrated another U.S. miscalculation. The North's leadership was composed of hardened communists who had been fighting for independence for thirty years. They had defeated the French, and their tenacity as both nationalists and communists was formidable. Ho Chi Minh is quoted as saying, "You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours...But even at these odds you will lose and I will win." The Vietnam War called into question the U.S. Army doctrine. Marine Corps General Victor H. Krulak heavily criticised Westmoreland's attrition strategy, calling it "wasteful of American lives... with small likelihood of a successful outcome." As well, doubts surfaced about the ability of the military to train foreign forces.

Between 1965 and 1975, the United States spent $111 billion on the war ($686 billion in FY2008 dollars). This resulted in a large federal budget deficit.

More than 3 million Americans served in the Vietnam War, some 1.5 million of whom actually saw combat in Vietnam. James E. Westheider wrote that "At the height of American involvement in 1968, for example, there were 543,000 American military personnel in Vietnam, but only 80,000 were considered combat troops." Conscription in the United States had been controlled by the President since World War II, but ended in 1973."

By war's end, 58,220 soldiers were killed, According to Dale Kueter, "Sixty-one percent of those killed were age 21 or younger. Of those killed in combat, 86.3 percent were white, 12.5 percent were black and the remainder from other races." Approximately 830,000 Vietnam veterans suffered symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. An estimated 125,000 Americans fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft, and approximately 50,000 American servicemen deserted. In 1977, United States President Jimmy Carter granted a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all Vietnam-era Draft dodgers. The Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, concerning the fate of U.S. service personnel listed as missing in action, persisted for many years after the war's conclusion.

Chemical defoliation

One of the most controversial aspects of the U.S. military effort in Southeast Asia was the widespread use of chemical defoliants between 1961 and 1971. They were used to defoliate large parts of the countryside. These chemicals continue to change the landscape, cause diseases and birth defects, and poison the food chain.

Early in the American military effort it was decided that since the enemy were hiding their activities under triple-canopy jungle, a useful first step might be to defoliate certain areas. This was especially true of growth surrounding bases (both large and small) in what became known as Operation Ranch Hand. Corporations like Dow Chemical Company and Monsanto were given the task of developing herbicides for this purpose.

The defoliants, which were distributed in drums marked with color-coded bands, included the "Rainbow Herbicides"—Agent Pink, Agent Green, Agent Purple, Agent Blue, Agent White, and, most famously, Agent Orange, which included dioxin as a by-product of its manufacture. About 12 million gallons (45,000,000 L) of Agent Orange were sprayed over Southeast Asia during the American involvement. A prime area of Ranch Hand operations was in the Mekong Delta, where the U.S. Navy patrol boats were vulnerable to attack from the undergrowth at the water's edge.

In 1961 and 1962, the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemicals to destroy rice crops. Between 1961 and 1967, the U.S. Air Force sprayed 20 million U.S. gallons (75,700,000 L) of concentrated herbicides over 6 million acres (24,000 km²) of crops and trees, affecting an estimated 13% of South Vietnam's land. In 1965, 42% of all herbicide was sprayed over food crops. Another purpose of herbicide use was to drive civilian populations into RVN-controlled areas.

As of 2006, the Vietnamese government estimates that there are over 4,000,000 victims of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam, although the United States government denies any conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the Vietnamese victims of dioxin poisoning. In some areas of southern Vietnam dioxin levels remain at over 100 times the accepted international standard.

The U.S. Veterans Administration has listed prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, multiple myeloma, Diabetes mellitus type 2, B-cell lymphomas, soft-tissue sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea tarda, peripheral neuropathy, and spina bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Although there has been much discussion over whether the use of these defoliants constituted a violation of the laws of war, the defoliants were not considered weapons, since exposure to them did not lead to immediate death or incapacitation.

Casualties

The number of military and civilian deaths from 1955 to 1975 is debated. Some reports fail to include the members of South Vietnamese forces killed in the final campaign, or the Royal Lao Armed Forces, thousands of Laotian and Thai irregulars, or Laotian civilians who all perished in the conflict. They do not include the tens of thousands of Cambodians killed during the civil war or the estimated one and one-half to two million that perished in the genocide that followed Khmer Rouge victory, or the fate of Laotian Royals and civilians after the Pathet Lao assumed complete power in Laos.

In 1995, the Vietnamese government reported that its military forces, including the NLF, suffered 1.1 million dead and 600,000 wounded during Hanoi's conflict with the United States. Civilian deaths were put at two million in the North and South, and economic reparations were demanded. Hanoi concealed the figures during the war to avoid demoralizing the population. Estimates of civilian deaths caused by American bombing in Operation Rolling Thunder range from 52,000 to 182,000. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war.

Popular culture

The Vietnam War has been featured heavily in television, film, video games, and literature in the participant countries. The war also influenced a generation of musicians and songwriters in Vietnam and the United States, both anti-war and pro/anti-communist. The band Country Joe and the Fish recorded "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" / The "Fish" Cheer in 1965, and it became one of the most influential anti-Vietnam protest anthems.

Trinh Cong Son was a South Vietnamese songwriter famous for his anti-war songs.

See also

Regional:

Cambodian Civil War

Indochina Wars

Laotian Civil War

Mayaguez Incident

North Vietnamese invasion of Laos

General:

History of Cambodia

History of Laos

List of conflicts in Asia

Annotations

Notes

References

Secondary sources

Anderson, David L. ''Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War'' (2004).

Baker, Kevin. "Stabbed in the Back! The past and future of a right-wing myth", ''Harper's Magazine'' (June 2006)

Angio, Joe. ''Nixon a Presidency Revealed'' (2007) The History Channel television documentary

Berman, Larry. ''Lyndon Johnson's War: The Road to Stalemate'' (1991).

Blaufarb, Douglas. ''The Counterinsurgency Era'' (1977) a history of the Kennedy Administration's involvement in South Vietnam.

Brigham, Robert K. ''Battlefield Vietnam: A Brief History'' a PBS interactive website

Buckley, Kevin. "Pacification’s Deadly Price", ''Newsweek'', 19 June 1972. Buzzanco, Bob. "25 Years After End of Vietnam War: Myths Keep Us From Coming To Terms With Vietnam", ''The Baltimore Sun'' (17 April 2000)

Church, Peter ed. ''A Short History of South-East Asia'' (2006).

Cooper, Chester L. ''The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam'' (1970) a Washington insider's memoir of events.

Demma, Vincent H. "The U.S. Army in Vietnam." ''American Military History'' (1989) the official history of the United States Army. Available online

Duiker, William J. ''The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam'' (1996).

Duncanson, Dennis J. ''Government and Revolution in Vietnam'' (1968).

Fincher, Ernest Barksdale, ''The Vietnam War'' (1980).

Ford, Harold P. ''CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962–1968.'' (1998).

Gerdes, Louise I. ed. ''Examining Issues Through Political Cartoons: The Vietnam War'' (2005).

Gettleman, Marvin E.; Franklin, Jane; Young, Marilyn ''Vietnam and America: A Documented History.'' (1995).

Hammond, William. ''Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1962–1968'' (1987); ''Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1068–1973'' (1995). full-scale history of the war by U.S. Army; much broader than title suggests.

Herring, George C''. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975'' (4th ed 2001), most widely used short history.

Hitchens, Christopher. ''The Vietnam Syndrome''.

; popular history by a former foreign correspondent; strong on Saigon's plans.

Kutler, Stanley ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War'' (1996).

Leepson, Marc ed. ''Dictionary of the Vietnam War'' (1999) New York: Webster's New World.

Lewy, Guenter. ''America in Vietnam'' (1978), defends U.S. actions.

Logevall, Fredrik. ''The Origins of the Vietnam War'' (Longman [Seminar Studies in History] 2001).

McMahon, Robert J. ''Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War: Documents and Essays'' (1995) textbook.

McNamara, Robert, James Blight, Robert Brigham, Thomas Biersteker, Herbert Schandler, ''Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy'', (Public Affairs, 1999).

Milne, David. ''America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War'' (Hill & Wang, 2008).

Moise, Edwin E. ''Historical Dictionary of the Vietnam War'' (2002).

Moss, George D. ''Vietnam'' (4th ed 2002) textbook.

Moyar, Mark. ''Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965'', (Cambridge University Press; 412 pages; 2006). A revisionist history that challenges the notion that U.S. involvement in Vietnam was misguided; defends the validity of the domino theory and disputes the notion that Ho Chi Minh was, at heart, a nationalist who would eventually turn against his Communist Chinese allies.

Major General Spurgeon Neel. ''Medical Support of the U.S. Army in Vietnam 1965–1970'' (Department of the Army 1991) official medical history

Nulty, Bernard.''The Vietnam War'' (1998) New York: Barnes and Noble.

Palmer, Bruce, Jr. ''The Twenty-Five Year War'' (1984), narrative military history by a senior U.S. general.

Schell, Jonathan. ''The Time of Illusion'' (1976).

Schulzinger, Robert D. ''A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941–1975'' (1997).

Sorley, Lewis, ''A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam'' (1999), based upon still classified tape-recorded meetings of top level US commanders in Vietnam, ISBN 0-15-601309-6

Spector, Ronald. ''After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam'' (1992), very broad coverage of 1968.

Summers, Harry G. ''On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War'', Presidio press (1982), ISBN 0-89141-563-7 (225 pages)

Tucker, Spencer. ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War'' (1998) 3 vol. reference set; also one-volume abridgement (2001).

Witz, James J. ''The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War'' (1991).

Young, Marilyn, B. ''The Vietnam Wars: 1945–1990.'' (1991).

Xiaoming, Zhang. "China's 1979 War With Vietnam: A Reassessment", ''China Quarterly.'' Issue no. 184, (December 2005)

Primary sources

Carter, Jimmy. ''By The President Of The United States Of America, A Proclamation Granting Pardon For Violations Of The Selective Service Act, 4 August 1964 To 28 March 1973'' (21 January 1977)

Central Intelligence Agency. "Laos", ''CIA World Factbook''

Kolko, Gabriel The End of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Later

Eisenhower, Dwight D. ''Mandate for Change.'' (1963) a presidential political memoir

Ho, Chi Minh. "Vietnam Declaration of Independence", ''Selected Works.'' (1960–1962) selected writings

LeMay, General Curtis E. and Kantor, MacKinlay. ''Mission with LeMay'' (1965) autobiography of controversial former Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force

Kissinger, United States Secretary of State Henry A. "Lessons on Vietnam", (1975) secret memoranda to U.S. President Ford

Kim A. O'Connell, ed. ''Primary Source Accounts of the Vietnam War'' (2006)

McCain, John. ''Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir'' (1999) *Marshall, Kathryn. ''In the Combat Zone: An Oral History of American Women in Vietnam, 1966–1975'' (1987)

Martin, John Bartlow. ''Was Kennedy Planning to Pull out of Vietnam?'' (1964) oral history for the John F. Kennedy Library, tape V, reel 1.

Myers, Thomas. ''Walking Point: American Narratives of Vietnam'' (1988)

''Public Papers of the Presidents, 1965'' (1966) official documents of U.S. presidents.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. ''Robert Kennedy and His Times.'' (1978) a first-hand account of the Kennedy administration by one of his principal advisors

Sinhanouk, Prince Norodom. "Cambodia Neutral: The Dictates of Necessity." ''Foreign Affairs.'' (1958) describes the geopolitical situation of Cambodia

Tang, Truong Nhu. ''A Vietcong Memoir'' (1985), revealing account by senior NLF official

Terry, Wallace, ed. ''Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans'' (1984)

- Total pages: 350

The landmark series Vietnam: A Television History, first broadcast in 1983, is a special presentation of the award-winning PBS history series, American Experience.

''The Pentagon Papers'' (Gravel ed. 5 vol 1971); combination of narrative and secret documents compiled by Pentagon. excerpts

U.S. Department of State. ''Foreign Relations of the United States'' (multivolume collection of official secret documents) vol 1: 1964; vol 2: 1965; vol 3: 1965; vol 4: 1966;

U.S. Department of Defense and the House Committee on Armed Services. ''U.S.-Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967.'' Washington, D.C. Department of Defense and the House Committee on Armed Services, 1971, 12 volumes.

Vann, John Paul ''Quotes from Answers.com'' Lt. Colonel, U.S. Army, DFC, DSC, advisor to the ARVN 7th Division, early critic of the conduct of the war.

Historiography

Hall, Simon, “Scholarly Battles over the Vietnam War,” ''Historical Journal'' 52 (Sept. 2009), 813–29.

External links

American Ethnography – On collecting engraved Zippos from the Vietnam War

Battlefield Vietnam PBS interactive site

Casualties – U.S. vs NVA/VC

Complete text of the Gravel Edition of the Pentagon Papers with supporting documents, maps, and photos

Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy-Vietnam primary sources on U.S. involvement

The Effects of Vietnamization on the Republic of Vietnam's Armed Forces, 1969–1972

Glossary of Military Terms & Slang from the Vietnam War

History of US Interventions, by Derek, Mitchell

Impressions of Vietnam and descriptions of the daily life of a soldier from the oral history of Elliott Gardner, U.S. Army

Sober thoughts on 30 April : The South Vietnam Liberation Front and Hanoi, Myth and Reality Speech by the former Minister of Information of the Republic of Vietnam.

Stephen H. Warner Southeast Asia Photograph Collection at Gettysburg College

Timeline US – Vietnam (1947–2001) in Open-Content project

The U.S. Army in Vietnam the official history of the United States Army

UC Berkeley Library Social Activism Sound Recording Project: Anti-Vietnam War Protests

Vietnam Casualties database searchable by first name, last name and location

Vietnam War Bibliography covers online and published resources

The Vietnam War at The History Channel

Vietnam war timeline comprehensive timeline of the Vietnam War

Virtual Vietnam Archive – Texas Tech University

War, propaganda, and the media: Vietnam

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Native name	''Cộng hòa Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam''
Conventional long name	Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Common name	Vietnam
Image coat	Coat of arms of Vietnam.svg
Symbol type	Emblem
Other symbol type	File:Communist Party of Vietnam flag.svg
Map caption
National motto	"Independence – Freedom – Happiness"
National anthem	File:United States Navy Band - Tiến Quân Ca.ogg''Tiến Quân Ca''"Army March" (first verse)
Official languages	Vietnamese
Languages type	Official scripts
Languages	Vietnamese alphabet
Demonym	Vietnamese
Capital	Hanoi
Legislature	National Assembly of Vietnam
Largest city	Ho Chi Minh City
Government type	Unitary socialist republic,Single-party state
Leader title1	President
Leader name1
Leader title2	Prime Minister
Leader name2
Leader title3	General Secretary of the CPV
Leader name3
Sovereignty type	Formation
Established event1	Đại Việt
Established date1	1054
Established event2	French annexation
Established date2	1853 to 1883
Established event3	Independence from France
Established date3	2 September 1945
Established event4	Reunification
Established date4	2 July 1976
Established event5	Current constitution
Established date5	15 April 1992
Area rank	65th
Area km2	331.698
Area sq mi	128,565
Percent water	1.3
Population estimate	90,549,390
Population census	85,846,997
Population estimate rank	13th
Population estimate year	2011
Population census year	2009
Population density km2	259
Population density sq mi	668
Population density rank	46th
Gdp ppp year	2010
Gdp ppp	$273.967 billion
Gdp ppp per capita	$3,104.179
Gdp nominal	$104.600 billion
Gdp nominal year	2010
Gdp nominal per capita	$1,168
Hdi year	2010
Hdi	0.572
Hdi rank	113th
Hdi category	medium
Gini	38
Gini year	2008
Gini category	medium
Currency	(₫)
Currency code	VND
Time zone	ICT (Indochina Time) UTC+7
Utc offset	+7
Time zone dst	No DST
Utc offset dst	+7
Drives on	right
Cctld	.vn
Calling code	84
Image map3	Bandovietnam-final-fill-scale.svg
Footnote1	According to the official name and 1992 Constitution. }}

Vietnam, sometimes spelled Viet Nam ( ; , ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (, ), is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea - referred to in Vietnam as the East Sea () - to the east. With an estimated 90.5 million inhabitants as of 2011, Vietnam is the 13th-most-populous country in the world, and the eighth-most-populous Asian country.

The Vietnamese became independent from Imperial China in 938 AD, following the Battle of Bạch Đằng River. Successive Vietnamese royal dynasties flourished as the nation expanded geographically and politically into Southeast Asia, until the Indochina Peninsula was colonized by the French in the mid-19th century. Efforts to resist the French eventually led to their expulsion from the country in the mid-20th century, leaving Vietnam divided politically into two countries. Fighting between the two sides continued, with heavy foreign intervention, during the Vietnam War, ending with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975.

Emerging from this prolonged military engagement, the war-ravaged Communist nation was politically isolated. In 1986, the government instituted economic and political reforms and began a path towards international reintegration. By 2000, it had established diplomatic relations with most nations. Its economic growth has been among the highest in the world since 2000, and according to Citigroup, such high growth is set to continue. Vietnam has the highest Global Growth Generators Index among 11 major economies, and its successful economic reforms resulted in it joining the World Trade Organization in 2007. However, the country still suffers from high levels of income inequality, disparities in healthcare provision, and poor gender equality.

Etymology

The name ''Việt Nam'' () is a variation of "Nam Việt" (南越; pinyin: ''Nányuè''; literally ''Southern Việt''), a name that can be traced back to the Trieu dynasty (2nd century BC). The word "Việt" originated as a shortened form of Bách Việt (百越; pinyin: '' Bǎiyuè''), a word applied to a group of peoples then living in southern China and Vietnam. The form "Vietnam" () is first recorded in the oracular poem ''Sấm Trạng Trình''. It has been found on 12 steles carved in the 16th and 17th centuries, including one at Bao Lam Pagoda in Haiphong that was carved in 1558. Between 1804 and 1813, the name was used officially by Emperor Gia Long. It was revived in the early 20th century by nationalists such as Phan Boi Chau, and most notably by the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (Vietnamese Nationalist Party). The country was usually called Annam until 1945, when Emperor Bao Dai changed the official name back to "Việt Nam". Since the use of Chinese characters was discontinued at this time, the alphabetic spelling is official.

History

Pre-Dynastic era

The area now known as Vietnam has been inhabited since Paleolithic times, with some archaeological sites in Thanh Hóa Province purportedly dating back several thousand years. Archaeologists link the beginnings of Vietnamese civilization to the late Neolithic-early Bronze Age Phung Nguyen culture, which was centered in what is now Vĩnh Phúc Province between 2000 and 1400 BC.

By about 1200 BC, the development of wet-rice cultivation and bronze casting in the Ma River and Red River plains led to the development of the Dong Son culture, notable for its elaborate bronze drums. The bronze weapons, tools, and drums of Dong-Sonian sites show a Southeast Asian influence that indicates an indigenous origin for the bronze-casting technology.

Many small, ancient copper mine sites have been found in northern Vietnam. Some of the similarities between the Dong-Sonian sites and other Southeast Asian sites include the presence of boat-shaped coffins and burial jars, stilt dwellings, and evidence of the customs of betel-nut-chewing and teeth-blackening.

Dynastic era

The legendary Hồng Bàng Dynasty of the Hùng kings is considered the first Vietnamese state, known in Vietnamese as Văn Lang. In 257 BC, the last Hùng king was defeated by Thục Phán, who consolidated the Lạc Việt tribes and Âu Việt tribes to form the Âu Lạc, proclaiming himself An Dương Vương. In 207 BC, a Chinese general named Zhao Tuo defeated An Dương Vương and consolidated Âu Lạc into Nanyue. However, Nanyue was itself incorporated into the empire of the Chinese Han Dynasty in 111 BC.

For the next thousand years, Vietnam remained mostly under Chinese rule. Early independence movements, such as those of the Trưng Sisters and Lady Triệu, were only temporarily successful, but the region did become independent as Vạn Xuân under the Anterior Lý Dynasty between 544 and 602 AD. By the early 10th century, Vietnam had gained autonomy, but not independence, under the Khúc family.

In 938 AD, a Vietnamese lord named Ngô Quyền defeated Chinese forces at Bạch Đằng River and regained independence after a millennium of Chinese domination. Renamed as Đại Việt (en: ''Great Viet''), the nation enjoyed a golden era under the Lý and Trần Dynasties. During the rule of the Trần Dynasty, Đại Việt repelled three Mongol invasions. Buddhism flourished and became the state religion.

Following the brief Hồ Dynasty, Vietnamese independence was momentarily interrupted by the Chinese Ming Dynasty, but was restored by Lê Lợi, the founder of the Lê Dynasty. Vietnam reached its zenith in the Lê Dynasty of the 15th century, especially during the reign of Emperor Lê Thánh Tông (1460–1497). Between the 11th and 18th centuries, Vietnam expanded southward in a process known as (''southward expansion''), and it eventually conquered the kingdom of Champa and part of the Khmer Empire.

From the 16th century onwards, civil strife and frequent infighting engulfed much of Vietnam. First, the Chinese-supported Mạc Dynasty challenged the Lê Dynasty's power. After the Mạc Dynasty was defeated, the Lê Dynasty was nominally reinstalled, but actual power was divided between the northern Trịnh Lords and the southern Nguyễn Lords, who engaged in a civil war for more than four decades before a truce was called in the 1670s. During this time, the Nguyễn expanded southern Vietnam into the Mekong Delta, annexing the Central Highlands and the Khmer land in the Mekong Delta.

The division of the country ended a century later when the Tây Sơn brothers defeated both and established their new dynasty. However, their rule did not last long, and they were defeated by the remnants of the Nguyễn Lords led by Nguyễn Ánh, with the help of the French. Nguyễn Ánh unified Vietnam, and established the Nguyễn Dynasty, ruling under the name Gia Long.

French colonisation

Vietnam's independence was gradually eroded by France—aided by large Catholic collaborator militias—in a series of military conquests from 1859 until 1885 when the entire country became part of French Indochina. The French administration imposed significant political and cultural changes on Vietnamese society. A Western-style system of modern education was developed, and Roman Catholicism was propagated widely in Vietnamese society. Most of the French settlers in Indochina were concentrated in Cochinchina (southern third of Vietnam whose principal city was Saigon).

Developing a plantation economy to promote the exports of tobacco, indigo, tea and coffee, the French largely ignored increasing calls for self-government and civil rights. A nationalist political movement soon emerged, with leaders such as Phan Boi Chau, Phan Chu Trinh, Phan Dinh Phung, Emperor Hàm Nghi and Ho Chi Minh fighting or calling for independence. However, the royalist Can Vuong was defeated in the 1890s after a decade of resistance, and the 1930 Yen Bai mutiny of the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang was put down easily. The French maintained control of their colonies until World War II, when the Japanese war in the Pacific triggered the invasion of French Indochina in 1941.

With the defeat of France in Europe, the French Third Republic transformed into the Vichy Regime, to which the colony remained loyal. Heavily dependent on Nazi Germany, Vichy France was forced to surrender control of French Indochina to Japan. The natural resources of Vietnam were exploited for the purposes of the Japanese Empire's military campaigns into the British Indochinese colonies of Burma, the Malay Peninsula and India.

First Indochina War

In 1941, the Viet Minh – a communist and nationalist liberation movement – emerged under Ho Chi Minh to seek independence for Vietnam from France as well as to oppose the Japanese occupation. Japanese occupation during World War II caused the Vietnamese Famine of 1945, which caused 2 million deaths, or 10% of the population then. Following the military defeat of Japan and the fall of its Empire of Vietnam in August 1945, Viet Minh occupied Hanoi and proclaimed a provisional government, which asserted independence on 2 September.

In the same year the Provisional French Republic sent the French Far East Expeditionary Corps, which was originally created to fight the Japanese occupation forces, in order to pacify the liberation movement and to restore French rule. On November 20, 1946, triggered by the Haiphong Incident, the First Indochina War between Viet Minh and the French forces ensued, lasting until July 20, 1954.

Despite fewer losses – Expeditionary Corps suffered one-third of the casualties of the Chinese and Soviet-backed Viet Minh – during the course of the war, the French and Vietnamese loyalists eventually suffered a major strategic setback at the Siege of Dien Bien Phu, which allowed Ho Chi Minh to negotiate a ceasefire with a favorable position at the ongoing Geneva conference of 1954. Colonial administration ended as French Indochina was dissolved. According to the Geneva Accords of 1954 the forces of former French supporters and communist nationalists were separated south and north, respectively, with the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone, at the 17th parallel north, between. A 300-day period of free movement was given, during which almost a million northerners, mainly Catholic, moved south, fearing persecution by the communists.

A partition of Vietnam, with Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam in North Vietnam, and Emperor Bảo Đại's State of Vietnam in the South Vietnam, was not intended to be permanent by the Geneva Accords, and they expressly forbade the interference of third powers. The State of Vietnam's Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem toppled Bảo Đại in a fraudulent referendum organised by his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, and proclaimed himself president of the Republic of Vietnam. The Accords mandated nationwide elections by 1956, which Diem refused to hold, despite repeated calls from the North for talks to discuss elections.

Vietnam War

The pro-Hanoi Vietcong began a guerrilla campaign in the late 1950s to overthrow Diem's government, which an official Vietcong statement described as a "disguised colonial regime." In the North, thousands of landowners were murdered by the communists and famine broke out in the 1950s. In the South, Diem went about crushing all opposition and tens of thousands were jailed or killed; dissidents were routinely labelled as communists even if they were anti-communist. Both Vietnams were police states with totalitarian security systems.

In 1963, Buddhist discontent with Diem's pro-Catholic discrimination erupted following the banning of the Buddhist flag and the Hue Vesak shootings. This resulted in a series of mass demonstrations during what is known as the Buddhist crisis. With Diem unwilling to bend, Nhu orchestrated the Xa Loi Pagoda raids; estimates of the death toll range into the hundreds. As a result, America's relationship with Diem broke down and resulted in the 1963 coup that saw Diem killed.

Diem was followed by a series of military regimes that often lasted only months before being toppled by another. With this instability, the communists began to gain ground. There were more than a dozen governments before the pairing of Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky and General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu took control of a junta in mid-1965. Thieu gradually outmaneuvered Ky and cemented his grip on power in fraudulent elections in 1967 and 1971.

To support South Vietnam's struggle against the communist insurgency, the United States began increasing its contribution of military advisers. US forces became embroiled in ground combat operations in 1965 and at their peak they numbered more than 500,000. Communist forces attacked most major targets in South Vietnam during the 1968 Tet Offensive, and although their campaign failed militarily, it shocked the American establishment, and caused them to think that the communists could not be defeated. Communist forces supplying the Vietcong carried supplies along the Ho Chi Minh trail, which passed through Laos and Cambodia. US president Richard Nixon authorized Operation Menu, an SAC bombing campaign in Laos and Cambodia, which he kept secret from the US Congress.

Its own casualties mounting, and facing opposition to the war at home and condemnation abroad, the U.S. began withdrawing from ground combat roles according to the Nixon Doctrine; the process was subsequently called . The effort had mixed results. The Paris Peace Accords of 27 January 1973 formally recognized the sovereignty of Vietnam "as recognized by the 1954 Geneva Agreements." Under the terms of the accords all American combat troops were withdrawn by 29 March 1973. Limited fighting continued, before the north captured the province of Phuoc Long in December 1974 and started a full-scale offensive, culminating in the Fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. South Vietnam briefly came under the nominal rule of a Provisional Revolutionary Government while under military occupation by North Vietnam. On 2 July 1976, North and South were merged to form the ''Socialist Republic of Vietnam''.

Postwar period

The government embarked on a mass campaign of collectivization of farms and factories. This caused an economic collapse and resulted in triple-digit inflation. Reconstruction of the war-ravaged country was slow, and serious humanitarian and economic problems confronted the communist regime. Millions of people fled the country in crudely built boats, creating an international humanitarian crisis.

In 1978, the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia (sparking the Cambodian-Vietnamese War) to remove from power the Khmer Rouge—who had been razing Vietnamese border villages and massacring the inhabitants, installing a regime whose leaders ruled until 1989. This action worsened relations with China, which launched a brief incursion into northern Vietnam (the Sino-Vietnamese War) in 1979. This conflict caused Vietnam to rely even more heavily on Soviet economic and military aid.

Đổi Mới ("Renovation")

At the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in December 1986, reformers, upset by the lack of economic progress after the Vietnam War, replaced the "old guard" with new leadership. The reformers were led by 71 year-old Nguyen Van Linh, who became the party's new general secretary. Linh was a native of northern Vietnam who had served in the south both during and after the war. In a historic shift, the reformers implemented free-market reforms known as (''Renovation''), which carefully managed the transition from a planned economy to a "socialist-oriented market economy".

With the authority of the state remaining unchallenged, private ownership of farms and companies engaged in commodity production, deregulation and foreign investment were encouraged while the state maintained control over strategic industries. The economy of Vietnam subsequently achieved rapid growth in agricultural and industrial production, construction and housing, exports and foreign investment. However, these reforms have also caused a rise in inequalities in many spheres of social life, such as income and gender inequality.

Government and politics

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a single-party state. Its current state constitution, which replaced the 1975 constitution in April 1992, asserts the central role of the Communist Party of Vietnam in all organs of government, politics and society.Only political organizations affiliated with or endorsed by the Communist Party are permitted to contest elections in Vietnam. These include the Vietnamese Fatherland Front and worker and trade unionist parties. Although the state remains officially committed to socialism as its defining creed, its economic policies are increasingly capitalist, with the ''The Economist'' defining its leadership as "ardently capitalist communists".

The President of Vietnam is the titular head of state and the nominal commander-in-chief of the military of Vietnam, chairing the Council on National Defense and Security. The current Prime Minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Tan Dung, is the head of government, presiding over a council of ministers composed of three deputy prime ministers and the heads of 26 ministries and commissions. The General Secretary of the Communist Party performs numerous key administrative and executive functions, controlling the party's national organization and state appointments, as well as setting policy. The National Assembly of Vietnam is the unicameral legislature of the government, composed of 498 members. It is superior to both the executive and judicial branches, with all government ministers being appointed from members of the National Assembly.

The Supreme People's Court of Vietnam is the country's highest court of appeal, though it is also answerable to the National Assembly. Beneath the Supreme People's Court stand the provincial municipal courts and numerous local courts. Military courts possess special jurisdiction in matters of national security.

Military

The Vietnam People's Army (VPA) is the official name for the combined military services of Vietnam. The VPA is subdivided into the Vietnam People's Ground Forces (including Strategic Rear Forces and Border Defense Forces), the Vietnam People's Navy, the Vietnam People's Air Force and the Vietnam People's Coast Guard. The government also organizes and maintains provincial militias and police forces. The VPA has an active manpower of around 450,000, but its total strength, including paramilitary forces, may be as high as 5,000,000.

Through Vietnam's recent history, the VPA has been actively involved in developing the economy of Vietnam, with detachments working in such areas as industry, agriculture, forestry, fishery and telecommunications. However, the role of the military in public life has steadily been reduced since the 1980s.

International relations

Throughout its history, Vietnam's key foreign relationship has been with its northern neighbour, China. Vietnam's sovereign principles and insistence on cultural independence have been laid down in numerous documents over the centuries, such as the 11th-century poem ''Nam quốc sơn hà'' and the 1428 proclamation ''Bình Ngô đại cáo''.

Currently, the formal mission statement of Vietnamese foreign policy is to: "Implement consistently the foreign policy line of independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation and development; the foreign policy of openness and diversification and multi-lateralization of international relations. Proactively and actively engage in international economic integration while expanding international cooperation in other fields." Vietnam furthermore declares itself to be "a friend and reliable partner of all countries in the international community, actively taking part in international and regional cooperation processes."

As of December 2007, Vietnam had established diplomatic relations with 172 countries, including the United States, which normalized relations in 1995. Vietnam holds membership of 63 international organizations, including the United Nations, ASEAN, NAM, Francophonie and WTO, and a total of 650 non-government organizations.

Administrative subdivisions

Vietnam is divided into 58 provinces (Vietnamese: as ''tỉnh'', from the Chinese 省, ''shěng''). There are also five centrally-controlled municipalities existing at the same level as provinces (''thành phố trực thuộc trung ương''). {| style="margin:auto;" | style="padding-right:1em; vertical-align:top;" | ---- Bắc Ninh Ha Nam Ha Tay Hai Duong Hung Yen Nam Dinh Ninh Binh Thai Binh Vĩnh Phúc Hanoi (municipality) Hai Phong (municipality) | style="padding-right:1em; vertical-align:top;" | ---- Ha Tinh Nghe An Quang Binh Quảng Trị Thanh Hóa Thừa Thiên-Huế | style="padding-right:1em; vertical-align:top;" | ---- Bắc Giang Bắc Kạn Cao Bang Ha Giang Lang Son Lao Cai Phu Tho Quang Ninh Thái Nguyên Tuyen Quang Yen Bai | style="padding-right:1em; vertical-align:top;" | ---- Dien Bien Hoa Binh Lai Chau Son La |- | style="padding-right:1em; vertical-align:top;" | ---- Dak Lak Dak Nong Gia Lai Kon Tum Lam Dong | style="padding-right:1em; vertical-align:top;" | ---- Binh Dinh Binh Thuan Khanh Hoa Ninh Thuan Phu Yen Quang Nam Quang Ngai Da Nang (municipality) | style="padding-right:1em; vertical-align:top;" | ---- Ba Ria-Vung Tau Binh Duong Binh Phuoc Dong Nai Tay Ninh Ho Chi Minh (municipality) | style="padding-right:1em; vertical-align:top;" | ---- An Giang Bạc Liêu Bến Tre Ca Mau Dong Thap Hau Giang Kien Giang Long An Soc Trang Tien Giang Tra Vinh Vĩnh Long Cần Thơ (municipality) |}

The provinces are subdivided into provincial municipalities (''thành phố trực thuộc tỉnh''), townships (''thị xã'') and counties (''huyện''), which are in turn subdivided into towns (''thị trấn'') or communes (''xã''). The centrally-controlled municipalities are subdivided into districts (''quận'') and counties, which are further subdivided into wards (''phường'').

Geography and climate

Vietnam is located on the eastern Indochina Peninsula between the latitudes 8° and 24°N, and the longitudes 102° and 110°E. It covers a total area of approximately in area, excluding the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa islands, making it almost the size of Germany. The combined length of the country's land boundaries is , and its coastline is long. Vietnam's land is mostly hilly and densely forested, with level land covering no more than 20%. Mountains account for 40% of the country's land area, and tropical forests cover around 42%.

The northern part of the country consists mostly of highlands and the Red River Delta. Phan Xi Păng, located in Lào Cai province, is the highest mountain in Vietnam, standing high. Southern Vietnam is divided into coastal lowlands, Annamite Chain peaks, and extensive forests. Comprising five relatively flat plateaus of basalt soil, the highlands account for 16% of the country's arable land and 22% of its total forested land. The soil in much of southern Vietnam is relatively poor in nutrients.

The Red River Delta (also known as the ), a flat, roughly triangular region covering , is smaller but more intensely developed and more densely populated than the Mekong River Delta. Once an inlet of the Gulf of Tonkin, it has been filled in over the millennia by riverine alluvial deposits, and it advances into the Gulf annually. The Mekong delta, covering about , is a low-level plain no more than above sea level at any point. It is criss-crossed by a maze of rivers and canals, which carry so much sediment that the delta advances into the sea every year.

Because of differences in latitude and the marked variety in topographical relief, the Vietnamese climate tends to vary considerably from place to place. During the winter or dry season, extending roughly from November to April, the monsoon winds usually blow from the northeast along the China coast and across the Gulf of Tonkin, picking up considerable moisture. Consequently, the winter season in most parts of the country is dry only by comparison with the rainy or summer season. The average annual temperature is generally higher in the plains than in the mountains, and higher in the south than in the north. Temperatures vary less in the southern plains around Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta, ranging between over the course of a year. Seasonal variations in the mountains and plateaus and in the north are much more dramatic, with temperatures varying from in December and January to in July and August.

Ecology and biodiversity

Vietnam has two World Natural Heritage Sites - Ha Long Bay and Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park - and six biosphere reserves, including Can Gio Mangrove Forest, Cat Tien, Cat Ba, Kien Giang, Red River Delta, and Western Nghe An.

Vietnam lies in the Indomalaya ecozone. According to Chapter 1 of the 2005 National Environmental Present Condition Report, "Biodiversity Subject of Vietnam Environment Protection Agency," in terms of species diversity Vietnam is one of twenty-five countries considered to possess a uniquely high level of biodiversity, and is ranked 16th in biological diversity worldwide, having 16% of the world's species. 15,986 species of flora have been identified in the country, of which 10% are endemic, while Vietnam's fauna include 307 nematode species, 200 oligochaeta, 145 acarina, 113 springtails, 7,750 insects, 260 reptiles, 120 amphibians, 840 birds and 310 mammals, of which 100 birds and 78 mammals are endemic.

Vietnam is furthermore home to 1,438 species of freshwater microalgae, constituting 9.6% of all microalgae species, as well as 794 aquatic invertebrates and 2,458 species of sea fish. In recent years, 13 genera, 222 species, and 30 taxa of flora have been newly described in Vietnam. Six new mammal species, including the saola, giant muntjac and Tonkin Snub-nosed Langur have also been discovered, along with one new bird species, Edwards's Pheasant.

In agricultural genetic diversity, Vietnam is one of the world's twelve original cultivar centers. The Vietnam National Cultivar Gene Bank is preserving 12,300 cultivars of 115 species. The Vietnamese government spent US$49.07 million on the preservation of biodiversity in 2004 alone, and has established 126 conservation areas, including 28 national parks.

Economy

Vietnam has been, for much of its history, a predominantly agricultural civilization based on wet rice cultivation. However, the Vietnam War destroyed much of the country's agrarian economy, leading the post-war government to implement a planned economy to revitalise agriculture and industrialise the nation. The collectivization of farms, factories and economic capital was implemented, and millions of people were put to work in government programs. For a decade following the Vietnam War, Vietnam's economy was plagued with inefficiency and corruption in state programs, poor quality and underproduction, and restrictions on economic activity. It also suffered from the post-war trade embargo instituted by the United States and most of Europe. These problems were compounded by the erosion of the Soviet bloc, which included Vietnam's main trading partners, in the late 1980s.

In 1986, the Sixth Party Congress of Vietnam introduced free market economic reforms as part of a broad reform package called Đổi Mới (''Renovation''), resulting in a socialist-oriented market economy. Private ownership was encouraged in industries, commerce and agriculture. Thanks largely to these reforms, Vietnam achieved around 8% annual GDP growth between 1990 to 1997, and the economy continued to grow at an annual rate of around 7% from 2000 to 2005, making Vietnam one of the world's fastest growing economies. Growth remained strong even in the face of the late-2000s global recession, holding at 6.8% in 2010, but Vietnam's year-on-year inflation rate hit 11.8% in December 2010, according to a GSO estimate. The Vietnamese dong was devalued three times in 2010 alone. Manufacturing, information technology and high-tech industries now form a large and fast-growing part of the national economy. Though Vietnam is a relative newcomer to the oil industry, it is currently the third-largest oil producer in Southeast Asia, with an output of . Like its Chinese neighbours, Vietnam continues to make use of centrally-planned economic five-year plans.

Deep poverty, defined as the percentage of the population living on less than $1 per day, has declined significantly in Vietnam, and the relative poverty rate is now less than that of China, India, and the Philippines. This decline in the poverty rate can be attributed to equitable economic policies aimed at improving living standards and preventing the rise of inequality; these policies have included egalitarian land distribution at the initial stages of Đổi Mới, investment in poorer remote areas, and subsidising of education and healthcare.

In 2010, Vietnam's nominal GDP reached US$103.124 billion, with a nominal GDP per capita of $1,168, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to a December 2005 forecast by Goldman Sachs, the Vietnamese economy will become the world's 17th-largest by 2025, with an estimated nominal GDP of $436 billion and a GDP per capita of $4,357. According to a 2008 forecast by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Vietnam may be the fastest-growing of the world's emerging economies by 2025, with a potential growth rate of almost 10% per annum in real dollar terms; by 2050, such a growth rate would make it 70% of the size of the economy of the United Kingdom, currently one of the world's largest economies.

Trade

Since the early 2000s, Vietnam has applied sequenced trade liberalisation, a two-track approach opening some sectors of the economy to international markets while protecting others. In July 2006, Vietnam updated its intellectual property legislation to comply with TRIPS, and it became a member of the WTO on January 11, 2007. Vietnam is now one of Asia's most open economies: two-way trade was valued at around 160% of GDP in 2006, more than twice the contemporary ratio for China and over four times the ratio for India. Vietnam's chief trading partners include China, Japan, Australia, the ASEAN countries, the United States and Western Europe.

As a result of several land reform measures, Vietnam has become a major exporter of agricultural products. It is now the world's largest producer of cashew nuts, with a one-third global share; the largest producer of black pepper, accounting for one-third of the world's market; and the second-largest rice exporter in the world, after Thailand. Vietnam has the highest proportion of land use for permanent crops - 6.93% - of any nation in the Greater Mekong Subregion. Other primary exports include coffee, tea, rubber, and fishery products. However, agriculture's share of Vietnam's GDP has fallen in recent decades, declining from 42% in 1989 to 20% in 2006, as production in other sectors of the economy has risen. According to the CIA World Factbook, the unemployment rate in Vietnam stood at 2.9% in April 2009.

Transport

Vietnam's modern transport system was originally developed under French rule to facilitate the transportation of raw materials, and was reconstructed and extensively modernized following the Vietnam War.

Air

Vietnam operates 17 major civil airports, including three international gateways: Noi Bai serving Hanoi, Da Nang International Airport serving Da Nang, and Tan Son Nhat serving Ho Chi Minh City. Tan Son Nhat is the nation's largest airport, handling 75 percent of international passenger traffic. According to a state-approved plan, Vietnam will have 10 international airports by 2015 - besides the aforementioned three, these include Lien Khuong International Airport, Phu Bai International Airport, Cam Ranh International Airport, Phu Quoc International Airport, Cat Bi International Airport, Cần Thơ International Airport and Long Thanh International Airport. The planned Long Thanh International Airport will be built on an area of , and will have full capacity of 100 million passengers.

Vietnam Airlines, the state-owned national airline, maintains a fleet of 69 passenger aircraft, and aims to operate 150 by 2020. Several private airlines are also in operation in Vietnam, including Air Mekong, Jetstar Pacific Airlines and VASCO.

Road

Vietnam's road system includes national roads administered at the central level; provincial roads managed at the provincial level; district roads managed at the district level; urban roads managed by cities and towns; and commune roads managed at the commune level. Bicycles, motor scooters and motorcycles remain the most popular forms of road transport in Vietnam's urban areas, although the number of privately-owned automobiles is also on the rise, especially in the larger cities. Public buses operated by private companies are the main mode of long-distance travel for much of the population.

Road safety is a serious issue in Vietnam - on average, 30 people are killed in traffic accidents every day. Traffic congestion is a growing problem in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, as the cities' roads struggle to cope with the boom in automobile use.

Rail

Currently, Vietnam's primary cross-country rail service is the Reunification Express, which runs from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, covering a distance of nearly 2,000 kilometres. From Hanoi, railway lines branch out to the northeast, north and west;the eastbound line runs from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay, the northbound line runs from Hanoi to Thai Nguyen and the northeast line runs from Hanoi to Lao Cai.

In 2009, Vietnam and Japan signed a deal to build a high-speed railway using Japanese technology; numerous Vietnamese engineers have since been sent to Japan to receive training in the operation and maintenance of high-speed trains. The railway will be a 1,630-km-long express route, serving a total of 26 stations, including Hanoi and the Thu Thiem terminus in Ho Chi Minh City.

Using Japan's well-established ''Shinkansen'' technology, the line will support trains travelling at a maximum speed of per hour. The high-speed lines linking Hanoi to central Vinh and central Nha Trang to Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam will be laid during the 2010–2015 period. From 2015 to 2020, construction will begin on the routes between Vinh and Nha Trang and between Hanoi and the northern provinces of Lao Cai and Lang Son.

Water

Vietnam has several major sea ports, including Cam Ranh, Da Nang, Hai Phong, Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Gai, Qui Nhơn, and Nha Trang. Further inland, the country's extensive network of rivers play a key role in rural transportation, with over of navigable waterways.

Demographics

Population

The census of April 1, 2009, recorded the population of Vietnam as standing at approximately 85.8 million, of which the Viet or Kinh ethnic group constituted nearly 73.6 million, or 85.8% of the population. The Kinh population is concentrated mainly in the alluvial deltas and coastal plains of the country. A largely homogeneous social and ethnic group, the Kinh possess significant political and economic influence over the country as its ethnic majority. Vietnam is furthermore home to 54 ethnic minority groups, including the Hmong, Dao, Tay, Thai, and Nung.

Many ethnic minorities - such as the Muong, who are closely related to the Kinh - dwell in the highlands, which cover two-thirds of Vietnam's territory. Before the Vietnam War, the population of the Central Highlands was almost exclusively Degar (including over 40 tribal groups); however, Ngo Dinh Diem's governments enacted a program of resettling Kinh in indigenous areas. The Hoa (ethnic Chinese) and Khmer Krom are mainly lowlanders. As Sino-Vietnamese relations soured in 1978 and 1979, some 450,000 Hoa left Vietnam.

Largest cities

Languages

The official national language of Vietnam is Vietnamese, a tonal monosyllabic Mon–Khmer language which is spoken by the majority of the population. In its early history, Vietnamese writing used Chinese characters. In the 13th century, the Vietnamese developed their own set of characters, referred to as Chữ nôm. The folk epic ( or ) by Nguyễn Du was written in Chữ nôm. Quốc ngữ, the romanized Vietnamese alphabet used for spoken Vietnamese, was developed in 17th century by the Jesuit Alexandre De Rhodes and several other Catholic missionaries. Quốc ngữ became widely popular and brought literacy to the Vietnamese masses during the French colonial period.

Various other languages are spoken by Vietnam's minority groups. The most common of these include Tày, Mường, Cham, Khmer, Chinese, Nùng, and H'Mông. The Montagnard peoples of the Central Highlands also speak a number of distinct languages.

The French language, a legacy of colonial rule, is still spoken by some older Vietnamese as a second language, but is losing its popularity. Vietnam nevertheless remains a full member of the Francophonie. Russian – and to a much lesser extent German, Czech and Polish – are known among some Vietnamese whose families had ties with the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. In recent years, English is becoming more popular as a second language; the study of English is now obligatory in most schools. Chinese and Japanese have also grown in popularity as Vietnam's links with China and Japan have strengthened.

Religion

For much of Vietnamese history, Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism have been the dominant religions, strongly influencing the national culture. About 85% of Vietnamese identify with Buddhism, though not all practice on a regular basis. Most people ascribe to Tam Đạo ("Triple religion"): 80% of people worship the mixture of Mahayana Buddhism mainly, Taoism, Confucianism with Ancestor Worship; 2% Hòa Hảo (a new 20th century religious movement that is concentrated in the Mekong Delta) and 2% Theravada Buddhism, mainly among Khmer people in the Mekong. According to the 2009 census, while over 10 million people have taken refuge in the Three Jewels, the vast majority of Vietnamese people practice ancestor worship in some form.

About 8% of the population are Christians, totalling around six million Roman Catholics and fewer than one million Protestants, according to the census of 2007. Christianity was first introduced to Vietnam by Portuguese and Dutch traders in the 16th and 17th centuries, and was further propagated by French missionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries, and to a lesser extent, by American Protestant missionaries during the Vietnam War, largely among the Montagnards of South Vietnam. The largest Protestant churches are the Evangelical Church of Vietnam and the Montagnard Evangelical Church. Two-thirds of Vietnam's Protestants are reportedly members of ethnic minorities.

The Vietnamese government is widely seen as suspicious of Roman Catholicism. This mistrust originated during the 19th century, when some Catholics collaborated with the French colonists in conquering and ruling the country and in helping French attempts to install Catholic emperors, such as in the Lê Văn Khôi revolt of 1833. Furthermore, the Catholic Church's strongly anti-communist stance has made it an enemy of the Vietnamese state. The Vatican Church is officially banned and only government-controlled Catholic organisations are permitted. However, Vietnam's relations with the Vatican have improved in recent years.

Several other minority faiths exist in Vietnam. About 3% of the population are adherents of Cao Dai, a syncretic modern religion that is concentrated around Tay Ninh Province. Sunni and Cham Bani Islam is primarily practiced by the ethnic Cham minority, though there are also a few ethnic Vietnamese adherents in the southwest. In total, there are approximately 70,000 Muslims in Vietnam, while around 50,000 Hindus and a small number of Baha'is are also in evidence.

The Vietnamese government rejects allegations that it does not allow religious freedom. The state's official position on religion is that all citizens are free to their belief, religion and that all regions are equal before law. Nevertheless, only government-controlled religious organisations are allowed, and the South Vietnam-founded Unified Buddhist Congregation of Vietnam is banned in favour of a communist-approved body.

Education

Vietnam has an extensive state-controlled network of schools, colleges and universities, and a growing number of privately-run and partially-privatised institutions. General education in Vietnam is divided into five categories: kindergarten, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, anduniversities. A large number of public schools have been organized across the country to raise the national literacy rate, which stood at 90.3% in 2008. There are a large number of specialist colleges, established to develop a more diverse and skilled national workforce.

A large number of Vietnam's most acclaimed universities are based in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Facing serious crises, Vietnam's education system is under a holistic program of reform launched by the government. Education is not free; therefore, some poor families may have trouble paying tuition for their children without some form of public or private assistance. Regardless, school enrollment is among the highest in the world, and the number of colleges and universities increased dramatically in the 2000s, from 178 in 2000 to 299 in 2005.

Health

Public health in Vietnam is of a reasonably high standard. As of 2009, the national life expectancy is 76 years for women and 72 for men. Infant mortality stands at 12 per 1,000 live births. As of 2009, 85% of the population has access to improved water sources. However, malnutrition is still common in the rural provinces. In 2001, government spending on health care corresponded to just 0.9% of Vietnam's gross domestic product (GDP), with state subsidies covering only about 20% of health care expenses.

In 1954, North Vietnam established a public health system that reached down to the hamlet level. After the national reunification in 1975, this system was extended to the provinces of former South Vietnam. In the late 1980s, the quality of healthcare declined to some degree as a result of budgetary constraints, a shift of responsibility to the provinces, and the introduction of charges. Inadequate funding has also contributed to a shortage of nurses, midwives, and hospital beds; in 2000, Vietnam had only 250,000 hospital beds, or 14.8 beds per 10,000 people, according to the World Bank.

Since the early 2000s, Vietnam has made significant progress in combating malaria, with the malaria mortality rate falling to about 5% of its 1990s equivalent by 2005, after the country introduced improved antimalarial drugs and treatment. However, tuberculosis cases are on the rise, with 57 deaths per day reported in May 2004. With an intensified vaccination program, better hygiene, and foreign assistance, Vietnam hopes to reduce sharply the number of TB cases and annual new TB infections.

As of September 2005, Vietnam had diagnosed 101,291 HIV cases, of which 16,528 progressed to AIDS, and 9,554 died. However, the actual number of HIV-positive individuals is estimated to be much higher. An average, 40–50 new infections are reported every day in Vietnam. As of 2007, 0.5% of the population is infected with HIV, and this figure has remained stable since 2005. In June 2004, the United States announced that Vietnam would be one of 15 nations to receive funding as part of a US$15 billion global AIDS relief plan.

Science and technology

Historically, Vietnamese scholars did not practice "science" in its generally accepted meaning, but nonetheless developed many academic fields, especially social sciences and the humanities. Vietnamese scholarship has left a millennium-deep legacy of analytical writings, such as the ''Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư'' of Ngô Sĩ Liên. Vietnamese monks led by the abdicated Emperor Tran Nhan Tong developed the Trúc Lâm Zen branch of philosophy in the 13th century. Arithmetics and geometry have been widely taught in Vietnam since the 15th century, using the textbook ''Đại thành toán pháp'' by Lương Thế Vinh as a basis. Lương Thế Vinh introduced the notion of zero, while Mạc Hiển Tích used the term ''số ẩn'' (en: "unknown/secret/hidden number") to refer to negative numbers even earlier. Vietnamese scholars furthermore produced numerous encyclopedias, such as Lê Quý Đôn's ''Vân đài loại ngữ''.

In recent times, Vietnamese scientists have made many significant contributions in various fields of study, most notably in mathematics. Hoàng Tụy pioneered the applied mathematics field of global optimization, while Ngô Bảo Châu won the 2010 Fields Medal for his proof of fundamental lemma in the theory of automorphic forms.

Media

Vietnam's media sector is regulated by the government in accordance with the 2004 Law on Publication. It is generally perceived that Vietnam's media sector is controlled by the government to follow the official communist party line, though some newspapers are relatively outspoken. The Voice of Vietnam is the official state-run national radio broadcasting service, broadcasting internationally via shortwave using rented transmitters in other countries, and providing broadcasts from its website. Vietnam Television is the national television broadcasting company. As Vietnam moved toward a free-market economy under its Đổi Mới reform program, the government's reliance on the print media to keep the public informed about its policies led to a near-doubling in the number of newspapers and magazines in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Vietnam extensively regulates public Internet access, using both legal and technical means. The collaborative project OpenNet Initiative classifies Vietnam's level of online political censorship to be "pervasive", while Reporters without Borders considers Vietnam to be one of 15 global "internet enemies". While the government of Vietnam claims to safeguard the country against obscene or sexually-explicit content through its blocking efforts, many politically and religiously sensitive sites are also banned.

Culture

Vietnam is an agricultural civilization based on wet rice cultivation with ancient Dong Son culture as one of its defining aspects. The major stimulation of Vietnamese culture's development comes from indigenous factors. Vietnamese totems are Vietnamese dragon which is derived from crocodile and snake (Vietnam's National Father- Lạc Long Quân is a holy dragon), lạc- a holy bird (Vietnam's National Mother- Âu Cơ is a bird fairy), turtle and ''nghê''- in dog's image. Vietnamese social is structured from units named ''làng'' (English: villages), not from lines of blood. Regarding national solidarity, all Vietnamese have a common ancestor death anniversary on the 10th day of the 3rd Lunar month (see Giỗ Tổ Hùng Vương).

Vietnam's culture is a part of Sinosphere that Confucianism and Laoism set the frameworks for Vietnam's feudal political systems and philosophy (Specifically, Vietnamese are closely related to Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien and Hainan cultures. Many of these people have also immigrated into Vietnam). Moreover, Vietnam was partially indianized for some certain periods of time, mostly by Buddism. Through history, Cham culture, Cambodian culture, the culture of Tai people and other minority ethnic groups in Vietnam have been integrated with Vietnamese culture in correlated effects. Vietnam's contemporary culture is also influenced by Western culture, for example, American, French and Russian cultures.

The official spoken and written language of Vietnam is Vietnamese, currently written in Latin alphabet. However, according to many recent researches, Vietnam is believed to have had established a distinctive culture before the invasion of China's dynasties, including a syllabic writing system named ''Khoa Đẩu'' for Vietnamese language along with its education system nationwide.

In the socialist era, the cultural life of Vietnam has been deeply influenced by government-controlled media and the cultural influences of socialist programs. For many decades, foreign cultural influences were shunned and emphasis placed on appreciating and sharing the culture of communist nations such as the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and others. Since the 1990s, Vietnam has seen a greater exposure to Southeast Asian, European and American culture and media.

Clothing

One of the most popular Vietnamese traditional garments is the "", worn often for special occasions such as weddings or festivals. White Áo dài is the required uniform for girls in many high schools across Vietnam. Áo Dài was once worn by both genders but today it is worn mainly by females, except for certain important traditional culture-related occasions where some men do wear it.

Cuisine

Vietnamese cuisine uses very little oil and many vegetables. The main dishes are often based on rice, soy sauce, and fish sauce. Its characteristic flavors are sweet (sugar), spicy (serrano peppers), sour (lime), nuoc mam (fish sauce), and flavored by a variety of mint and basil.

Music

Vietnamese music varies slightly in the three regions: or North, or Central, and or South. Northern classical music is Vietnam's oldest and is traditionally more formal. Vietnamese classical music can be traced to the Mongol invasions, when the Vietnamese captured a Chinese opera troupe. Central classical music shows the influences of Champa culture with its melancholic melodies.

Literature

Vietnamese literature has a long history. Folk literature has been developed for centuries with many great arts, including a typical 6–8 verse poem kind named "ca dao", a system of tales about village establishers and heroes which served as cultural base for many cultural regions (for example, "Saint Gióng tales"). Written literatures dates from Ngô Dynasty with some admirable artists like Nguyễn Trãi with "Bình Ngô đại cáo", Trần Hưng Đạo with "Hịch tướng sĩ", Nguyễn Du with "Truyện Kiều" (English: The Tale of Kieu) and Nguyễn Đình Chiểu with "Lục Vân Tiên". Some genres play an important role in performance like "hát nói" in ca trù. Some poet unions have been formed like "Tao Đàn." The mordenization of literature has happened since Western cultural effect began in 19th century. The first transformation movement was "Thơ Mới" from 1932 to 1945.

Arts and sports

Vovinam and Bình Ðịnh martial arts are two popular Vietnamese martial arts practiced by many within Vietnam. Football (soccer) is the most popular team sport in Vietnam. Sports and games such as badminton, tennis, ping pong, and chess are also popular with large segments of the population. Volleyball, especially women's volleyball, is watched by a fairly large number of Vietnamese people. The (expatriate Vietnamese) community forms a prominent part of Vietnamese cultural life, introducing Western sports, films, music and other cultural activities in the nation.

Festivals

Vietnam has a plethora of festivals, the most important being the New Year Tết. The dates of the calendar are set by the Lunar Calendar.

Among countless other traditional Vietnamese occasions, the traditional Vietnamese wedding is very popular. Many of the age-old customs in a Vietnamese wedding continue to be celebrated by both Vietnamese in Vietnam and overseas, often combining both western and eastern elements.

Tourism

Vietnam's number of visitors for tourism and vacation has increased steadily over the past ten years. About 3.77 million international guests visited Vietnam in 2009. The government and private enterprizes are investing capital into the coastal regions that are already popular for their beaches and boat tours.

Popular destinations include Hanoi, Saigon, the old imperial capital of Hue, World Heritage Sites of Hoi An and the Cham temples of Mỹ Sơn, the coastline such as Nha Trang, the caves of Halong Bay, Marble Mountains, and many other sites. As tourism increases in importance, new projects are invested into, such as the tourism complex in Binh Duong, with the largest artificial sea in Southeast Asia.

On Valentine's Day 2011 Joe Jackson, the father of popstar Michael Jackson, attended a ground breaking ceremony for what will be the region's largest entertainment complex, a five-star hotel and amusement park called "Happyland" in which he has investment interests. The $2 billion project, which has been designed to accommodate 14 million tourists annually, is located in southern Long An province about 20 minutes from Ho Chi Minh City. It is expected that the project will be finished in 2014.

See also

CIVETS

References

Other documents

Herring, George C''. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975'' (4th ed 2001), most widely used short history.

Jahn GC. 2006. The Dream is not yet over. In: P. Fredenburg P, Hill B, editors. Sharing rice for peace and prosperity in the Greater Mekong Subregion. Victoria, (Australia): Sid Harta Publishers. p 237–240

Karrnow, Stanley. ''Vietnam: A History''. ''Penguin (Non-Classics)''; 2nd edition (June 1, 1997). ISBN 0-14-026547-3

McMahon, Robert J. ''Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War: Documents and Essays'' (1995) textbook

Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 7th edition, Oxford University Press.

Tucker, Spencer. ed. ''Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War'' (1998) 3 vol. reference set; also one-volume abridgment (2001)

External links

Country Profile from BBC News

Vietnam from ''UCB Libraries GovPubs''

; Government

Portal of the Government of Vietnam

Communist Party of Vietnam

National Assembly: the Vietnamese legislative body

General Statistics Office

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Chief of State and Cabinet Members

; Other

Vietnam tourism website Official Tourism website of Vietnam

Category:Member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Category:Communist states Category:Countries bordering the South China Sea Category:Single-party states Category:Socialist states Category:Southeast Asian countries Category:States and territories established in 1976 Category:Member states of the United Nations

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Name	Martin Luther King, Jr.
Birth name	Michael King, Jr.
Birth date	January 15, 1929
Birth place	Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Death date	April 04, 1968
Death place	Memphis, Tennessee, United States
Signature	Martin Luther King Jr Signature2.svg
Parents	Martin Luther King, Sr.Alberta Williams King
Spouse	Coretta Scott King (m. 1953–68)
Children	Yolanda Denise-King (deceased)Martin Luther King IIIDexter Scott KingBernice Albertine King
Movement	African-American Civil Rights Movement, Peace movement
Organization	Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Monuments	Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial
Alma mater	Morehouse College (B.A.) Crozer Theological Seminary (B.D.) Boston University (Ph.D.)
Awards	Nobel Peace Prize (1964), Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977, posthumous), Congressional Gold Medal (2004, posthumous)
Religion	Baptist (Progressive National Baptist Convention)
Influences	Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Benjamin Mays, Hosea Williams, Bayard Rustin, Henry David Thoreau, Howard Thurman, Leo Tolstoy
Influenced	}}

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. King has become a national icon in the history of modern American liberalism.

A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he expanded American values to include the vision of a color blind society, and established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.

In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other nonviolent means. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and stopping the Vietnam War.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986.

Early life and education

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the middle child of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. King Jr. had an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King. King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie ''Gone with the Wind.''

King was originally skeptical of many of Christianity's claims. Most striking, perhaps, was his initial denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus during Sunday school at the age of thirteen. From this point, he stated, "doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly". However, he later concluded that the Bible has "many profound truths which one cannot escape" and decided to enter the seminary.

Growing up in Atlanta, King attended Booker T. Washington High School. A precocious student, he skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grade and entered Morehouse College at age fifteen without formally graduating from high school. In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951. King married Coretta Scott, on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents' house in her hometown of Heiberger, Alabama. They became the parents of four children; Yolanda King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King. King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, when he was twenty-five years old, in 1954. King then began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received his Doctor of Philosophy on June 5, 1955, with a dissertation on "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman". A 1980s inquiry concluded portions of his dissertation had been plagiarized and he had acted improperly but that his dissertation still "makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship",

Influences

Thurman

Civil rights leader, theologian, and educator Howard Thurman was an early influence on King. A classmate of King's father at Morehouse College, Thurman mentored the young King and his friends. Thurman's missionary work had taken him abroad where he had met and conferred with Mahatma Gandhi. When he was a student at Boston University, King often visited Thurman, who was the dean of Marsh Chapel. Walter Fluker, who has studied Thurman's writings, has stated, "I don't believe you'd get a Martin Luther King, Jr. without a Howard Thurman".

Gandhi and Rustin

With assistance from the Quaker group the American Friends Service Committee, and inspired by Gandhi's success with non-violent activism, King visited Gandhi's birthplace in India in 1959. The trip to India affected King in a profound way, deepening his understanding of non-violent resistance and his commitment to America's struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, "Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation." African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin had studied Gandhi's teachings. Rustin counseled King to dedicate himself to the principles of non-violence, served as King's main advisor and mentor throughout his early activism, and was the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. Rustin's open homosexuality, support of democratic socialism, and his former ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand King distance himself from Rustin.

Public stance on political parties

As the leader of the SCLC, King maintained a policy of not publicly endorsing a U.S. political party or candidate: "I feel someone must remain in the position of non-alignment, so that he can look objectively at both parties and be the conscience of both—not the servant or master of either."

In a 1958 interview, he expressed his view that neither party was perfect, saying, "I don't think the Republican party is a party full of the almighty God nor is the Democratic party. They both have weaknesses ... And I'm not inextricably bound to either party."

King critiqued both parties' performance on promoting racial equality: }}

Personal political advocacy

Although King never publicly supported a political party or candidate for president, in a letter to a civil rights supporter in October 1956 he said that he was undecided as to whether he would vote for the Adlai Stevenson or Dwight Eisenhower, but that "In the past I always voted the Democratic ticket."

In his autobiography, King says that in 1960 he privately voted for Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy: "I felt that Kennedy would make the best president. I never came out with an endorsement. My father did, but I never made one." King adds that he likely would have made an exception to his non-endorsement policy in 1964, saying "Had President Kennedy lived, I would probably have endorsed him in 1964."

Sermons and speeches

Throughout his career of service, King wrote and spoke frequently, drawing on his experience as a preacher. His "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1963, is a "passionate" statement of his crusade for justice. His I Have a Dream speech is a 17 minute public speech delivered on August 28, 1963, in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination. On October 14, 1964, King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to racial prejudice in the United States.

Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955

In March 1955, a fifteen-year-old school girl, Claudette Colvin, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in compliance with the Jim Crow laws. King was on the committee from the Birmingham African-American community that looked into the case; because Colvin was pregnant and unmarried, E.D. Nixon and Clifford Durr decided to wait for a better case to pursue. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, urged and planned by Nixon and led by King, soon followed. The boycott lasted for 385 days, and the situation became so tense that King's house was bombed. King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United States District Court ruling in ''Browder v. Gayle'' that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

In 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group was created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the service of civil rights reform. King led the SCLC until his death.

On September 20, 1958, while signing copies of his book ''Stride Toward Freedom'' in Blumstein's department store on 125th Street, in Harlem, King was stabbed in the chest with a letter opener by Izola Curry, a deranged black woman, and narrowly escaped death. Gandhi's nonviolent techniques were useful to King's campaign to change the civil rights laws implemented in Alabama. King applied non-violent philosophy to the protests organized by the SCLC. In 1959, he wrote ''The Measure of A Man'', from which the piece ''What is Man?'', an attempt to sketch the optimal political, social, and economic structure of society, is derived. His SCLC secretary and personal assistant in this period was Dora McDonald.

The FBI, under written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, began telephone tapping King in the fall of 1963. Concerned that allegations (of Communists in the SCLC), if made public, would derail the Administration's civil rights initiatives, Kennedy warned King to discontinue the suspect associations, and later felt compelled to issue the written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. J Edgar Hoover feared Communists were trying to infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement, but when no such evidence emerged, the bureau used the incidental details caught on tape over the next five years in attempts to force King out of the preeminent leadership position.

King believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that convinced the majority of Americans that the Civil Rights Movement was the most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.

King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into the law of the United States with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

King and the SCLC put into practice many of the principles of the Christian Left and applied the tactics of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out. There were often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities. Sometimes these confrontations turned violent.

Albany movement

The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia in November 1961. In December, King and the SCLC became involved. The movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a broad-front nonviolent attack on every aspect of segregation within the city and attracted nationwide attention. When King first visited on December 15, 1961, he "had planned to stay a day or so and return home after giving counsel." But the following day he was swept up in a mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators, and he declined bail until the city made concessions. "Those agreements", said King, "were dishonored and violated by the city," as soon as he left town. King returned in July 1962, and was sentenced to forty-five days in jail or a $178 fine. He chose jail. Three days into his sentence, Chief Pritchett discreetly arranged for King's fine to be paid and ordered his release. "We had witnessed persons being kicked off lunch counter stools... ejected from churches... and thrown into jail... But for the first time, we witnessed being kicked out of jail."

After nearly a year of intense activism with few tangible results, the movement began to deteriorate. King requested a halt to all demonstrations and a "Day of Penance" to promote non-violence and maintain the moral high ground. Divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts. However, it was credited as a key lesson in tactics for the national civil rights movement.

Birmingham campaign

The Birmingham campaign was a strategic effort by the SCLC to promote civil rights for African Americans. Many of its tactics of "Project C" were developed by Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, Executive Director of SCLC from 1960–64. Based on actions in Birmingham, Alabama, its goal was to end the city's segregated civil and discriminatory economic policies. The campaign lasted for more than two months in the spring of 1963. To provoke the police into filling the city's jails to overflowing, King and black citizens of Birmingham employed nonviolent tactics to flout laws they considered unfair. King summarized the philosophy of the Birmingham campaign when he said, "The purpose of ... direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation".

Protests in Birmingham began with a boycott to pressure businesses to offer sales jobs and other employment to people of all races, as well as to end segregated facilities in the stores. When business leaders resisted the boycott, King and the SCLC began what they termed Project C, a series of sit-ins and marches intended to provoke arrest. After the campaign ran low on adult volunteers, SCLC's strategist, James Bevel, initiated the action and recruited the children for what became known as the "Children's Crusade". During the protests, the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene "Bull" Connor, used high-pressure water jets and police dogs to control protesters, including children. Not all of the demonstrators were peaceful, despite the avowed intentions of the SCLC. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police, who responded with force. King and the SCLC were criticized for putting children in harm's way. By the end of the campaign, King's reputation improved immensely, Connor lost his job, the "Jim Crow" signs in Birmingham came down, and public places became more open to blacks.

St. Augustine, Florida, and Selma, Alabama

King and SCLC were also driving forces behind the protest in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964. The movement engaged in nightly marches in the city met by white segregationists who violently assaulted them. Hundreds of the marchers were arrested and jailed.

King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, in December 1964, where SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months. A sweeping injunction issued by a local judge barred any gathering of 3 or more people under sponsorship of SNCC, SCLC, or DCVL, or with the involvement of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965.

March on Washington, 1963

King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were: Roy Wilkins from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Whitney Young, National Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James L. Farmer, Jr. of the Congress of Racial Equality. The primary logistical and strategic organizer was King's colleague Bayard Rustin. For King, this role was another which courted controversy, since he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march. Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation, but the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.

The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the southern United States and a very public opportunity to place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation's capital. Organizers intended to denounce and then challenge the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks, generally, in the South. However, the group acquiesced to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took on a far less strident tone. As a result, some civil rights activists felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the "Farce on Washington," and the Nation of Islam forbade its members from attending the march.

The march did, however, make specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public schools; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for Washington, D.C., then governed by congressional committee. Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success. More than a quarter million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington's history. King's "I Have a Dream" speech electrified the crowd. It is regarded, along with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Infamy Speech, as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.

The March, and especially King's speech, helped put civil rights at the very top of the liberal political agenda in the United States and facilitated passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Stance on compensation

Martin Luther King Jr. expressed a view that black Americans, as well as other disadvantaged Americans, should be compensated for historical wrongs. In an interview conducted for ''Playboy'' in 1965, he said that granting black Americans only equality could not realistically close the economic gap between them and whites. King said that he did not seek a full restitution of wages lost to slavery, which he believed impossible, but proposed a government compensatory program of $50 billion over ten years to all disadvantaged groups. He posited that "the money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils". He presented this idea as an application of the common law regarding settlement of unpaid labor, but clarified that he felt that the money should not be spent exclusively on blacks. He stated, "It should benefit the disadvantaged of ''all'' races".

"Bloody Sunday", 1965

King, James Bevel, and the SCLC, in partial collaboration with SNCC, attempted to organize a march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, for March 7, 1965. The first attempt to march on March 7 was aborted because of mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day has since become known as Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the Civil Rights Movement, the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King's nonviolence strategy. King, however, was not present. King met with officials in the Johnson administration on March 5 in order to request an injunction against any prosecution of the demonstrators. He did not attend the march due to church duties, but he later wrote, "If I had any idea that the state troopers would use the kind of brutality they did, I would have felt compelled to give up my church duties altogether to lead the line." Footage of police brutality against the protesters was broadcast extensively and aroused national public outrage.

King next attempted to organize a march for March 9. The SCLC petitioned for an injunction in federal court against the State of Alabama; this was denied and the judge issued an order blocking the march until after a hearing. Nonetheless, King led marchers on March 9 to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, then held a short prayer session before turning the marchers around and asking them to disperse so as not to violate the court order. The unexpected ending of this second march aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement. The march finally went ahead fully on March 25, 1965. At the conclusion of the march and on the steps of the state capitol, King delivered a speech that has become known as "How Long, Not Long".

Chicago, 1966

In 1966, after several successes in the South, King and others in the civil rights organizations tried to spread the movement to the North, with Chicago as its first destination. King and Ralph Abernathy, both from the middle class, moved into a building at 1550 S. Hamlin Ave., in the slums of North Lawndale on the West Side of Chicago, as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor.

The SCLC formed a coalition with CCCO, Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, an organization founded by Albert Raby, and the combined organizations' efforts were fostered under the aegis of The Chicago Freedom Movement. During that spring, several dual white couple/black couple tests on real estate offices uncovered the practice (now banned in the U.S.) of racial steering. These tests revealed the racially selective processing of housing requests by couples who were exact matches in income, background, number of children, and other attributes, with the only difference being their race.

The needs of the movement for radical change grew, and several larger marches were planned and executed, including those in the following neighborhoods: Bogan, Belmont Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park (a suburb southwest of Chicago), Gage Park and Marquette Park among others.

In Chicago, Abernathy later wrote that they received a worse reception than they had in the South. Their marches, especially the one through Marquette Park on August 5, 1966, were met by thrown bottles and screaming throngs, and they were truly afraid of starting a riot. King's beliefs militated against his staging a violent event, and he negotiated an agreement with Mayor Richard J. Daley to cancel a march in order to avoid the violence that he feared would result from the demonstration. King, who received death threats throughout his involvement in the civil rights movement, was hit by a brick during one march but continued to lead marches in the face of personal danger.

When King and his allies returned to the south, they left Jesse Jackson, a seminary student who had previously joined the movement in the South, in charge of their organization. Jackson continued their struggle for civil rights by organizing the Operation Breadbasket movement that targeted chain stores that did not deal fairly with blacks.

Opposition to the Vietnam War

Starting in 1965, King began to express doubts about the United States' role in the Vietnam War. In an April 4, 1967 appearance at the New York City Riverside Church—exactly one year before his death—King delivered a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam". He spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, insisting that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today". He also argued that the country needed larger and broader moral changes:

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King also was opposed to the Vietnam War on the grounds that the war took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare services like the War on Poverty. The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti-poverty programs at the same time. He summed up this aspect by saying, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death".

King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, union leaders and powerful publishers. "The press is being stacked against me," King complained. ''Life'' magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi", and ''The Washington Post'' declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

King stated that North Vietnam "did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of thousands". King also criticized the United States' resistance to North Vietnam's land reforms. He accused the United States of having killed a million Vietnamese, "mostly children."

The speech was a reflection of King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, which paralleled the teachings of the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center, with whom King was affiliated. King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the nation. Towards the time of his murder, King more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct racial and economic injustice. Though his public language was guarded, so as to avoid being linked to communism by his political enemies, in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism. In one speech, he stated that "something is wrong with capitalism" and claimed, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism."

King had read Marx while at Morehouse, but while he rejected "traditional capitalism," he also rejected Communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism," and its "political totalitarianism."

King also stated, in his "Beyond Vietnam", speech that "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar ... it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring". King quoted a United States official who said that, from Vietnam to Latin America, the country was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." King condemned America's "alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America," and said that the United States should support "the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World rather than suppressing their attempts at revolution.

King spoke at an Anti-Vietnam demonstration where he also brought up issues of civil rights and the draft.

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In 1967, King gave another speech, in which he lashed out against what he called the "cruel irony" of American blacks fighting and dying for a country which treated them as second class citizens:

On January 13, 1968, the day after President Johnson's State of the Union Address, King called for a large march on Washington against "one of history's most cruel and senseless wars".

Poor People's Campaign, 1968

In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C., demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States. King traveled the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would march on Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created a bill of rights for poor Americans.

However, the campaign was not unanimously supported by other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Rustin resigned from the march stating that the goals of the campaign were too broad, the demands unrealizable, and thought these campaigns would accelerate the backlash and repression on the poor and the black. Throughout his participation in the civil rights movement, King was criticized by many groups. This included opposition by more militant blacks and such prominent critics as Nation of Islam member Malcolm X. Stokely Carmichael was a separatist and disagreed with King's plea for racial integration because he considered it an insult to a uniquely African-American culture. Omali Yeshitela urged Africans to remember the history of violent European colonization and how power was not secured by Europeans through integration, but by violence and force.

King and the SCLC called on the government to invest in rebuilding America's cities. He felt that Congress had shown "hostility to the poor" by spending "military funds with alacrity and generosity". He contrasted this with the situation faced by poor Americans, claiming that Congress had merely provided "poverty funds with miserliness". His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than mere reform: he cited systematic flaws of "racism, poverty, militarism and materialism", and argued that "reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced".

Assassination and its aftermath

On March 29, 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of the black sanitary public works employees, represented by AFSCME Local 1733, who had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment. In one incident, black street repairmen received pay for two hours when they were sent home because of bad weather, but white employees were paid for the full day.

On April 3, King addressed a rally and delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" address at Mason Temple, the world headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. King's flight to Memphis had been delayed by a bomb threat against his plane. In the close of the last speech of his career, in reference to the bomb threat, King said the following:

King was booked in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel, owned by Walter Bailey, in Memphis. The Reverend Ralph Abernathy, King's close friend and colleague who was present at the assassination, testified under oath to the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations that King and his entourage stayed at room 306 at the Lorraine Motel so often it was known as the "King-Abernathy suite."

According to Jesse Jackson, who was present, King's last words on the balcony prior to his assassination were spoken to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was attending: "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."

Then, at 6:01 p.m., April 4, 1968, a shot rang out as King stood on the motel's second floor balcony. The bullet entered through his right cheek, smashing his jaw, then traveled down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder. Abernathy heard the shot from inside the motel room and ran to the balcony to find King on the floor. The events following the shooting have been disputed, as some people have accused Jackson of exaggerating his response.

After emergency chest surgery, King was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 p.m. According to biographer Taylor Branch, King's autopsy revealed that though only thirty-nine years old, he had the heart of a sixty-year-old man, perhaps a result of the stress of thirteen years in the civil rights movement.

The assassination led to a nationwide wave of race riots in Washington D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, Louisville, Kentucky, Kansas City, and dozens of other cities. Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was on his way to Indianapolis for a campaign rally when he was informed of King's death. He gave a short speech to the gathering of supporters informing them of the tragedy and urging them to continue King's ideal of non-violence. James Farmer, Jr. and other civil rights leaders also called for non-violent action, while the more militant Stokely Carmichael called for a more forceful response. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey attended King's funeral on behalf of the President, as there were fears that Johnson's presence might incite protests and perhaps violence.

At his widow's request, King's last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church was played at the funeral, a recording of his "Drum Major" sermon, given on February 4, 1968. In that sermon, King made a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to "feed the hungry", "clothe the naked", "be right on the [Vietnam] war question", and "love and serve humanity". His good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", at the funeral.

The city of Memphis quickly settled the strike on terms favorable to the sanitation workers.

Two months after King's death, escaped convict James Earl Ray was captured at London Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the United Kingdom on a false Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd on his way to white-ruled Rhodesia. Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and charged with King's murder. He confessed to the assassination on March 10, 1969, though he recanted this confession three days later. On the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman, Ray pleaded guilty to avoid a trial conviction and thus the possibility of receiving the death penalty. Ray was sentenced to a 99-year prison term. Ray fired Foreman as his attorney, from then on derisively calling him "Percy Fourflusher". He claimed a man he met in Montreal, Quebec, with the alias "Raoul" was involved and that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy. He spent the remainder of his life attempting, unsuccessfully, to withdraw his guilty plea and secure the trial he never had. On June 10, 1977, shortly after Ray had testified to the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he did not shoot King, he and six other convicts escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee. They were recaptured on June 13 and returned to prison.

Allegations of conspiracy

Ray's lawyers maintained he was a scapegoat similar to the way that John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is seen by conspiracy theorists. One of the claims used to support this assertion is that Ray's confession was given under pressure, and he had been threatened with the death penalty. Ray was a thief and burglar, but he had no record of committing violent crimes with a weapon.

Those suspecting a conspiracy in the assassination point to the two successive ballistics tests which while proving that a rifle similar to Ray's Remington Gamemaster had been the murder weapon, did not prove that his specific rifle had been the one used. Moreover, witnesses surrounding King at the moment of his death say the shot came from another location, from behind thick shrubbery near the rooming house—which had been inexplicably cut away in the days following the assassination—and not from the rooming house window.

In 1997, King's son Dexter Scott King met with Ray, and publicly supported Ray's efforts to obtain a new trial. Two years later, Coretta Scott King, King's widow, along with the rest of King's family, won a wrongful death claim against Loyd Jowers and "other unknown co-conspirators". Jowers claimed to have received $100,000 to arrange King's assassination. The jury of six whites and six blacks found Jowers guilty and that government agencies were party to the assassination. William F. Pepper represented the King family in the trial. King biographer David Garrow disagrees with William F. Pepper's claims that the government killed King. He is supported by author Gerald Posner who has researched and written about the assassination.

In 2000, the United States Department of Justice completed the investigation about Jowers' claims but did not find evidence to support allegations about conspiracy. The investigation report recommended no further investigation unless some new reliable facts are presented. In 2002, ''The New York Times'' reported a church minister, Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson, claimed his father, Henry Clay Wilson—not James Earl Ray—assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr. He stated, "It wasn't a racist thing; he thought Martin Luther King was connected with communism, and he wanted to get him out of the way." Wilson provided no evidence to back up his claims.

King's friend and colleague, James Bevel, disputed the argument that Ray acted alone, stating, "There is no way a ten-cent white boy could develop a plan to kill a million-dollar black man." In 2004, Jesse Jackson, who was with King at the time of his death, noted:

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Personality and public image

FBI surveillance and wiretapping

J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for years had been suspicious about potential influence of communists in social movements such as labor unions and civil rights. Hoover directed the FBI to track King in 1957, and the SCLC as it was established (it did not have a full-time executive director until 1960); its investigations were largely superficial until 1962, when it learned that one of King's most trusted advisers was New York City lawyer Stanley Levison. The FBI found Levison had been involved with the Communist Party USA. The FBI feared Levison was working as an "agent of influence" over King, in spite of its own reports in 1963 that Levison had left the Party and was no longer associated in business dealings with them. Another King lieutenant, Hunter Pitts O'Dell, was also linked to the Communist Party by sworn testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). However, by 1976 the FBI had acknowledged that it had not obtained any evidence that King himself or the SCLC were actually involved with any communist organizations.

The Bureau received authorization to proceed with wiretapping from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in the fall of 1963 and informed President John F. Kennedy, both of whom unsuccessfully tried to persuade King to dissociate himself from Levison. Although Robert Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so", Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy. The Bureau placed wiretaps on Levison's and King's home and office phones, and bugged King's rooms in hotels as he traveled across the country.

For his part, King adamantly denied having any connections to Communism, stating in a 1965 ''Playboy'' interview that "there are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida", and claiming that Hoover was "following the path of appeasement of political powers in the South" and that his concern for communist infiltration of the civil rights movement was meant to "aid and abet the salacious claims of southern racists and the extreme right-wing elements". Hoover did not believe his pledge of innocence and replied by saying that King was "the most notorious liar in the country." After King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, the FBI described King as "the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country". They alleged that King was "knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking guidance from communists".

The attempt to prove that King was a Communist was related to the feeling of many segregationists that blacks in the South were happy with their lot but had been stirred up by "communists" and "outside agitators". However, the civil rights movement arose from activism within the black community dating back to before World War I. King said that "the Negro revolution is a genuine revolution, born from the same womb that produces all massive social upheavals—the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations."

Allegations of adultery

Having concluded that King was dangerous due to communist infiltration, the FBI shifted to attempting to discredit King through revelations regarding his private life. FBI surveillance of King, some of it since made public, attempted to demonstrate that he also engaged in numerous extramarital affairs. Lyndon Johnson once said that King was a "hypocritical preacher". Ralph Abernathy, a close associate of King's, stated in his 1989 autobiography ''And the Walls Came Tumbling Down'' that King had a "weakness for women". In a later interview, Abernathy said he only wrote the term "womanizing", did not specifically say King had extramarital sex and that the infidelities King had were emotional rather than sexual. King's biographer David Garrow wrote about a number of extramarital affairs, including one woman King saw almost daily. According to Garrow, "that relationship, rather than his marriage, increasingly became the emotional centerpiece of King's life, but it did not eliminate the incidental couplings...of King's travels." King explained his extramarital affairs as "a form of anxiety reduction." Garrow noted that King's promiscuity was the cause of "painful and overwhelming guilt".

The FBI distributed reports regarding such affairs to the executive branch, friendly reporters, potential coalition partners and funding sources of the SCLC, and King's family. The Bureau also sent anonymous letters to King threatening to reveal information if he did not cease his civil rights work. One anonymous letter sent to King just before he received the Nobel Peace Prize read, in part, "The American public, the church organizations that have been helping—Protestants, Catholics and Jews will know you for what you are—an evil beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significant [sic]). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation." King interpreted this as encouragement for him to commit suicide, although William Sullivan, head of the Domestic Intelligence Division at the time, argued that it may have only been intended to "convince Dr. King to resign from the SCLC." King refused to give in to the FBI's threats. Judge John Lewis Smith, Jr. in 1977 ordered that all known copies of the recorded audiotapes and written transcripts resulting from the FBI's electronic surveillance of King between 1963 and 1968 to be held in the National Archives and sealed from public access until 2027.

Across from the Lorraine Motel, next to the boarding house in which James Earl Ray was staying, was a fire station. Police officers were stationed in the fire station to keep King under surveillance. Using papered-over windows with peepholes cut into them, the agents were watching the scene while Martin Luther King was shot. Immediately following the shooting, officers rushed out of the station to the motel, and Marrell McCollough, an undercover police officer, was the first person to administer first aid to King. The antagonism between King and the FBI, the lack of an all points bulletin to find the killer, and the police presence nearby have led to speculation that the FBI was involved in the assassination.

Legacy

King's main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States, which has enabled more Americans to reach their potential. He is frequently referenced as a human rights icon today. His name and legacy have often been invoked since his death as people have debated his likely position on various modern political issues.

On the international scene, King's legacy included influences on the Black Consciousness Movement and Civil Rights Movement in South Africa. King's work was cited by and served as an inspiration for South African leader Albert Lutuli, another black Nobel Peace prize winner who fought for racial justice in his country. The day following King's assassination, school teacher Jane Elliott conducted her first "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise with her class of elementary school students in Riceville, Iowa. Her purpose was to help them understand King's death as it related to racism, something they little understood from having lived in a predominately white community.

King's wife, Coretta Scott King, followed her husband's footsteps and was active in matters of social justice and civil rights until her death in 2006. The same year that Martin Luther King was assassinated, she established the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia, dedicated to preserving his legacy and the work of championing nonviolent conflict resolution and tolerance worldwide. Their son, Dexter King, currently serves as the center's chairman. Daughter Yolanda King, who died in 2007, was a motivational speaker, author and founder of Higher Ground Productions, an organization specializing in diversity training.

There are opposing views, even within the King family, of the slain civil rights leader's religious and political views about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. King's widow Coretta said publicly that she believed her husband would have supported gay rights. However, his daughter Bernice believed he would have been opposed to gay marriage. The King Center includes discrimination, and lists homophobia as one of its examples, in its list of "The Triple Evils" that should be opposed.

In 1980, the Department of Interior designated King's boyhood home in Atlanta and several nearby buildings the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. In 1996, United States Congress authorized the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity to establish a foundation to manage fund raising and design of a national Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C. King was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, established by and for African Americans. King was the first African American honored with his own memorial in the National Mall area and the first non-President to be commemorated in such a way. The King Memorial will be administered by the National Park Service.

King's life and assassination inspired many artistic works. A 1976 Broadway production, ''I Have a Dream'', was directed by Robert Greenwald and starred Billy Dee Williams as King. In spring of 2006, a stage play ''Passages of Martin Luther King'' about King was produced in Beijing, China with King portrayed by Chinese actor, Cao Li. The play was written by Stanford University professor, Clayborne Carson.

King spoke earlier about what people should remember him for if they are around for his funeral. He said rather than his awards and where he went to school, people should talk about how he fought peacefully for justice:

The King Center

"Martin Luther King Jr. Collection", Morehouse College, RWWL

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project

Martin Luther King Jr., "A New Sense of Direction (1968)"

"Martin Luther King Jr.", ''The Seattle Times''

1956 Comic Book: ''Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story''

Kirk, John A., "Martin Luther King, Jr.", ''New Georgia Encyclopedia''

"Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle", online encyclopedia, chronology and document library, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University.

"Martin Luther King, Jr.", ''Encyclopedia of Alabama''

;Images

"Martin Luther King Jr.: Peacemaker", slideshow by ''Life'' magazine

The Life and Death of Martin Luther King, slideshow by ''The First Post''

Photo Essay: "The Last Days of Martin Luther King, Jr.", ''Time''

;Speeches and interviews

Audio from April 1961 King, "The Church on the Frontier of Racial Tensions", speech at Southern Seminary

"Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929–1968", one hour documentary report by ''Democracy Now!''

"Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic Speeches and Interviews"

The New Negro, King interviewed by J. Waites Waring

"Interview with Dr. Kenneth Clark", PBS

"Beyond Vietnam" speech text and audio

King Institute Encyclopedia multimedia

Why I Am Oppposed to the War in Vietnam, sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967 (audio of speech with video 23:31)

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Name	Martin Luther
Birth date	November 10, 1483
Birth place	Eisleben, Saxony, Holy Roman Empire
Death date	February 18, 1546
Death place	Eisleben, Saxony, Holy Roman Empire
Titles	Monk, Priest, Theologian
Spouse	Katharina von Bora
Parents	Hans and Margarethe Luther (née Lindemann)
Children	Hans (Johannes), Elisabeth, Magdalena, Martin, Paul, Margarethe
notableworks	The Ninety-Five Theses, Luther's Large Catechism, Luther's Small Catechism, On the Freedom of a Christian
influences	Paul the Apostle, Augustine of Hippo
influenced	Philipp Melanchthon, Lutheranism
Signature	Martin Luther Signature.svg }}

Martin Luther (10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his ''Ninety-Five Theses'' in 1517. His refusal to retract all of his writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the Emperor.

Luther taught that salvation is not earned by good deeds but received only as a free gift of God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer from sin. His theology challenged the authority of the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church by teaching that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge and opposed sacerdotalism by considering all baptized Christians to be a holy priesthood. Those who identify with Luther's teachings are called Lutherans.

His translation of the Bible into the language of the people (instead of Latin) made it more accessible, causing a tremendous impact on the church and on German culture. It fostered the development of a standard version of the German language, added several principles to the art of translation, and influenced the translation into English of the King James Bible. His hymns influenced the development of singing in churches. His marriage to Katharina von Bora set a model for the practice of clerical marriage, allowing Protestant priests to marry.

In his later years, while suffering from several illnesses and deteriorating health, Luther became increasingly antisemitic, writing that Jewish homes should be destroyed, their synagogues burned, money confiscated and liberty curtailed. These statements have contributed to his controversial status.

Early life

Birth and education

Martin Luther was born to ''Hans Luder'' (or Ludher, later Luther) and his wife Margarethe (née Lindemann) on 10 November 1483 in Eisleben, Germany, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. He was baptized as a Catholic the next morning on the feast day of St. Martin of Tours. His family moved to Mansfeld in 1484, where his father was a leaseholder of copper mines and smelters and served as one of four citizen representatives on the local council. The religious scholar Martin Marty describes Luther's mother as a hard-working woman of "trading-class stock and middling means" and notes that Luther's enemies would later wrongly describe her as a whore and bath attendant. He had several brothers and sisters, and is known to have been close to one of them, Jacob. Hans Luther was ambitious for himself and his family, and he was determined to see Martin, his eldest son, become a lawyer. He sent Martin to Latin schools in Mansfeld, then Magdeburg in 1497, where he attended a school operated by a lay group called the Brethren of the Common Life, and Eisenach in 1498. The three schools focused on the so-called "''trivium''": grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Luther later compared his education there to purgatory and hell.

In 1501, at the age of nineteen, he entered the University of Erfurt – which he later described as a beerhouse and whorehouse. The schedule called for waking at four every morning for what has been described as "a day of rote learning and often wearying spiritual exercises." He received his master's degree in 1505.

In accordance with his father's wishes, Luther enrolled in law school at the same university that year but dropped out almost immediately, believing that law represented uncertainty. Luther sought assurances about life and was drawn to theology and philosophy, expressing particular interest in Aristotle, William of Ockham, and Gabriel Biel. He was deeply influenced by two tutors, Bartholomaeus Arnoldi von Usingen and Jodocus Trutfetter, who taught him to be suspicious of even the greatest thinkers and to test everything himself by experience. Philosophy proved to be unsatisfying, offering assurance about the use of reason but none about loving God, which to Luther was more important. Reason could not lead men to God, he felt, and he thereafter developed a love-hate relationship with Aristotle over the latter's emphasis on reason. For Luther, reason could be used to question men and institutions, but not God. Human beings could learn about God only through divine revelation, he believed, and Scripture therefore became increasingly important to him.

He later attributed his decision to an event: on 2 July 1505, he was on horseback during a thunderstorm and a lightning bolt struck near him as he was returning to university after a trip home. Later telling his father he was terrified of death and divine judgment, he cried out, "Help! Saint Anna, I will become a monk!" He came to view his cry for help as a vow he could never break. He left law school, sold his books, and entered a closed Augustinian friary in Erfurt on 17 July 1505. One friend blamed the decision on Luther's sadness over the deaths of two friends. Luther himself seemed saddened by the move. Those who attended a farewell supper walked him to the door of the Black Cloister. "This day you see me, and then, not ever again," he said. His father was furious over what he saw as a waste of Luther's education.

Monastic and academic life

Luther dedicated himself to monastic life, devoting himself to fasting, long hours in prayer, pilgrimage, and frequent confession. He would later remark, "If anyone could have gained heaven as a monk, then I would indeed have been among them." Luther described this period of his life as one of deep spiritual despair. He said, "I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailor and hangman of my poor soul."

Johann von Staupitz, his superior, concluded that Luther needed more work to distract him from excessive introspection and ordered him to pursue an academic career. In 1507, he was ordained to the priesthood, and in 1508 began teaching theology at the University of Wittenberg. He received a Bachelor's degree in Biblical studies on 9 March 1508, and another Bachelor's degree in the ''Sentences'' by Peter Lombard in 1509. On 19 October 1512, he was awarded his Doctor of Theology and, on 21 October 1512, was received into the senate of the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg, having been called to the position of ''Doctor in Bible''. He spent the rest of his career in this position at the University of Wittenberg.

The start of the Reformation

In 1516, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar and papal commissioner for indulgences, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Roman Catholic theology stated that faith alone, whether fiduciary or dogmatic, cannot justify man; justification rather depends only on such faith as is active in charity and good works (''fides caritate formata'') can justify man. The benefits of good works could be obtained by donating money to the church.

On 31 October 1517, Luther wrote to his bishop, Albert of Mainz, protesting the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences," which came to be known as ''The Ninety-Five Theses''. Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church, but saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is accordingly "searching, rather than doctrinaire." Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"

Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel that "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory [also attested as 'into heaven'] springs."

He insisted that, since forgiveness was God's alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.

However, this oft-quoted saying of Tetzel was by no means representative of the ''official'' Catholic teaching on indulgences, but rather, more a reflection of his capacity to exaggerate. Yet if Tetzel overstated the matter in regard to indulgences for the ''dead'', his teaching on indulgences for the ''living'' was pure.

According to scholars Walter Krämer, Götz Trenkler, Gerhard Ritter and Gerhard Prause, the story of the posting on the door, even though it has settled as one of the pillars of history, has little foundation in truth. The story is based on comments made by Philipp Melanchthon, though it is thought that he was not in Wittenberg at the time.

It was not until January 1518 that friends of Luther translated the ''95 Theses'' from Latin into German, printed, and widely copied, making the controversy one of the first in history to be aided by the printing press. Within two weeks, copies of the theses had spread throughout Germany; within two months throughout Europe.

Luther's writings circulated widely, reaching France, England, and Italy as early as 1519. Students thronged to Wittenberg to hear Luther speak. He published a short commentary on Galatians and his ''Work on the Psalms''. This early part of Luther's career was one of his most creative and productive. Three of his best-known works were published in 1520: ''To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation'', ''On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church'', and ''On the Freedom of a Christian''.

Justification by faith

From 1510 to 1520, Luther lectured on the Psalms, the books of Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians. As he studied these portions of the Bible, he came to view the use of terms such as penance and righteousness by the Catholic Church in new ways. He became convinced that the church was corrupt in its ways and had lost sight of what he saw as several of the central truths of Christianity. The most important for Luther was the doctrine of justification – God's act of declaring a sinner righteous – by faith alone through God's grace. He began to teach that salvation or redemption is a gift of God's grace, attainable only through faith in Jesus as the Messiah. "This one and firm rock, which we call the doctrine of justification," he wrote, "is the chief article of the whole Christian doctrine, which comprehends the understanding of all godliness."

Luther came to understand justification as entirely the work of God. This teaching by Luther was clearly expressed in his 1525 publication ''On the Bondage of the Will'', which was written in response to ''On Free Will'' by Desiderius Erasmus (1524). Luther based his position on Predestination on St. Paul's epistle to the . Against the teaching of his day that the righteous acts of believers are performed in ''cooperation'' with God, Luther wrote that Christians receive such righteousness entirely from outside themselves; that righteousness not only comes from Christ but actually ''is'' the righteousness of Christ, imputed to Christians (rather than infused into them) through faith. "That is why faith alone makes someone just and fulfills the law," he wrote. "Faith is that which brings the Holy Spirit through the merits of Christ." Faith, for Luther, was a gift from God; the experience of being justified by faith was "as though I had been born again." His entry into Paradise, no less, was a discovery about "the righteousness of God" – a discovery that "the just person" of whom the Bible speaks (as in Romans 1:17) lives by faith. He explained his concept of "justification" in the Smalcald Articles:

The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised again for our justification (Romans 3:24–25). He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), and God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). All have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood (Romans 3:23–25). This is necessary to believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law or merit. Therefore, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us ... Nothing of this article can be yielded or surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls (Mark 13:31).

Breach with the papacy

Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz and Magdeburg did not reply to Luther's letter containing the 95 Theses. He had the theses checked for heresy and in December 1517 forwarded them to Rome. He needed the revenue from the indulgences to pay off a papal dispensation for his tenure of more than one bishopric. As Luther later noted, "the pope had a finger in the pie as well, because one half was to go to the building of St Peter's Church in Rome".

Pope Leo X was used to reformers and heretics, and he responded slowly, "with great care as is proper." Over the next three years he deployed a series of papal theologians and envoys against Luther, which only served to harden the reformer's anti-papal theology. First, the Dominican theologian Sylvester Mazzolini drafted a heresy case against Luther, whom Leo then summoned to Rome. The Elector Frederick persuaded the pope to have Luther examined at Augsburg, where the Imperial Diet was held. There, in October 1518, Luther informed the papal legate Cardinal Cajetan that he did not consider the papacy part of the biblical Church, and the hearings degenerated into a shouting match. More than his writing the 95 Theses, Luther's confrontation of the church cast him as an enemy of the pope. Cajetan's original instructions had been to arrest Luther if he failed to recant, but he lacked the means in Augsburg, where the Elector guaranteed Luther's security. Luther slipped out of the city at night, without leave from Cajetan. In January 1519, at Altenburg in Saxony, the papal ''nuncio'' Karl von Miltitz adopted a more conciliatory approach. Luther made certain concessions to the Saxon, who was a relative of the Elector, and promised to remain silent if his opponents did. The theologian Johann Maier von Eck, however, was determined to expose Luther's doctrine in a public forum. In June and July 1519, he staged a disputation with Luther's colleague Andreas Karlstadt at Leipzig and invited Luther to speak. Luther's boldest assertion in the debate was that Matthew 16:18 does not confer on popes the exclusive right to interpret scripture, and that therefore neither popes nor church councils were infallible. For this, Eck branded Luther a new Jan Hus, referring to the Czech reformer and heretic burned at the stake in 1415. From that moment, he devoted himself to Luther's defeat.

Excommunication

On 15 June 1520, the Pope warned Luther with the papal bull (edict) ''Exsurge Domine'' that he risked excommunication unless he recanted 41 sentences drawn from his writings, including the 95 Theses, within 60 days. That autumn, Johann Eck proclaimed the bull in Meissen and other towns. Karl von Miltitz, a papal nuncio, attempted to broker a solution, but Luther, who had sent the Pope a copy of ''On the Freedom of a Christian'' in October, publicly set fire to the bull and decretals at Wittenberg on 10 December 1520, an act he defended in ''Why the Pope and his Recent Book are Burned'' and ''Assertions Concerning All Articles''. As a consequence, Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X on 3 January 1521, in the bull ''Decet Romanum Pontificem''.

Diet of Worms

The enforcement of the ban on the 95 Theses fell to the secular authorities. On 18 April 1521, Luther appeared as ordered before the Diet of Worms. This was a general assembly of the estates of the Holy Roman Empire that took place in Worms, a town on the Rhine. It was conducted from 28 January to 25 May 1521, with Emperor Charles V presiding. Prince Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, obtained a safe conduct for Luther to and from the meeting.

Johann Eck, speaking on behalf of the Empire as assistant of the Archbishop of Trier, presented Luther with copies of his writings laid out on a table and asked him if the books were his, and whether he stood by their contents. Luther confirmed he was their author, but requested time to think about the answer to the second question. He prayed, consulted friends, and gave his response the next day:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.

Luther is sometimes also quoted as saying: "Here I stand. I can do no other". Recent scholars consider the evidence for these words to be unreliable, since they were inserted before "May God help me" only in later versions of the speech and not recorded in witness accounts of the proceedings.

Over the next five days, private conferences were held to determine Luther's fate. The Emperor presented the final draft of the Diet of Worms on 25 May 1521, declaring Luther an outlaw, banning his literature, and requiring his arrest: "We want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic." It also made it a crime for anyone in Germany to give Luther food or shelter. It permitted anyone to kill Luther without legal consequence.

At Wartburg Castle

Luther's disappearance during his return trip was planned. Frederick III, Elector of Saxony had him intercepted on his way home by masked horsemen and escorted to the security of the Wartburg Castle at Eisenach. During his stay at Wartburg, which he referred to as "my Patmos", Luther translated the New Testament from Greek into German and poured out doctrinal and polemical writings. These included a renewed attack on Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, whom he shamed into halting the sale of indulgences in his episcopates, and a "Refutation of the Argument of Latomus," in which he expounded the principle of justification to Jacobus Latomus, an orthodox theologian from Louvain.

In this work, one of his most emphatic statements on faith, he argued that every good work designed to attract God's favor is a sin. All humans are sinners by nature, he explained, and God's grace, which cannot be earned, alone can make them just. On 1 August 1521, Luther wrote to Melanchthon on the same theme: "Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides."

In the summer of 1521, Luther widened his target from individual pieties like indulgences and pilgrimages to doctrines at the heart of Church practices. In ''On the Abrogation of the Private Mass'', he condemned as idolatry the idea that the mass is a sacrifice, asserting instead that it is a gift, to be received with thanksgiving by the whole congregation. His essay ''On Confession, Whether the Pope has the Power to Require It'' rejected compulsory confession and encouraged private confession and absolution, since "every Christian is a confessor." In November, Luther wrote ''The Judgement of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows''. He assured monks and nuns that they could break their vows without sin, because vows were an illegitimate and vain attempt to win salvation.

Luther made his pronouncements from Wartburg in the context of rapid developments at Wittenberg, of which he was kept fully informed. Andreas Karlstadt, supported by the ex-Augustinian Gabriel Zwilling, embarked on a radical programme of reform there in June 1521, exceeding anything envisaged by Luther. The reforms provoked disturbances, including a revolt by the Augustinian monks against their prior, the smashing of statues and images in churches, and denunciations of the magistracy. After secretly visiting Wittenberg in early December 1521, Luther wrote ''A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection and Rebellion''. Wittenberg became even more volatile after Christmas when a band of visionary zealots, the so-called Zwickau prophets, arrived, preaching revolutionary doctrines such as the equality of man, adult baptism, and Christ's imminent return. When the town council asked Luther to return, he decided it was his duty to act.

Return to Wittenberg

Luther secretly returned to Wittenberg on 6 March 1522. "During my absence," he wrote to the Elector, "Satan has entered my sheepfold, and committed ravages which I cannot repair by writing, but only by my personal presence and living word." For eight days in Lent, beginning on ''Invocavit'' Sunday, 9 March, Luther preached eight sermons, which became known as the "Invocavit Sermons." In these sermons, he hammered home the primacy of core Christian values such as love, patience, charity, and freedom, and reminded the citizens to trust God's word rather than violence to bring about necessary change.

Do you know what the Devil thinks when he sees men use violence to propagate the gospel? He sits with folded arms behind the fire of hell, and says with malignant looks and frightful grin: "Ah, how wise these madmen are to play my game! Let them go on; I shall reap the benefit. I delight in it." But when he sees the Word running and contending alone on the battle-field, then he shudders and shakes for fear.

The effect of Luther's intervention was immediate. After the sixth sermon, the Wittenberg jurist Jerome Schurf wrote to the elector: "Oh, what joy has Dr. Martin’s return spread among us! His words, through divine mercy, are bringing back every day misguided people into the way of the truth."

Luther next set about reversing or modifying the new church practices. By working alongside the authorities to restore public order, he signalled his reinvention as a conservative force within the Reformation. After banishing the Zwickau prophets, he now faced a battle not only against the established Church but against radical reformers who threatened the new order by fomenting social unrest and violence.

Peasants' War

Despite his victory in Wittenberg, Luther was unable to stifle radicalism further afield. Preachers such as Zwickau prophet Nicholas Storch and Thomas Müntzer helped instigate the German Peasants' War of 1524–25, during which many atrocities were committed, often in Luther's name. There had been revolts by the peasantry on a smaller scale since the 15th century. Luther's pamphlets against the Church and the hierarchy, often worded with "liberal" phraseology, now led many peasants to believe he would support an attack on the upper classes in general. Revolts broke out in Franconia, Swabia, and Thuringia in 1524, even drawing support from disaffected nobles, many of whom were in debt. Gaining momentum under the leadership of radicals such as Müntzer in Thuringia and Michael Gaismair in Tyrol, the revolts turned into war.

Luther sympathised with some of the peasants' grievances, as he showed in his response to the Twelve Articles in May 1525, but he reminded the aggrieved to obey the temporal authorities. During a tour of Thuringia, he became enraged at the widespread burning of convents, monasteries, bishops’ palaces, and libraries. In ''Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants'', written on his return to Wittenberg, he explained the Gospel teaching on wealth, condemned the violence as the devil's work, and called for the nobles to put down the rebels like mad dogs:

Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel ... For baptism does not make men free in body and property, but in soul; and the gospel does not make goods common, except in the case of those who, of their own free will, do what the apostles and disciples did in Acts 4 [:32–37]. They did not demand, as do our insane peasants in their raging, that the goods of others—of Pilate and Herod—should be common, but only their own goods. Our peasants, however, want to make the goods of other men common, and keep their own for themselves. Fine Christians they are! I think there is not a devil left in hell; they have all gone into the peasants. Their raving has gone beyond all measure.

Luther justified his opposition to the rebels on three grounds. First, in choosing violence over lawful submission to the secular government, they were ignoring Christ's counsel to "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's"; St. Paul had written in his epistle to the that all authorities are appointed by God and therefore should not be resisted. This reference from the Bible forms the foundation for the doctrine known as the Divine Right of Kings, or, in the German case, the divine right of the princes. Second, the violent actions of rebelling, robbing, and plundering placed the peasants "outside the law of God and Empire," so they deserved "death in body and soul, if only as highwaymen and murderers." Lastly, Luther charged the rebels with blasphemy for calling themselves "Christian brethren" and committing their sinful acts under the banner of the Gospel.

Without Luther's backing for the uprising, many rebels laid down their weapons; others felt betrayed. Their defeat by the Swabian League at the Battle of Frankenhausen on 15 May 1525, followed by Müntzer’s execution, brought the revolutionary stage of the Reformation to a close. Thereafter, radicalism found a refuge in the anabaptist movement and other sects, while Luther's Reformation flourished under the wing of the secular powers.

Marriage

Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora, one of 12 nuns he had helped escape from the Nimbschen Cistercian convent in April 1523, when he arranged for them to be smuggled out in herring barrels. "Suddenly, and while I was occupied with far different thoughts," he wrote to Wenceslaus Link, "the Lord has plunged me into marriage." Katherina was 26 years old, Luther was 41 years old.

On 13 June 1525, the couple was engaged with Johannes Bugenhagen, Justus Jonas, Johannes Apel, Philipp Melanchthon and Lucas Cranach the Elder and his wife as witnesses. On the evening of the same day, the couple was married by Bugenhagen. The ceremonial walk to the church and the wedding banquet were left out, and were made up two weeks later on 27 June.

Some priests and former monks had already married, including Andreas Karlstadt and Justus Jonas, but Luther's wedding set the seal of approval on clerical marriage. He had long condemned vows of celibacy on Biblical grounds, but his decision to marry surprised many, not least Melanchthon, who called it reckless. Luther had written to George Spalatin on 30 November 1524, "I shall never take a wife, as I feel at present. Not that I am insensible to my flesh or sex (for I am neither wood nor stone); but my mind is averse to wedlock because I daily expect the death of a heretic." Before marrying, Luther had been living on the plainest food, and, as he admitted himself, his mildewed bed was not properly made for months at a time.

Luther and his wife moved into a former monastery, "The Black Cloister," a wedding present from the new elector John the Steadfast (1525–32). They embarked on what appeared to have been a happy and successful marriage, though money was often short. Between bearing six children, Hans – June 1526, Elizabeth – 10 December 1527 died within a few months, Magdalene – 1529 died in Luther's arms in 1542, Martin – 1531, Paul – January 1533, and Margaret – 1534, Katharina helped earn the couple a living by farming the land and taking in boarders. Luther confided to Michael Stiefel on 11 August 1526: "My Katie is in all things so obliging and pleasing to me that I would not exchange my poverty for the riches of Croesus."

Organising the church

By 1526, Luther found himself increasingly occupied in organising a new church. His Biblical ideal of congregations' choosing their own ministers had proved unworkable. According to Bainton: "Luther's dilemma was that he wanted both a confessional church based on personal faith and experience and a territorial church including all in a given locality. If he were forced to choose, he would take his stand with the masses, and this was the direction in which he moved." From 1525 to 1529, he established a supervisory church body, laid down a new form of worship service, and wrote a clear summary of the new faith in the form of two catechisms.

To avoid confusing or upsetting the people, Luther avoided extreme change. He also did not wish to replace one controlling system with another. He concentrated on the church in the Electorate of Saxony, acting only as an adviser to churches in new territories, many of which followed his Saxon model. He worked closely with the new elector, John the Steadfast, to whom he turned for secular leadership and funds on behalf of a church largely shorn of its assets and income after the break with Rome. For Luther's biographer Martin Brecht, this partnership "was the beginning of a questionable and originally unintended development towards a church government under the temporal sovereign". The elector authorised a visitation of the church, a power formerly exercised by bishops. At times, Luther's practical reforms fell short of his earlier radical pronouncements. For example, the ''Instructions for the Visitors of Parish Pastors in Electoral Saxony'' (1528), drafted by Melanchthon with Luther's approval, stressed the role of repentance in the forgiveness of sins, despite Luther's position that faith alone ensures justification. The Eisleben reformer Johannes Agricola challenged this compromise, and Luther condemned him for teaching that faith is separate from works. The ''Instruction'' is a problematic document for those seeking a consistent evolution in Luther's thought and practice.

In response to demands for a German liturgy, Luther wrote a ''German Mass'', which he published in early 1526. He did not intend it as a replacement for his 1523 adaptation of the Latin Mass but as an alternative for the "simple people", a "public stimulation for people to believe and become Christians." Luther based his order on the Catholic service but omitted "everything that smacks of sacrifice"; and the Mass became a celebration where everyone received the wine as well as the bread. He retained the elevation of the host and chalice, while trappings such as the Mass vestments, altar, and candles were made optional, allowing freedom of ceremony. Some reformers, including followers of Huldrych Zwingli, considered Luther's service too papistic; and modern scholars note the conservatism of his alternative to the Catholic mass. Luther's service, however, included congregational singing of hymns and psalms in German, as well as of parts of the liturgy, including Luther's unison setting of the Creed. To reach the simple people and the young, Luther incorporated religious instruction into the weekday services in the form of the catechism. He also provided simplified versions of the baptism and marriage services.

Luther and his colleagues introduced the new order of worship during their visitation of Electoral Saxony, which began in 1527. They also assessed the standard of pastoral care and Christian education in the territory. "Merciful God, what misery I have seen," Luther wrote, "the common people knowing nothing at all of Christian doctrine ... and unfortunately many pastors are well-nigh unskilled and incapable of teaching."

Catechisms

Luther devised the catechism as a method of imparting the basics of Christianity to the congregations. In 1529, he wrote the ''Large Catechism'', a manual for pastors and teachers, as well as a synopsis, the ''Small Catechism'', to be memorised by the people themselves. The catechisms provided easy-to-understand instructional and devotional material on the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, baptism, and the Lord's Supper. Luther incorporated questions and answers in the catechism so that the basics of Christian faith would not just be learned by rote, "the way monkeys do it", but understood.

The catechism is one of Luther's most personal works. "Regarding the plan to collect my writings in volumes," he wrote, "I am quite cool and not at all eager about it because, roused by a Saturnian hunger, I would rather see them all devoured. For I acknowledge none of them to be really a book of mine, except perhaps the ''Bondage of the Will'' and the Catechism." The ''Small Catechism'' has earned a reputation as a model of clear religious teaching. It remains in use today, along with Luther's hymns and his translation of the Bible.

Luther's ''Small Catechism'' proved especially effective in helping parents teach their children; likewise the ''Larger Catechism'' was effective for pastors. Using the German vernacular they expressed the Apostles' Creed in simpler, more personal, Trinitarian language. He rewrote each article of the Creed to express the character of the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. Luther's goal was to enable the catechumens to see themselves as a personal object of the work of the three persons of the Trinity, each of which works in the catechumen's life. That is, Luther depicted the Trinity not as a doctrine to be learned, but as persons to be known. The Father creates, the Son redeems, and the Spirit sanctifies, a divine unity with separate personalities. Salvation originates with the Father and draws the believer to the Father. Luther's treatment of the Apostles Creed must be understood in the context of the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) and the Lord's Prayer, which are also part of the Lutheran catechical teaching.

Translation of the Bible

Luther had published his German translation of the New Testament in 1522, and he and his collaborators completed the translation of the Old Testament in 1534, when the whole Bible was published. He continued to work on refining the translation until the end of his life. Others had translated the Bible into German, but Luther tailored his translation to his own doctrine. When he was criticised for inserting the word "alone" after "faith" in Romans 3:28, he replied in part: "[T]he text itself and the meaning of St. Paul urgently require and demand it. For in that very passage he is dealing with the main point of Christian doctrine, namely, that we are justified by faith in Christ without any works of the Law . . . But when works are so completely cut away – and that must mean that faith alone justifies – whoever would speak plainly and clearly about this cutting away of works will have to say, 'Faith alone justifies us, and not works'."

Luther's translation used the variant of German spoken at the Saxon chancellery, intelligible to both northern and southern Germans. He intended his vigorous, direct language to make the Bible accessible to everyday Germans, "for we are removing impediments and difficulties so that other people may read it without hindrance."

Published at a time of rising demand for German-language publications, Luther's version quickly became a popular and influential Bible translation. As such, it made a significant contribution to the evolution of the German language and literature. Furnished with notes and prefaces by Luther, and with woodcuts by Lucas Cranach that contained anti-papal imagery, it played a major role in the spread of Luther's doctrine throughout Germany. The Luther Bible influenced other vernacular translations, such as William Tyndale's English Bible (1525 forward), a precursor of the King James Bible.

Hymns

Luther was a prolific hymn writer, authoring hymns such as ''Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott'' (''A Mighty Fortress Is Our God''), based on Psalm 46. Luther connected high art and folk music, also all classes, clergy and laity, men, women and children. His device for this linking was the singing of German hymns in connection with worship, school, home, and the public arena.

Luther's 1524 creedal hymn ''Wir glauben all an einen Gott'' (''We All Believe in One True God'') is a three-stanza confession of faith prefiguring Luther's 1529 three-part explanation of the Apostles' Creed in the ''Small Catechism.'' Luther's hymn, adapted and expanded from an earlier German creedal hymn, gained widespread use in vernacular Lutheran liturgies as early as 1525. Sixteenth-century Lutheran hymnals also included ''Wir glauben all'' among the catechetical hymns, although 18th-century hymnals tended to label the hymn as Trinitarian rather than catechetical, and 20th-century Lutherans rarely use the hymn because of the perceived difficulty of its tune.

Luther's 1538 hymnic version of the Lord's Prayer, ''Vater unser im Himmelreich'', corresponds exactly to Luther's explanation of the prayer in the ''Small Catechism,'' with one stanza for each of the seven prayer petitions, plus opening and closing stanzas. The hymn functioned both as a liturgical setting of the Lord's Prayer and as a means of examining candidates on specific catechism questions. The extant manuscript shows multiple revisions, demonstrating Luther's concern to clarify and strengthen the text and to provide an appropriately prayerful tune. Other 16th- and 20th-century versifications of the Lord's Prayer have adopted Luther's tune, although modern texts are considerably shorter.

Luther wrote ''Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir'' (''From depths of woe I cry to you'') in 1523 as a hymnic version of Psalm 130 and sent it as a sample to encourage evangelical colleagues to write psalm-hymns for use in German worship. In a collaboration with Paul Speratus, this and seven more hymns were published in the first Lutheran hymnal, also called Achtliederbuch. In 1524 Luther developed his original four-stanza psalm paraphrase into a five-stanza Reformation hymn that developed the theme of "grace alone" more fully. Because it expressed essential Reformation doctrine, this expanded version of ''Aus tiefer Not'' was designated as a regular component of several regional Lutheran liturgies and was widely used at funerals, including Luther's own. Along with Erhart Hegenwalt's hymnic version of Psalm 51, Luther's expanded hymn was also adopted for use with the fifth part of Luther's catechism, concerning confession.

Luther's 1540 hymn ''Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam'' (''To Jordan came the Christ our Lord'') reflects the structure and substance of his questions and answers concerning baptism in the ''Small Catechism.'' Luther adopted a preexisting Johann Walter tune associated with a hymnic setting of Psalm 67's prayer for grace; Wolf Heintz's four-part setting of the hymn was used to introduce the Lutheran Reformation in Halle in 1541. Preachers and composers of the 18th century, including J. S. Bach, used this rich hymn as a subject for their own work, although its objective baptismal theology was displaced by more subjective hymns under the influence of late-19th-century Lutheran pietism.

Luther wrote ''Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein'' (''Oh God, look down from heaven''). He wrote ''Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland'' (''Now come, Savior of the gentiles'') based on ''Veni redemptor gentium''. It became the main hymn (Hauptlied) for Advent. He transformed ''A solus ortus cardine'' to ''Christum wir sollen loben schon'' (''We should now praise Christ'') and ''Veni creator spiritus'' to ''Komm, Gott Schöpfer, Heiliger Geist'' (''Come, Holy Spirit, Lord God''). He wrote two hymns on the Ten Commandments, ''Dies sind die heilgen Zehn Gebot'' and ''Mensch, willst du leben seliglich''. His ''Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ'' (''Praise be to You, Jesus Christ'') became the main hymn for Christmas. He wrote for Pentecost ''Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist'' and for Easter ''Christ ist erstanden'' (Christ is risen), based on ''Victimae paschali laudes''.

Luther's hymns inspired composers to write music. Johann Sebastian Bach included several verses as chorales in his cantatas and based chorale cantatas entirely on them, namely ''Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4'', as early as possibly 1707, in his second annual cycle (1724 to 1725) ''Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein, BWV 2'', ''Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, BWV 7'', ''Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 62'', ''Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ, BWV 91'', and ''Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, BWV 38'', later ''Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80'', and in 1735 ''Wär Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit, BWV 14''.

Sacramentarian controversy and the Marburg Colloquy

In October 1529, Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse convoked an assembly of German and Swiss theologians at the Marburg Colloquy, to establish doctrinal unity in the emerging Protestant states. Agreement was achieved on fourteen points out of fifteen, the exception being the nature of the Eucharist – the sacrament of the Lord's Supper—an issue crucial to Luther.

The theologians, including Zwingli, Melanchthon, Martin Bucer, and Johannes Oecolampadius, differed on the significance of the words spoken by Jesus at the Last Supper: "This is my body which is for you" and "This cup is the new covenant in my blood" (1 Corinthians 11:23–26). Luther insisted on the Real Presence of the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine, which he called the sacramental union, while his opponents believed God to be only spiritually or symbolically present. Zwingli, for example, denied Jesus's ability to be in more than one place at a time but Luther stressed the omnipresence of his human nature. According to transcripts, the debate sometimes became confrontational. Citing Jesus's words "The flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6.63), Zwingli said, "This passage breaks your neck". "Don't be too proud," Luther retorted, "German necks don't break that easily. This is Hesse, not Switzerland." On his table Luther wrote the words "''Hoc est corpus meum''" ("This is my body") in chalk, to continually indicate his firm stance.

Despite the disagreements on the Eucharist, the Marburg Colloquy paved the way for the signing in 1530 of the Augsburg Confession, and for the formation of the Schmalkaldic League the following year by leading Protestant nobles such as John of Saxony, Philip of Hesse, and George, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. The Swiss cities, however, did not sign these agreements.

On the soul after death

In contrast to the views of Calvin and Melanchthon, throughout his life Luther maintained that it was not false doctrine to believe that a Christian's soul sleeps after it is separated from the body in death; and, accordingly, he disputed traditional interpretations of some Bible passages, such as the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. This also led Luther to reject the idea of torments for the saints: "It is enough for us to know that souls do not leave their bodies to be threatened by the torments and punishments of hell, but enter a prepared bedchamber in which they sleep in peace." Luther also affirmed the continuity of one's personal identity beyond death. In his Smalcald Articles he described the saints as currently residing "in their graves and in heaven."

The Lutheran theologian Franz Pieper observed that Luther's apparent teaching of "soul sleep" (German ''Seelenschlaf'') differed from the later Lutheran theologians such as Johann Gerhard. Lessing (1755) had earlier reached the same conclusion in his analysis of Lutheran Orthodoxy on this issue.

Luther's ''Commentary on Genesis'' contains a passage which concludes "...the soul does not sleep (''anima non sic dormit''), but wakes (''sed vigilat'') and experiences visions". Francis Blackburne in 1765 argued that John Jortin misread this and other passages from Luther, while Gottfried Fritschel pointed out in 1867 that it actually refers to the soul of a man "in this life" (''homo enim in hac vita'') tired from his daily labour (''defatigus diurno labore'') who at night enters his bedchamber (''sub noctem intrat in cubiculum suum'') and whose sleep is interrupted by dreams.

Henry Eyster Jacobs' English translation from 1898 reads: :"Nevertheless, the sleep of this life and that of the future life differ; for in this life, man, fatigued by his daily labour, at nightfall goes to his couch, as in peace, to sleep there, and enjoys rest; nor does he know anything of evil, whether of fire or of murder."

On Islam

At the time of the Marburg Colloquy, Suleiman the Magnificent was besieging Vienna with a vast Ottoman army. Luther had argued against resisting the Turks in his 1518 ''Explanation of the Ninety-five Theses'', provoking accusations of defeatism. He saw the Turks as a scourge sent to punish Christians by God, as agents of the Biblical apocalypse that would destroy the antichrist, whom Luther believed to be the papacy, and the Roman Church. He consistently rejected the idea of a Holy War, "as though our people were an army of Christians against the Turks, who were enemies of Christ. This is absolutely contrary to Christ's doctrine and name". On the other hand, in keeping with his doctrine of the two kingdoms, Luther did support non-religious war against the Turks. In 1526, he argued in ''Whether Soldiers can be in a State of Grace'' that national defence is reason for a just war. By 1529, in ''On War against the Turk'', he was actively urging Emperor Charles V and the German people to fight a secular war against the Turks. He made clear, however, that the spiritual war against an alien faith was separate, to be waged through prayer and repentance. Around the time of the Siege of Vienna, Luther wrote a prayer for national deliverance from the Turks, asking God to "give to our emperor perpetual victory over our enemies".

In 1542, Luther read a Latin translation of the Qur'an. He went on to produce several critical pamphlets on Islam, which he called "Mohammedanism" or "the Turk". Though Luther saw the Muslim faith as a tool of the devil, he was indifferent to its practice: ''"Let the Turk believe and live as he will, just as one lets the papacy and other false Christians live."'' He opposed banning the publication of the Qur'an, wanting it exposed to scrutiny.

Augsburg Confession

Shaken by the Siege of Vienna, Charles V convened the Imperial Diet at Augsburg in 1530, aiming to unite the empire against the Turks. To achieve this, he needed first to resolve the religious controversies in his lands, "considering with love and kindness the views of everybody". He asked for a statement of the evangelical case, and one was duly devised by Luther, Melanchthon, and their colleagues at Wittenberg. Melanchthon drafted the document, known as the Augsburg Confession, and travelled with the elector's party to Augsburg, where it was read to the emperor and diet on 25 June 1530. (Luther was left behind at the Coburg fortress in southern Saxony because he remained under the imperial ban and lacked a safe-conduct to attend the diet.) Luther's writings during his 165 days at Coburg, including the ''Exhortation to all Clergy Assembled at Augsburg'', show that, unlike Melanchthon, he was set against making concessions.

Despite the Confession's avoidance of strident language or abuse of the pope, the diet rejected it on 22 September and ordered the reformers to renounce heresy and submit to the control of the Roman Catholic Church by the following April or face the imperial army. That decision confirmed Luther's belief that the mission had been futile. It prompted the Lutheran princes to form a military alliance, the Schmalkaldic League, which Luther cautiously supported on grounds of self-defence in his ''Warning to His Dear German People'' of 1531. The Augsburg Confession had become the statement of faith on which Lutherans were prepared to stand or fall. Though a modification of Luther's own position, it nevertheless is regarded as the first Lutheran treatise.

Depiction of Luther

In the 1530s and 1540s, printed images of Luther that emphasized his monumental size were crucial to the spread of Protestantism. In contrast to images of frail Catholic saints, Luther was presented as a stout man with a "double chin, strong mouth, piercing deep-set eyes, fleshy face, and squat neck." He was shown to be physically imposing, an equal in stature to the secular German princes with whom he would join forces to spread Lutheranism. His large body also let the viewer know that he did not shun earthly pleasures like drinking or conjugal relations with his wife—behavior that was a stark contrast to the ascetic life of the medieval religious orders. Famous images from this period include the woodcuts by Hans Brosamer (1530) and Lucas Cranach the Elder and Lucas Cranach the Younger (1546).

Antinomian controversy

Early in 1537, Johannes Agricola (1494–1566) – serving at the time as pastor in Luther's birthplace, Eisleben – preached a sermon in which he claimed that God's gospel, not God's moral law (the Ten Commandments), revealed God's wrath to Christians. Based on this sermon and others by Agricola, Luther suspected that Agricola was behind certain anonymous antinomian theses circulating in Wittenberg. These theses asserted that the law is no longer to be taught to Christians but belonged only to city hall. Luther responded to these theses with six series of theses against Agricola and the antinomians, four of which became the basis for disputations between 1538 and 1540. He also responded to these assertions in other writings, such as his 1539 open letter to C. Güttel ''Against the Antinomians'', and his book ''On the Councils and the Church'' from the same year.

In his theses and disputations against the antinomians, Luther reviews and reaffirms, on the one hand, what has been called the "second use of the law," that is, the law as the Holy Spirit's tool to work sorrow over sin in man's heart, thus preparing him for Christ's fulfillment of the law offered in the gospel. Luther states that everything that is used to work sorrow over sin is called the law, even if it is Christ's life, Christ's death for sin, or God's goodness experienced in creation. Simply refusing to preach the Ten Commandments among Christians – thereby, as it were, removing the three letters l-a-w from the church – does not eliminate the accusing law. Claiming that the law – in any form – should not be preached to Christians anymore would be tantamount to asserting that Christians are no longer sinners in themselves and that the church consists only of essentially holy people.

On the other hand, Luther also points out that the Ten Commandments – when considered not as God's condemning judgment but as an expression of his eternal will, that is, of the natural law – also positively teach how the Christian ought to live. This has traditionally been called the "third use of the law." For Luther, also Christ's life, when understood as an example, is nothing more than an illustration of the Ten Commandments, which a Christian should follow in his or her vocations on a daily basis.

The Ten Commandments, and the beginnings of the renewed life of Christians accorded to them by the sacrament of baptism, are a present foreshadowing of the believers' future angel-like life in heaven in the midst of this life. Luther's teaching of the Ten Commandments, therefore, has clear eschatological overtones, which, characteristically for Luther, do not encourage world-flight but direct the Christian to service to the neighbor in the common, daily vocations of this perishing world.

In the 20th century, there have been attempts to show that the "third use of the law" was a typical "Reformed" doctrine and that Luther himself never taught this, but in light of Luther's disputations against the antinomians and other texts, this position cannot be maintained.

Bigamy of Philip of Hesse

From December 1539, Luther became implicated in the bigamy of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, who wanted to marry one of his wife's ladies-in-waiting. Philip solicited the approval of Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer, citing as a precedent the polygamy of the patriarchs. The theologians were not prepared to make a general ruling, and they reluctantly advised the landgrave that if he was determined, he should marry secretly and keep quiet about the matter. As a result, on 4 March 1540, Philip married a second wife, Margarethe von der Sale, with Melanchthon and Bucer among the witnesses. However, Philip was unable to keep the marriage secret, and he threatened to make Luther's advice public. Luther told him to "tell a good, strong lie" and deny the marriage completely, which Philip did during the subsequent public controversy. In the view of Luther's biographer Martin Brecht, "giving confessional advice for Philip of Hesse was one of the worst mistakes Luther made, and, next to the landgrave himself, who was directly responsible for it, history chiefly holds Luther accountable". Brecht argues that Luther's mistake was not that he gave private pastoral advice, but that he miscalculated the political implications. The affair caused lasting damage to Luther's reputation.

Anti-Judaism and antisemitism

Luther wrote about the Jews throughout his career, though only a few of his works dealt with them directly. Luther rarely encountered Jews during his life, but his attitudes reflected a theological and cultural tradition which saw Jews as a rejected people guilty of the murder of Christ, and he lived within a local community that had expelled Jews some ninety years earlier. He considered the Jews blasphemers and liars because they rejected the divinity of Jesus, whereas Christians believed Jesus was the Messiah. At the same time, Luther believed that all human beings who set themselves against God shared one and the same guilt. As early as 1516, Luther wrote, "...[M]any people are proud with marvelous stupidity when they call the Jews dogs, evildoers, or whatever they like, while they too, and equally, do not realize who or what they are in the sight of God". In 1523, Luther advised kindness toward the Jews in ''That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew'', but only with the aim of converting them to Christianity. When his efforts at conversion failed, he grew increasingly bitter toward them.

Luther's other major works on the Jews were his 60,000-word treatise ''Von den Juden und Ihren Lügen'' (''On the Jews and Their Lies''), and ''Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi'' (''On the Holy Name and the Lineage of Christ''), both published in 1543, three years before his death. Luther argued that the Jews were no longer the chosen people but "the devil's people": he referred to them with violent, vile language. Luther advocated setting synagogues on fire, destroying Jewish prayerbooks, forbidding rabbis from preaching, seizing Jews' property and money, and smashing up their homes, so that these "poisonous envenomed worms" would be forced into labour or expelled "for all time". In Robert Michael's view, Luther's words "We are at fault in not slaying them" amounted to a sanction for murder. Luther's "recommendations" for how to treat the Jews was a clear reference to the "sharp mercy" of Deuteronomy 13, the punishments prescribed ''by Moses'' for those who led others to "false gods".

Luther spoke out against the Jews in Saxony, Brandenburg, and Silesia. Josel of Rosheim, the Jewish spokesman who tried to help the Jews of Saxony in 1537, later blamed their plight on "that priest whose name was Martin Luther—may his body and soul be bound up in hell!—who wrote and issued many heretical books in which he said that whoever would help the Jews was doomed to perdition." Josel asked the city of Strasbourg to forbid the sale of Luther's anti-Jewish works: they refused initially, but relented when a Lutheran pastor in Hochfelden used a sermon to urge his parishioners to murder Jews.

Luther was the most widely read author of his generation, and he acquired the status of a prophet within Germany. According to the prevailing view among historians, his anti-Jewish rhetoric contributed significantly to the development of antisemitism in Germany, and in the 1930s and 1940s provided an "ideal underpinning" for the National Socialists' attacks on Jews. Reinhold Lewin writes that "whoever wrote against the Jews for whatever reason believed he had the right to justify himself by triumphantly referring to Luther." According to Michael, just about every anti-Jewish book printed in the Third Reich contained references to and quotations from Luther. Heinrich Himmler wrote admiringly of his writings and sermons on the Jews in 1940. The city of Nuremberg presented a first edition of ''On the Jews and their Lies'' to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper ''Der Stürmer'', on his birthday in 1937; the newspaper described it as the most radically anti-Semitic tract ever published. It was publicly exhibited in a glass case at the Nuremberg rallies and quoted in a 54-page explanation of the Aryan Law by Dr. E.H. Schulz and Dr. R. Frercks. On 17 December 1941, seven Protestant regional church confederations issued a statement agreeing with the policy of forcing Jews to wear the yellow badge, "since after his bitter experience Luther had already suggested preventive measures against the Jews and their expulsion from German territory." According to Daniel Goldhagen, Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium of Luther's writings shortly after Kristallnacht, for which Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church in the University of Oxford argued that Luther's writing was a "blueprint." Sasse applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On 10 November 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews." According to Professor Dick Geary, the Nazis won a larger share of the vote in Protestant than in Catholic areas of Germany in elections of 1928 to November 1932.

At the heart of scholars' debate about Luther's influence is whether it is anachronistic to view his work as a precursor of the racial antisemitism of the National Socialists. Some scholars see Luther's influence as limited, and the Nazis' use of his work as opportunistic. Biographer Martin Brecht points out that "There is a world of difference between his belief in salvation and a racial ideology. Nevertheless, his misguided agitation had the evil result that Luther fatefully became one of the 'church fathers' of anti-Semitism and thus provided material for the modern hatred of the Jews, cloaking it with the authority of the Reformer." Johannes Wallmann argues that Luther's writings against the Jews were largely ignored in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that there was no continuity between Luther's thought and Nazi ideology. Uwe Siemon-Netto agreed, arguing that it was because the Nazis were already anti-Semites that they revived Luther's work. Hans J. Hillerbrand agreed that to focus on Luther was to adopt an essentially ahistorical perspective of Nazi antisemitism that ignored other contributory factors in German history. Similarly, Roland Bainton, noted church historian and Luther biographer, wrote "One could wish that Luther had died before ever [''On the Jews and Their Lies''] was written. His position was entirely religious and in no respect racial."

Other scholars argue that, even if his views were merely anti-Judaic, their violence lent a new element to the standard Christian suspicion of Judaism. Ronald Berger writes that Luther is credited with "Germanizing the Christian critique of Judaism and establishing anti-Semitism as a key element of German culture and national identity." Paul Rose argues that he caused a "hysterical and demonizing mentality" about Jews to enter German thought and discourse, a mentality that might otherwise have been absent.

Since the 1980s, Lutheran Church denominations have repudiated Martin Luther's statements against the Jews and have rejected the use of them to incite hatred against Lutherans.

Final years and death

Luther had been suffering from ill health for years, including Ménière's disease, vertigo, fainting, tinnitus, and a cataract in one eye. From 1531 to 1546, his health deteriorated further. The years of struggle with Rome, the antagonisms with and among his fellow reformers, and the scandal which ensued from the bigamy of the Philip of Hesse incident, in which Luther had played a leading role, all may have contributed. In 1536, he began to suffer from kidney and bladder stones, and arthritis, and an ear infection ruptured an ear drum. In December 1544, he began to feel the effects of angina.

His poor physical health made him short-tempered and even harsher in his writings and comments. His wife Katharina was overheard saying, "Dear husband, you are too rude," and he responded, "They are teaching me to be rude." In 1545 and 1546 Luther preached three times in the Market Church in Halle, staying with his friend Justus Jonas during Christmas.

His last sermon was delivered at Eisleben, his place of birth, on 15 February 1546, three days before his death. It was "entirely devoted to the obdurate Jews, whom it was a matter of great urgency to expel from all German territory," according to Léon Poliakov. James Mackinnon writes that it concluded with a "fiery summons to drive the Jews bag and baggage from their midst, unless they desisted from their calumny and their usury and became Christians." Luther said, "we want to practice Christian love toward them and pray that they convert," but also that they are "our public enemies ... and if they could kill us all, they would gladly do so. And so often they do."

Luther's final journey, to Mansfeld, was taken because of his concern for his siblings' families continuing in their father Hans Luther's copper mining trade. Their livelihood was threatened by Count Albrecht of Mansfeld bringing the industry under his own control. The controversy that ensued involved all four Mansfeld counts: Albrecht, Philip, John George, and Gerhard. Luther journeyed to Mansfeld twice in late 1545 to participate in the negotiations for a settlement, and a third visit was needed in early 1546 for their completion.

The negotiations were successfully concluded on 17 February 1546. After 8:00 pm, he experienced chest pains. When he went to his bed, he prayed, "Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God" (Ps. 31:5), the common prayer of the dying. At 1:00 am he awoke with more chest pain and was warmed with hot towels. He thanked God for revealing his Son to him in whom he had believed. His companions, Justus Jonas and Michael Coelius, shouted loudly, "Reverend father, are you ready to die trusting in your Lord Jesus Christ and to confess the doctrine which you have taught in his name?" A distinct "Yes" was Luther's reply.

An apoplectic stroke deprived him of his speech, and he died shortly afterwards at 2:45 am on 18 February 1546, aged 62, in Eisleben, the city of his birth. He was buried in the Castle Church in Wittenberg, beneath the pulpit. The funeral was held by his friends Johannes Bugenhagen and Philipp Melanchthon. A year later, troops of Luther's adversary Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor entered the town, but were ordered by Charles not to disturb the grave.

A piece of paper was later found on which Luther had written his last statement. The statement was in Latin, apart from "We are beggars," which was in German.

1. No one can understand Virgil's Bucolics unless he has been a shepherd for five years. No one can understand Virgil's Georgics, unless he has been a farmer for five years.

2. No one can understand Cicero's Letters (or so I teach), unless he has busied himself in the affairs of some prominent state for twenty years.

3. Know that no one can have indulged in the Holy Writers sufficiently, unless he has governed churches for a hundred years with the prophets, such as Elijah and Elisha, John the Baptist, Christ and the apostles.

Do not assail this divine Aeneid; nay, rather prostrate revere the ground that it treads.

We are beggars: this is true.

Luther is honoured on 18 February with a commemoration in the Lutheran Calendar of Saints and a feast day in the Episcopal (United States) Calendar of Saints; in the Church of England's Calendar of Saints he is commemorated on 31 October.

Works and editions

The Erlangen Edition (''Erlangener Ausgabe'': "EA"), comprising the ''Exegetica opera latina'' – Latin exegetical works of Luther.

The Weimar Edition (Weimarer Ausgabe) is the exhaustive, standard German edition of Luther's Latin and German works, indicated by the abbreviation "WA". This is continued into "WA Br" ''Weimarer Ausgabe, Briefwechsel'' (correspondence), "WA Tr" ''Weimarer Ausgabe, Tischreden'' (tabletalk) and "WA DB" ''Weimarer Ausgabe, Deutsche Bibel'' (German Bible).

The American Edition (''Luther's Works'') is the most extensive English translation of Luther's writings, indicated either by the abbreviation "LW" or "AE". The first 55 volumes were published 1955-1986, and a twenty volume extension (vols. 56-75) is planned of which volumes 58, 60, and 68 have appeared thus far.

See also

Christianity and antisemitism

Consubstantiation

List of Erasmus's correspondents

John Calvin

John Wycliffe

Lutheran Marian theology

Propaganda during the Reformation

Theologia Germanica

Theology of Martin Luther

Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (Germany)

Translation

References

Further reading

For works by and about Luther, see Martin Luther (resources) or Luther's works at Wikisource.

Luther, M. ''The Bondage of the Will.'' Eds. J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnson. Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1957. OCLC 22724565.

''Luther's Works'', 55 vols. Eds. H. T. Lehman and J. Pelikan. St Louis Missouri, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1955–86. Also on CD-ROM. Minneapolis and St Louis: Fortress Press and Concordia Publishing House, 2002.

Reu, Johann Michael ''Thirty-five Years of Luther Research'' Chicago: Wartburg Publishing House, 1917.

External links

''Booknotes'' interview with Martin Marty on ''Martin Luther'', April 11, 2004.

Category:1483 births Category:1546 deaths Category:16th-century German people Category:16th-century Latin-language writers Category:Anglican saints Category:Augustinian friars Category:Burials at All Saints' Church, Wittenberg Category:Christian Hebraists Category:Christian mystics Category:Christian religious leaders Category:German Christian ministers Category:German Lutheran theologians Category:German Lutherans Category:German Lutheran clergy Category:Lutheran priests Lutheran Category:German theologians Category:German translators Category:Lutheran theologians Category:Late Middle Ages Category:Latin–German translators Category:Lutheran hymnwriters Category:Lutheran sermon writers Category:Lutheran writers Category:People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar Category:People excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church Category:Converts to Lutheranism from Roman Catholicism Category:People from Eisleben Category:Protestant Reformers Category:Renewers of the church Category:Anti-Catholicism Category:Translation scholars Category:Translators of the Bible into German Category:University of Erfurt alumni Category:University of Wittenberg faculty Category:Walhalla enshrinees Category:Apocalypticists

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War Machine (James Rupert Rhodes) is a fictional character, a comic book superhero appearing in comic books set in the Marvel Comics universe. The character of James Rhodes first appeared in ''Iron Man'' #118 (January 1979) by David Michelinie, John Byrne and Bob Layton. The War Machine armor, which became Rhodes' signature armored battlesuit, was designed by Len Kaminski and Kevin Hopgood.

Also known by his nickname Rhodey, Rhodes has been a featured character in the ''Iron Man'' animated series, ''Iron Man: Armored Adventures'' and ''The Invincible Iron Man'' animated film. He was played by actor Terrence Howard in the 2008 film ''Iron Man'' and by Don Cheadle in the sequel ''Iron Man 2''.

Publication history

Initially a supporting character in volume one of ''Iron Man'', Rhodes later assumed the mantle of Iron Man after Tony Stark's relapse into alcoholism in issue #170 (May 1983). The character would continue in a supporting role and later resume the role of Iron Man following Stark's purported death in issue #284 (Sept. 1992). After Stark's return to the role of Iron Man, Rhodes continued as the superhero War Machine and made his solo series debut in an eponymous title after being featured as a supporting character in the superhero-team series ''Avengers West Coast''.

In addition to ''Iron Man'' and his own title ''War Machine'', Rhodes has been featured in the ensemble titles ''West Coast Avengers''; ''Force Works'' by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning; ''Sentinel Squad O*N*E''; ''The Crew'' by Christopher Priest; and ''Avengers: The Initiative'' by Dan Slott and Christos Gage. Rhodes was also featured in the alternate-reality Marvel MAX imprint's ''U.S. War Machine'' series by Chuck Austen, and ''U.S. War Machine 2.0'', by Austen and Christian Moore.

In the series ''Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.'', Rhodes was featured in the storyline "War Machine: Weapon of S.H.I.E.L.D." written by Gage and artist Sean Chen. In this tie-in to the company-wide storyline "Secret Invasion", War Machine replaced Iron Man as the protagonist for the final three issues of the series. This led into a second ''War Machine'' ongoing series, written by Greg Pak with art by Leonardo Manco, which lasted 12 issues. Featured in the ensemble title ''Secret Avengers'', War Machine is the lead character of the series ''Iron Man 2.0'' by writer Nick Spencer and artist Barry Kitson.

Fictional character biography

Origins

James Rupert Rhodes, an African-American from the South Philadelphia section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force who served tours of duty in Southeast Asia. A combat pilot, he was stranded in the jungle behind enemy lines after his helicopter was shot down by Viet Cong rocket fire. He encounters Iron Man, who escaped from Wong-Chu's prison camp in his prototype suit of powered armor, for the first time. Defeating the Viet Cong soldiers that ambushed them, Rhodes and Iron Man discovered an enemy rocket base that was the origin of the rocket fire that grounded Rhodes in the first place. Destroying the base with a stolen Viet Cong helicopter, Rhodes and Iron Man flew the helicopter back to the American defense perimeter. At the base hospital in Saigon, Stark arrives in person to thank Rhodes for helping Iron Man and to offer Rhodes a job as his personal pilot. After the Vietnam War was over and after taking several career paths including mercenary work, Rhodes finally took Stark's offer and became Stark's personal pilot, chief aviation engineer for Stark International, and one of Stark's closest friends.

The all new Iron Man

Due to Obadiah Stane's actions, Stark International was losing foreign contracts and going into heavy debt. With Stark's company and personal life in disarray, Stark relapsed into alcoholism. After an intoxicated Stark was defeated by Magma, Rhodes donned the Iron Man armor for the first time and defeated Magma. Stark asked Rhodes to be Iron Man while Stark continued his life of alcoholism. Rhodes, along with scientist Morley Erwin, quits Stark International and sent the remaining Iron Man armors into the ocean to protect Stark’s technology from Stane and S.H.I.E.L.D., who monitored the Stane takeover. Morley Erwin maintained the Iron Man armor and served as Rhodes’ technical support while Rhodes fought villains such as the Mandarin, Thunderball, the Zodiac, and the Radioactive Man as Iron Man. He became a charter member of the West Coast Avengers and fought in the Beyonder's "Secret Wars". Rhodes, Morley Erwin, and Morley's sister Dr. Clytemnestra Erwin planned to create a new electronics firm based in California. Rhodes took mercenary jobs to provide money for the armor's upkeep and to fund the company. Recovering from his alcoholism, Tony Stark joined the three and they formed the company Circuits Maximus. Due to the armor’s helmet being tailored to Stark’s brainwaves, Rhodes developed headaches and grew more erratic and aggressive. Stark helped Rhodes maintain the armor, but Rhodes' paranoia and hatred made him believe that Stark wanted to retake the armor. During a battle with Vibro, Rhodes went on a rampage to capture the villain and Stark was forced to wear his new testbed armor (resembling Stark's first Iron Man armor) to stop Rhodes and talk him out of his rage.

Rhodes sought help from Dr. Henry Pym to cure his headaches while Stark delivered Rhodes’ resignation to the Avengers and revealed his identity to Hawkeye and Mockingbird. Pym sent Rhodes to Dr. Michael Twoyoungmen (Shaman of Alpha Flight) and Rhodes cured himself of his headaches via a journey through a mystic dimension called "The Gorge" that revealed Rhodes’ guilt of feeling unworthy of the armor. While Rhodes was finally at peace and left his armor behind in the dimension, the armor was empowered by The Omnos, a being of extra-dimensional energy, and was returned to Rhodes. Rhodes resumed operating as Iron Man with Stark using his own testbed armor to assist Rhodes. Due to a bomb sent by Stane to Circuits Maximus that injured Rhodes and killed Morley Erwin, Stark became active as Iron Man again, donning his newly-completed "Silver Centurion" model, and defeated Stane.

Out of the armor

Rhodes remained at Stark's side as Stark regained his personal fortune and built a new corporation, Stark Enterprises, remaining in California. Rhodes donned the red-and-gold armor once more when A.I.M. attacked the under-construction Stark space station. However, the armor's seals had been damaged in a shuttle explosion, causing Rhodes to suffer severe burns upon reentry; he survived only by Stark using his own armor as a heat shield to minimize Rhodes' exposure. After Rhodes recovered, he continued to play a key role in assisting Stark, particularly during the first ''Armor Wars'' storyline.

When Stark was shot by Kathy Dare and left paralyzed, he needed a fill-in for the role of Iron Man. Rhodes refused, citing the history between him and the armor, "not all of it good". Stark would call upon the former Force, Clay Wilson (known as Carl Walker at this point), to fill in, wearing the modified Stealth armor, until Stark could modify his regular armor to allow him to function normally inside the suit. Rhodes would reluctantly return to the armor to fight the Mandarin at the behest of the Chinese government, in order to allow Stark to seek medical assistance in their country. In the end, Stark (using a remote-control set of armor) and Rhodes team up with the Mandarin to stop the larger threat of the Makulan dragons.

Iron Man once again and the birth of War Machine

The Masters Of Silence, three Japanese warriors tricked by Justin Hammer into attacking Iron Man, defeated Stark with technology that enabled them to not be affected by repulsors or unibeams. To combat the threat, Stark designed the "Variable Threat Response Battle Suit, Model XVI, Mark I" (nicknamed "War Machine"), a more heavily armed version of the Iron Man armor designed for all-out warfare. After Stark's apparent death in the comic book, he left Rhodes in control of Stark Enterprises as its new CEO, along with a new Variable Threat Response Battle Suit designed especially for Rhodes to continue the Iron Man legacy. As Iron Man once again, Rhodes used the armor and fought against threats such as the Living Laser, the second Spymaster, Blacklash, the Beetle, and Atom Smasher.

Upon the revelation that Stark was alive, Rhodes quit Stark Enterprises and the friendship between the two was fractured. After teaming with Iron Man against battledroids programmed to kill Rhodes, Stark wanted Rhodes to keep the Variable Threat Response Battle Suit stating that the armor always belonged to Rhodes. Rhodes eventually kept the armor and later adopted the name of War Machine. When the robot Ultimo went on a rampage, Rhodes called together Harold "Happy" Hogan, Bethany Cabe, Eddie March, "Carl Walker" and Michael O'Brien to pilot various Iron Man armors to take down Ultimo as the Iron Legion. He rejoined the West Coast Avengers as War Machine and served with the team until he resigned after an argument with Iron Man during an Avengers team meeting. During the beginning of the ''War Machine'' series, Rhodes was approached by Vincent Cetewayo, noted activist from the African country of Imaya and founder of the human rights organization Worldwatch Incorporated. Cetewayo offered Rhodes the position of Worldwatch's Executive Director, but the offer was declined. Cetewayo was kidnapped by Imayan forces led by the dictator President Eda Arul. Receiving no aid from S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers, Rhodes traveled to Imaya as War Machine to free Cetewayo. Joined by Deathlok, the two evaded capture from a S.H.I.E.L.D. unit led by Major Bathsheva "Sheva" Joseph and joined the fight to liberate Imaya. Rhodes successfully led Imayan rebels into combat against Arul's forces, but failed to save Cetewayo from being killed by the Advisor, the apparent mastermind of Arul's rise to power. Shaken by the death of Cetewayo and finding something worth fighting for, Rhodes takes the position of Worldwatch's Executive Director and hired Sheva Joseph, who left S.H.I.E.L.D. after her assignment in Imaya.

During the ''Hands of the Mandarin'' crossover, Stark disapproved of the actions of War Machine in Imaya and demanded that Rhodes relinquish the armor when he returned to Stark Enterprises to get the specifications for his armor. The two men battled each other until the fight was stopped by Bethany Cabe, the Head Of Security for Stark Enterprises. While their armor was rebooting, the Mandarin captured Rhodes and Stark, discovering their identities. Century of the superhero team Force Works rescued Rhodes, but his armor was useless thanks to the Mandarin’s anti-technology field. Rhodes and Stark reconciled and joined with Force Works to stop the Mandarin and his Avatars from using the Heart Of Darkness for their plans of conquest. Stark gave Rhodes the blueprints to the War Machine armor and a fully upgraded armor with new armaments was made. Rhodes continued to use the War Machine armor in a solo superhero career, occasionally fighting alongside Stark and Force Works.

The Warwear

After the events of the ''Time War'' storyline, in which Rhodes teamed up with Captain America, Bucky and Sgt. Nick Fury & his Howling Commandos to stop Neo-Nazis from sending modern weaponry to Nazi Germany, the War Machine armor was lost in the time stream. Rhodes returned to civilian life, but he ended up acquiring a brand new alien armor known as the Eidolon Warwear after meeting a mysterious woman named Skye and fighting an alien known as a Lictor. Skye was sent to teach Rhodes to use the Warwear and revealed that Rhodes was chosen to fight against Stark (who was under the control of Immortus disguised as Kang the Conqueror). Skye was fatally wounded by Dirge, another Eidolon Warrior sent by Immortus, and Rhodes defeated him in combat. Stark eventually breaks free of Immortus' control and sacrificed his life while Rhodes foiled Immortus' plot by using Dirge's Warwear to destroy the Starcore satellite armed with a chronographic weapon. S.H.I.E.L.D. was made aware of Rhodes' alien armor and hunted him down, but Rhodes evaded capture. To protect Worldwatch, he resigns as Executive Director.

In ''Tales of the Marvel Universe'', Rhodes rejoined Stark Enterprises to protect his friend's legacy while the Japanese company Fujikawa Industries bought out Stark Enterprises. Rhodes was kept around to help with the transition to Stark-Fujikawa. He was offered the job of President Of Corporate Liaison Operations, but kept away from Fujikawa's attempt to discover the secrets to Stark's Iron Man armor technology contained in a single gauntlet. Rhodes infiltrated the security system at Stark-Fujikawa's Research and Development facility, recovered the gauntlet, and purged the Fujikawa database of all Iron Man armor technology data by downloading the Eidolon Warwear directly into the Fujikawa computers to attack the system. Losing the armor as a result of the sabotage mission, Rhodes quits Stark-Fujikawa. After serving as one of Stark's trustees when Iron Man was presumed dead after the final battle with Onslaught, Rhodes starts his own marine salvage business called "Rhodes Recovery" and retires from superheroics.

Post War Machine

Despite staying in retirement and focusing on his salvaging company, Rhodes assisted Stark on occasion. In volume three of ''Iron Man'', He helped Stark defeat freelance mercenary and arms dealer Parnell Jacobs, who was masquerading as a villainous War Machine. A former friend and mercenary partner of Rhodes, Jacobs was under the employ of Sunset Bain and piloted a version of the War Machine armor based on armor parts that Jacobs found from the discarded original and reverse engineering by Stuart Clarke.

Due to mismanagement by his accountant and an extravagant lifestyle, Rhodes is left with depleted funds and files for bankruptcy. He is informed by the New York Police Department that his sister Jeanette "Star" Rhodes was killed in a notorious section of Brooklyn overridden with crime and drugs known as "Little Mogadishu". During a fight with some local thugs, he is helped by Josiah el Hajj Saddiq a.k.a. Josiah X, a local minister who is the son of the black Captain America. Josiah X helped Rhodes obtain footage of Jeanette's killers. With the police unable to apprehend, Rhodes captured his sister's murderers with NYPD narcotics officer Kevin "Kasper" Cole making the arrests. He discovers that the criminals that killed Jeanette were drug dealers working for the 66 Bridges, a powerful street gang with a big percentage of East Coast criminal operations. Rhodes unknowingly invested in the 66’s front company Grace & Tumbalt, a black-owned corporation that created Little Mogadishu due to their gentrification efforts. During his campaign against the 66 Bridges, Rhodes crosses paths with Cole, who secretly fights crime as The White Tiger in order to gain arrests for a promotion to detective, and Danny Vincent (Manuel Vincente), an ex-spy known as Junta with allegiance only to himself. Joining forces with these two men along with Josiah X as Justice, Rhodes and The Crew took on the 66 Bridges gang and their CEO Nigel "Triage" Blacque.

Rhodes later becomes a key member of the Office of National Emergency (O*N*E) and the head combat instructor for Sentinel Squad O*N*E. He began developing doubts about the nature of his job, such as being ordered to arrest the Black Panther and Storm when they refused to sign SHRA.

Return

When Rhodes served as a military consultant at a base in Dubai, a terrorist attack left Rhodes severely injured. Stark arrived in Dubai and rebuilt him with new limbs, bionics, and cybernetics. Rhodes once again becomes War Machine and was made field commander and a director of Camp Hammond to help train SHRA registered recruits of the Fifty State Initiative program. When the Skrulls invaded earth and unleashed a virus that disabled all Starktech systems along with Rhodes' life-support systems, he is forced to rely on Baron Von Blitzschlag's electrical powers to keep him alive while managing to activate a cluster of emergency generators in his armor that incorporated Stanetech parts in its design.

In the ''War Machine: Weapon Of S.H.I.E.L.D.'' storyline, Rhodes received a secret holographic message with coordinates after the global Starktech failure. Despite an intercepting Skrull fleet, Rhodes found a secret cloaked satellite in outer space with Suzanne "Suzi" Endo at the satellite ahead of him. Endo was there to help because of her background in cybernetics and Rhodes viewed another message from Stark revealing that Rhodes' armor, as well as the satellite, was independent from all Earth systems with Rhodes himself as a part of Stark's contingency plan. A Skrull fleet followed Rhodes to the satellite and Endo revealed that the satellite is a functional weapon with Rhodes being the key to its activation. With the satellite linked to Rhodes, it transformed into a giant "War Machine" robotic form. Destroying the Skrull fleet, he left the satellite to Russian airspace to destroy an escaping Skull ship. He made his way to a weapons depot in Tatischevo where the Winter Guard was protecting the nuclear weapons from the Skrulls. The Winter Guard ordered him to leave under the orders of the Russian military, but Rhodes ignored and was captured on a Skrull warship. He escaped and with Endo's help, used the warship to destroy the Skull fleet with the Winter Guard disobeying orders so that they could aid Rhodes. The last Super-Skrull attempted to detonate the nuclear warheads by turning himself into energy, but Rhodes used his armor's capabilities to absorb the energy.

Dark Reign

In ''Dark Reign: New Nation'', Rhodes faced Anton Aubuisson, a corrupt former French soldier with the Roxxon Energy Corporation in negotiations with the Anunquit tribe in western Canada. Rhodes defeated Aubuisson and discovered the use of Ultimo technology given to Aubuisson by Eaglestar International, a corrupt paramilitary defense contracting firm. This led to Rhodes traveling to Santo Marco and finding Parnell Jacobs, once believed to be killed by Stuart Clarke,. Rhodes recruits Jacobs to be his "one-man pit crew" to stop Eaglestar's efforts after informing him that Jacobs' estranged wife Dr. Glenda Sandoval, a medic with Eaglestar, was in forced imprisonment. In a side story, a team under the direction of Bethany Cabe developed a clone body for Rhodes to take over. The team's facility was attacked and the clone body was taken by Norman Osborn. Rhodes, with support from Jacobs and Cabe, invades the Eaglestar headquarters in the nation of Aqiria. Rescuing Sandoval and dealing with threats such as the Dark Avenger Ares and civilians infected with Ultimo technology, Rhodes deduced that the Ultimo technology came from the United States where Ultimo was last seen. Rhodes took on the mission of destroying the Ultimo components with Sandoval, Cabe, Jacobs, former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jake Oh, and a returning Suzi Endo as "Team War Machine". The team faced the threat of Ultimo in the form of Morgan Stark, Tony Stark's cousin, with the help of Rhodes' former West Coast Avengers teammates and Norman Osborn in a temporary alliance. While Rhodes was captured after ruining Osborn's plan to make Ultimo his weapon, his team exposed the "Bainesville Ten", a group of high ranking officials and industry captains responsible for worldwide crimes. Despite Osborn's efforts to distract from the indictment of the group by putting Rhodes on trial at The Hague for war crimes, Rhodes and his team foiled Osborn's scheme with Rhodes himself transferred to his clone body after saving the life of a child.

In the "Stark Disassembled" storyline, Rhodes went to Broxton, Oklahoma where Tony Stark was left in a persistent vegetative state. Following recorded instructions from Stark, Rhodes extracted wires from Pepper Potts' Rescue suit and connected Captain America's shield to the implant on Stark's chest, which would be started by Thor's lightning, in order to reboot Stark's brain.

Heroic Age

After the ''Siege'' storyline, War Machine joined the new Secret Avengers team, alongside Beast, Nova, Steve Rogers, Valkyrie, and Moon Knight.

Due to a government contract between Tony Stark's "Stark Resilent" company and The Pentagon, War Machine was assigned a new position as the US military's own "Iron Man". Now at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, Rhodes is under the command of General Babbage, who has a personal grudge against Rhodes for his actions when he battled Ultimo and Norman Osborn in the previous ''War Machine'' series. His first assignment was to track down Palmer Addley, a former weapons designer for DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Addley is committing terrorist acts around the world, despite having been dead for months. When War Machine confronts the alleged dead man, Addley's response is to drop a nuclear weapon on him. Rhodes survives, but this prompts Tony Stark to replace his armor with a far more advanced model: the "Iron Man 2.0" armor.

During the ''Fear Itself'' storyline, War Machine is seen in Washington DC helping Ant-Man and Beast. War Machine learns from the Prince of Orphans that the "Eighth City" has been opened.

Powers and abilities

Skills

Rhodes was trained as an aircraft pilot and studied aviation engineering while in service with the United States Marine Corps. He is knowledgeable in aircraft operation/maintenance and has piloted various aircraft at Stark Enterprises. Rhodes is an experienced soldier trained in unarmed combat and military weaponry such as small arms. In addition to being a pilot, engineer, soldier, and businessman, Rhodes derives multiple abilities from various hi-tech armors, either designed by Stark Industries or extraterrestrial in nature. With his years of experience with both the Iron Man and War Machine powered armors, Rhodes is skilled in armored combat and uses a more physical fighting style compared to Stark.

Armors

Iron Man Armor V

First Appearance: ''Iron Man'' #85 (April 1976)

Rhodes' first armor as Iron Man was a solar charged carbon-composite based steel mesh armor which provided him with superhuman-level strength and durability. It was armed with repulsors in each palm of the armor's gauntlets and a multifunctional unibeam projector in the chest.

War Machine Armor (Variable Threat Response Battle Suit Mark II, Model JRXL-1000)

First Appearance: ''Iron Man'' #284 (September 1992)

The original Variable Threat Response Battle Suit Mark I was a version of the Iron Man armor utilizing laser guided munitions. Stark gave Rhodes a modified version of the armor, Mark II Model JRXL-1000, created just for him with the inclusion of repulsors and a unibeam projector. The armor could be modified with various modular weapons and has an improved tactical computer system with automatic targeting. Additional weapons included pulse bolt generators, retractable shoulder minigun, variable-configured double-barrel cannons on each gauntlet, gauntlet mounted flamethrower, plasma blade on the left gauntlet, missile box launcher, micro-rocket launcher, particle beam discharger, and an electromagnetic pulse generator in the unibeam projector that could shut down any electronic device in a 50-mile radius. The armor also included a photon emitter that created a force shield, forcefield-based stealth technology, boot-jet propulsion, and a self-contained breathing system.

The second version of the armor, reconfigured by Stark, contained upgraded improvements such as heat seeking missile launchers, pulse cannon, and retractable weapon pods located on its back. Rhodes utilized different types of specialty ammunition as well as non-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets. Though Rhodes lost the original armor, he still possessed a functional prototype helmet and gauntlet.

Eidolon Warwear

First Appearance: ''War Machine'' #18 (September 1995)

The armor is a symbiotic bio-armor system of alien origin and provided Rhodes with superhuman strength, durability, and speed. The armor responded to Rhodes' commands and created weapons based on his thoughts and needs. When inactive, it was concealed inside a "mandala" or tattoo-like mark on Rhodes' chest. The left arm is capable of firing destructive energy blasts while the right arm is able to morph into a blade. The armor can "unskin" remote drones that are capable of feats such as discharging various types of energy, infiltrating electronic/computer systems, creating energy fields, and completing basic tasks. If the drone are destroyed, Rhodes feels pain due to the symbiotic connection. The armor can morph into a "full battle mode," which provided unspecified enhancement to both the armor and Rhodes himself. It was also capable of space travel with an unlimited life support system. During battle, the armor would have the strange ability to "sing" alien war songs.

Sentinel Squad Armor

First Appearance: ''Sentinel Squad O.N.E.'' #1 (March 2006)

During the ''Sentinel Squad O*N*E'' series, he used an armor that was similar to the design of previous Iron Man powered armors and was based on the primary Sentinel piloted armors that the squad used in combat. The armor was derived of S.H.I.E.L.D. technology and Stark-designed upgrades. Rhodes also piloted a larger advanced Sentinel model codenamed "War Machine". The armors were constructed of a unique mix of steel and fiberglass and contained many offensive and defensive improvements in weaponry and enhancements.

Stanetech Based War Machine Armor

First Appearance: ''Avengers: The Initiative'' #1 (March 2007)

Used during ''Avengers: The Initiative'' to volume two of ''War Machine'', this version of the War Machine armor shows all the abilities of the previous iterations with bleeding edge military ballistics and weaponry. Unlike previous War Machine armors, the armor incorporated advanced components derived from Obadiah Stane's reverse engineering of older Iron Man armor that made him immune to any Starktech based systems attack. Rhodes' bionics required an added life support system with cybernetic implants linked to the armor's systems. The armor is composed of alloys such as titanium and Wakandan vibranium, coated for stealth capabilities, and capable of space and underwater travel. Armaments included sonic generators, pulse bolts, a minigun, and a retractable unibeam projector. The armor can interface with any system and has interlocking capabilities that integrated mechanical constructs to repair and upgrade the armor. During the second ''War Machine'' series, Rhodes used this ability to merge with jet fighters and tanks deliberately to gain their technology and weapons. At the end of the series, Rhodes (Now in a cloned version of his body) is seen wearing a non-cybernetic version of the armor.

War Machine Armor V

First Appearance: ''Secret Avengers'' #1 (May 2010)

Used during issues of ''Secret Avengers'' and appearances in other comic series, this upgraded incarnation of the Variable Threat Response Battle Suit has a similar design to the movie version of the War Machine armor with armaments similar to previous incarnations such as a retractable shoulder minigun, repulsor technology, and shoulder missile launcher. The armor was destroyed by a nuclear attack in the first arc of the series ''Iron Man 2.0''.

"Iron Man 2.0" War Machine Armor

First Appearance: ''Iron Man 2.0'' #3 (April 2011)

Created in the series ''Iron Man 2.0'' by Tony Stark, this War Machine armor is a complete redesign after the destruction of the previous model. Designed by ''Iron Man 2.0'' artist Barry Kitson, the armor emphasizes stealth, recon, infiltration, and combat readiness. Unlike its predecessors, it is a slimmed down armor with no visible external weaponry such as shoulder miniguns or missile launchers. The armor's color scheme is gunmetal with black detailing and has two lines on the helmet's left eye area that glows according to the repulsor reactor's color. The armor utilizes upgraded technology such as an updated Chameleon Mode (previously a feature of the "Silver Centurion" Iron Man armor) for optical invisibility, holographic projection, and camouflage purposes. The armor also possesses Ghost technology to phase through solid objects, scanner invisibility to become undetectable to all targeting systems, and a Combat Mode that can deploy weaponry which is normally hidden and increase the size and bulk of the armor. But the armor has limitations such as strain of the armor's repulsor reactor, disorientation from the Chameleon Mode, and the inability to be both invisible and intangible at the same time due to a compatibility issue.

Other versions

1602

In ''Marvel 1602: New World'', there is a character named Rhodes, a Moor who is the engineer of the armor worn by the Spanish nobleman Lord Iron. Rhodes accompanied Lord Iron to the New World and assists in Lord Iron's mission to hunt down David Banner, former advisor to King James I of England and the man who tortured Lord Iron when he was captured by the British.

Amalgam Comics

In the Amalgam Comics Universe created by Marvel Comics and DC Comics, there is a character named Stewart Rhodes that appears in the comic ''Iron Lantern'' #1. A pilot and engineer employed at Stark Aircraft, he knows the secret of Hal Stark's double life as Iron Lantern. Stewart Rhodes is the amalgam of James Rhodes and John Stewart.

Marvel Zombies

In ''Marvel Zombies: Dead Days'', War Machine is seen amongst the crowd of heroes who have survived the Zombie plague so far. His fate is not depicted.

In ''Marvel Zombies Return'', Zombie Giant Man finds a way to enter parallel universes and invades a universe that resembles the time period in which Tony Stark was an alcoholic. Giant Man infected the parallel universe's Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts and a number of people at Stark Industries. The James Rhodes from the parallel universe finds the Iron Man armor located in a bathroom and puts it on to reach Stark. After Stark sacrifices himself to kill as many zombies as possible, Rhodes takes the name Iron Man and announces he will help the police fend off the zombies. He also becomes a member of this reality's Illuminati. Years later, Rhodes joins the New Avengers in a heavily armed suit reminiscent of the War Machine armor but in the Iron Man color scheme. This Rhodes is at least partly cybernetic, having escaped falling victim to the zombie virus himself by cutting off his limbs after being bitten in order to protect himself from the virus, the armor consisting at least partly of cybernetic limbs rather than a simple suit. The Avengers team assembled consists of Iron Man and the zombified Spider-Man, Hulk and Wolverine. Rhodes sacrifices one of his last three fingers to lure the Zombie Avengers to the Savage land. Then, using a nanite virus developed by Spider-Man, the team defeats the zombie Avengers, eradicating the zombie menace.

MC2

In the MC2 alternate future, Rhodes gained superhuman powers after exposing himself to experimental microscopic robots. While Tony Stark had intended to test them on himself, Rhodes did not feel it would be right for Stark to unnecessarily risk his life. Although now blessed with exponentially-increasing invulnerability and an impressive array of energy-based attacks, the nanites slowly corrupt Rhodes' mind, eventually destroying his personality and leaving him as little more than a very powerful, humanoid robot. He eventually works as a personal bodyguard for Tony Stark, and although he adopts a superhero uniform (vaguely reminiscent of Superman, though with a different color scheme and no chest insignia) neither he nor Stark bother to come up with a moniker for him. Spider-Girl refers to him as "Fred" for most of her series, for simple lack of anything else to call him.

U.S. War Machine

In the alternate-reality MAX imprint series ''U.S. War Machine'', Tony Stark announces he is retiring from developing weapons after he and his bodyguard James Rhodes, who had piloted the MPI-2100 Mobile Infantry Suit a.k.a. the "War Machine" armor, had used lethal force in the defeat of foreign tyrant Doctor Doom's armies. He stated he was mothballing the War Machine armor and presented the SI1-211 "Iron Man" as his new bodyguard. Rhodes, however, uses the War Machine armor to fight rogue agents of the terrorist group Advanced Idea Mechanics, and after killing two of them is fired by Stark. Afterward, former War Machine pilot Parnell Jacobs attacks Rhodes at home in an attempt to steal the War Machine armor. After Rhodes defeats Jacobs, Colonel Nick Fury, head of the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D., has Rhodes and Jacobs brought in to the agency's headquarters, the Skycarrier.

Jacobs reveals that his wife, Glenda Sandoval, was taken hostage by A.I.M., with the promise of release if Jacobs delivered the original War Machine armor. But Jacobs had sold that armor to another terrorist group, HYDRA, to gain money when he learned his wife was pregnant. S.H.I.E.L.D. retrieves the armor from HYDRA and, with the guidance of 12-year-old-genius armament designer "Scotch", reverse-engineers its technology to create its own version of the War Machine armor for a planned Special Operations division, dubbed "U.S. War Machine", with Rhodes in charge. Targeting A.I.M., the team includes Jacobs, Dum Dum Dugan, and Sheva Josephs.

In the sequel series ''U.S. War Machine 2.0.'', Stark is furious that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s U.S. War Machine division exists and combats it as Iron Man accompanied by his own armored forces—Happy Hogan, Bethany Cabe, and Eddie March—in MPI-2100 Mobile Infantry Suits. Rhodes, now a major, and his division team with Captain America (James "Bucky" Barnes), Sam Wilson, and Clint Barton, to stop Doctor Doom from detonating stolen nuclear weapons planted on the Millennium Wheel in London.

Ultimate Marvel

James Rhodes first appears as a prep school student and the victim of frequent bullying at the school due to his ethnicity, that he comes from a poorer family and the fact that he's there because of the school's racial quota. He finds an unlikely friend in a young Tony Stark who defends him against the bullies - much to his dismay because it only serves to attract more attention to himself and, thus, increase his torment. Stark is keen on Rhodes being his friend, while Rhodes, initially, is uneasy about Stark and his burgeoning friendship. Later, after Stark is severely attacked at school and is aided by Rhodes (which turns out to be a peripheral attack on Stark's father), both leave the school and with Stark's father's help, are accepted into the Baxter Building's School for Exceptional Children along with Rhodes's sister, one, because they are all strikingly intelligent, but also for their own protection. Both begin work on different projects and eventually, Stark takes Rhodes into his confidence and allows Rhodes a chance to wear and help design some of the armor he and his father have innovated. Rhodes and Stark's friendship strengthens and Rhodes is later seen making another armor version named "War Machine" which he is going to trade with Stark's "Iron Man" armor when both are fully developed. A couple of years later, Stark and Rhodes, in their respective armor, team up as fake "Robots" to take out a terrorist group for the government. This origin, however, was retconned as being a fictionalized history of Tony Stark's early years. Years later, Rhodes, now a Colonel, is seen sporting a new War Machine armor created by Tony Stark's older brother Gregory Stark of which both are, for some reason, now estranged, which he uses to save two abducted U.S. army officers from the hands of the Taliban. Once the officers had been secured, Rhodes decides to kill the unarmed civils and the enemy after they surrendered, giving the first glimpse into a more ruthless, apathetic and even sadistic War Machine; a far cry from earlier views of Rhodes. Later, in France, he attempts to capture a seemingly rogue Captain America as part of the reactivated "Project Avengers" with new armor that is quite larger, is bloated with numerous ballistic weapons (far more than Tony Stark's Iron Man armor), and can also, evidently, even transform into a German sports car. Rhodes is almost able to capture Captain America, but their last confrontation involves Cap being in a room full of school children. Rhodes' ruthlessness is shown ever further as he contemplates continuing his attack, until Cap reminds him that any "Collateral Damage" involving school children would be a Public Relations and Political nightmare prompting War Machine to back off, but for all the wrong reasons. At this point, Rhodes' new mental, emotional or combat attitude has not been addressed or explained.

In other media

Collections

Iron Man: War Machine (''Iron Man'' #280-291)

War Machine Classic: Vol. 1 (''War Machine'' #1-7, and Ashcan)

Secret Invasion: War Machine (''Iron Man'' vol. 4, #33-35, and ''Iron Man'' #144)

War Machine Vol. 1: Iron Heart (''War Machine'' vol. 2, #1-5, and ''Dark Reign: New Nation'' #1)

War Machine Vol. 2: Dark Reign (''War Machine'' vol. 2, #6-12)

Iron Man 2.0 Vol. 1: Palmer Addley Is Dead (''Iron Man 2.0'' Prelude, and #1-7)

References

External links

World of Black Heroes: War Machine Biography

War Machine at Marvel.com

Category:Comics characters introduced in 1979 Category:Characters created by David Michelinie Category:Comic book sidekicks Category:Fictional African-American people Category:Fictional aviators Category:Fictional characters from Pennsylvania Category:Fictional characters from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Category:Fictional cyborgs Category:Fictional engineers Category:Fictional soldiers Category:Fictional United States Marines Category:Film characters Category:Iron Man Category:Marvel Comics superheroes

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