


assumed financial and military support for the South Vietnamese state. With the defeat of the French Union in the First Indochina War and its acceptance of military withdrawal from Vietnam pursuant to the Geneva peace agreement on Vietnam that took effect on 23 July 1954, the country gained the independence from France but was divided into two military gathering areas: the Viet Minh took control of North Vietnam, while the U.S. The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries officially becoming communist states by 1976. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. The war is widely considered to be a Cold War-era proxy war. The north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.
