This episode tells the story of the the Vietnam War at sea, of the most intense air battles of the Cold War, of bombardments against the Vietnamese coastline, and the politics  and history behind a war that was unpopular from day one and split the nation in two. 

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Right after the end of World War Two, the Viet Minh, a communist-led anti imperialist party and army led by Ho Chi Minh claimed control of almost all of the country in the power vacuum immediately after the Japanese surrender. A year later, in 1946 the revived French government sent troops back to occupy its former colony of Vietnam and crushed Ho Chi Minh’s new government, forcing his military to abandon the cities for the jungles, mountains, and countryside. Based on anticolonial principles the United States had initially opposed the French recolonization of Indochina but the victory of the communist just north of Vietnam in the Chinese civil war drove the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to support the French in their war against the Viet Minh.

The French were defeated, but we soon took their place. This is that story...

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