The picture above is a picture of Ho Chi Minh's trail leading through Laos in 1967.

    Nationalism often leads to independence of countries. Nationalism led Vietnam‘s independence in a few ways. The first way is that the communist leader of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, was a nationalist and wanted his country to be independent from their French leaders. Ho Chi Minh really wanted his country to be its own so he started a war. His nationalism led to him starting a war. Another way that nationalism led to independence was that one reason for people going into the war that Ho Chi Minh started. These people were called Viet Minh. The Viet Minh were the people fighting in the war to liberate themselves from the French. This eventually led to the independence of Vietnam. That is how nationalism led to the independence of Vietnam.

    After eight years of fighting, Vietnam was divided at the 17^th parallel into communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Several years later the North Vietnamese trained troops and sent many groups of soldiers into South Vietnam to gain control over the country. The U.S thought that the domino theory would take place if they didn’t help South Vietnam defend itself against the North. The domino theory was that if Vietnam became a communist country, all of Asia would turn communist too. So to stop the spread of communism, the U.S. sent supplies and military advisers to help South Vietnam defend itself against the North, while Communist China and the Soviets supplied the North with weapons, equipment, and advisors. The U.S. began sending troops in 1964 and kept sending them as the war grew.  In 1969, there were more than half million U.S. troops in Vietnam. But in January, 1973 an agreement for U.S. withdrawal was arranged.