Vietnam War

With the end of WW2 in 1945, the U.S and the Soviets became the two main world powers at the military and economic levels, representing the capitalist and the communist system, respectively.

In 1954, Vietnam was divided in two, the south, financed by the president of the United States, and the north led by Ho Chi Minh, that way the Vietnam war officially started when the country refused to accept the Genebra convention which was supposed to unify the both parts, as well as the ideological clashes between the north and the south, were causes of the war.

The Vietnam war was the one that most stained the U.S military career, thousands of families were destroyed, the press acted intensely in the conflict by portraying the massacre that the Americans caused to the Vietnamese.

With the course of the conflict, the war symbolized the fall of the greatest capitalist power by a ´´Third World Country´´ once the United States had an incomparable weapons power regarding its enemy.

Countless criticisms were presented regarding the U.S weapons power on Vietnam in movies and music.

The great publicity of the press worldwide about the war, the incalculable loss of soldiers, children being killed...was vital to create in the population a revulsion to conservatism, to war and to weapons, leading later to the Hippie movement and the counterculture movements.

José Afonso Silva