Before actually entering the White House in 1953, President Eisenhower continued the policy of supplying aid to the French war effort. In disregard to the massive aid, the French couldn’t retake Vietnam. The French were forced to surrender in May of 1954, when the Vietminh overran the French outpost at Dien Bien Phu, in northwestern Vietnam. From May through July 1954, the countries of France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the U.S., China, Laos, and Cambodia met in Geneva, Switzerland, with the Vietminh and with South Vietnam’s anticommunist nationalists to work out a peace agreement. This meeting is well known as the Geneva Accords.
The Geneva Accords divided Vietnam for a short period of time, along the 17th parallel. The communists guerrillas and their leader, Ho Chi Minh, controlled North Vietnam from the capitol of Hanol. Although the Viet Minh victory at Dien Bien Phu signaled the end of French colonial influence in Indochina and cleared the way for the division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel at the conference of Geneva, the United States, eventually, stepped up, increasing military aid to South Vietnam and sending the first U.S. military advisers to the country in 1959.
The Geneva Accords divided Vietnam for a short period of time, along the 17th parallel. The communists guerrillas and their leader, Ho Chi Minh, controlled North Vietnam from the capitol of Hanol. Although the Viet Minh victory at Dien Bien Phu signaled the end of French colonial influence in Indochina and cleared the way for the division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel at the conference of Geneva, the United States, eventually, stepped up, increasing military aid to South Vietnam and sending the first U.S. military advisers to the country in 1959.