Abstract
The Vietnamese conflict differed from most wars in that key battles were not necessarily large nor fought by the military. Simultaneously with the military engagements raged an insidious political war which claimed as its victims a number equal to or exceeding the military casualties. To the communist there was neither a military nor a separate political war but a revolutionary struggle dedicated to the takeover of South Vietnam. The communist formula for victory, propagated in the spring of 1959, centered on violence and remains unchanged to the present.