Watch iconic images of Vietnam War

New Delhi: The Vietnam War was the prolonged struggle between ommunist forces attempting to regain the control of their nation and the United States attempting to prevent the spread of communism. The war dominated the history of Vietnam for almost 30 years.Americans refer this period as "Vietnam War" – and the Vietnamese call it"American War" .There had been fighting in Vietnam for decades before the Vietnam War began. The Vietnamese had suffered under French colonial rule for nearly six decades when Japan invaded portions of Vietnam in 1940. It was in 1941, when Vietnam had two foreign powers occupying them, that communist Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh arrived back in Vietnam. In 1954 the Communist forces based in the north and led by Ho Chi Minh defeated the French . The Vietnam war started in 1959 and ended on April 30, 1975 after the communists seized Saigon and control of the whole country. Here are some iconic pics of the war: Police chief about to execute Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem on the street .American with an anti-war message on his helmet. A wounded paratrooper grimaces in pain. South Vietnamese woman mourns over the body of her husband. Children run away from the site of a napalm attack. A large peace sign, apparently gouged out of the countryside with a bulldozer, near Camp Eagle, headquarters of the 101st Airborne Division, in the northern part of South Vietnam. South Vietnamese soldiers traverse a river in the Ba Don area near the Cambodian border. U.S. troops endure Viet Cong fire to reach an evacuation helicopter near the Hoai Chau graveyard. U.S. Army helicopters touch down in a staging area 50 miles northeast of Saigon in 1966.