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The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Vietnamese
Việt Nam Dân Chủ Cộng Hòa), also known as North Vietnam, was created by the partition
of Vietnam in 1954 after the defeat of France at the Battle of
Dien Bien Phu. The Viet Minh took control of North Vietnam on October 11, 1954.
North Vietnam's capital was Hanoi and it was ruled by a Communist government allied with the Soviet Union and
the People's Republic of China and fought
against the United States and South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The People's Republic of China helped to support the
government during the war; for example, on August 7, 1967 the PRC agreed to give North Vietnam an undisclosed amount of aid in the form of a grant.
With the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces in 1975, political authority within
South Vietnam was taken by the Communist-backed Republic of South Vietnam. This government merged with
North Vietnam on July 2, 1976, to form a single
nation called the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam, commonly known simply as Vietnam.
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