Reddit mentions of A People's History Of The Vietnam War (New Press People's History)

To understand the impact of the war on both Southern and Northern economies, start with French colonialism. It wasn't great for the Vietnamese people. But with the advent of WWII, French control disintegrated as they submitted to the Japanese, and things went from bad to worse. In 1945 the war ended and a power vacuum ensued. The Viet Minh took control of Hanoi in the North and began to fight for power with the French, based in Saigon to the south. An estimated 5 million people died of famine, war, and disease during these years (out of a population of about 24 million). The French eventually lost the North in '54, and set up a puppet government backed by the US and UK in Saigon. Flagrant corruption and religious persecution caused discontent with the Southern government, and the Viet Minh sent forces south to start a guerilla movement known as the Viet Cong. That's when the US jumped in under the pretense of stallin' communism.

As the US began losing the ground war in the mid 60s, they switched to carpet bombing, Agent Orange, and napalm. It's impossible to say how much exactly, but a staggeringly large percentage of land, especially in central Vietnam, eastern Laos, and northern Cambodia, was decimated by 7 million tons of bombs, 72 million liters of Agent Orange (covering nearly 10% of the Vietnamese countryside and jungle), and a modest 400,000 tons of napalm.

Eventually the North took control of the entire country as it is today. It's no surprise that the Communist party fought so hard for the land below the 17th parallel, whatever patriotic slogans they may have used--the Mekong delta alone produces half the country's rice, and rich businessmen in Saigon were scraping huge profits. When the Hanoi government took over in 1975, wealthy elites, intellectuals, and catholics fled the country or were killed/persecuted/removed from power. The Party annexed a vast majority of the economy into SOEs (state-owned enterprises) and sucked the economy dry yet again by corruption, misuse of state funds, and cronyism. Tack on a war in Cambodia, and it took Vietnam another 20 years ('75-'95) to even begin to recover. Older people here remember very well not having enough rice 20 years ago.

Think about what 30 years of war and famine does to a population. As Viktor Frankel so poignantly put it when describing Nazi concentration camps, the best examples of our species do not survive. Those who were altruistic, honest, and brave died first. Those who were not increased their chances of survival. Open persecution of anything deemed intellectual, individual, or capitalist for so many years has a stifling effect on an economy. Only in the last 15 years has Vietnam begun to pull itself out of an economy that meant severe poverty for a majority of people. As Hanoi's paranoia of all things foreign subsides and a small number of SOEs have been privatized, a growing middle class and new wealth in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) are raising living standards. Riding the wave of China's boom, Vietnamese people saw life improve at an almost surreal pace from 2002-2007. Today things have slowed down and inflation is getting out of hand, once again due in large part to the reluctance of the Party's plutocrats to tidy up the corruption.

Regardless of its often melancholy history, Vietnam is a beautiful country, full of bright, charming people. Visiting is easier and more pleasant than ever. Things are looking up here.

I highly recommend reading Jonathan Neale's A People's History of the Vietnam War. It goes into detail about the war and its effects through the 1980s. link