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no place for then-president, Thieu, and the US insistence that all NVA troops should move north after a ceasefire. Tit-for-tat military offensives launched early in 1972 saw both sides attempting to strengthen their hand at the bargaining table: Hanoi launched its Easter Offensive on the upper provinces of the South; while Nixon countered by resuming the bombing of the North. Towards the year’s end, negotiations recommenced, this time with Hanoi in a mood to compromise – not least because Nixon let rumours spread of his Madman Theory, which involved the use of nuclear weaponry – but the draft agreement produced in October (Nixon was keen to see a resolution before the US elections in Nov) was delayed by President Thieu in Saigon. By the time it was finalized in January 1973 Nixon had flexed his military muscles one last time, sanctioning the eleven-day Christmas Bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong (See "The Christmas Bombing"), in which twenty thousand tonnes of ordnance was dropped and 1600 civilians perished.

Under the terms of the Paris Accords, signed on January 27 by the United States, the North, the South and the Viet Cong, a ceasefire was established, all remaining American troops were repatriated by April, and Hanoi and Saigon released their PoWs. The Paris talks failed to yield a long-term political settlement, instead providing for the creation of a Council of National Conciliation, comprising Saigon’s government and the Communists, to sort matters out at some future date. The agreements allowed the NVA and ARVN troops to retain whatever positions they held. For this fudged deal, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the Nobel Prize for peace, though only Kissinger accepted.

History |

The fall of the South

The Paris Accords accomplished little beyond smoothing the US withdrawal from Vietnam: with the NVA allowed to remain in the South, it was only a matter of time before renewed aggression erupted. Thieu’s ARVN, now numbering a million troops and in robust shape thanks to its new US-financed equipment, soon set about retaking territory lost to the North during the Easter Offensive. The Communists, on the other hand, were still reeling from losses accrued during that campaign. By 1974, things were beginning to sour for the South. An economy already weakened by heavy inflation was further drained by the unemployment caused by America’s withdrawal; corruption in the military was rife, and unpaid wages led to a burgeoning desertion rate. By the end of the year, the South was ripe for the taking.

Received wisdom in Hanoi was that a slow build-up of arms in the South, in preparation for a conventional push in 1976, would be the wisest course of action. Then, over the Christmas period of 1974, an NVA drive led by General Tran overran the area north of Saigon now called Song Be Province. Duly encouraged, Hanoi went into action, and towns in the South fell like ninepins under the irresistible momentum of the Ho Chi Minh Campaign. Within two months, Communist troops had occupied Buon Ma Thuot, taking a mere 24 hours to finish a job they’d anticipated would require a week. Hué and Da Nang duly followed, and by April 21 Xuan Loc, the last real line of defence before Saigon, had also fallen. ARVN defiance disintegrated in the face of the North’s unerring progress: a famous image from these last days shows a highway scattered with the discarded boots of fleeing Southern soldiers. President Thieu fled by helicopter to Taiwan, and leadership of Saigon’s government was assumed by General Duong Van Minh (“Big Minh”). Minh held the post for just two days before NVA tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace and Saigon fell to the North on April 30. Only hours before, the last Americans and other Westerners in the city had been airlifted out in the frantic helicopter operation known as “Frequent Wind” (See "Along Le Duan Boulevard to the Botanical Gardens").

The toll of the American War in human terms is staggering. Of the 3.3 million Americans who served in Vietnam between 1965 and 1973, some 58,000 died, and