Vietnam War (1945-1975)

1
Vietnam War (1945-1975)
2
Vietnam War (1945-1975)

• The Vietnam War was the longest war in United
  States history.
• Promises and commitments to the people and
  government of South Vietnam to keep communist
  forces from overtaking them reached back into the
  Truman Administration. Eisenhower placed military
  advisers and CIA operatives in Vietnam, and John
  F. Kennedy sent American soldiers to Vietnam.
  Lyndon Johnson ordered the first real combat by
  American troops, and Richard Nixon concluded the
  war.

3
Early Involvement

• After World War I, a nationalist movement formed
  in Vietnam led by Ho Chi Minh. Ho was educated in
  the West, where he became a disciple of Marxist
  thought. Ho resented and resisted the French.
  When the Japanese invaded Vietnam during World
  War II, they displaced French rule. Ho formed a
  liberation movement known as the Viet Minh. Using
  guerrilla warfare, the Viet Minh battled the
  Japanese and held many key cities by 1945.
  Paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence, Ho
  proclaimed the new nation of Vietnam a new
  nation Western powers refused to recognize.

4
Early Involvement

• France was determined to reclaim all its
  territories after World War II. The United States
  now faced an interesting dilemma. American
  tradition dictated sympathy for the
  revolutionaries over any colonial power. However,
  supporting the Marxist Viet Minh was unthinkable,
  given the new strategy of containing communism.

Ho Chi Minh
5
Domino Theory

• American diplomats subscribed to the domino
  theory. A communist victory in Vietnam might lead
  to communist victories in Laos, Cambodia,
  Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Such a
  scenario was unthinkable to the makers of
  American foreign policy.
• President Truman decided to support France in its
  efforts to reclaim Indochina by providing money
  and military advisers. The United States
  financial commitment amounted to nearly 1
  billion per year.

6
Early Involvement

• The French found Ho Chi Minh a formidable
  adversary. Between 1945 and 1954 a fierce war
  developed between the two sides. Slowly but
  surely, the Viet Minh wore down the French will
  to fight. On May, 8th, 1954 a large regiment of
  French troops was captured by the Vietnamese led
  by communist general Vo Nguyen Giap at Dien Bien
  Phu.

7
French Withdrawl

• The rest of the French troops withdrew, leaving a
  buffer zone separating the North and South.
  Negotiations to end the conflict took place in
  Geneva. A multinational agreement divided Vietnam
  at the 17th parallel. The territory north of this
  line would be led by Ho Chi Minh with Hanoi its
  capital.

8
The US Takes Over

• The southern sector named Saigon its capital and
  Ngo Dinh Diem its leader. This division was meant
  to be temporary, with nationwide elections
  scheduled for 1956. Knowing that Ho Chi Minh
  would be a sure victor, the South made sure these
  elections were never held.

9
The US Takes Over

• During the administrations of Eisenhower and
  Kennedy, the United States continued to supply
  funds, weapons, and military advisers to South
  Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh turned North Vietnam into a
  communist dictatorship and created a new band of
  guerrillas in the South called the Viet Cong,
  whose sole purpose was to overthrow the military
  regime in the South and reunite the nation under
  Ho Chi Minh.

10
The US Takes Over

• The United States was backing an unpopular leader
  in Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem was corrupt, showed little
  commitment to democratic principles, and favored
  Catholics to the dismay of the Buddhist majority.
  In November 1963, Diem was murdered in a coup
  with apparent CIA involvement.

11
Buddhist Protests

• On June 11th, 1963 a Buddhist protest march was
  making its way down one of Saigons busiest
  arteries, Phan-Dinh-Phung St. The procession of
  around 400 Buddhist monks and Nuns moved through
  the city until they hit Le-Van-Duyet St where a
  light blue Austin that was part of the
  procession, the car seen in the background of the
  picture, stopped. The hood was raised as if the
• car had engine trouble while the nuns and monks
  in the parade quickly surrounded the car forming
  a circle of some seven monks deep. Thich Quang
  Duc a 66 year old monk calmly got out of the car
  and walked to the center of the circle sitting on
  a cushion provided for him. His religious
  brothers removed a jerry can of fuel from the car
  and proceeded to pour it over Quang-Duc who was
  now meditating in the lotus position. Quang-Duc
  with his Buddhist prayer beads in his right hand,
  then opened a box of matches, lit one and was
  instantly engulfed in flames. He did not move
  while his body was incinerated, while Malcome
  Browne the only western reporter present snapped
  the picture of the monk on fire..

12
Buddhist Protests

• Passers-by stop to watch as flames envelope a
  young Buddhist monk, Saigon, October 5th, 1963.
  The man sits impassively in the central market
  square, he has set himself on fire performing a
  ritual suicide in protest against governmental
  anti-Buddhist policies. Crowds gathered to
  protest in Hue after the South Vietnamese
  government prohibited Buddhists from carrying
  flags on Buddha's birthday. Government troops
  opened fire to disperse the dissidents, killing
  nine people, Diems government blamed the incident
  on the Vietcong and never admitted
  responsibility. The Buddhist leadership quickly
  organized demonstrations that eventually led to
  seven monks burning themselves to death.

13
The US Takes Over

• Few of Ngo's successors fared any better, while
  Ho Chi Minh was the Vietnamese equivalent of
  George Washington. He had successfully won the
  hearts and minds of the majority of the
  Vietnamese people. Two weeks after the fall of
  Diem, Kennedy himself was felled by an assassin's
  bullet.
• By the time Lyndon Johnson inherited the
  Presidency, Vietnam was a bitterly divided
  nation. The United States would soon too be
  divided on what to do in Vietnam.

14
Gulf of Tonkin Incident

• In August 1964, in response to American and GVN
  espionage along its coast, the DRV launched a
  local and controlled attack against the C. Turner
  Joy and the U.S.S. Maddox, two American ships on
  call in the Gulf of Tonkin. The first of these
  attacks occurred on August 2, 1964. A second
  attack was supposed to have taken place on August
  4, although Vo Nguyen Giap, the DRV's leading
  military figure at the time, and Johnson's
  Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara have
  recently concluded that no second attack ever
  took place. In any event, the Johnson
  administration used the August 4 attack as
  political cover for a Congressional resolution
  that gave the president broad war powers. The
  resolution, now known as the Gulf of Tonkin
  Resolution, passed both the House and Senate with
  only two dissenting votes (Senators Morse of
  Oregon and Gruening of Alaska). The Resolution
  was followed by limited reprisal air attacks
  against the DRV.

15
Gulf of Tonkin Incident

• Throughout the fall and into the winter of 1964,
  the Johnson administration debated the correct
  strategy in Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs of Staff
  wanted to expand the air war over the DRV quickly
  to help stabilize the new Saigon regime. The
  civilians in the Pentagon wanted to apply gradual
  pressure to the Communist Party with limited and
  selective bombings. Only Undersecretary of State
  George Ball dissented, claiming that Johnson's
  Vietnam policy was too provocative for its
  limited expected results. In early 1965, the NLF
  attacked two U.S. army installations in South
  Vietnam, and as a result, Johnson ordered the
  sustained bombing missions over the DRV that the
  Joint Chiefs of Staff had long advocated.

16
Operation Rolling Thunder

• The bombing missions, known as OPERATION ROLLING
  THUNDER, caused the Communist Party to reassess
  its own war strategy. From 1960 through late
  1964, the Party believed it could win a military
  victory in the south "in a relatively short
  period of time." With the new American military
  commitment, confirmed in March 1965 when Johnson
  sent the first combat troops to Vietnam, the
  Party moved to a protracted war strategy. The
  idea was to get the United States bogged down in
  a war that it could not win militarily and create
  unfavorable conditions for political victory. The
  Communist Party believed that it would prevail in
  a protracted war because the United States had no
  clearly defined objectives, and therefore, the
  country would eventually tire of the war and
  demand a negotiated settlement. While some naive
  and simple-minded critics have claimed that the
  Communist Party, and Vietnamese in general, did
  not have the same regard for life and therefore
  were willing to sustain more losses in a
  protracted war, the Party understood that it had
  an ideological commitment to victory from large
  segments of the Vietnamese population.

17
The Tet Offensive

• By 1968, things had gone from bad to worse for
  the Johnson administration. In late January, the
  DRV and the NLF launched coordinated attacks
  against the major southern cities. These attacks,
  known in the West as the Tet Offensive, were
  designed to force the Johnson administration to
  the bargaining table. The Communist Party
  correctly believed that the American people were
  growing war-weary and that its continued
  successes in the countryside had tipped the
  balance of forces in its favor. Although many
  historians have since claimed that the Tet
  Offensive was a military defeat, but a
  psychological victory for the Communists, it had
  produced the desired results. In late March 1968,
  a disgraced Lyndon Johnson announced that he
  would not seek the Democratic Party's
  re-nomination for president and hinted that he
  would go to the bargaining table with the
  Communists to end the war.

18
My Lai Massacre
March 28, 1968 - The initial report by
participants at My Lai states that 69 Viet Cong
soldiers were killed and makes no mention of
civilian causalities. The My Lai massacre is
successfully concealed for a year, until a series
of letters from Vietnam veteran Ronald Ridenhour
spark an official Army investigation that results
in Charlie Company Commander, Capt. Ernest L.
Medina, First Platoon Leader, Lt. William Calley,
and 14 others being brought to trial by the Army.
A news photos of the carnage, showing a mass of
dead children, women and old men, remains one of
the most enduring images of America's involvement
in Vietnam.
19
Escalation of the Vietnam War

• The situation inherited by Richard Nixon was no
  less a "mess" than it was in November 1963 when
  Lyndon Johnson rose to the presidency. In fact,
  it was much worse. Over 500,000 troops were
  stationed in Vietnam Americans killed in action
  averaged 1200 a month. And domestic opinion
  about the war was divided (no consensus on a
  course of action in Vietnam), negative (a
  majority felt that the war was a mistake), and
  pessimistic (people saw little progress at the
  peace talks and believed the fighting would go on
  for at least 2 more years). Added to the mix
  were the racial divisions in the country, the
  skepticism toward within the anti-war movement,
  and a long standing antipathy toward Nixon among
  Democratic loyalists.

20
Escalation of the Vietnam War

• Nixon and Kissinger quickly agreed upon two
  premises about American policy in Vietnam. First,
  the war in Vietnam was not "winnable" in any
  conventional sense of the term. Public opinion
  would tolerate neither an escalation nor the
  continuation of a status quo that included over
  1,000 killed per month. Second, a unilateral
  withdrawal was not feasible because the political
  costs, both domestic and international, were
  unacceptable. Withdrawal would dissolve Nixon's
  political base at home and, as Kissinger
  continually emphasized, undermine American
  credibility abroad. 2 Apart from the military
  situation in Vietnam, the political problem
  confronting President Nixon was complex. How
  could Nixon "buy time" to achieve his
  understanding of "peace with honor" without
  succumbing to Lyndon Johnson's fate of eroding
  public support?

21
Escalation of the Vietnam War

• The history of his first administration reveals
  that Nixon's strategy consisted of four
  components
• 1. Vietnamization
• 2. The "Politics of Polarization"
• 3. The "Madman" scenario
• 4. Triangular Diplomacy

22
Escalation of the Vietnam War

• Vietnamization
• First, it was necessary to reduce American
  casualty rates and the number of combat troops in
  Vietnam. To this end, Nixon defined his policy
  as "Vietnamization" -- the idea that South
  Vietnamese would gradually assume a greater
  combat role and ultimately eliminate the need for
  American ground forces. Because the US would not
  withdraw abrubtly, the policy of Vietnamization
  would require time. The domestic political
  objective was to convince the public that the
  Army of South Vietnam could eventually handle the
  war on their own.

23
Escalation of the Vietnam War

• The "Politics of Polarization"
• To buy time, Nixon had to build a larger and more
  reliable base of support within the American
  public. His popular vote margin in the 1968
  election was razor thin. However, to his
  advantage, the Democratic coalition was shattered
  in 1968 and there were political opportunities.
  To exploit these opportunities, the
  administration would pursue a "politics of
  polarization" in which it would, at one and the
  same time, appeal to a "silent majority" and
  attempt to isolate opponents and paint them, in
  one manner or another, as extreme.

24
The Silent Majority

• The "Politics of Polarization"
• To buy time, Nixon had to build a larger and more
  reliable base of support within the American
  public. His popular vote margin in the 1968
  election was razor thin. However, to his
  advantage, the Democratic coalition was shattered
  in 1968 and there were political opportunities.
  To exploit these opportunities, the
  administration would pursue a "politics of
  polarization" in which it would, at one and the
  same time, appeal to a "silent majority" and
  attempt to isolate opponents and paint them, in
  one manner or another, as extreme.

25
The Silent Majority

• The polarizing effect of Vice President Agnew's
  attacks were intentional and part of the
  political strategy of the administration. As
  Agnew noted, "I say it is time for a positive
  polarization. It is time to rip away the rhetoric
  and to divide on authentic lines." 9 President
  Nixon and his political advisors were strongly
  influenced by The Emerging Republican Majority,
  published by Kevin Phillips in 1969 and called
  "The Political Bible of the Nixon Era" by
  Newsweek magazine. In the book, Phillips argued
  that the once potent New Deal coalition of the
  Democrats was in shambles. Nixon could, Phillips
  contended, build a permanent national majority
  for the Republicans by holding his traditional
  Republican base while augmenting that base with
  southern Democrats (many of whom voted for George
  Wallace in 1968) and other conservative elements
  in the Democratic Party.
• At 930 PM on November 3, President Nixon
  addressed a national television audience from the
  White House. This speech, whose date was
  announced just two days before the first
  moratorium, was designed to buy time in Vietnam
  and to reach out to dissident Democrats along
  with Nixon's core constituency. In the speech,
  the president traced the history of American
  involvement in Vietnam, highlighted the
  negotiating efforts of administration since
  taking office, outlined his policy of
  Vietnamization, and placed the blame for the
  continuation of war on the government of North
  Vietnam. The speech reached its crescendo when he
  appealed to the public for support

26
The Silent Majority

• And so tonight-- to you, the great silent
  majority of my fellow
• Americans-- I ask for your support. I pledged
  in my campaign
• for the Presidency to end the war in a way that
  we could win the
• peace. I have initiated a plan of action which
  will enable me to
• keep that pledge. The more support I can have
  from the
• American people, the sooner that pledge can be
  redeemed for
• the more divided we are at home, the less likely,
  the enemy is to
• negotiate at Paris. Let us be united for peace.
  Let us also be
• united against defeat. Because let us understand
  North Vietnam
• cannot defeat or humiliate the United States.
  Only Americans
• can do that.
• - Nixons Silent Majority Speech Nov. 3, 1969

27
The Silent Majority

• The public reaction to the president's speech was
  most favorable. Among those who watched the
  address, 77 approved of how Nixon was handling
  the situation in Vietnam and only 6 disapproved.
  In the wake of the speech, Nixon's overall
  approval rating climbed from 56 to 67. Although
  Nixon had increased his personal support, other
  indicators suggested that the public remained
  divided on policy in Vietnam. 55 of public now
  classified themselves as "doves" with only 31
  using the "hawk" label (down from 41 after the
  TET offensive).

28
Escalation of the Vietnam War

• The "Madman" scenario
• A "madman theory" was devised for negotiating
  with the government of North Vietnam. In this
  gambit, Henry Kissinger would emphasize, in his
  meetings with representatives of North Vietnam,
  the volatility of President Nixon's personality.
  He would warn the North Vietnamese that Nixon was
  unpredictable, that he could fly into a rage, and
  that this could happen in response to either
  North Vietnamese military action or intransigence
  in the peace talks. A similar theme was sounded
  by Kissinger in his dealing with the American
  press. Over the course of the term, Nixon
  provided a number of examples to give credence to
  Kissinger's claims secretly bombing Cambodia,
  bombing Hanoi and Haiphong, invading Cambodia and
  mining Haiphong harbor.

29
Escalation of the Vietnam War

• Triangular Diplomacy
• Finally, Nixon pursued a "geopolitical" approach
  to the war as well. During the first years of
  his term, Nixon discovered reason to believe that
  both the Soviet Union and People's Republic of
  China were interested in what became known as
  detente -- an easing of Cold War tensions and
  expanding trade relations. This interest, plus
  the suspicions between USSR and the PRC, would
  provide Nixon with leverage for pressing the
  Soviets and Chinese to "do business" with the
  U.S. and to pressure the North Vietnamese to
  settle the war.
• When we examine the history or chronology of the
  first Nixon administration, each component is
  evident as is the manner in which the components
  "meshed" into both a political strategy for
  getting America out of Vietnam and reelecting
  Nixon in 1972.

30
Invasion of Cambodia

• On April 20, 1970, President Nixon addressed a
  national television audience. In his speech, he
  reviewed the progress of his Vietnamization
  policy and announced that 150,000 American troops
  would be withdrawn from Vietnam in the following
  year. This was the third and largest announcement
  of troop withdrawals since Nixon took office.
  And, unlike the troop increases of the Johnson
  years, the announcements by Nixon were well
  publicized.

31
Invasion of Cambodia

• Ten days later, Nixon took to the airwaves again.
  The news this time was more controversial as the
  president announced that American and South
  Vietnamese forces were launching an invasion of
  Cambodia. The object of the offensive was to wipe
  out sanctuaries within Cambodia that were used by
  the North Vietnamese infiltrating the south.

• In his speech, Nixon emphasized not only the
  strategic value of the operation but also
  American credibility. "If, when the chips are
  down," the president argued, "the world's most
  powerful nation, the United States of America,
  acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces
  of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free
  nations and free institutions throughout the
  world." In order to persuade the public, the
  speech exaggerated the strategic value of the
  operation and contained a number of "whoppers."
  13 The address concluded with a classic
  Nixonian flourish as the president asserted that
  "I would rather be a one-term President and do
  what is right than to be a two-term President at
  the cost of seeing America become a second-rate
  power and to see this Nation accept the first
  defeat in its proud 190-year history."

32
Invasion of Cambodia

• The response of public opinion to the military
  action was peculiar. The public approved of the
  way Nixon was handling the situation in Cambodia
  by a margin of 50 to 35 in response to the
  question of whether U.S. troops should be sent to
  Cambodia, only 25 responded affirmatively while
  59 said troops should not be sent.

33
Kent State Massacre

• Despite the nature of the polls, the "Cambodian
  decision" triggered a firestorm of protest. The
  most publicized occurred on the campus of Kent
  State University in northeast Ohio. On the
  evening of May 1, 1970, antiwar protests turned
  violent when the ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training
  Corp) building was torched. In response, the
  Governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, dispatched the
  National Guard to Kent. During another
  demonstration on Monday, May 4th, members of the
  National Guard began firing at demonstrators.
  Four students were killed and eight injured.

34
Kent State / Jackson State

• In the wake of Kent State, all hell broke loose.
  Two students were killed when Mississippi State
  police fired on a crowd of students at Jackson
  State University. 450 colleges and universities
  went on strike Governor Ronald Reagan closed the
  entire college and university system in
  California within a week, the National Guard had
  been deployed in sixteen different states and on
  21 different campuses. A number of universities
  simply closed down for the year.

35
Kent State / Jackson State

• In the weeks after Kent State, "hard hats" ---
  the slang for workers in construction and the
  building trades --- staged a series of
  demonstrations in support of Nixon. In one New
  York city demonstration the "hardhats" attacked a
  group of antiwar demonstrators with "fists,
  boots, and hammers, chanting 'Love It or Leave
  It.' " These blue collar workers, traditionally
  Democratic voters, were one of the groups Nixon
  hoped to attract with the politics of
  polarization.
• The remainder of 1970 saw a continuation of the
  Vietnamization policy. By the end of the 1970,
  there were 335,000 American troops in Vietnam
  (down from 537,000 at the end of Johnson's term)
  with an average monthly casualty rate of 344
  (down from an average of 1,200 during 1968).

36
The Laotian Incursion

• In early February, 1971,the South Vietnamese
  army, backed by the US air and tactical support,
  launched an incursion into Laos with the intent
  of cutting off the Ho Chi Minh trail. Initially,
  the operation was successful with South
  Vietnamese forces moving twenty miles deep into
  Laos. On February 20th, the North Vietnamese
  launched a counteroffensive and, during nearly a
  month of fighting, captured the territory
  initially occupied by South Vietnamese forces. On
  March 19th, the U.S. began an airlift to remove
  South Vietnamese from Laos and on March 24th, the
  operation was officially declared at an end

37
The Laotian Incursion

• The Laotian incursion was seen as the first
  "test" of Nixon's Vietnamization policy in the
  sense of revealing whether the army of South
  Vietnam could sustain an offensive. The results
  were, at best, mixed. As Stephen Ambrose notes,
  "the offensive designed to prove that
  Vietnamization was working had turned into a
  rout, made painfully visible to American
  television viewers by footage showing ARVN troops
  fighting among themselves for a place on American
  helicopters extracting them from Laos."

38
The Spring Protests, 1971

• The coming of spring brought more anti-war
  protests to Washington D.C. There were sizable
  demonstrations in March, April, and May. The
  April demonstrations were led by the organization
  known as Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW).
  The most dramatic moment of the April protests
  occurred near the Capitol Building where numerous
  combat veterans threw back their medals to
  protest Nixon's continuation of the war.

Another round of demonstrations began on May 3,
1971. For the Silent Majority this was proof
that the students were out of control. It also
led country music singer Merle Haggard to write
Okie from Muskogee which became a rallying song
for the Silent Majority.
39
The Spring Protests, 1971

• On April 7, 1971, Nixon announced, in a
  nationally televised speech, that 100,000 troops
  would be withdrawn by the end of the year. In an
  impromptu news conference on November 11th, he
  reported that another 45,000 would be withdrawn
  by February 1st, 1972. By the end of 1971, the
  number of U.S. troops in Vietnam would stand at
  157,000 the average number of casualties per
  month would fall to 123.

40
The Pentagon Papers

• In 1971, the New York Times published excerpts
  from the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret overview
  of the history of government involvement in
  Vietnam. A participant in the study named Daniel
  Ellsberg believed the American public needed to
  know some of the secrets, so he leaked
  information to the press. The Pentagon Papers
  revealed a high-level deception of the American
  public by the Johnson Administration.

41
The Pentagon Papers

• Many statements released about the military
  situation in Vietnam were simply untrue,
  including the possibility that even the bombing
  of American naval boats in the Gulf of Tonkin
  might never have happened. A growing credibility
  gap between the truth and what the government
  said was true caused many Americans to grow even
  more cynical about the war.

42
The Pentagon Papers

• By December 1972, Nixon decided to escalate the
  bombing of North Vietnamese cities, including
  Hanoi. He hoped this initiative would push North
  Vietnam to the peace table. In January 1973, a
  ceasefire was reached, and the remaining American
  combat troops were withdrawn. Nixon called the
  agreement "peace with honor," but he knew the
  South Vietnamese Army would have difficulty
  maintaining control.

43
The Pentagon Papers

• The North soon attacked the South and in April
  1975 they captured Saigon. Vietnam was united
  into one communist nation. Saigon was renamed Ho
  Chi Minh City. Cambodia and Laos soon followed
  with communist regimes of their own. The United
  States was finally out of Vietnam. But every
  single one of its political objectives for the
  region met with failure.
• Over 55,000 Americans perished fighting the
  Vietnam War.

44
The Fall of Saigon
By April 25th, 1975, after the NVA captured Phuoc
Long city, Quang Tri, Hue, Da Nang and Hue, the
South Vietnamese Army had lost its best units,
more than a third of its men, and nearly half its
weapons. The NVA were closing in on Saigon, which
forced President Ford to order an immediate
evacuation of American civilians and South
Vietnamese refugees in Operation Frequent Wind.
The operation was put into effect by secret
code. Remaining citizens, refugees, and officials
were to stand by until the code was released.
"White Christmas" was the code, which was
broadcast on the morning of April 29th. Refugees
and Americans then "high-tailed" it to designated
landing zones.
U.S. Marine and Air Force helicopters, flying
from offshore carriers, performed a massive
airlift. In 18 hours, more than 1,000 American
civilians and nearly 7,000 South Vietnamese
refugees were flown out of Saigon.
45
The Fall of Saigon
South Vietnamese pilots also were permitted to
participate in the evacuation, and they landed on
U.S. carriers. More than 100 of those
American-supplied helicopters (more than 250,000
each) were then pushed off carrier decks to make
room for more evacuees. At 403 a.m., April
30th, 1975, two U.S. Marines were killed in a
rocket attack at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airport.
They were the last Americans to die in the
Vietnam War. At dawn, the remaining marines of
the force guarding the U.S. Embassy lifted off.
Only hours later, South Vietnamese looters
ransacked the embassy as Soviet-supplied tanks,
operated by North Vietnamese, rolled south on
National Highway 1. On the morning of April 30th,
Communist forces captured the presidential palace
in Saigon, which ended the Second Indochina War.