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Vietnam War         Background             History to 1949                 Harry S. Truman and Vietnam (1945-1953)             Exit the French, 1950-1955                 Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vietnam (1953–1961)             The Diem Era                 John F. Kennedy and Vietnam (1961–1963)             Lyndon B. Johnson and Vietnam (1963–1969)                 Gulf of Tonkin and the Westmoreland Expansion                 Operation Rolling Thunder (1965–1968)                 The Big Build-Up                 Search and Destroy, the Strategy of Attrition                 The Ho Chi Minh trail                 The Border Battles and the Tet Offensive                 Paris peace talks             Richard Nixon and Vietnam, 1969–1974                 The My Lai massacre                 The Pentagon Papers                 Operation Menu and the Cambodian Incursion, 1969-1970                 Lam Son 719, 1971                 The Easter Offensive, 1972                 The 1972 Election and Operation Linebacker II                 Return to Paris, 1973                 Total US Withdrawal                 Final North Vietnamese offensive                 Fall of Saigon         Casualties             Soviet Union             Peoples Republic of China             South Korea             North Korea             Australia and New Zealand             Thailand         U.S. and Australian opposition to the War             Vietnam                 Undetonated munitions                 Contamination from U.S. chemicals             Domestic effects and aftermath in Cambodia             Domestic effects and aftermath in Laos                 Social impact             Social attitudes and treatment of US and Allied veterans         See also             Names for the war         Lists         Footnotes         Bibliography         Primary Sources         Further reading

Conflict Vietnam War Partof the Cold War image Caption Vietnamese village after an attack Date 1959 Political defeat for US. Military ... Strength1 ~1,200,000 (1968) Strength2 ~520,000 (1968)

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See also: History of Vietnam

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History to 1949
From 110 BC to 938 AD, (with the exception of brief periods) much of present-day Vietnam, especially the northern half, was part of China. After gaining independence, Vietnam went through a long history of resisting outside aggression. France had gained control of Indochina in a series of colonial wars beginning in the 1840s and lasting through the 1880s. At the post-World War I negotiations that led to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Hồ Chí Minh requested Vietnamese participation in order to work to obtain independence for the Indochinese colonies. His request was rejected, and Indochina's status as a colony of France remained unchanged. During World War II, The government of Vichy France cooperated with the occupying Imperial Japanese forces. Vietnam was under effective Japanese control, as well as de facto Japanese administrative control -- although the French continued to serve as official administrators until 1944. Hồ returned to Vietnam and formed a resistance group in the north. He was aided by teams sent in by the USOffice of Strategic Services (the precursor of today's Central Intelligence Agency). These teams worked behind enemy lines in Indochina giving support to indigenous resistance groups. In 1944, the Japanese overthrew the French administration and humiliated its colonial officials in front of the Vietnamese population. The Japanese then began to encourage nationalist activity among the Vietnamese and, late in the war, granted Vietnam nominal independence.

After the war and following the Japanese surrender, Vietnamese nationalists, communists, and other groups hoped to finally take control of the country. The Japanese army in Indochina assisted the Viet Minh -- Hồ's resistance army -- and other Vietnamese independence groups by imprisoning French officials and soldiers and handing over public buildings to the Vietnamese. On 2 September 1945, Hồ Chí Minh declared independence from France and proclaimed the formation of a new Vietnamese government under his leadership. In his exultant speech before a hugh audience, he cited the US Declaration of Independence and a band played "The Star Spangled Banner." Hồ, who had been a member of the Third Communist International since the early 1920s, hoped that the Americans would ally themselves with a Vietnamese nationalist movement, communist or otherwise. He based this hope on speeches by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who opposed a revival of European colonialism after World War II. Roosevelt, however, had moderated his position after the British -- who wanted to keep their own colonies -- objected.

The new Vietnamese government only lasted a few days, however, since it had bbeen decided at the Potsdam Conference that Vietnam would be jointly occupied by Chinese and British forces who would supervise the Japanese surrender and repatriation. The Chinese army arrived in Vietnam from north only a few days after Hồ Chí Minh's declaration of independence and took over areas north of the 16th parallel. The British arrived in the south in October and supervised both the surrender and departure of the Japanese army from Indochina south of the 16th parallel. With these actions, the government of Hồ Chí Minh effectively ceased to exist. In the South, the French prevailed upon the British to turn control of the region back over to them. French officials, when released from Japanese prisons at the end of September 1945, took matters into their own hands in some areas. In the north, France negotiated with both the nationalist government of China and the Viet Minh. By agreeing to give up Shanghai and its other concessions in China, the French persuaded the Chinese to allow them to return to northern Vietnam and negotiate with the Viet Minh. Hồ agreed to allow French forces to land outside Hanoi, while France agreed to recognize an independent Vietnam within the new French Union. In the meantime, Hồ took advantage of the period of negotiation to liquidate competing nationalist groups in the north. After failed negotiations with Hồ over the possibility of forming a government within the Union, the French entered Hanoi and the Việt Minh fled into the hills to begin an insurgency, marking the beginning of the First Indochina War. After the defeat of the Nationalists by the Communists in the Chinese Civil War, Premier Mao Zedong was able to supply direct military assistance to the Viet Minh. The Viet Minh gained the weapons, supplies, and the expertise necessary to transform themselves from a guerrilla force into a conventional army.

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Harry S. Truman and Vietnam (1945-1953)
Milestones of U.S. involvement under Harry S. Truman

March 9, 1945 — Japan overthrows nominal French authority in Indochina and declares an independent Vietnamese puppet state. The French administration is disarmed.

August 15, 1945 — Japan surrenders to the Allies. In Indochina, the Japanese administration allows Hồ Chí Minh to take over control of the country. This is called the August Revolution. Hồ Chí Minh borrows a phrase from the U.S. Declaration of Independence for his own declaration. Hồ Chí Minh fights with a variety of other political factions for control of the major cities.

August 1945 — A few days after the Vietnamese "revolution", Chinese forces enter from the north and, as previously planned by the allies, establish an administration in the country as far south as the 16th parallel.

September 26, 1945: OSS officer Lt. Col. A. Peter Dewey — working with the Viet Minh to repatriate Americans captured by the Japanese — is shot and killed by the Viet Minh, becoming the first American casualty in Vietnam.

October 1945 — British troops land in southern Vietnam and establish a provisional administration. The British free French soldiers and officials imprisoned by the Japanese. The French begin taking control of cities within the British zone of occupation.

February 1946 — The French sign an agreement with China. France gives up its concessions in Shanghai and other Chinese ports. In exchange, China agrees to assist the French in returning to Vietnam north of the 16th parallel.

March 6, 1946 — After negotiations with the Chinese and the Viet Minh, the French sign an agreement recognizing Vietnam within the French Union. Shortly after, the French land at Haiphong and occupy the rest of northern Vietnam. The Viet Minh use the negotiating process with France and China to buy time to use their armed forces to destroy all competing nationalist groups in the north.

December 1946 — Negotiations between the Viet Minh and the French break down. The Viet Minh are driven out of Hanoi into the countryside.

1947–1949 — The Viet Minh fight a limited insurgency in remote rural areas of northern Vietnam.

1949 — Chinese communists reach the northern border of Indochina. The Viet Minh drive the French from the border region and begin to receive large amounts of weapons from the Soviet Union and China. The weapons transform the Viet Minh from an irregular small-scale insurgency into a conventional army.

May 1st 1950 — After the capture of Hainan Island from Chinese Nationalist forces by Chinese Communists, President Truman approves $10 million in military assistance for anti-communist efforts in Indochina.

Following the outbreak of the Korean War, Truman announces "acceleration in the furnishing of military assistance to the forces of France and the Associated States in Indochina…" and sends 123 non-combat troops to help with supplies to fight against the communist Viet Minh.

1951 — Truman authorizes $150 million in French support.

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Exit the French, 1950-1955

See also: First Indochina War

In the meantime, the US was also supplying its the French allies with military aid. In 1950, the US Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) arrived to screen French requests for aid, advise on strategy, and train Vietnamese soldiers. In 1956, MAAG assumed from the French full responsibility for training the Vietnamese army. By 1954, the US had given 300,000 small arms and machine guns, and one billion dollars to support the French military effort and was shouldering at least 80% of the cost.

The Viet Minh eventually handed the French a major military defeat at Ðiện Biên Phủ. At the 1954 Geneva Conference the French government negotiated a peace agreement with the Viet Minh which allowed the French to leave Indochina and all three nations of the colony (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) were granted independence. However, Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel, above which the Viet Minh established a socialist state, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and below which a non-communist state was established under the Emperor Bảo Đại. Bao Dai's Prime Minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, shortly thereafter removed him from power, and established himself as President of the Republic of Vietnam.

As dictated by the Geneva Accords of 1954, the partition of Vietnam was meant to be only temporary, pending free elections for a national leadership. The agreement stipulated that the two military zones, which were separated by the temporary demarcation line, "should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary," and specifically stated that "general elections shall be held in July 1956." However, the Diem government refused to enter into negotiations to hold the stipulated elections, encouraged by US unwillingness to allow a communist victory in an all-Vietnam election. Questions were also raised about the legitimacy of any poll held in the communist-run North. The US-supported government of South Vietnam justfied its refusal to comply with the Geneva Accords by virtue of the fact it had not signed them.

Beginning in the summer of 1955, Diem launched a 'Denounce the Communists' campaign, during which communists and other anti-government elements were arrested, imprisoned or executed. Also at this time, as stipulated at Geneva, refugees and regroupees moved across the demarcation line in both directions. It was estimated that around 52,000 Vietnamese civilians moved from south to north, while 450,000 (mainly Roman Catholics and supporters of the French)were air- or boat-lifted from north to south.

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Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vietnam (1953–1961)
Milestones of the escalation under Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1954 — The Viet Minh defeat the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. The defeat, along with the end of the Korean war the previous year, causes the French to seek a negotiated settlement to the war.

1954 — The Geneva Conference (1954), called to determine the post-French future of Indochina, proposes a temporary division of Vietnam, to be followed by nationwide elections to unify the country in 1956.

1954 — Two months after the Geneva conference, North Vietnam forms Group 100 with headquarters at Ban Namèo. Its purpose is to direct, organize, train and supply the Pathet Lao to gain control of Laos, which along with Cambodia and Vietnam formed French Indochina.

1955 — North Vietnam launches an 'anti-landlord' campaign, during which counter-revolutionaries are imprisoned or killed. The numbers killed or imprisoned are disputed, with historian Stanley Karnow estimating about 6,000 while others (see the book "Fire in the Lake") estimate only 800. R.J. Rummel puts the figure as high as 200,000.

November 1, 1955 — Eisenhower deploys the Military Assistance Advisory Group to train the South Vietnam Army. This marks the official beginning of American involvement in the war as recognized by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

April 1956 — The last French troops leave Vietnam.

1954–1956 — 450,000 Vietnamese civilians flee the Viet Minh administration in North Vietnam and relocate in South Vietnam. 52,000 move in the opposite direction.

1956 — National unification elections do not occur.

December 1958 — North Vietnam invades Laos and occupies parts of the country

July 8, 1959 — Charles Ovnand and Dale R. Buis become the first two American Advisors to die in Vietnam.

September 1959 — North Vietnam forms Group 959 which assumes command of the Pathet Lao forces in Laos

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The Diem Era

As opposition to Diem's rule in South Vietnam grew, a low-level insurgency began to take shape there in 1957, conducted mainly by Viet Minh cadres who had remained in the south and had hidden caches of weapons in case unification failed to take place through elections. In late 1956 one of the leading communists in the south, Lê Duẩn, returned to Hanoi to urge that the Vietnam Workers' Party take a firmer stand on national reunification, but Hanoi hesitated in launching a full-scale military struggle. Finally, in January 1959, under pressure from southern cadres who were being successfully targeted by Diem's secret police, the Central Committee of the Party issued a secret resolution authorizing the use of armed struggle in the South. In December 1960, under instruction from Hanoi, southern communists established the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam in order to overthrow the government of the south. The NLF was made up of two distinct groups: South Vietnamese intellectuals who opposed the government and were nationalists and communists who had remained in the south after the partition and regroupment of 1954 as well as those who had since come from the north. While there were many non-communist members of the NLF, they were subject to the control of the party cadres and increasingly side-lined as the conflict continued; they did, however, enable the NLF to portray itself as a primarily nationalist, rather than communist, movement. Diem was already deeply unpopular with many of his countrymen because of his administration's nepotism, corruption, and its apparent bias in favor of the Catholic minority - of which Diem was a part - at the expense of the Buddhist majority. Promised land reforms were not carried out and Diem's strategic hamlet program for village self-defense (and government control) was a disaster. The Kennedy administration was growing increasingly frustrated with Diệm. In 1963 a crackdown by Diệm's forces was launched against Buddhist monks protesting against discriminatory practices and demanding a political voice. Diem's repression of the protests sparked the so-called Bhuddist Revolt, during which self-immolations by several monks took place and which were covered in the world press. The communists took full advantage of the situation and fueled anti-Diem sentiment to create further instability. Some policy-makers in Washington began to believe that Diem was incapable of defeating the communists, and some even feared that he might make a deal with Ho Chi Minh. During the summer of 1963 administration officials began discussing the possibility of a regime change in Saigon. The State Department was generally in favor of encouraging a coup while the Pentagon and CIA were more alert to the destabilizing consequences of such a coup and wanted to continue applying pressure to Diem to make political changes. Chief among the proposed changes was the removal of his younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu from all of his positions of power. Nhu was in charge of South Vietnam's secret police and was seen as the man behind the Bhuddist repression. As Diem's most powerful advisor, Nhu (along with his wife) had become a hated figure in South Vietnam, and one whose continued influence was unacceptable to all members of the Kennedy administration. Eventually the administration determined that Diem was unwilling to further modify his policies and the decision was made to remove US support from the regime. This choice was was made jointly by the State Department, Pentagon, National Security Agency, and the CIA. President Kennedy agreed with the consensus. In November, the US embassy in Saigon communicated to the military officers that made up the conspiracy that the US would not oppose the removal of Diem. The president was overthrown by the military and later executed along with his brother. After the coup, Kennedy appeared to be genuinely shocked and dismayed by the murders. Top CIA officials were baffled that Kennedy didn't understand that this was a possible outcome. Chaos ensued in the security and defense systems of South Vietnam and, once again, Hanoi took advantage of the situation to increase its support for the insurgents in the south. South Vietnam now entered a period of extreme political instability, as one military junta replaced another in quick succession. Ironically, Kennedy was himself assassinated just three weeks after Diệm. Kennedy was automatically succeeded by Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, who declared on 24 November that the US would continue its support of the South Vietnamese government. During this period, the US military involvement in South Vietnam dramatically increased and the 'Americanization' of the war began. The Saigon governments, and their new-found Western allies, portrayed their military actions as simply a defense against the use of armed violence to effect political change. At a geo-political level, the conflict was conducted in order to deter what was then perceived as expansive, Moscow-dominated communism, which had been the keystone of Western policy since the late 1940s. The Cold War paradigms of containment and the domino theory were in their heyday, and they were endlessly referred to when the issue of Vietnam came up. As far as the North Vietnamese the NLF were concerned, the conflict was a struggle to reunite the nation under a socialist government and to repel foreign aggressors and neo-colonialists - battlecries that were a virtual repeat of those of the war against the French.

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John F. Kennedy and Vietnam (1961–1963)

January 1961 — Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pledges support for "wars of national liberation" throughout the world. The idea of creating a neutral Laos is suggested to Kennedy.

May 1961 — Kennedy sends 400 American Green Beret "Special Advisors" to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers following a visit to the country by Lyndon Johnson.

June 1961 — Kennedy meets with Khrushchev in Vienna. Kennedy protests North Vietnam's attacks on Laos and points out that the U.S. was supporting the neutrality of Laos. Both leaders agree to pursue a policy of creating a neutral Laos.

October 1961 — Following successful Viet Cong attacks, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recommends sending six divisions (200,000 men) to Vietnam. Kennedy sends just

16,000 before the end of his Presidency in 1963.

August 1, 1962 — Kennedy signs the Foreign Assistance Act of 1962 which provides "…military assistance to countries which are on the rim of the Communist world and under direct attack."

January 3, 1963 — Viet Cong victory in the Battle of Ap Bac.

May 1963 — Buddhists riot in South Vietnam after a conflict over the display of religious flags during the celebration of Buddha's birthday. Some Buddhists urge Kennedy to end U.S. support for Ngo Dinh Diem, who is Catholic. Photographs of protesting Buddhist monks burning themselves alive appear in U.S. newspapers.

May 1963 — Republican Barry Goldwater declares that the U.S. should fight to win or withdraw from Vietnam. Later on, during his presidential campaign against Lyndon Johnson, his Democratic opponents accuse him of wanting to use atomic bombs in the conflict.

November 1, 1963 — Military officers launch a coup d'état against Diem, with the tacit approval of the Kennedy administration. Diem leaves the presidential residence.

November 2, 1963 — Diem is discovered and killed by rebel leaders, along with his brother Nhu.

November 22,1963 — Kennedy is assassinated.

The new administration of President John F. Kennedy remained essentially committed to the bi-partisan, anti-Communist foreign policies inherited from the administrations of Presidents Harry S. Truman]] and Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1961 Kennedy found himself faced with a three-part crisis: The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba; the construction of the Berlin Wall by the Soviets; and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement. Fearing that another failure on the part of the US to stop communist expansion would fatally damage US credibility with its allies, Kennedy was determined to 'draw a line in the sand' and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. "Now we have a problem in making our power credible", he said, "and Vietnam looks like the place."
The long-standing commitment of the United States to defend Vietnam was reaffirmed by President Kennedy on May 11 in National Security Action Memorandum 52 which became known as "The Presidential Program for Vietnam Its opening statement reads:

"US objectives and concept of operations are to prevent communist domination of South Vietnam; to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society, and to initiate, on an accelerated basis, a series of mutually supporting actions of a military, political, economic psychological, and covert character designed to achieve this objective."

Kennedy was intrigued by the idea of ustilizing US Army Special Forces for counterinsurgency conflicts in Third World countries threatened by the new "wars of national liberation". Originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional invasion of Europe, Kennedy believed that the guerrilla tactics employed by special forces would be effective in the "brush fire" war in Vietnam. He saw British success in using such forces during the Malayan Emergency as a strategic template. Thus in May 1961 Kennedy sent detachments of Green Berets to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers in guerilla warfare.

The Diệm regime was initially able to cope with the insurgency with the aid of US materiel and advisers, and, by 1962, seemed to be gaining the upper hand. Senior US military leaders received positive reports from the US commander, General Paul D. Harkins of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam or MACV. By the following year, however, a communist offensive that began with the defeat of government forces at the Battle of Ap Bac and continued at Dong Xoi, inflicted major losses on ARVN units. These communist operations were the first large-scale military actions conducted by the North Vietnamese since Dien Bien Phu, and were a major departure from the assassination and guerrilla warfare campaigns that had preceded them. They were a storm warning that the insurgency was escalating into a more conventional conflict.

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Lyndon B. Johnson and Vietnam (1963–1969)

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Gulf of Tonkin and the Westmoreland Expansion

On 27 July 1964 5,000 additional U.S. military advisors were ordered to South Vietnam, bringing the total U.S. troop commitment to 21,000.
The massive escalation of the war from 1964 to 1968 was justified by the administration as a response to the Gulf of Tonkin Incidents of 2-4 August 1964. It was the basis of the administrations assertion that the attacks were "unprovoked aggression" on the part of North Vietnam, that the US Congress approved the Southeast Asia Resolution (also known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) on 7 August. The law gave the president broad powers to conduct military operations without an actual declaration of war. The resolution passed unanimously in the House of Representatives and was opposed in the Senate only by members.
In a televised address, President Johnson argued that "the challenge that we face in Southeast Asia today is the same challenge that we have faced with courage and that we have met with strength in Greece and Turkey, in Berlin and Korea, in Lebanon and in Cuba." National Security Council members, including Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and General Maxwell Taylor, agreed on 28 November to recommend that Johnson adopt a plan for a two-stage escalation of the bombing of North Vietnam.

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Operation Rolling Thunder (1965–1968)

In February 1965, the United States air base at Pleiku, in the Central Highlands, was attacked twice by the NLF, resulting in the deaths of over a dozen US personnel. These guerilla attacks prompted the administration to order retaliatory air strikes (Operation Flaming Dart} against North Vietnam. It was as though the administration had just been awaiting such an opportunity. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy stated that "the incident at Pleiku was like a streetcar - you had to jump on board when it came along." Operation Rolling Thunder was the code name given to a sustained strategic bombing campaign targeted against North Vietnam by aircraft of the US Air Force and Navy. Its original purpose was to serve as a signaling device to the Hanoi government. US airpower would act as a method of "strategic persuasion" in that it would serve to deter the North politically by the fear of continued or increased bombardmant. Beginning in March 1965 Rolling Thunder gradually escalated in intensity in an effort to both boost morale of the South Vietnamese and to force the communists to cease their attacks. When that did not work, its goals were altered to destroying the will of the North to fight by destroying the nation's industrial base, transportation network, and its air defenses. When this was not successful in destroying Hanoi's will to continue, Rolling Thunder was ended and other aerial campaigns were directed to counter the flow of men and supplies down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail.

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The Big Build-Up

President Johnson had already appointed General William C. Westmoreland to succeed Paul D. Harkins as Commander of MACV in June of 1964. Under Westmoreland, the big build-up of American troop strength in Vietnam took place. American forces rose from 16,000 during 1964 to more than 500,000 by 1968. With the US' decision to escalate its involvement, ANZUS Pact allies Australia and New Zealand agreed to contribute troops and material to the conflict. They were quickly joined by the Republic of Korea (second only to the Americans in troop strength), Thailand, and the Philippines. Meanwhile, political affairs in Saigon were finally settling down (at least as far as the Americans were concerned}. On 14 February the most recent military junta, the National Leadership Committee, installed Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky as prime minister. In 1966, the junta selected General Nguyen Van Thieu to run for president with Ky on the ballot as the vice-presidental candidate in the 1967 election. The best thing that can be said about the election of 1967 was that it was held. Thieu and Ky were elected and would remain in office for the duration. In the presidential election of 1971, Thieu ran for the presidency unopposed. With the installation of Thieu and Ky regime (the Second Republic), the US finally had a "legitimate" government in Saigon with which to deal. With the advent of Rolling Thunder, American airbases and facilities would have to be constructed and manned for the aerial effot. And the defense of those bases could not be entrusted to the South Vietnamese. So, on 8 March 1965, 3,500 United States Marines came ashore at Da Nang as the first US combat troops to land in South Vietnam, adding to the 25,000 US military advisers already in place. On 5 May the 173d Airborne Brigade became the first US Army ground unit committed to the conflict in South Vietnam. 18 August, Operation Starlite began as the first major US ground operation, destroyng a Viet Cong stronghold in Quảng Ngãi Province. The Viet Cong learned from their defeat and subsequently tried to avoid fighting an American-style ground war by reverting to small-unit guerrilla operations. The North Vietnamese had already sent regular army units to southern Vietnam beginning in late 1964. Some North Vietnamese officials favored an immediate invasion of the south, and a plan was developed to use VPA units to split southern Vietnam in half through the Central Highlands. The two imported adversaries first faced one another during OperationSilver Bayonet, better known as the Battle of the Ia Drang. During the savage fighting that took place both sides learned lessons. The North Vietnamese, who had taken horrendus casualties, began to adapt to the overwhelming American superiority in air mobility, supporting arms, and close air support. The Americans learned that the Vietnam People's Army (which was basically a light infantry force) was not a rag-tag band of guerrillas, but was instead a highly-disciplined, proficient force and one which was extremely well motivated.

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Search and Destroy, the Strategy of Attrition

On 27 November 1965 The Pentagon declared that if the major operations needed to neutralize North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces were to succeed, US troop levels in South Vietnam would have to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000. In a series of meetings between Westmoreland and the president held in Honolulu in February 1966, Westmoreland argued that the US presence had succeeded in preventing the immediate defeat of the South Vietnamese government, but that more troops would be necessary if systematic offensive operations were to be conducted. The issue then became in what manner US forces would be used. What was to be the American strategy? The nature of the American military's strategic and tactical decisions made during this period would color the conduct and nature of the conflict for the duration of American participation. Military logic demanded that the US attack the locus of VPA/VC support in North Vietnam itself. If that country could not be invaded, then the enemy's logistical system in Laos and Cambodia should have been cut by ground forces, isolating the southern battlefield. The gloves should have come off in Rolling Thunder and the ports and harbors of the North should have be mined. But political considerations limited US military actions, mainly due to the memory of communist reactions during the Korean Conflict. Ever present in the minds of diplomats, military officers, and politicians was the possibility of a spiraling escalation of the conflict into a superpower confrontation and the possibility of a nuclear exchange. Therefore, there would be no invasion of North Vietnam, the "neutrality" of Laos and Cambodia would be respected, and Rolling Thunder would not resemble the bombing of Germany and Japan during World War II. These limitations were not foisted upon the military as an afterthought. Before the first US combat boot stepped ashore at Da Nang, the Pentagon was cognizant of all of the parameters that were going to be imposed by their civilian masters, yet they still agreed that the mission could be accomplished within them. Westmoreland believed that he had found a strategy that would either defeat Hanoi or, at the very least, force it into serious negotiations. Attrition was the key. The general claimed that larger offensive operations would eventually lead to a "crossover point" in VPA and Việt Cộng casualties after which a decisive victory would be possible. American forces would conduct operations against the VPA, pushing the enemy further back into the countryside away from the heavily populated coastal lowlands. In the backcountry the US could fully utilize its superiority in firepower and mobility to bleed the enemy in set-piece battles. The cleaning out of the Viet Cong and the pacification of the villages and would be the responsibility of the South Vietnamese military. The adoption of this strategy, however, brought Westmoreland into direct conflict with his Marine Corps commander, General Lewis Walt, who had already recognized the security of the villages as the key to success. Walt had immediately commenced pacification efforts in his area of responsibility, but Westmoreland was unhappy, believing that the Marines were being underutilized and fighting the wrong enemy. In the end, MACV won out and Westmoreland's "search and destroy concept, predicated on the attrition of enemy forces, won the day. It is highly ironic that, at this point in the conflict, both sides chose similar strategies. The VPA, which had been operating a more conventional, large-unit war, switched back to small-unit operations in the face of US military might. The real struggle now began in the villages, where the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese peasants, whose cooperation was absolutely necessary to military success, were to be won or lost. Unfortunately for the US, it had given responsibility for this struggle to the ARVN, whose troops and commanders were notroiously unfit for the task. Only time would tell which side would feel the pain of the attritional war first and concede victory to the other side. As a result of the Honolulu conference, President Johnson authorized an increase in troop strength to 429,000 by August 1966. The large increase in troops enabled MACV to carry out numerous operations that grew in size and complexity during the next two years. For US troops participating in these operations (Masher/White Wing, Attleboro, Ceder Falls, Junction City and dozens of others) the war boiled down to hard marching through difficult terrain and weather that was alternately murderously hot and bone-chillingly cold and wet. Hours and days passed in excruciating repitition and boredom that was punctuated by adrenaline-pumping minutes of fear when contact was made with the enemy. It was the VPA/VC, however, who actually controlled the pace of the war. Fighting only when they believed that they thought they had the upper hand and then disappearing when the Americans and/or South Vietnamese brough their superiority in numbers and firepower to bear. Hanoi, utilizing the Ho Chi Minh and Sihanouk Trails, matched the US at every point of the escalation, funneling manpower and supplies to the southern battlefields.

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The Ho Chi Minh trail

North Vietnam received foreign military aid shipments through its ports and rail systems. This material (and VPA manpower) was then moved south down the logistical corridor called by the Americans the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the Truong Son Strategic Supply Route to the North Vietnamese). At the end of an arduous journey the men and supplies enterd South Vietnam's border areas. Complicating matters, the Trail system ran for most of its length through the neighboring neutral nations of Laos and Cambodia. It was impossible to block the infiltration of men and supplies from the north without bombing or invading those countries. Beginning in December 1964, however, the US began a covert aerial interdiction campaign in Laos that would continue until the end of the conflict in 1973. Laos and Cambodia also had their own communist insurgencies to deal with. In Laos, the North Vietnamese-supported Pathet Lao carried on a see-saw struggle with the Royal Lao Army. Government forces were supported by CIA-sponsored Hmong army and by the bombs of the US Air Force. In Cambodia Prince Norodom Sihanouk maintained a delicate political balancing act between east and west. Believing that the triumph of communism in Southeast Asia was inevitable, he made a deal with the Chinese in 1965 that allowed North Vietnamese forces to establish permanent bases in the country and to use the port of Sihanoukville for delivery of military supplies. In 1970, Sihanouk was deposed by the pro-American General Lon Nol and the port was closed. In the meantime, the Hồ Chí Minh Trail was steadily expanded and became the logistical jugular vein for communist forces fighting in the south.

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The Border Battles and the Tet Offensive

Late in 1967, Westmoreland had said that it was "conceivable" that in "two years or less" US forces could be phased out of the war, turning over more and more of the job to the South Vietnamese. He should have known better. During the second half of the year, savage fighting had broken out in I Corps, the three northernmost provinces of South Vietnam. Beginning below the DMZ at Con Tien and then spreading west to the Laotian border near Dak To, the VPA began to stand its ground and fight. This readiness of its enemy to remain fixed in place inspired MACV to send reinforcements from other sectors of South Vietnam. The Border Battles had begun.

Most of the VPA/VC operational capability was possible only because of the unhindered movement of men along the Hồ Chí Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia. In order to threaten this flow of supplies, a Marine Corps firebase had been established on the Vietnamese side of the Laotian border near the village of Khe Sanh. The US utilized the base as a surveillance position overlooking Route 9, the only east-west road that crossed the border in Western I Corps. General Westmoreland also hoped to use the base as a jump off point for a future incursion against the Trail system in Laos. During the spring of 1967, a series of small-unit actions near Khe Sanh prompted MACV to beef up the outposts defenses. These actions and increasing amounts of intelligence indicated that the North Vietnamese were building up significant forces just across the Laotian frontier.

Indeed, the VPA was doing just that. Three regular divisions (and later a fourth) were began to move toward Khe Sanh, eventually surrounding the base and cutting its only road access. Westmoreland, contrary to the advice of his superiors, reinforced the Marine position. If the communists were willing to mass their forces for destruction by American air power, so much the better. MACV then launched the largest concentrated aerial bombardment effort of the conflict to defend Khe Sanh (see Operation Niagara). Another massive aerial effort was undertaken to keep the beleagured Marines supplied. There were many comparisons (by the media, the Americans, and the North Vietnamese) to the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, but the differences outweighed the similarities.

MACV used this opportunity to field its latest technology against the VPA. A sensor-driven anti-infiltration system was in the process opf being field tested in Laos as the siege of Khe Sanh began (see Operation Igloo White). Westmoreland ordered that it be employed to detect VPA troop movements near Marine base and the system worked well. By March the long-awaited ground assault against the base had failed to materialize and communist forces began to melt back toward Laos. Historian are left with only questions. What was the goal of the VPA? Was the siege a real attempt to stage another Dien Bien Phu? Or had the battles near the border (which had eventually drawn in half of MACV's manuever battalions) been a diversion, meant to pull forces away from the cities, where another VPA offensive was about to get under way?
General Westmoreland's public reassurances that the "light at the end of the tunnel" was about to be reached were barely out of his mouth when, on 30 January 1968, VPA and NLF forces broke the truce that accompanied the annual Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday and mounted their largest offensive thus far in the conflict in hopes of sparking a "General Uprising"' among the South Vietnamese. These forces, ranging in size from small groups to entire regiments, attacked nearly every city and major military installation in South Vietnam. The Americans and South Vietnamese, initially surprised by the scope and scale of the offensive, quickly responded and inflicted horrendus casualties on their enemy (the VC was essentially eliminated as a fighting force during the offensive, the palces of the dead within its ranks were increasingly filled by North Vietnamese).

VPA/VC attacks were quickly and bloodily repulsed except in Saigon, where the fighting lasted for three days, and in the old imperial capital of Hue, where it continued for a month. During the communist occupation of Hue, 2,800 South Vietnamese were murdered by the Viet Cong in what was the single worst massacre of the war (see Massacre at Hue). The hoped for uprising never took place, indeed, the offensive drove some previously apathetic South Vietnamese to fight for the South Vietnamese government. Another surprise for the communists was that the ARVN did not collapse under the onslaught, instead turning in a performance that pleased even their American patrons.

Contrary to contemporary opinion, the American media did not characterize the Tet Offensive as a military defeat for the US. What shocked and dismayed the American public was the realization that either it had basically been lied to or that the American military command had been dangerously overoptimistic in its appraisal of the situation in Vietnam. The public could not understand how such an attack was possible after having been told for several years that victory was just around the corner. The Tet Offensive came to embody the 'credibility gap' at the heart of US government statements. These realizations and changing attitudes forced the American public to face hard realities and to reexamine its position in Southeast Asia. The days of an open-ended commitment to the conflict were over.

The psychological impact of the Tet Offensive effectively ended the political career of Lyndon Johnson. On March 11 Senator Eugene McCarthy won 42 percent of the vote in the Democratic New Hampshire Primary. Although Johnson wasn't on the ballot, commentators viewed this as a defeat for the President. Shortly thereafter, Senator Robert Kennedy announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for the 1968 presidential election. On 31 March, in a speech that took America and the world by surprise, Johnson famously announced that "I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President" and pledged himself to devoting the rest of his term in office to the search for peace in Vietnam^{(Text and audio of speech)}. Johnson announced that he was limiting bombing of the DRV to just north of the DMZ, and that US representatives were prepared to meet with North Vietnamese counterparts in any suitable place "to discuss the means to bring this ugly war to an end." Much to Johnson's surprise, a few days later Hanoi agreed to contacts between the two sides. On 13 May, what would become known as the 'Paris peace talks' began.

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Paris peace talks
12 October 1967, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk had declared that proposals in the US Congress for peace initiatives with Hanoi were futile due to North Vietnam's repeated refusal to negotiate. The position of Hanoi was simply that the US should evacuate South Vietnam and leave Vietnamese affairs to the Vietnamese. In the wake of the Tet Offensive, Lyndon finally seemed to realize the predicament that his policies had led to. Neither the strategic "carrot and stick" approach of Rolling Thunder nor the attritional stalemate in the ground war had solved the problem in Vietnam. His chief concern then became getting Hanoi participate in serious negotiations.

United States and North Vietnamese negotiators had already met in Paris on 10 May for the opening session of the peace talks. The North Vietnamese delegation was headed by Xuan Thuy, while his American counterpart was US ambassador-at-large Averell Harriman. For five months, however, the negotiations stalled as neither Hanoi nor Washington was willing to give ground that would allow full negotiations to begin; Hanoi insisted on a total cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam, while Washington demanded a reciprocal de-escalation North Vietnamese military activities in South Vietnam.

Neither gave way until late in October when Johnson issued preliminary orders to halt the bombing of North Vietnam (which ended on 11 November). Johnson's Vice-President, and the Democratic Party's nominee in the US presidential election, Hubert H. Humphrey, had managed to close a large lead held by the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, partly by breaking with Johnson in September and calling for an end to the bombing of North Vietnam. Humphrey was further boosted by the apparent breakthrough in Paris. Nixon feared that this lead would be sufficient to give electoral victory to Humphrey. Using an intermediary, Nixon encouraged South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to stay away from the talks by promising that Saigon would get a better deal under a Nixon presidency. Thieu obliged, and Nixon went on to win the election by a narrow margin. By the time Johnson left office about all that had been agreed in Paris was the shape of the negotiating table.

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Richard Nixon and Vietnam, 1969–1974
Shortly after his inauguration Richard Nixon began his policy of slow disengagement from the Vietnam. The goal of the US military effort was to buy time to gradually build up the South Vietnamese armed forces so that they could defend their nation on their own. This policy became the cornerstone of the so-called "Nixon Doctrine". As applied to Vietnam, the doctrine was called "Vietnamization".

Soon after Tet, the axe fell on General Westmoreland (who was inexplicably promoted to Army Chief of Staff) and he was replaced by his deputy, General Creighton W. Abrams. Due to the sea change in American strategy posed by Vietnamization, Abrams pursued a very different approach. The US was gradually withdrawing from the conflict and Abrams favored smaller scale operations aimed at VPA/VC logistics, more openness with the media, less indiscriminate use of air strikes and heavy artillery, elimination of body count as the key indicator of battlefield success, and more meaningful cooperation with South Vietnamese forces.

One of Nixon's main foreign policy goals had been the achievement of a breakthrough in US relations with China and the Soviet Union. An avowed anti-communist early in his political career, Nixon could make diplomatic overtures to the Russian and Chinese communists without being accused of having communist sympathies. The result of those overtures was an era of détente that led to nuclear arms reductions in the U.S. and Soviet Union and the beginnings of a dialogue with China. In this context, Nixon viewed the Vietnam War as simply another limited conflict forming part of a bigger tapestry of superpower relations; however, he was still doggedly determined to preserve South Vietnam until such times as he could not be blamed for what he saw as its inevitable collapse (a "decent interval"). To this end he and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger employed Chinese and Soviet foreign policy gambits to successfully defuse some of the anti-war opposition at home and secured movement at the negotiating table in Paris.

China and the Soviet Union had been the principal backers of Hanoi's effort through large-scale military and financial aid. The two communist powers superpowers competed with one another to prove their "fraternal socialist links" with the regime in Hanoi. The North Vietnamese had beome adept at playing the two nations off against one another. Their support would increase isignificantly in the years leading up to the US departure in 1973, enabling the North Vietnamese to mount a full-scale conventional offensives against the south, complete with tanks, heavy artillery, and the most modern surface-to-air missiles (SAMS).

Nixon was roundly criticized for his heavy bombing of Hanoi in December 1972, which was partly facilitated by his diplomatic overtures to China, and which followed a breakdown in the Paris peace talks after peace appeared close at hand. Agreement had been reached in October 1972 between Kissinger and chief North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho, but the agreement was rejected by South Vietnamese President Thieu, who demanded dozens of changes to the text, including the critical demand that North Vietnamese troops had to withdraw from South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese rejected this, and then countered with many changes of their own. Nixon responded with Operation Linebacker II, which was condemned by one journalist as "war by tantrum." The bombing of Hanoi did, however, pressure North Vietnam back to the negotiating table, allowing America, and Nixon, a face-saving, or "decent interval", exit.

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The My Lai massacre

The morality of US participation in the conflict was a major political issue both in the US and abroad. First, there was the question whether America should have interferred in what was generally understood to be a civil war. Second, was a proxy war like Vietnam, without a clear and decisive path to victory, worth the number of casualties sustained by both combatants and civilians. Third, there was the question how the American military, which depended on the use of massive amounts of firepower (which held down casualties) could fight a war against an elusive enemy that was often indistinguishable from the civilian population. For example, the levelling of entire villages by airstrikes or artillery because of single shots by snipers was relatively common. Last, how could inexperienced US troops (many of whom were unwilling conscripts) be reasonably expected to engage in such a guerrilla war without succumbing to stress and resorting to acts of wanton brutality. Fighting a mostly invisible enemy (who often utilized the civilian population as a shield) that did not obey the conventional rules of warfare while suffering injury and death from impersonal booby traps and snipers could only lead to the kind of fear and hatred that would compromise morals.

On 16 March 1968, three companies of Task Force Barker, part of the Americal Division, took part in a search and destroy operation near the village of My Lai, in Quang Nam Province. One of those three companies, Charlie Company, under the command of Lieutenant William Calley entered the hamlet of Son My and proceeded to round up, rape, torture, and murder as many of the inhabitants as could be found. Although not all of the members of the company participated, Lieutenant Cally did. He personally ordered the executions of hundreds of villagers in large groups ("a Nazi kind of thing" as one participant related it). One of the soldiers on the scene was Ron Haeberle, a photographer for the Army newspaper, "Stars and Stripes" who took unobtrusive official black and white photos of the operation and color shots of the massacre with his personal camera. Although the operation appeared suspicious to Cally's superiors, it was papered over and forgotten.

In 1969, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh exposed the My Lai massacre in print and the Haeberle photos splashed across the world media. The Pentagon went into overdrive and launched an investigation headed by General William Peers to look into the allegations. After a flurry of activity the Peers Commission issued its report on the massacre. It declared that "an atmosphere of atrocity" surrounded the event, and concluded that had the massacre not only taken place, but that the crime had been covered up by the commander of the Americal Division and his executive officer. Perhaps 400 Vietnamese civilians, mostly old men, women and children, had been killed by Charlie company. Several men were charged in the killings, but only Calley was convicted. He was given a given a life sentence by a court-martial in 1970 but was later pardoned by President Nixon. Cover-ups may have happened in other cases, as detailed in the Pulitzer Prize-winning article series about the Tiger Force by the Toledo Blade in 2003.

Although My Lai generated a lot of civilian recriminations and bad publicity for the military, it should not be seen as the tip of an iceberg. Although individual murders were committed by US servicemen during the conflict, allegations of other massacres turned out to be only that - allegations. My Lai was infamous because it was the only incident in which large numbers of individuals were killed. It must also be stated that all of the allegations combined only add up to a fraction of the poiltical murders carried out by the NLF and North Vietnamese Army during the conflict (see Hue Massacre.

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The Pentagon Papers

The credibility of the US government again suffered in 1971 when The New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspapers, serially published The Pentagon Papers (actually US-Vietnam Realtions, 1945-1967). This top-secret historical study of the American commitment in Vietnam from the Franklin Roosevelt administration until 1967, had been contracted to the RAND corporation by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. The study was leaked to the press by Daniel Ellsberg, a former State Department official.

The Pentagon Papers laid out, in stark black and white, the missteps taken by four administrations in their Vietnam policies. For example; they revealed the Johnson administrations obfuscations (if not outright lying) to Congress concerning the Gulf of Tonkin incidents that had led to direct US intervention; they exposed the clandestine bombing of Laos that had begun in 1964; and they detailed the American governments complicity in the death of Ngo Dinh Diem. The study presented a continuously pessimistic view of the likelihood of victory and generated fierce criticism of US policies.

The importance of the actual content of the papers to US policy-making was disputed, but the window that they provided into the flawed decision-making process at the highest levels of the US governement gave many food for thought. Their publication was a news event and the government's legal (Nixon lost out to the Supreme Court) and extra-legal efforts (the "Plumbers" break-in at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, committed in order to gain materiel with which to descredit him, was one of the first steps on the road to Watergate) carried out to prevent their publication - mainly on national security grounds - then went on to generate yet more criticism and suspicion of the government by the American public.

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Operation Menu and the Cambodian Incursion, 1969-1970

By 1970 the policy of non-alignment and neutrality had worn thin for Prince Sihanouk. Due to pressures from the right in Cambodia, the prince began a shift from the pro-left position he had assumed in 1965-1966. He began to make overtures for normalized relations with the US
and created a Government of National Salvation with the assistance of the pro-American General Lon Nol. Seeing a shift in the prince's position, President Nixon ordered the launching of a top-secret bombing campaign, targeted at the VPA/NLF Base Areas and sanctuaries along Cambodia's eastern border. The massive B-52 strikes (Operation Menu) deluged Cambodia for 14 months and delivered over 100,000 tons of bombs. Prince Sihanouk was quietly acquiescent about the affair.

On 18 March, Sihanouk, who was out of the country on a state visit, was deposed by a vote of the National Assembly and replaced by Lon Nol. Cambodia's ports were immediately closed to North Vietnamese military supplies and the government demanded that the VPA be removed from the border areas. Taking advantage of the situation, Nixon ordered a military incursion into Cambodia by US and South Vietnamese troops in order to both destroy VPA/NLF sanctuaries bordering South Vietnam and to buy time for the US withdrawal. During the Cambodian Incursion, US and South Vietnamese forces discoverd and removed or destroyed a hugh logistical and intelligence haul in Cambodia.

The incursion sparked large-scale demonstrations on and closures of American college campuses. During the ensuing protests, four students were killed and a score injured by Ohio National Guardsmen during a demonstrations at Kent State University. Two other students were killed at Jackson State College in Mississippi. In an effort to lessen opposition to the the US committment, Nixon announced on 12 October that the US would withdraw 40,000 more troops from Vietnam before Christmas.

There were two tragic and unintended effects of the Cambodian incursion: First, it pushed the VPA deeper into Cambodia, which destabilized the country. Second, it forced the North Vietnamese to openly support its despised allies, the Khmer Rouge and allowed them to extend their power. During the incursion, South Vietnamese troops had gone on a rampage, in sharp contrast to the exemplary behaviour that had been displayed by the communists, further increasing support for their cause. Sihanouk remained in China, where he established and headed a government in exile, throwing his personal support behind the Khmer Rouge, the North Vietnamese, and the Laotian Pathet Lao.

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Lam Son 719, 1971

In 1971 the US authorized the ARVN to carry out an offensice operation aimed at cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southeastern Laos. Besides attacking the VPA logistical system (which would buy time fro the US withdrawal) the incursion would be a significant test of the policy of Vietnamization. Backed by US air and artillery support, the ARVN moved across the border along Route 9, utilizing the abandoned Marine outpost of Khe Sanh as a jumping off point. At first, the incursion went well, but unlike the Cambodian operation of 1970, the North Vietnamese decided to stand and fight, finally mustering around 60,000 men on the battlefield.

The VPA first struck the flanks of the ARVN column, smashed it outposts, and then moved in on the main ARVN force. Unlike previous encounters during the conflict, the VPA fielded armoured formations, heavy artillery, and large amounts of the latest anti-aircraft artillery. The ARVN retreated back across the border, closely persued by the North Vietnamese. One half of the invasion forces was killed or captured during the operation. Worse than that, Vietnamization was an obnvious failure.

On 18 August, Australia and New Zealand decided to withdraw their troops from Vietnam. The total number of US forces in South Vietnam dropped to 196,700 on 29 October 1971, the lowest level since January 1966. On 12 November 1971, Nixon set a 1 February 1972 deadline to remove another 45,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam.

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The Easter Offensive, 1972

Vietnamization received another severe test in the spring of 1972 when the North Vietnamese launched a massive conventional offensive across the DMZ. Beginning 30 March, the Easter Offensive (known as the Nguyen Hue Offensive to the North Vietnamese) quickly overran the three northernmost provinces of South Vietnam, including Quang Tri City. VPA forces then drove to capture Hue. Early in April the North Vietnamese opened two additional attacks. The first, a three division thrust supported by tanks and heavy artillery, came out of Cambodia on 5 April. The VPA siezed Loc Ninh and advanced toward the provencial capital of An Loc in Binh Long Province. The second, launched from the tri-border region into the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, seized a complex of ARVN outposts near Dak To and then advanced toward Kontum, threatening to split South Vietnam in two. The US countered with a buildup of American airpower to support ARVN defensive operations and to conduct Operation Linebacker, the first bombing of North Vietnam since the bombing halt of 1968. The VPA actions at An Loc and Kontum were contained and the ARVN launched a counteroffensive in May to retake the lost northern provinces. On 10 September, the South Vietnamese flag once again flew over the Citadel of Quang Tri City, but the ARVN offensive then ran out of steam, conceding the rest of the occupied territory to the North Vietnamese. South Vietnam had countered the heaviest attack since Tet, but it was totally dependant on US airpower for its survival. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of American troops, who now numbered less than 100,000 at the beginning of the year, was continued as scheduled. By June only six infantry battalions remained. On 12 August, the last American ground combat troops left the country.

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The 1972 Election and Operation Linebacker II

During the run-up to the 1972 US presidential election, the war was again a major issue. An antiwar Democrat, George McGovern, ran against President Nixon. The president ended Operation Linebacker on 22 October and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger declared that "peace is at hand" shortly before Election day, dealing a death blow to McGovern's campaign, which was already far behind in opinion surveys. However, the peace agreement was not signed until the next year, leading to charges that Kissinger's announcement had been a political ploy. The Nixon Administration claimed that North Vietnamese negotiators had made use of Kissinger's pronouncement as an opportunity to embarrass the president and to weaken the US position at the negotiating table. White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler on 30 November 1972 told the press that there would be no more public announcements concerning US troop withdrawals from Vietnam due to the fact that troop levels were then down to 27,000.

Due to the intrasigence of Nguyen Van Thieu (who feared that US commitments to support South Vietnam would no be observed), the negotiations in Paris became stalled. To reassure Thieu, Nixon ordered a resumption of the bombing of North Vietnam using B-52s and tactical aircraft in Operation Linebacker II, which began on 18 December with large raids against both Hanoi and Haiphong. Although this heavy bombing campaign caused protests, both domestically and internationally, and despite significant losses of B-52s over North Vietnam, Nixon continued the bombing until 29 December. Thieu was convinced that the US would continue its support of his nation. When the negotiations resumed, the North Vietnamese actually gained concessions from the US delegation.

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Return to Paris, 1973
On 15 January 1973, citing progress in peace negotiations, President Nixon announced the suspension of all offensive actions against North Vietnam, to be followed by a unilateral withdrawal of all US troops. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on 27 January, officially ending direct US involvement in the Vietnam Conflict.

The agreement called for the withdrawal of all US forces and an exchange of prisoners of war. Within South Vietnam, a cease fire was declared (to be overseen by a multi-national, 1,160-man International Control Commission force) and both South Vietnamese and North Viietnamese forces would remain in control of the areas they then occupied. Both sides pledged to work toward a compromise political solution, possibly even resulting in a coalition government. Neither Thieu nor Hanoi was satisfied, and land-grabbing military operations commenced almost immediately. The signing of the Accords was the main motivation for the awarding of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger and to leading North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho. Five days before the signing of the peace agreement, Lyndon Johnson, under whose leadership America had entered the conflict, died.

The first US prisoners of war were released by North Vietnam on 11 February, and all US soldiers were ordered to leave South Vietnam by 29 March. The peace agreement, in the meantime, did not last. As an inducement for Thieu's government to sign the agreement, Nixon had promised that the US would provide financial and limited military support (in the form of air strikes) so that the south could continue to defend itself. But Nixon was fighting for his political life in the growing Watergate Scandal, facing an increasingly hostile Congress that held the power of the purse. The president was able to exert little influence on a hostile public long sick of the Vietnam War. Thus, Nixon broke his promises to South Vietnam. Economic aid continued (after being cut nearly in half), but most of it was siphoned off by corrupt officials in the South Vietnamese government, and little actually went to the war effort. At the same time, aid to North Vietnam from the Soviet Union increased. With the US no longer heavily involved, both the US and the Soviet Union no longer saw the war as significant to their relations. The balance of power shifted decisively in North Vietnam's favor, and the north subsequently launched a major military offensive against the south.

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Total US Withdrawal
In December 1974, the Democratic majority in Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which cut off all military funding to the South Vietnamese government and made unenforceable the peace terms negotiated by Nixon. Nixon, threatened with impeachment because of Watergate, had resigned his office. Gerald R. Ford, Nixon's vice-president stepped in to finish his term. The new president vetoed the Foreign Assistance Act, but his veto was overridden by Congress.

By 1975, the South Vietnamese Army stood alone against the well-organized, highly determined, and foreign-funded North Vietnamese. Within South Vietnam, there was increasing chaos. The withdrawal of the American military had compromised an economy that had thrived largely due to US financial support and the presence of large numbers of US troops. Along with the rest of the non-oil exporting world, South Vietnam suffered economically from the oil price shocks caused by the Arab oil embargo and a subsequent global economic downturn.

In early March, 1975, the VPA launched Campaign 275, a limited invasion of the Central Highlands supported by tanks and heavy artillery. The ARVN proved no match for the onslaught and collapsed, opening the way to the coast. President Thieu, fearful that the bulk of his forces would be cut off in the northern provinces, decided to redeploy those troops from the northern provinces into the Central Highlands. But the withdrawal of the northern forces soon turned into a bloody retreat as the VPA suddenly attacked from the north. While South Vietnamese forces retreated from the northern provinces, splintered ARVN elements in the Central Highlands fought desperately against the North Vietnamese.

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Final North Vietnamese offensive

General Van Tien Dung, commander of the VPA offensive, was faced by a quandry. Hanoi had authorized only a limited offensive, meant only to gain more territory and tip the balance in any future political settlement. He was now faced with the prospect of seizing all of South Vietnam. North Vietnam had effectively launched a full-scale conventional military invasion designed to conquer South Vietnam by force.

On 11 March Ban Me Thuot, gateway to the Central Highlands, fell to the North Vietnamese.

North Vietnam's 3^rd Army Corps (Tay Nguyen) began its attack in the early morning hours. After a violent artillery barrage, the 4,000-man garrison defending the city retreated with their families. On March 15, President Thieu ordered the Central Highlands and the northern provinces to be abandoned, in what he declared to be a "lighten the top and keep the bottom" strategy. South Vietnamese General Phu abandoned the cities of Pleiku and Kontum and retreated to the coast in what became known as the "column of tears". General Phu led his troops to Tam Ky on the coast, but as the ARVN retreated, civilian refugees went with them. Due to already-destroyed roads and bridges, Phu's column slowed down as the VPA closed in. As the column staggered down the mountains to the coast, it was shelled incessently by the VPA and, by 1 April it ceased to exist.

On 20 March, Thieu reversed himself and ordered that Hue, Vietnam's third-largest city, be held "at all costs". But as the North Vietnamese attacked, panic ensued, and South Vietnamese resistance collapsed. On 22 March, the VPA opened a siege against Hue. Civilians jammed into the airport, seaports, and the docks hoping to escape. Some even swam into the ocean to reach boats and barges. The ARVN were routed along with the civilians, and some South Vietnamese soldiers shot civilians just to make room for a passageway for their retreat. On 31 March, after a three-day siege, Hue fell.

As resistance at Hue collapsed, VPA rockets landed in downtown Da Nang and its airport. By the 28 March, 35,000 troops of the VPA were poised to attack in the suburbs. By the 30th , 100,000 leaderless ARVN troops surrendered as the North Vietnamese marched victoriously through Da Nang. With the fall of the city, the defense of the Central Highlands and northern provinces collapsed. With the northern half of the country under their control, the VPA prepared for the final phase of its offensive, the Ho Chi Minh Campaign. The plan called for capturing Saigon before 1 May, thereby preventing the redployment and regroupment of ARVN forces to defend the capital.

The VPA continued its attack as South Vietnamese forces attempted to hold back the a juggernaut. On 7 April, three North Vietnamese divisions attacked Xuan-loc, 40 miles east of Saigon, where they met fierce resistance from the ARVN 18^th Infantry division. For two bloody weeks, severe fighting raged in the city as the ARVN defenders, in a last-ditch effort, tried desperately to save South Vietnam from conquest. But on 21 April, the exhausted and garrison surrendered. A bitter and tearful Nguyễn Văn Thiệu resigned the presidency on the same day, declaring that the US had betrayed South Vietnam. Thiệu left for Taiwan on 25 April, leaving control of his doomed nation to General Dương Văn Minh.
By this time, North Vietnamese tanks had reached Bien Hoa and turned towards Saigon, clashing with occasional isolated ARVN units along the way.

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Fall of Saigon

By the end of April, the weakened South Vietnamese military had collapsed on all fronts. The VPA offensive had forced South Vietnamese troops into a bloody retreat. On 27 April, 100,000 North Vietnamese troops encircled Saigon, which was to be defended by only 30,000 ARVN troops. In order to increase panic and disorder in the city, the VPA began shelling the airport and forcing its closure. With the air exit closed, large numbers of people who might otherwise have fled the city found that they had no way out. On 29 April, the US launched Operation Frequent Wind, arguably the largest helicopter evacuation in history. Chaos, unrest, and panic ensued as hysterical South Vietnamese officials and civilians scrambled to leave Saigon before it was too late. Helicopters began evacuating both US and South Vietnamese citizens from the US embassy. Evacuations had been delayed until the last possible moment because US Ambassador Graham Martin believed that Saigon could be held and that a political settlement was still possible. The evacuations began in an atmosphere of desperation as hysterical crowds of Vietnamese vied for the limited number of seats on the departing helicopters. Martin pleaded with the US government to send $700 million in emergency aid to South Vietnam in order to bolster the Saigon regime's ability to fight and mobilize fresh South Vietnamese units, but it was to no avail. It was now too late for any amount of money to save the situation. In the US, South Vietnam was now perceived as doomed. President Ford had given gave a televised speech on 23 April declaring the end of the Vietnam War and the end of all US aid to the Saigon regime. The helicopter evacuation continued day and night as VPA tanks breached the defenses on the outskirts of the city. In the early morning hours of 30 April, the last US Marines evacuated the embassy roof by helicopter as civilians poured over the embassy perimeter and swarmed onto its grounds. On 30 April, tank skirmishes began as ARVN units attacked the VPA's heavily armored Soviet T-54 tanks. VPA troops overcame this resistance, quickly capturing the US embassy, the South Vietnamese government army garrison, the police headquarters, radio station, presidential palace, and other vital facilities. The North Vietnamese encountered greater than expected resistance from small and scattered ARVN formations. The presidential palace was captured and the NLF flag waved victoriously over it. Thieu's successor, South Vietnamese President Dương Văn Minh attempted to surrender Saigon, but VPA Colonel Búi Tín informed him that he did not have anything to surrender. Minh then issued his last command, ordering all South Vietnamese troops to lay down their arms. The last official American military action in Southeast Asia occurred on 15 May 1975, when 18 Marine and airmen were killed during a rescue operation known as the Mayagüez incident involving a skirmish with the Khmer Rouge on an island off the Cambodian coast. The names of those men are listed on the last panel of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Both of the Vietnams were united 2 July 1976 to form the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of the former president of North Vietnam. Thousands of supporters of the South Vietnamese government were rounded up and sent to "re-education" camps. The new regime considered these supporters to be American collaborators and traitors. North Vietnam followed up its victory by first making Laos a virtual puppet state. Socialist fraternalism was thrown overboard by the Khmer Rouge, who had historical territorial ambitions in Vietnam. Border incursions finally led to a Vietnamese invasion, during which Pol Pot's murderous Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown and a pro-Vietnamese government was installed (see Third Indochina War. Ironically, the US did not recognise the new government of Cambodia, and, along with the United nations]], continued to consider the Khmer Rouge (perpetrators of the greatest genocide since the Second world War) as their ally. And the ironies just kept on coming. In 1979 the Chinese, furious with the Vietnamese for eliminating their Khmer Rouge allies, launched an invasion of Vietnam's northern provinces. After fighting to a stalemate, the Chinese withdrew. So much for expansive, Moscow-dominated communism. The domino principle, the original pretext for US involvement, had been stood upon its head.

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Casualties
Even today the number of those killed, military and civilian, in the period covered (1959-1975) is open to debate and uncertainity. To illustrate the problem, below are three reference works by three or more authors listing casualty figures. What is remarkable about them is that the only ones that seem to match are the ones that must be, at best, approximations. None of the figures include the members of South Vietnamese forces killed in the final campaign. Nor do they include the Royal Lao Armed Forces, thousands of Laotian and Thai irregulars, or Laotian civilians who all perished in that peculiar conflict. They do not include the tens of thousands of Cambodians killed during the civil war or the estimated one and one-half to two million that perished in the genocide that followed Khmer Rouge victory

1. Harry G. Summers, The Vietnam War Almanac. Novato CA: Presidio Press, 1985.

US killed in action, died of wounds, died of other causes, missing and declared dead - 57,690. South Vietnamese military killed - 243,748. Republic of Korea killed - 4,407. Australia and New Zealand (combined) - 469. Thailand - 351. The Vietnam People's Army and NLF (combined) - 666,000. North Vietnamese civilian fatalities - 65,000. South Vietnamese civilian dead - 300,000.

2. Marc Leepson, ed, Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1999.

US killed in action, etc. - 58,159. South Vietnamese military - 224,000. Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand - not listed. DRV military - not listed. DRV civilians - 65,000. South Vietnamese civilians - 300,000.

3. Edward Doyle, Samuel Lipsman, et al, Setting the Stage. Boston: Boston Publishing
Company, 1981.

US - 57,605. South Vietnamese military - 220,357. Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand - not listed. DRV and NLF deaths - 444,000. Combined DRV and RVN civilian deaths -587,000.

A fourth Source, John Rowe's Vietnam: The Australian Experience. Sydney: Time-Life Books Australia, 1987, gives a figure of 496 Australians killed in action or died of wounds.

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Soviet Union
The Soviet Union supplied North Vietnam with medical supplies, arms, tanks, planes, helicopters, artillery, ground-air missiles and other military equipment. 80% of all weaponry used by the North Vietnamese side came from the Soviet Union. Hundreds of military advisors were sent to train the Vietnamese army. Soviet pilots acted as training cadre and many have flown combat missions as "volunteers". Fewer than a dozen Soviet citizens lost their lives in this conflict.

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Peoples Republic of China
The People's Republic of China's involvement in the Vietnam War began in the summer of 1962, when Mao Zedong agreed to supply Hanoi with 90,000 rifles and guns free of charge. After the launch of Operation Rolling Thunder, China sent engineering battalions and supporting anti-aircraft units to North Vietnam to repair the damage caused by American bombing, build roads, railroads and to perform other engineering works. This freed North Vietnamese army units to go to the South. Between 1965 and 1970 over 320,000 Chinese soldiers served in North Vietnam; the peak year was 1967 when 170,000 were serving there. In April 2006, an event was held in Vietnam to honor the almost 1100 Chinese soldiers who were killed in the Vietnam War; a further 4200 were injured.

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South Korea
South Korea's military represented the second largest contingent of foreign troops in South Vietnam. South Korea dispatched its first troops beginning in 1964. Large combat battalions began arriving a year later. A total of approximately 300,000 South Korean soldiers were sent to Vietnam. As with the United States, soldiers served one year, and then were replaced with new soldiers, from 1964 until 1973. The maximum number of South Korean troops in Vietnam at any one time was 50,000. More than 5,000 South Koreans were killed and 11,000 were injured in the war.

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North Korea
As a result of a decision of the Korean Workers' Party in October 1966, in early 1967, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) sent a fighter squadron to North Vietnam to back up the North Vietnamese 921st and 923rd fighter squadrons defending Hanoi. They stayed through 1968, and 200 pilots were reported to have served. In addition, at least two anti-aircraft artillery regiments were sent as well. North Korea also sent weapons, ammunition and two million sets of uniforms to their comrades in North Vietnam. Kim Il Sung is reported to have told his pilots to "fight in the war as if the Vietnamese sky were their own".•••

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Australia and New Zealand

As US allies under the ANZUS pact, Australia and New Zealand sent ground troops to Vietnam. Both nations had gained valuable experience in counterinsurgency and jungle warfare during the Malayan Emergency. Geographically close to Asia, they subscribed to the Domino Theory of communist expansion and felt that their national security would be threatened if communism spread further in Southeast Asia. Australia's peak commitment was 7,672 combat troops, New Zealand's 552. Australia re-introduced conscription to bolster an extra nine infantry battalions in the face of significant public opposition to the war. Like the US, Australia began by sending advisers to Vietnam, the number of which rose steadily until 1965, when combat troops were committed. New Zealand began by sending a detachment of engineers and an artillery battery, then started sending special forces. The Australian Units & The New Zealanders in 161 Artillery Battery were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation 1st Class for their actions in support of the 173d Airborne Brigade at Bein Hoa in 1965/6. Overall, the US was pleased by the effectiveness of the Australian and New Zealand special forces - the Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) and the Special Air Service of New Zealand (NZ SAS).

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Thailand
Thai Army formations, including the "Queen's Cobra" battalion saw action in South Vietnam between 1965 and 1971. Thai forces saw much more action in the covert war in Laos between 1964 and 1972. There, Thai regular formations were heavily outnumbered by the irregular
"volunteers" of the CIA-sponsored Police Aerial Reconnaissance Units or PARU, who carried out reconnaissance activities on the western side of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The activities of these personnel remain one of the great unknown stories of the Southeast Asian conflict.

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U.S. and Australian opposition to the War

Small-scale U.S. opposition to the war began in 1964 on college campuses. Some of the opposition resulted from the growing influence of the New Left (or "Western Marxism", which reflected an independent strain of socialist thought not controlled by Moscow), but much of the opposition was nonideological. The younger generation, inspired by President John F. Kennedy's memorable edict "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country", was idealistic, and many had committed themselves to the idea of improving society and the world around them. The same idealism that led many young people to join the Peace Corps and volunteer to fight in Vietnam would lead many others to protest the war and participate as "freedom riders" in the Civil Rights movement in the South. A compelling and very personal reason for much student opposition to the war was the military draft. Conscription in the United States had existed since 1940 (except for a brief lapse in 1947-48), when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the U.S. Congress drafted soldiers to fight in World War II. Large numbers of soldiers were also drafted to serve in the Korean War in the early 1950s. Though conscription remained at a low level through much of the rest of the Cold War, it increased dramatically in 1964 to provide troops for the Vietnam Conflict. Formal protests against the draft began on October 15, 1965, when the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam staged the first public burning of a draft card in the United States. Many potential draftees fled to Canada and Sweden. Abuses in the Selective Service System were one cause of protest, as local "draft boards" were given wide latitude to decide who should be drafted and who should be granted "deferments". The granting of a deferment -- so that one could go to college, raise a child, and for various other reasons -- usually meant escaping military service. Eventually, deferments were abandoned in favor of a lottery. The first draft lottery since World War II in the United States was held on December 1, 1969, based on a potential draftee's date of birth. While this had the effect of giving relative certainty to young men as to their chances of being drafted, it also had the effect of dividing those eligible youth who engaged in war protest, as noted by The New York Times in a December 8, 1969 article: "Draft Lottery Changes Views of Eligibles." Statistical analysis indicated that the methodology of the lotteries unintentionally disadvantaged men with late year birthdays. This issue was treated at length in a January 4, 1970, New York Times article titled "Statisticians Charge Draft Lottery Was Not Random". U.S. public opinion became polarized by the war. Many supporters of the war argued for what was known as the Domino Theory, which held that if South Vietnam fell to communism, other nations, primarily in Southeast Asia, would succumb like falling dominoes. Some critics of the war pointed out that the conflict was political and that the military mission lacked clear objectives. Other critics argued that the government of South Vietnam lacked political legitimacy, and that support for the war was therefore immoral. Some anti-war activists were themselves Vietnam Veterans, as evidenced by the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Some of the U.S. citizens opposed to the Vietnam War stressed their support for ordinary Vietnamese civilians struck by a war over which they had no influence. President Johnson's undersecretary of state, George Ball, was one of the lone voices in his administration advising against war in Vietnam. The growing anti-war movement alarmed many in the U.S. government. On August 16, 1966 the House Un-American Activities Committee began investigations of U.S. citizens who were suspected of aiding the NLF. Anti-war demonstrators disrupted one of the HUAC meetings, and 50 were arrested. On February 1, 1968, a suspected NLF officer was captured near the site of a ditch holding the bodies of as many as 34 South Vietnamese police and their relatives -- some of whom were related to General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan's deputy and close friend. General Loan, the National Chief of Police in South Vietnam, summarily shot the suspect in the head on a public street in front of journalists. The execution was filmed and photographed, and provided another iconic image that helped sway public opinion in the United States against the war. In Australia, resistance to the war was at first very limited, although the Australian Labor Party (in opposition for most of the period) steadfastly opposed conscription. However, anti-war sentiment escalated rapidly in the late 1960s as more and more Australian soldiers were killed in battle. Growing public unease about the death toll was fueled by a series of highly-publicized arrests of conscientious objectors and exacerbated by shocking revelations of atrocities against Vietnamese civilians, leading to a rapid increase in domestic opposition to the war between 1967 and 1970. The Moratorium marches, timed in major Australian cities to coincide with similar protest marches in the U.S., were among the largest public gatherings ever seen in Australia up to that time, with over 200,000 people taking to the streets in Melbourne alone. On October 15, 1969, hundreds of thousands of people took part in National Moratorium antiwar demonstrations across the United States. A second round of "Moratorium" demonstrations was held on November 15, 1969. On April 22, 1971, John Kerry, who would later become a U.S. Senator, became the first Vietnam War veteran to testify before Congress about the war, when he appeared before a Senate committee hearing on proposals related to ending the war. He spoke for nearly two hours with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in what has been called the Fulbright Hearing, after the chairman of the Committee, Senator J. William Fulbright. Kerry presented the conclusions of the controversial Winter Soldier Investigation, in which veterans claimed to have personally committed or witnessed war crimes. Kerry would later be both supported and criticized by fellow veterans when he ran for President against George W. Bush in 2004. In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson began to seek a second term. A little-known member of his own party, Eugene McCarthy, ran against him for the Democratic nomination on an antiwar platform. McCarthy lost by just 300 votes to Johnson in the first primary election in New Hampshire. This unexpected blow to the Johnson campaign, together with President Johnson's long years of frustration in trying to satisfy "doves" with his Great Society programs while placating "hawks" by staying the course in Vietnam, led the president to make a surprise announcement in a March 31 televised speech that he was pulling out of the race. At the same time, he announced the initiation of the Paris Peace Talks with North Vietnam. After Richard Nixon won the presidency in November, 1968, U.S. National Security Adviser and lead U.S. negotiator Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese lead negotiator Xuan Thuy began secret peace