Fall of Saigon: A History from Beginning to End

Active US involvement in what became known as the Vietnam War (in Vietnam, this conflict is remembered as the American War) began in 1961 and spanned a period of twelve years until the Paris Peace Talks finally brought the deployment of American combat troops to an end in early 1973. Unfortunately, the peace talks didn’t also lead to the end of the civil war between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). Even after this time, over 7,000 American Department of Defense civilian contractors remained in Vietnam to support the South Vietnamese Army, and US Marines remained in place to protect the thousands of American diplomats and aid workers still in the country.

Many people, in the United States and elsewhere, believed that the Paris Peace Talks would lead to the creation of North and South Vietnam as two separate countries. After all, that was what happened following the end of the Korean War in 1953 when communist North Korea and US-supported South Korea managed to establish an occasionally tense but effective peace on either side of an agreed border. That wasn’t what happened in Vietnam. Within less than two years, the army of North Vietnam had advanced far to the south until it was threatening the capital and last bastion of South Vietnam: the city of Saigon.

In this book, we explore what happened during the last weeks and months of the Vietnam War. This is the story of the Fall of Saigon.