Fall of Saigon: Vietnam Reunified Under Communism
North Vietnamese tanks drove through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon on 30 April 1975. The Paris agreement of January 1973 had removed the American forces and left some 150,000 North Vietnamese troops in the south, which is the fact that decided everything afterwards. Nixon had given private assurances of American air support if the North attacked; Watergate removed him in August 1974, and Congress had already legislated to bar combat operations and then cut aid to Saigon by more than half. The offensive began in March 1975 in the central highlands and was intended as a two-year campaign. Thieu then ordered a withdrawal from the highlands that turned into a rout — the convoy south became known as the column of tears — and the northern provinces collapsed in weeks, with Hue and Da Nang abandoned amid panicking crowds. The whole thing took fifty-five days. The American evacuation, Operation Frequent Wind, lifted some 7,000 people out of Saigon by helicopter over eighteen hours on 29 and 30 April, with helicopters pushed off carrier decks into the sea to make room and crowds at the embassy gate. Around 130,000 Vietnamese left in the first wave and more than a million followed by boat over the following years. Some 58,000 Americans and between one and three million Vietnamese had died since 1955. The country was unified in 1976, sent perhaps 300,000 people to re-education camps, and invaded Cambodia in 1978. The photograph everyone remembers is of a helicopter on a rooftop with a queue on the ladder, and it is not the embassy but an apartment block used by American officials a few streets away. The war's final image is misidentified as often as it is reproduced.
- Year: 1975 CE
- Category: Military
