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US DEFEAT IN VIETNAM  
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Michael G. Vann
April 30, 2025
Jacobin [[link removed]]

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_ The US invasion of Vietnam was a catastrophe for the Vietnamese
people, resulting in millions of deaths. Fifty years ago today, the
US-backed regime finally collapsed as North Vietnamese forces took
control of Saigon. _

Two Vietnamese women mourn their relatives on April 29, 1975, at Bien
Hoa military cemetery as the US started to evacuate their embassy in
Saigon. , Françoise Demulder / AFP via Getty Images

 

While Vladimir Lenin never actually wrote that “there are decades
when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen,” it
would make for an excellent description of April 1975. Just two weeks
after the Khmer Rouge seized Phnom Penh
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Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, fell to North Vietnamese forces
on April 30, 1975.

The date embodies both one of the American empire’s most devastating
military defeats and one of international communism’s most
spectacular revolutionary triumphs. The date is a point of national
pride in Vietnam, and justifiably so.

A Century of Struggle

From one perspective, this event marked the end of the Vietnam War
(more appropriately termed the Second Indochina War, ranging from 1954
to 1975), a conflict that ravaged the country for decades and left
deep scars on its people and landscape. The exact number of Vietnamese
deaths will never be known, but the toll may be over three million (a
figure which dwarfs the 58,220 Americans lost in the war). As the
conflict spilled over into Vietnam’s neighbors, it killed perhaps
60,000 and 300,000 in Laos and Cambodia, respectively.

The American use of the term “Vietnam War” fails to convey the
larger historical context of what was equally a national and a Marxist
revolution. As significant as the horrifically destructive American
war between 1964 and 1973 was, it constituted just one phase of a
longer Vietnamese struggle against foreign aggression and for a more
just society.

In the longest historical focus, Vietnam had been engaged in
resistance since the French first attacked the Nguyen Dynasty in 1858.
Through multiple waves of imperialist expansion, the imperialist
invaders seized and occupied all of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos,
forming the Indochinese Union in 1887. The Vietnamese opposed the
French with conventional and guerrilla warfare, piracy and banditry,
and countless everyday acts of resistance for over a century
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After World War I, a new generation of Vietnamese modernizers wanted
to eject the French while also learning from the West. Inspired by
Japan’s transformation under the Meiji Restoration and by Sun
Yat-Sen’s Kuomintang in China, they called for a new Vietnamese
modernity and rejected Confucian traditions. In 1927, following Sun
Yat-Sen’s party strategy, the nationalist Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang
(VNQDD) was founded to liberate the nation and promote a capitalist
modernity. Drawn from the educated elite and wealthy families, the
liberal VNQDD did not call for widespread social revolution.

The Soviet Union sponsored a more radical program. After seizing power
in 1917, Lenin and the Bolshevik Party promoted Marxist world
revolution. In 1919, they organized the Communist International
(Comintern) in Moscow to organize, educate, fund, and discipline the
new revolutionaries.

Nguyen Ai Quoc, a young Vietnamese patriot in France who would later
take the nom de guerre Ho Chi Minh, was present at the 1920 founding
of the French Communist Party in Tours. Drawn to Marxism as the only
ideology that offered an anti-colonial critique, he eventually went to
Moscow for training. In exile, he founded the Vietnamese Revolutionary
Youth League in 1925 and then the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) in
1930.

With Comintern support, the ICP argued that both colonialism and
capitalism were exploiting the Vietnamese people. The ICP accused
traditionalists of failing to resist the French and collaborating with
the colonial occupiers. The ICP included “feudal” Confucian
scholars in its list of enemies and argued that national independence
would have to be accompanied by a profound social revolution.

While vague on details, the ICP attracted support from the urban and
rural poor who suffered under the colonial political economy. The ICP
promised a new path to modernity for Vietnam.

Universities of Revolution

With no small amount of irony, the history of Vietnamese communism is
directly tied to French rule. The exploitative colonial political
economy created the conditions that convinced thousands of activists
that communist revolution was the only viable solution. Marxism, the
ideology that eventually liberated and modernized Vietnam, was
initially a French import.

Between 1929 and 1931, there was a series of assassination, strikes,
mutinies, and rural uprisings that formed what they called
“Soviets.” The French responded with harsh repression, throwing
thousands into the growing colonial prison system.

Members of the VNQDD, often drawn from the educated elite, fared
poorly in the violent jails. In contrast, the Comintern’s
revolutionary training gave ICP cadres the skills not only to survive
incarceration but to organize and recruit new members. The prisons
essentially became universities of revolution and time served was an
important qualification for advancement in the party hierarchy.

 

When the French Popular Front issued a general amnesty to political
prisoners in 1936, newly freed Communists organized a
political-military force, aiming to both defeat colonialism and start
a Marxist revolution. A few years later, with the Japanese invasion
and occupation of Southeast Asia shattering the European and American
colonial regimes, Ho Chi Minh created the Vietminh, a Communist-led
coalition. In August 1945, he declared independence in Hanoi. The
French responded by reinvading their “lost” colony in November
1946, starting the First Indochina War.

The Vietminh used guerrilla tactics, appeals to nationalism, and class
resentment against wealthy landowners to build support. The
increasingly alarmed US government supported the French as part of an
anti-communist crusade. By 1950, Washington was underwriting the cost
of the war.

After gaining control of the northern countryside and achieving a
historic victory in the mountains at Dien Bien Phu, the Vietminh
forced the French to the negotiating table. The July 1954 Geneva
Accords called for the temporary administrative division of Vietnam
until elections could be held within two years.

In the north, the Vietminh officially established the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam (declared in 1945) and enacted a social revolution
with a dramatic (albeit brutal) land reform campaign. A flood of
Catholic and upper-class Vietnamese fled south and to France.

In the south, Ngo Dinh Diem’s anti-Communist administration
established the rival Republic of Vietnam (RVN), a police state that
refused to hold national elections. His disastrous land reform managed
to alienate both peasants and landlords. Without a political base,
Diem resorted to cronyism, angering just about every segment of
society, including the Buddhist monks, some of whom protested with
self-immolation. The increasingly corrupt regime used violence against
any opposition.

Deeply committed to the goal of national unification but faced with an
impasse, the North Vietnamese leadership established the National
Liberation Front (NLF) in 1960. While it was a coalition of patriotic
groups, the Communist Party dominated the NLF, and it took its orders
from Hanoi. Using the same guerrilla tactics that had proved
successful against the French, the NLF made rapid gains in the south.
Some supported the promises of social revolution, but many
non-Communist southern Vietnamese joined the NLF simply as an
alternative to Diem.

Diem called the NLF “Viet Cong” or “Vietnamese commies” and
waged a counterinsurgency campaign that was as brutal as it was
ineffective. The regime took over the old French penitentiary system,
using widespread torture such as the infamous tiger cages. Once again,
surviving prison was important for advancement in the party.

Search and Destroy

By 1963, the south was spinning out of control. As the war destroyed
the rural economy, refugees flooded the cities. In November, Diem was
kidnapped and murdered by his own officers. A series of strong men
cycled through the South Vietnamese leadership as corruption and
desertion weakened the demoralized the Army of the Republic of Vietnam
(ARVN).

Despite US civil and military aid, the Republic of Vietnam was on the
verge of collapse. When Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency after
John F. Kennedy’s assassination, he dramatically increased support
for the south and deployed American Marines in 1964. He also started a
bombing campaign against the north.

The indiscriminate destruction of the land and air campaigns is still
being assessed. From massacres on the ground such as My Lai to the
bombing of civilians in Hanoi, there were numerous and well-documented
US war crimes.

After 1965, the North sent its formally trained and conventionally
equipped People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) to join the NLF. Despite
the scale of the American campaign, which peaked at over 540,000
troops in 1969, the Republic of Vietnam steadily lost ground.

American military aid could not solve a basic political problem: most
Vietnamese viewed the regime as an illegitimate puppet of US
imperialism. To compound the issue, every incident of what the
American military called “collateral damage,” be it from the
barrel of a M16 or the payload of a B52, increased support for the
NLF.

The war’s escalating violence impacted the makeup of the party. A
faction of pro-Soviet hard-liners led by Le Duan began to dominate the
organization. Le Duan, who had been jailed by the French, represented
a generational succession to the aging Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap.

In a cycle of violence, Le Duan ruthlessly matched American aggression
with NLF and PAVN attacks. In 1968, the Central Intelligence Agency
began the Phoenix Program, a campaign of terrorism, torture, and
targeted assassinations to neutralize the NLF and its sympathizers.

Vietnamization

Faced with an unwinnable war, Richard Nixon decreased the number of
troops in the south as he increased the intensity of the bombing on
the north. Nixon’s murderous 1972 Christmas Bombing of Hanoi was
followed by the final withdrawal of American troops in March 1973.

With the American military gone, it was only a question of how long
the Republic of Vietnam would survive. Initially, Hanoi was concerned
that the Americans would honor their promise to return if the south
was going to fall. By 1974, however, the Watergate scandal and
widespread popular opposition to deploying combat troops to Southeast
Asia emboldened the north to launch a Spring Offensive in 1975.

The fall of Saigon, which Hanoi described as the liberation of the
city, was the culmination of a swift and decisive offensive by the
PAVN and the NLF, whose forces had been steadily advancing southward
since the beginning of the year. Starting in March, thousands of ARVN
officers and RVN officials boarded American planes with their families
in Tan Son Nhat Airport. These refugees were terrified of what a
Communist victory would mean for them.

The final assault on Saigon began on April 29, with heavy artillery
bombardment and coordinated attacks on key positions. By the afternoon
of April 30, North Vietnamese forces had captured the Presidential
Palace and raised their flag, signaling the collapse of the South
Vietnamese government.

The chaotic scenes of evacuation, with helicopters ferrying 7,000
American personnel and South Vietnamese civilians to safety, became
iconic images of the war’s end. While some 130,000 Vietnamese
associated with the American effort were resettled in the United
States, many who wanted to leave were left behind.

In contrast to the Khmer Rouge’s mass executions of old regime
loyalists, there was relatively little postwar bloodshed in Vietnam.
However, hundreds of thousands of ARVN officers and RVN officials were
held in reeducation camps
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sometimes until the 1980s. Washington’s failure to protect its
puppet regime or to safely evacuate collaborators signaled a decline
in imperial power.

The fall of Saigon was not just a military defeat but also a profound
political and ideological shift. It marked the reunification of
Vietnam under communist rule, ending the division that had persisted
since the Geneva Accords of 1954. The new government faced the
daunting task of rebuilding a country devastated by war, while also
implementing socialist policies to transform Vietnamese society.

Winners and Losers

While unified, Vietnam was in a disastrous economic situation after
the destructive war. Instead of honoring Nixon’s 1973 promise of
over $3,300,000,000
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to rebuild Vietnam, Gerald Ford imposed an embargo in 1975. When
Vietnam invaded Cambodia on December 25, 1978, both overthrowing the
Khmer Rouge regime and starting the devastating Third Indochina War
(1978–1991), Ford’s successor Jimmy Carter responded with further
sanctions.

Vietnam became reliant on Soviet bloc aid and assistance just as the
USSR was going into its prolonged economic collapse. Faced with dismal
material conditions and resentful of the heavy-handed northern
occupation of the South, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese risked
their lives escaping by boat. The so-called “Boat People” became
an international humanitarian disaster.

After Le Duan’s death in 1986, the party adopted the Deng
Xiaoping–style Doi Moi reforms and has since successfully integrated
Vietnam into the global economy while providing significant
infrastructure and social services. Following a template that some
observers characterized as “Market-Leninism,” the party retained
all political power and oversaw all major sectors, but allowed a
steady increase in the number of privately run enterprises. With low
unemployment and inflation, it is projected
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to be Asia’s fastest growing economy in 2026. Hanoi won both the war
and the peace.

In the United States, this fiftieth anniversary will be marked with
emotions such as grief and bitterness among many veterans. The date
marks the futility of a conflict in which hundreds of thousands of
conscripted young men lost their lives or returned with traumatic
physical and emotional wounds. April 30 signals the limits of American
power. The event was a slap in the face to many Americans who could
not understand how a tiny rural country could defeat the most powerful
industrialized war machine in world history.

For their part, diasporic Vietnamese communities in southern
California’s Winchester
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Silicon Valley’s San José
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and Houston, Texas, speak of “Black April.” Founded by those who
fled the Communist victory, these communities stridently maintain
reactionary politics and loyalty to the defeated ARVN. In Little
Saigon, former anti-Communist fighters use terms such as “Day the
Country Was Lost” (_Ngày vong quốc_), “National Day of Shame”
(_Ngày quốc sỉ_), and “National Day of Resentment” (_Ngày
quốc hận_).

 

With ideological inclinations akin to Miami’s Cuban American
community, there is widespread support in these quarters for far-right
American political figures from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. Keen
observers noted that some of the January 6 rioters carried the South
Vietnamese flag in their assault on the Capitol.

A National Epic

In sharp contrast, April 30, 2025, will be a day of over-the-top
celebrations in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Saigon’s official name
since July 2, 1976. The “Day of the Liberation of the South and
National Reunification” (_Ngày giải phóng miền Nam, thống
nhất đất nước_) is one of Vietnam’s most important national
events.

For months, thousands of soldiers and scores of pilots have been
rehearsing for the celebration
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Even troops from Laos and Cambodia will participate
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The commemorative ceremony is taking place at 6:30 a.m. on April 30,
2025, along Le Duan Boulevard where a PAVN tank famously crashed
through the gates of the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace,
symbolizing the end of the war and national unification. Leadership
from the party and state, armed forces, war veterans, youth, and tens
of thousands of citizens will be in attendance.

The event will begin with a solemn flag-raising ceremony followed by
speeches from central and city leaders, tributes from war veterans and
youth representatives, jet and helicopter flyovers, and a massive
military parade. After the display of force, the ceremony will
conclude with the release of doves and balloons carrying messages of
peace and national unity and praise for the party’s program of
economic development.

There will also be a meticulously staged epic, reenacting the heroic
historical journey of the nation — from the resistance against the
United States to the moment of reunification on April 30, 1975. HCMC
will host a variety of special side events, such as fireworks and a
patriotically branded cycling race, to create a festive atmosphere
throughout the city.

While April 30 will be a day of celebration, ceremonies the previous
day offered incense and flowers in remembrance of heroic martyrs at
various sacred historical sites such as the HCMC Martyrs’ Cemetery,
Ben Duoc Memorial Temple, HCMC Policy Cemetery, and the Nga Ba Giong
Historic Site — to pay tribute to those who sacrificed for the
country’s independence and freedom.

Michael G. Vann is a professor of history at California State
University, Sacramento, and the coauthor of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt:
Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam.

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