Diem's dictatorship in South Vietnam
Head of State Bao Dai appointed the Catholic Ngô Đình Diệm as prime minister of South Vietnam on July 7, 1954. About one million mostly Roman Catholic North Vietnamese resettled in South Vietnam the following year, aided by U.S. Navy ships. The CIA encouraged the mass exodus with anti-communist propaganda to gain Diem's backing. 90% of the South Vietnamese were Buddhists, traditionally tolerant of non-Buddhists. However, Diem favored Catholics from the north in the allocation of posts for state offices and treated Buddhism not as a religion but as an association. In this way, he generated lasting antipathy toward his followers among the rural population.
Diem faced insubordinate parts of the military and strong private armies of the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao sects as well as the mafia-like Bình Xuyên in Saigon. Only with the help of the CIA, U.S. officer Edward Lansdale, and U.S. special envoy J. Lawton Collins was he able to thwart coup attempts. Collins, whom U.S. President Eisenhower had vested with all powers, ensured in 1955 that South Vietnamese instead of French officers were allowed to lead Diem's newly established "Army of the Republic of Vietnam" (ARVN). Diem, however, rejected any cooperation with other South Vietnamese anti-communist forces and began cracking down on sectarian agents in February 1955. When he provoked a civil war in Saigon by doing so, Collins strongly recommended that the U.S. government drop him. Diem forestalled this by using the ARVN victoriously, albeit at great sacrifice, against the Binh Xuyen in the "Battle for Saigon" from April 27 to May 2, 1955. In concert with U.S. Secretary of State Dulles and a Senate majority led by Senator Mike Mansfield, Eisenhower then decided to unconditionally prop up Diem's regime.
Diem received generous U.S. funding from then on, largely to build up the ARVN along the lines of the U.S. Army. He invested only minimal portions of U.S. aid for social and economic policy. South Vietnam's economy became increasingly dependent on U.S. imports. The urban upper and middle classes profited from cheaper consumer goods from the United States. The development of its own industry was neglected. Diem militarized public order and structured his armed forces in such a way that no independent centers of power were to emerge. This decisively reduced their clout. Diem and his family clan were regarded by the vast majority of South Vietnamese as unscrupulous, corrupt puppets of the West because of his dictatorial domestic policies. This increased the chances of Ho's victory in the all-Vietnamese elections scheduled for 1956. Therefore, Diem canceled them, breaking the 1954 Geneva Accord, but justified this by saying that South Vietnam had not signed it. U.S. President Eisenhower supported him in this. Instead, he deposed Bao Dai in October 1955 and had himself confirmed as the new president in a referendum whose result (98.2%) was rigged, and proclaimed the Republic of Vietnam. In March 1956, a parliament filled with his supporters approved the constitution he had drafted for the Republic of Vietnam, which did not provide for a genuine separation of powers. Vietnam was thus divided into two states, both of which considered themselves the rightful representative for all of Vietnam.
Civil war
Beginning in 1955, Diem resettled villagers from the hill tribes (Montagnards) living in the central highlands, confiscated their land and handed it over to some 210,000 mostly Catholic followers to create a social bulwark against Viet Minh infiltration. He also favored relatives and followers in leadership positions. In doing so, he destroyed thousands of years of village self-government. As a result, the Montagnards formed their own organization, which expanded into the Bajaraka in 1958, demanding autonomy for their settlement areas. Montagnards were recruited from both sides of the civil war that was now beginning.
South Vietnam's armed forces had previously been geared to defending against expected conventional attacks from North Vietnam, but not to fighting insurgents (counterinsurgency). The U.S. now took over their training and equipment. To this end, it initially sent 350 officers to South Vietnam as "military advisors" (trainers, action planners and leaders) and stationed the 77th Special Forces Group there, which was founded in 1953. Thus, for the first time, the U.S. appeared as an independent conflict partner in Vietnam, thus initiating its later entry into the war.
From the summer of 1955 to 1959, Diem's regime carried out the To Cong campaign ("Denounce the Communists!"). In 1955, he closed the border to North Vietnam and cut off postal traffic there. With newly enacted repressive laws, thousands of South Vietnamese were arrested indefinitely or placed under house arrest on mere suspicion of opposing the regime, tortured, and in many cases sentenced to death and shot, including by mobile special courts beginning in 1959. Diem thus reduced the Viet Minh cadre by two-thirds by 1959. He abolished commune elections and appointed thousands of his followers as administrators of South Vietnam's provinces, districts, and villages. In response, the Viet Minh carried out up to 4,000 assassinations of Diem's administrators from 1957 to 1961.
Battles between them and the ARVN began in 1959. Despite increasing popular support for Diem's repressive measures, more and more Viet Minh were killed or imprisoned in South Vietnam. In order not to lose their influence over the South Vietnamese, who were ready to resist, they pressured North Vietnam's government to send in combat troops. The latter had so far given priority to its own social and economic transformation. Beginning in September 1959, it allowed South Vietnamese-born former Viet Minh to return to the South. These transported weapons, food, and other supplies south along a jungle route that later became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In the Battle of Tua Hai in February 1960, the first major battle of the Vietnam War, some 300 Viet Minh captured the headquarters of the ARVN's 32nd Regiment at Tay Ninh (55 km from Saigon) and captured large quantities of supplies there.
North Vietnam's Unity Party, the Lao Dong, developed into a mass party of about 500,000 members in 1960. Its five-year plan of September 1960 called primarily for the development of heavy industry and infrastructure and the collectivization of agriculture. It was led by Premier Phạm Văn Đồng and Party Secretary Lê Duẩn. In response to his call, the Viet Minh united with other opposition groups to form the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) on December 20, 1960. It was formed at a congress of the outlawed Communist Party of South Vietnam, which had set Diem's overthrow and the expulsion of the U.S. Army as its main goals. Modeled on Mao Zedong's Revolutionary Army, the NLF formed a counter-government of trained cadres who motivated the rural population to revolt and organized armed resistance. In this process, North Vietnam did not appear as an actor because of the 1954 Geneva Accord, but in fact the NLF followed Hanoi's directives. Their opponents equated them with their military branch and called them Viet Cong (VC). The NLF's goal was to force the withdrawal of U.S. military advisors and to form a coalition government of all groups in South Vietnam.
Since North Vietnam wanted to avoid U.S. intervention in the civil war in the south, it supported the NLF only politically, not militarily, until 1961. Until 1965, it remained largely dependent on old French weapons or weapons captured from the ARVN. The NLF saw itself as the engine of a social revolution, mobilized the peasants and introduced procedures in the villages that promoted their self-reliance. Through its redistributive measures, it quickly gained support among the rural population. By the end of 1961, it controlled 75% of South Vietnam's rural areas.
Escalation
With his anti-communist rollback policy, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in office since January 1961, set the course for the escalation of the Vietnam War. A report by his advisors Walt Rostow and Maxwell Taylor on their visit to Vietnam in early 1961 became decisive: the U.S. would have to commit itself irreversibly to the preservation of South Vietnam and, to this end, strengthen the counterinsurgency strategy. As a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the new Flexible Response strategy was intended to expand U.S. room for maneuver against communist states and insurgencies without risking nuclear war. Therefore, Kennedy ordered some covert military operations against North Vietnam and increased the number of U.S. military advisors in South Vietnam from 400 to 16,575 by 1962. By 1962, the U.S. Air Force was flying 50,000 airstrikes against Vietnamese villages believed to be Viet Cong, including the use of napalm.
In May 1961, Kennedy allowed small, heavily armed secret detachments of South Vietnamese agents, trained by U.S. military advisors, to be dropped into North Vietnam. The necessary flights were organized by the ARVN, disguised as a private airline. Later, pilots from Taiwan were also trained for this purpose. The U.S. population was not to learn of these actions even when they were discovered by North Vietnam. This happened for the first time as early as July 1961; almost all other agents smuggled in were discovered and imprisoned shortly after landing in North Vietnam. Nevertheless, agent teams were increased to several hundred by mid-1964. In the process, cooperation between South Vietnam and Taiwan continued even after Diem's fall.
U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara justified the increased U.S. deployment in November 1961 on the basis of the SEATO Treaty. Appeasement would lead to Communist victory throughout Indochina, loss of U.S. credibility with Asian allies, and destruction of SEATO. However, Kennedy rejected the call by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Department, and Diem for the deployment of regular troops and targeted bombing of Hanoi. Instead, he had funding for the ARVN greatly increased, the elite Green Berets unit sent in, and the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) established near Saigon as a high command. He authorized the CIA to conduct sabotage operations in the North. Operation 34A ("OPLAN34") was launched. The CIA's Saigon office thus became an asset whose activities were not adequately monitored by the U.S. Congress.
Between 1959 and 1961, U.S. military advisors trained the Royal Laotian Army and gained recruits from the Hmong tribe in the secret Operation White Star in Laos. Largely because of enormous U.S. arms shipments, including helicopters, armored troop carriers, and modern artillery, the ARVN was militarily successful against the resistance fighters in 1962 and took the strategic and tactical initiative in the civil war.
However, Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, the security chief, used the guerrilla defense strategy primarily to intensify the repression of the peasants. To this end, the elaborate Taylor-Staley plan called for concentrating the rural population in "defense villages" beginning in March 1962. Most villagers resisted this because it violated their religious customs and further worsened their already difficult social situation. Except in some highland areas where the CIA carried out the plan, the defense village program was a fatal setback for Diem's regime. In early 1963, in the battle for Ap Bac, a single, relatively poorly armed but determined NLF battalion repulsed attacks by numerically far superior ARVN units. In the process, the incompetence of the South Vietnamese officers became apparent.
In May 1963, Diem's ban on the Buddhist flag in Hue triggered months of severe unrest that gripped all of South Vietnam (Buddhist crisis). Police shot women and children during protest demonstrations. Hunger strikes and self-immolations occurred. In August, Diem's brother Nhu placed the country under martial law. At the same time, he established initial contacts with Hanoi through France's President de Gaulle, without informing the U.S. ambassador.
Kennedy was now faced with the choice of continuing to prop up a corrupt regime rejected in South Vietnam, which increased the NLF's chances of victory by its behavior, or overthrowing Diem and thus interfering with South Vietnam's sovereignty. Only Paul Kattenburg advised in this situation that the U.S. military be withdrawn from South Vietnam and the country left to its own devices, but he was rejected in the National Security Council. Key Kennedy advisors such as Averell Harriman and George Wildman Ball wanted Diem dropped. Kennedy appointed Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. as the new U.S. ambassador to Saigon. Lodge was to demand that Diem remove Nhu and otherwise encourage disaffected ARVN generals to stage a coup. To increase pressure on Diem, McNamara and Maxwell Taylor recommended to Kennedy the withdrawal of U.S. military advisors and reductions in military aid to the ARVN after their September visit to Saigon. As a result, Kennedy withdrew 1,000 military advisors on October 11, 1963. He planned to withdraw the remainder from Vietnam by 1965. On November 2, 1963, disaffected ARVN officers overthrew Diem and Nhu; both were assassinated after their arrest. Lodge, who had known of the coup plot and had not informed Diem, denied any U.S. involvement upon his return to the United States in June 1964. Several of Kennedy's advisers, including Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, later viewed the coup as a grave mistake that tied the United States even more closely to South Vietnam.
Entry of the USA into the war
After the fatal assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, Johnson ascended to the presidency. He had always supported the containment policies of his predecessors. On Nov. 26, he endorsed a memorandum written for Kennedy that promised South Vietnam continued aid against any communist aggression. He would not allow "Vietnam to go the same way as China" but would see to it that South Vietnam's generals "put the fear of God into the Communists." In order to secure his domestic policy (Great Society), which was aimed at social balance, in the U.S. Congress, Johnson wanted to protect U.S. interests in Indochina in foreign policy and guarantee the survival of South Vietnam.
Its new ruler, General Dương Văn Minh, a Buddhist, sought a compromise with the NLF against Johnson's wishes and demanded more restraint from the U.S. military. In January 1964, with Johnson's approval, he was overthrown by an officer group led by General Nguyễn Khánh. Other military coups followed; no stable government emerged in South Vietnam until late 1967. North Vietnam took advantage of this situation and sent more fighters and materiel there. With this, the NLF was to first bring the central highlands and the Mekong delta under its control, and then attack in the major cities of South Vietnam as well.
During his March 1964 visit to Vietnam, McNamara found that the NLF controlled 40% of South Vietnam and up to 90% of the areas around Saigon. The ARVN had lost 3,000 troops in the Mekong Delta, a high number of its soldiers deserted, and many did not accept Khánh as commander in chief. Publicly, McNamara nevertheless claimed progress in repelling the NLF. Internally, he recommended increasing military aid and not sending U.S. ground troops before the presidential election (November 1964). These would only further weaken ARVN combat morale and then necessitate more and more U.S. troops (snowball effect). Johnson then stepped up the covert OPLAN34 initiated by Kennedy. This involved the CIA, U.S. Army, and ARVN conducting joint acts of sabotage in North Vietnam to relieve and stabilize the regime in Saigon. In addition, he now had the Defense Department plan in detail the bombing of North Vietnam. He appointed Maxwell Taylor as U.S. ambassador to Saigon, appointed General William Westmoreland as MACV commander in chief, and increased the number of U.S. military advisors in South Vietnam from 16,000 to 23,300 by the end of 1964. At the same time, he offered Hanoi economic aid if it would cease supporting the NLF and recognize the Saigon regime; otherwise, it would face U.S. air strikes (Seaborn mission). In return, Hanoi offered to recognize a neutral South Vietnam if the U.S. withdrew its military there completely. During an attempted mediation by UN Secretary General U Thant in September 1964, both sides insisted on these irreconcilable demands.
Starting in May 1964, Johnson wanted to have his planned war effort authorized by the U.S. Congress in order to involve it, and thus the U.S. population, more closely. The resolution on this was not to be presented until after the presidential election in November because of the lack of a cause for war. During the election campaign, Johnson portrayed his opponent, Barry Goldwater, as a dangerous warmonger who would expand the Vietnam War and plunge the U.S. into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and promised not to send ground troops to Vietnam.
On July 31, 1964, a South Vietnamese sabotage squad attacked two North Vietnamese islands as part of "OPLAN34." On August 1, the U.S. warship USS Maddox entered the Gulf of Tonkin to conduct electronic reconnaissance of the North Vietnamese People's Army (NVA). For unexplained reasons, North Vietnam's Coast Guard dispatched three speedboats to the Maddox on August 2. The latter, fearing a torpedo attack, opened fire, sank one of the boats, damaged the others, and reported this "Tonkin incident" to the U.S. government. On August 4, USS Turner Joy (DD-951) mistakenly reported more torpedo attacks during a thunderstorm, but retracted the report. NSA submitted to Johnson only that 10% of radio traffic relevant to the incident that suggested an attack. Johnson ordered initial air strikes on Hanoi that same evening, justifying them on U.S. television as retaliation for "repeated unprovoked acts of violence." The involvement of U.S. warships in sabotage operations was concealed from Congress. Secretary of State George Ball later admitted that they had been dispatched to the Gulf of Tonkin to provoke a cause for war. The immediate retaliatory strikes had been prepared for months.
On August 7, after brief debate, the U.S. Congress passed the Tonkin Resolution with only two votes against (Ernest Gruening, Wayne Morse). This authorized the U.S. government "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack on U.S. forces and to prevent further aggression." It was intended to replace a formal declaration of war and served as the U.S. legalization of all subsequent combat operations by its forces in Indochina until its withdrawal in 1970. Johnson achieved a congressional majority for it with the help of Senator William Fulbright and a promise that he did not plan to send ground troops before the election. He silenced Goldwater's criticism that he was "soft on communism" and won a landslide victory in the November 3, 1964, presidential election.
With the targeted and threatened further U.S. air strikes, the U.S. government, as it turned out in 1970, was testing a concept of "coercive diplomacy" developed around 1960 that combined coordinated force and offers of negotiation. The effect was the opposite: the government in Hanoi no longer expected U.S. withdrawal after the collapse of the regime in South Vietnam; rather, it anticipated a U.S. invasion of all of Vietnam and prepared to fight U.S. troops directly in the South as well. Starting in September 1964, it therefore sent armed combat troops to South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail and had it further expanded for this purpose.
On November 1, 1964, the NLF directly attacked a U.S. military base for the first time at Biên Hòa. This reinforced Johnson's intention to bomb North Vietnam to weaken the NLF in the south. Initially, the U.S. paid for an increase of 100,000 to 660,000 troops in the ARVN to prop up the regime of General Nguyễn Khánh. In December 1964, the NLF bombed a Saigon hotel where U.S. military advisers were staying and defeated two numerically and weaponry far superior ARVN battalions at Binh Gia. Now Johnson's advisers wanted to bomb North Vietnam earlier to save South Vietnam's regime from collapse.
Allied states
The People's Republic of China was the first state to recognize the NLF in 1960. It saw its role as supporting liberation movements against both superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, in Third World countries. After the Tonkin Incident, it declared that it would intervene in North Vietnam in the event of a U.S. invasion. To this end, Mao had troops of 300,000 to 500,000 deployed near China's southern border, built two airfields there, and trained North Vietnamese pilots. In December 1964, the two countries concluded a military aid agreement. In June 1965, the first Chinese aid troops arrived in North Vietnam. Until 1969, the People's Republic of China helped North Vietnam mainly with personnel to repair and maintain roads, railroads and airfields, provided air defense forces and supplied military equipment.
Since the Sino-Soviet rift, the Soviet Union competed for political influence in Indochina with the People's Republic of China, which became a nuclear power in October 1964. On October 14, 1964, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was overthrown in the Soviet Union. He had pursued peaceful coexistence with the U.S. and therefore supported North Vietnam with some $500 million in economic aid and light weapons, but always refused to supply anti-aircraft guns and anti-tank weapons. After his fall, Hanoi expelled the few Soviet military advisors from the country. His successor, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, then agreed with Hanoi on a military aid agreement in February 1965. After the first U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, the Soviet Union took a confrontational course with the United States beginning in November 1964 and condemned all further U.S. bombing. It supplied North Vietnam with S-75 surface-to-air missiles and aircraft, including Mig-21s, and artillery suitable for attacks on U.S. bases. North Vietnam thus received substantial war resources from both countries and successfully played them off against each other in their allocation and in diplomatic support until the end of the war. Ho was more interested in the alliance with the Soviet Union in this regard, while Le Duan was more interested in China. By 1968, the Soviet Union had sent 2,000 military advisers and surpassed China as North Vietnam's main arms supplier. By 1975, it had also granted loans worth some five billion dollars. The People's Republic of China, on the other hand, withdrew its advisers from North Vietnam beginning in 1967 and largely suspended its economic aid during the Cultural Revolution. It resumed it after the Ussuri Incident (March-September 1969) and supplied $500 million worth of goods to North Vietnam in the following years.
North Korea actively supported North Vietnam from 1967 onward with a contingent of fighter pilots, who were mainly used in the defense of Hanoi. As early as 1965, Kim Il-sung had repeatedly stated that North Korea was ready to provide military support to North Vietnam at any time. Fourteen North Korean military personnel died in the fighting, and they are commemorated with a memorial in the Vietnamese community of Tân Dĩnh. It was not until 2001 that the participation of North Korean pilots in the air battles over North Vietnam was officially confirmed by the Vietnamese government.
Beginning in 1965, the GDR called on its citizens to show "international solidarity" with North Vietnam. Donations intended for humanitarian aid were also used for military means. The extent of these, however, is not known. From 1973, the GDR trained 20 to 30 North Vietnamese per year as officers.
Beginning in April 1964, the U.S. government tried to enlist as many countries as possible as supporters of its Vietnam effort ("More Flags" program) to keep it from looking unilateral. By December, 15 states sent mostly symbolic aid contributions. Only SEATO members Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea and Taiwan provided significant nonmilitary goods. Johnson then asked the SEATO states for combat troops. Britain declined because it had been protecting the post-colonial federation around Malaysia against Indonesian attacks with 30,000 troops since 1963, including the U.S. military base in Singapore, which the United States needed for its containment policy against the People's Republic of China. The other states sent military only against the U.S. promise to bear all associated costs.
SEATO never officially approved the U.S. deployment. South Korea, not a SEATO member, provided most of the armed forces until 1966, receiving extensive economic, modernization, and military aid in return and contractual commitments from the United States not to reduce its troops in South Korea. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos received an additional $80 million in economic aid for a nonmilitary relief force, but withdrew it in 1969 in the face of violent civil protests. Thailand allowed the U.S. to use its airfields for bombing raids on Laos and North Vietnam beginning in 1964, then also to build eight U.S. military bases with 37,000 U.S. troops. It received $75 million in annual military aid for a division deployed in 1967. Australia joined the United States in supporting Suharto's bloody military coup in Indonesia in 1965 and increased its aid troops to South Vietnam through 1967. Together, these countries sent a total of 68,850 troops at their peak through 1969, which they withdrew at varying rates through 1973:
| Year | Australia | New Zealand | Philippines | South Korea | Thailand |
| 1964 | 200 | 30 | 17 | 150 | - – |
| 1966 | 4.525 | 155 | 2.061 | 44.566 | 244 |
| 1968 | 7.661 | 516 | 1.576 | 50.003 | 6.005 |
| 1969 | 7.672 | 552 | 189 | 48.869 | 11.568 |
| 1972 | 130 | 50 | 50 | 36.790 | 40 |
NATO had unreservedly affirmed U.S. involvement in Indochina as identical to its goals until 1963. However, the U.S. troop buildup in South Vietnam in 1964 sparked concerns that it could weaken the alliance. After the Tonkin incident, NATO countries rejected U.S. demands to send their own troops to Vietnam. Beginning in July 1965, Scandinavian countries expressed concern about escalation and civilian casualties and urged the U.S. to negotiate with its wartime adversaries. Doubts about the claimed U.S. reasons for war and its failure to consult NATO intensified the criticism. France supported a neutral South Vietnam, as it had in 1954, and condemned the bombing of North Vietnam. By contrast, Gerhard Schröder, then Germany's foreign minister, feared that a defeat in or a U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam might encourage the Soviet Union to make blackmailing advances in Europe and thus endanger the security of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Chancellor Ludwig Erhard supported the U.S. war effort even in the face of skeptical NATO partners, but in April 1965 he gave the United States $30 million, less than half the amount requested. In December 1965, he tried to extend the payment terms for German arms purchases in the United States that former German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauß had promised the United States in 1961 to offset U.S. foreign exchange for U.S. troops stationed in the Federal Republic. Johnson rejected this proposal in September 1966. The disagreement with the U.S. over the sharing of military costs contributed significantly to Erhard's downfall. His successor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, then agreed with the U.S. and Britain in January 1967 that EEC central banks and West German banks would not use their reserves of U.S. dollars to buy gold. In this way, the Federal Republic substantially supported the dollar exchange rate and its function as a reserve currency, which had significantly jeopardized the U.S. budget deficit caused by the Vietnam War.
Willy Brandt did not criticize the U.S. war effort, either as Foreign Minister or as Chancellor, so as not to jeopardize U.S. security guarantees for Berlin after the 1961 Berlin crisis, German-American friendship, the SPD's reputation as an Atlanticist party, and his policy of détente. In 1965 he criticized the domino theory, and in early 1968 he called U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam desirable and rejected German military contributions. In February, the SPD, under pressure from the party base, demanded an immediate halt to the bombing. Brandt, on the other hand, emphasized the U.S. will for peace and also expressed understanding for Nixon's bombings in 1972.
When the U.S. had moved two-thirds of its reconnaissance aircraft to South Vietnam by July 1966 and 66,000 troops from Western Europe by 1967, it could no longer fulfill its security guarantee to the NATO countries. After the Soviet Union put down the Prague Spring militarily in 1968, the NATO countries again moved closer to the U.S. side. Nonaligned states such as India, on the other hand, viewed U.S. behavior in Vietnam and that of the Soviet Union in the Eastern Bloc as comparable violent interference.
Canada remained neutral in the war, but many Canadians served as volunteers in the U.S. armed forces, although this was actually prohibited under Canadian law. It is estimated that between 30000 and 40000 Canadians were in the war effort, of whom more than 125 died. According to other estimates, 400 Canadians fell and 4000 were wounded. Despite the ban on military service in foreign forces, none of the volunteers were prosecuted. Canada did, however, participate in the International Control Commission - which was supposed to monitor compliance with the Geneva Accords - with 240 soldiers and 50 advisors from the Department of State.
Bombing
The U.S. did not want to conquer North Vietnam and endanger its existence so as not to risk nuclear war with the Soviet Union and/or China. They wanted to hold South Vietnam until North Vietnam would recognize it and stop its infiltration attempts. Therefore, they initially bombed limited targets and gradually increased their ground forces without using the full capacity of the U.S. Army. In doing so, MACV's high command relied on its technically and materially superior weapons, U.S. Air Force air superiority, and the mobility of its helicopters, which could rapidly transport U.S. troops anywhere. Because North Vietnam could not counter this "technowar" with anything equivalent, it was expected to soon exhaust its forces and cease fighting. Bombing North Vietnam's military bases, NLF-controlled areas of South Vietnam, and supply lines even in neighboring states was intended to make the war unaffordable for North Vietnam, to divert it from supporting the NLF, to cut it off from supplies, and to facilitate border controls in the South. Politically, it was intended to stabilize South Vietnam's regime and satisfy conservative opposition in the United States, which demanded unrestricted bombing of North Vietnam.
Following the NLF attack on the U.S. base at Camp Holloway near Plei Cu, Johnson ordered the three-week Operation Flaming Dart (Feb. 7-28, 1965) as a punitive action. This involved bombing North Vietnamese troop locations believed to be supporting NLF attacks in the south. After the NLF attacked additional U.S. bases in the south, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to launch Operation Rolling Thunder. This initially involved eight weeks of bombing 94 targets in North Vietnam, mainly supply depots and transportation hubs. From May 13 to 18, there was a pause in bombing for negotiations. During this, North Vietnam maintained its goal of an independent and reunified Vietnam, which was unacceptable to the United States, quickly repaired damage to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and deployed Soviet anti-aircraft missiles around Hanoi and other industrial centers.
Johnson resisted demands by the U.S. military to bomb even densely populated urban centers. He selected the targets himself on a weekly basis, exempting major cities, levee installations, and border areas near the border with China from bombing, and emphasizing that only installations deemed militarily important should be destroyed. The bombing initially affected regions around the 17th parallel, and later areas farther and farther north, including many militarily insignificant sites. They killed "1,000 civilians a week," according to McNamara, including with napalm and cluster bombs.
| Date | Bombing | Discharge quantities (tons) |
| 1965 | 25.000 | 63.000 |
| 1966 | 79.000 | 136.000 |
| 1967 | 108.000 | 226.000 |
Although the bombs largely destroyed North Vietnam's infrastructure, military installations, and energy production by 1968, they failed to achieve the strategic goal of stopping South Vietnam's infiltration and forcing negotiations. Instead, they succeeded in causing North Vietnam's population to close ranks, repair as much destruction as possible at night with huge crowds, move many industrial facilities underground, and increase the transport of war materiel and fighters to South Vietnam. With the help of Soviet weapons, its air defenses became much more effective, so that by 1968 North Vietnam had shot down 950 U.S. aircraft.
Beginning April 3, 1965, the U.S. Air Force also bombed those areas of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that passed through Laos (Operation Steel Tiger). Beginning on December 6, 1965, U.S. ground forces also attempted to disrupt the trail, particularly near the mountain passes between North Vietnam and Laos (Operation Tiger Hound). After the bombardment of North Vietnam stopped on 1 November 1968, Johnson ordered Operation Commando Hunt to disrupt the now-expanded trail network in Laos. This delayed NLF attacks in South Vietnam planned for 1969, but never succeeded in completely destroying the trail.
Chemical warfare
Since the 1950s, U.S. military laboratories at Fort Detrick had experimented with herbicides that had been developed as chemical weapons during World War II and then used commercially, testing their effects in nature for military purposes. Since 1959, these agents had been tested in South Vietnam. Based on reports of their success, U.S. President Kennedy made these agents a central component of a flexible, innovative counterinsurgency strategy in 1961 and personally ordered their use in Vietnam. In doing so, the U.S. government exploited a loophole in the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibited war with chemical weapons only against humans, but not against plants. In order to meet the US Army's large orders, the manufacturers Dow Chemical and Monsanto allowed the starting materials to be synthesized at a higher temperature, which increased the dioxin content.
In July 1961, the first shipments arrived in South Vietnam under code names such as Agent Orange, Agent Blue, Agent Purple and Agent White. In January 1962, Operation Ranch Hand ("farm hand") began, with the U.S. Air Force and ARVN systematically spraying such dioxin-containing herbicides in Vietnam and the border areas of Laos and Cambodia. These defoliated the jungle to denude roads, waterways, and border areas, destroying crops and thus depriving NLF fighters of shelter, ambushes, food, and social support. Under Johnson, this became the historically largest program of chemical warfare beginning in 1965. In the process, the U.S. sprayed some 20 million gallons (80 million liters) of dioxin-contaminated herbicides by 1971. In 1971, the use of these agents was stopped.
Ground war
While Johnson and the National Security Council determined the selection, timing, and intensity of bombing, MACV decided on the deployment and use of U.S. ground forces. General Westmoreland viewed the Vietnam War as a conventional war in which the goal was combat incapacitation, i.e., killing, capturing, or wounding as many opponents as possible with as few own casualties as possible ("attrition strategy"). The search-and-destroy method was used for this purpose, for example in the large-scale Operation Masher in the spring of 1966. Its measure of success was the body count, i.e. the number of enemies killed.
On March 8, 1965, the first U.S. combat troops landed in Đà Nẵng to protect the base there. Other U.S. troops surrounded the respective U.S. military bases ("enclave strategy"). Then the First Cavalry Division was tasked with halting the NLF advance in the central highlands of South Vietnam. Other combat troops concentrated in areas near the demilitarized zone (17th parallel). They were to protect own military bases, search assigned areas, destroy detected NLF combat units, control border regions, and prevent infiltration of NLF forces. MACV distributed U.S. combat forces not according to capturing as many areas as possible, but according to inflicting as many casualties as possible on the enemy to make military attacks permanently impossible. To do this, helicopters dropped small airmobile infantry units into an area they were combing. As few men as possible were to make contact with the enemy as a kind of "decoy." As soon as they spotted or were engaged by enemy fighters, they fixed their location and called in air support. This destroyed the opponents by massive fire, as much as was available.
By far the majority of areas for these searches were in the coastal plains, some in the central highlands, in the Khe Sanh region near the border with Laos, and in the Mekong Delta. Everywhere there were zones excluded from combing because the nearest U.S. base had too few soldiers or the NLF had too many fighters there. These zones were shelled uncontrolled with artillery or dropped with the remaining bombs during return or overflights. For this, the U.S. Army used almost 50% of its combat ammunition in 1966 and 1967, and up to 85% in some assigned areas. In doing so, it killed an unknown number of civilians and drove survivors from their neighborhoods. This made subsequent "pacification" much more difficult.
Many inexperienced U.S. soldiers emptied their entire magazines in continuous fire, so later versions of the M16 rifle were given a 3-shot mode. In addition, most U.S. commanders, who had a relatively large margin of maneuver, relied on the firepower of their commands when in contact with the enemy. However, 70% of the artillery rounds fired were expended in situations where there was no or only light combat. Statistically, 50,000 rounds were used for every NLF combatant killed.
Although, contrary to expectations, they did not achieve a measurable decisive decimation of the NLF, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff called for more and more soldiers and firepower. By the end of 1965, the U.S. government sent 184,000 U.S. troops to the Vietnam War; by the end of 1966, 400,000; by the end of 1967, 485,000; by January 1968, 548,000. All U.S. measures lacked objective measures of what they actually accomplished. Thus, it remained unclear whether more U.S. ground troops deployed killed more opponents in percentage terms:
| Date | US troops | Operations | enemies killed |
| 02/1966 | 208.000 | 57 | 4.727 |
| 12/1966 | 385.000 | 89 | 3.864 |
| 12/1967 | 486.000 | 129 | 7.938 |
| 12/1969 | 479.000 | 90 | 9.936 |
| 12/1970 | 335.000 | 90 | 6.185 |
Body count totals came from systematically falsified battle reports because NLF fighters usually took their dead with them, U.S. soldiers did not want to search for alien bodies in the jungle, and these were almost indistinguishable from civilians. Killing civilians unobserved and exaggerating numbers became common because promotions depended on body counts being as high as possible. In addition, MACV ordered in February 1966 that enemy casualties must necessarily exceed the infiltration of new fighters announced by Hanoi by the end of the year. Speeches by government officials increased the pressure to succeed. In March 1967, for example, Dean Rusk claimed that there was evidence that the enemy could not sustain his forces. In the fall, Westmoreland spoke of "light at the end of the tunnel"; victory was now in sight. Internally, the CIA had been denying this since the spring of 1967, estimating the number of NLF fighters to be twice as high as MACV, assuming the offsetting of losses by rapid recruitment in South Vietnam. MACV, on the other hand, denied the failure of its attrition strategy. The U.S. government accepted its lower estimate, thereby blessing the systematic misstatements in the body count. Thus, this way of measuring success persisted after the Tet Offensive.
Various measures were intended to isolate the "battlefield" of South Vietnam (there was no clear front against guerrillas) against infiltration. To this end, the U.S. Army integrated a "Ranger Force" into the ARVN, enlarged its special forces, and set up boat patrols against supplies by sea. The CIA's Weir Village Program, the Studies and Observation Group, minefields and garrisons, and the later invasion of Laos also served this purpose. However, all of these measures failed to achieve their goal because South Vietnam's border was too long and too much wilderness, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail was constantly being rebuilt and expanded.
After suffering heavy defeats in the first year of the war, the NVA drafted all able-bodied North Vietnamese starting in July 1966 and grew from 250,000 to 400,000 men. Up to 5,000 of them crossed the Ho Chi Minh Trail into the south every month, until in 1966 some 200,000 NVA soldiers were fighting there alongside around 120,000 guerrilla fighters. Their commander-in-chief, General Nguyen Chi Tanh, initially relied on raiding attacks on ARVN and U.S. bases, which resulted in high casualties among the attackers. After the lost battle in the Ia Drang Valley (November 1965), he changed strategy, avoiding large-scale battles and engaging primarily ARVN security patrols in many dispersed one-on-one battles. 95% of these combat operations were conducted by units of 300 to 600 men. To render U.S. Air Force air superiority ineffective, they moved only at night and during the rainy season, favoring close combat and using extensive tunnel systems as weapons depots and retreat sites. In doing so, they forced U.S. ground forces to disperse, take on more and more security duties from the ARVN, and always return to their bases. U.S. soldiers, to whom the language and culture of the country were foreign, could hardly distinguish between guerrillas and peasants, but were forced to control more and more Vietnamese villages themselves, and their behavior reinforced the impression that a foreign aggressor threatened the people and had to be fought by all Vietnamese together. Despite multiple weapons and numerical inferiority, Tanh's troops thus retained the strategic initiative and destroyed the U.S. prospect of limiting its war effort and its own losses, both locally and temporally. The NLF was always able to absorb losses until 1968 and continue its targeted pinpricks. Although the U.S. Army and ARVN last fielded nearly five times as many soldiers, their opponents maintained a steady stream of materiel and fighters who were well-trained and usually far more motivated. The ARVN could rarely hold territory once occupied for long. In addition, the U.S. Army had to use many soldiers to protect its military bases and weapons stored there because they were under constant attack. Even higher kill rates of later U.S. operations did not limit the NLF's radius of action: it continued to decide where, when, and for how long to fight. In 1969, 75% of all fighting continued to come from it.
To cope with the escalating fighting with American troops, North Vietnam carried out a mobilization of society along the lines of the People's War, in which every member of society would have to participate in the war effort. Because most men were drafted into the military, women had to take over their role in the economy, and their share of the labor force in North Vietnam rose to about 75%. The proportion of women serving in political positions at the local level doubled during the war to nearly half of the posts there.
The Thieu regime
In February 1965, ARVN generals Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, Nguyễn Chánh Thi, and Nguyễn Văn Thiệu ousted the Khánh regime and promised the US close cooperation against the NLF. In March 1965, Thieu warned the U.S. that the NLF already controlled 75% of South Vietnam. He called for increased U.S. ground operations so that the ARVN could take on more defensive tasks. Thus, the latter increasingly ceded control of the country to U.S. forces. In the ARVN and the cities of South Vietnam, its own military regime remained controversial.
In March 1966, Ky dismissed the Buddhist Thi, who commanded the ARVN units of five northern provinces. This was protested by the Buddhists in the region, who wanted to negotiate an end to the war with the NLF. Their leader Tri Quang received enormous support from parts of the ARVN. Although Thieu promised early elections for a constituent assembly, protests increased until Ky Đà occupied Nẵng with the help of U.S. troops and surrounded Buddhist pagodas. In response, demonstrators in Huế set fire to the U.S. consulate. In Saigon, too, increasing numbers of Buddhists, Catholics, and other civilians protested the U.S. war effort. While ARVN defectors negotiated with Ky and Thieu, U.S. troops and loyal ARVN troops occupied Huế in early June and bloodily put down the uprising (180 dead, over 700 injured). This marked the failure of an attempt by urban South Vietnamese to end the war. In September 1967, Ky and Thieu held democratic elections, but hardly any Buddhists participated. Despite heavy vote rigging, Thieu received only 34.8% of the electoral votes. The Constituent Assembly challenged the election results. Only after an intervention by U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker did it elect Thieu president of South Vietnam and have two of his opposing candidates arrested. As a result, most South Vietnamese did not recognize Thieu but considered him a U.S. puppet.
Thieu created a consensus based on corruption by giving ARVN generals a share of U.S. subsidies. In addition, the Chinese-born merchant elite supported him. The military also divided among itself illegal markets such as the sale of heroin to U.S. soldiers, among others. Under Thieu, too, the ARVN served primarily to allocate and control power and therefore remained little effective militarily.
Negotiation and mediation offers
Since the continued bombing of North Vietnam could only be justified in domestic and foreign policy terms by a parallel display of willingness to negotiate, Johnson offered Hanoi negotiations on the recognition of South Vietnam for the first time during the first bombing pause in July 1965. This served primarily to reassure the U.S. population. In December 1965, in a 14-point plan, the U.S. government again offered to stop bombing if Hanoi ended its support for the NLF in South Vietnam. The latter was still not to be allowed to co-govern South Vietnam. North Vietnam, conversely, made the cessation of air strikes a precondition for negotiations. Attempts by Polish (November 1966), British and Soviet diplomats (February 1967) to mediate failed in each case because of simultaneously intensified U.S. air attacks. By 1967, there had been close to 2,000 such advances by individuals from third countries.
At the Glassboro Conference in June 1967, Johnson agreed with Soviet Premier Alexei NikolaevichKossygin to enter into a limitation of strategic nuclear weapons. Kossygin, however, rejected Johnson's offer to also negotiate the disarmament of antiballistic missile systems; because of the U.S. Vietnam War, which showed its bellicose intent, the Soviet Union could not refrain from acquiring such defense systems.
In September 1967, with the "San Antonio formula," Johnson offered for the first time to stop the air attacks as soon as North Vietnam agreed to serious negotiations and did not send any more fighters to South Vietnam. Then, he said, the NLF could play a political role in South Vietnam. Sticking to the goal of an independent South Vietnam and a military victory over the NLF while bombing Hanoi's outskirts, North Vietnam did not respond to the offer. Since the rupture of the Geneva Accords of 1954, the leadership there considered negotiations meaningful only after clear military successes and never gave up its goal of a complete U.S. withdrawal, a power-sharing of the NLF and later reunification of Vietnam. It used offers of negotiations primarily to morally discredit the U.S. air attacks in the eyes of Western public opinion.
From 1965 to 1968, Johnson tried several times to enlist Pope Paul VI as a mediator between the warring parties. He requested that the Pope publicly criticize North Vietnam, its treatment of U.S. prisoners of war, and influence Catholic officials in South Vietnam to convince NLF supporters among the South Vietnamese of U.S. objectives. Paul VI rejected this role and instead telegraphed Johnson in February 1965 that he feared the impending U.S. war effort might escalate into a general war. In late 1967, he told Johnson he understood his good intentions but could never agree to war. He offered to explain U.S. peaceful objectives to the Soviet Union. He pursued a plan to celebrate Christmas Mass in Saigon and then visit North Vietnam. After the Tet Offensive, however, Johnson dropped these offers of mediation in favor of the Paris talks.
Tet Offensive 1968
Since 1961, the NLF had limited its strategy, analogous to Mao's People's War concept, to conquering rural regions in order to encircle South Vietnam's major cities in the coastal belt. Because of high NLF casualties in the south, General Tanh demanded in Hanoi in June 1967 that the urban conquest, planned as the second stage, be brought forward. In response, his successor Vo Nguyen Giap prepared a coordinated surprise attack by local guerrilla fighters with NLF and NVA forces on most of South Vietnam's major and provincial capitals. This was intended to show the U.S. that its military could not permanently secure any center of South Vietnam and that victory was thus illusory, to induce it to de-escalate, to fragment the ARVN, and ideally to initiate a general uprising against the regime in South Vietnam. To increase the surprise effect, the Vietnamese New Year (Tet), when there was traditionally a ceasefire, was chosen as the date of the attack.
Weapons were smuggled into South Vietnam's cities. As a diversion, Giap massed 20,000 NVA troops at a U.S. base in the fall and began the battle for Khe Sanh on January 21, 1968. To avoid defeat at all costs as at Dien Bien Phu, Westmoreland defended this U.S. base with 50,000 U.S. and ARVN troops. Johnson had the area bombed by April with the historically densest amount of explosives (100,000 tons). Giap had succeeded in the diversion.
After individual premature attacks, the Tet Offensive began on January 31, 1968. Some 84,000 fighters simultaneously attacked numerous provincial and district capitals and attempted to conquer them. The U.S. Army had not expected such a fierce large-scale attack, despite warnings from its intelligence agencies. In Saigon, NLF commandos advanced as far as the U.S. Embassy. But they were quickly pushed back in street fighting by ARVN forces and eliminated in most cities in a matter of days. In the process, U.S. gunships destroyed entire neighborhoods. Commenting on the result in Bến Tre, the U.S. commander famously said, "We had to destroy Ben Tre to save it." Only in the battle for Huế did 7,500 NVA soldiers hold out until February 24. They murdered between 2,000 and 6,000 unarmed civilians. During the recapture in house and street fighting, 216 U.S. soldiers died. Huế was almost completely destroyed. 100,000 inhabitants had to flee.
By March 1968, the Tet Offensive had killed over 14,000 civilians, including 6,000 in Saigon, wounded 25,000, and left 670,000 homeless. The hoped-for uprising of the South Vietnamese failed to materialize. The NLF lost up to 40,000 fighters (50%), many former strongholds and retreat areas, and with them considerable economic resources, prestige, and recruitment opportunities among the rural population. The latter now hoped almost only for an end to the fighting. The NLF troops never recovered from their losses. The regular NVA had to compensate for them and henceforth bore the brunt of the war.
On April 3, 1968, North Vietnam's leadership decided to begin negotiations with the United States. Ho, who since 1965 had acted only as a moral arbiter of internal directional struggles, called for the last time on July 20, 1968, for the war to continue until final victory. He died on September 2, 1969, without a successor. Ton Duc Thang became head of state. A dispute arose between party officials Le Duan, who had urged a quick military victory, and Trường Chinh, who wanted to give priority to long-term reconstruction and persuasion, over the consequences of the defeat for further warfare.
"Pacification"
U.S. general staffs wanted to use the defeat of the NLF to push through expanded war plans. Westmoreland proposed a February 1968 landing operation against NVA positions on the coast of North Vietnam near the demilitarized zone, called for ground troop attacks on NVA retreat areas in Laos and Cambodia, and intensified air strikes to effectively disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail. General Earle Wheeler supported the plan and called for an additional 206,000 U.S. troops, i.e., reservist conscription, to do so in late February: otherwise, he said, North Vietnam would win in the long run. He did not specify success criteria or a time frame for these new ground operations.
U.S. Secretary of Defense McNamara resigned at the end of February 1968 as a result of the Tet Offensive and conflicts with Johnson over military strategy. His successor, Clark M. Clifford, in office since March 1, advocated a return to the enclave strategy of 1965, with the U.S. Army limiting itself to protecting major cities from now on and leaving the ARVN to fight the enemy, thus allowing the Vietnamese to achieve an internal negotiated peace. Before Johnson could announce his decision in favor of Clifford's plan, the New York Times published the generals' troop request on March 10. Resistance then formed in the U.S. Congress, with 139 of 400 members of the House of Representatives passing a resolution demanding a comprehensive reassessment of the entire U.S. war effort. Johnson's foreign policy advisors McGeorge Bundy, George Ball and Dean Acheson, unlike the previous year, advised against expansion and unchanged continuation of the war on March 25. The Tet Offensive caused a shift in opinion; the surprising offensive power of the enemy, who had been thought to be on the verge of collapse, destroyed U.S. citizens' hopes for the war's imminent end and Johnson's credibility. Voters felt misled by the administration, which for years had promised early victory after each successive escalation. Added to this was the enormous burden of the war on the national budget and the U.S. economy.
On March 31, 1968, in an address to the nation, Johnson announced he would limit bombing, offer negotiations to North Vietnam, and not run for reelection. He appointed Averell Harriman as the U.S. representative to the planned Paris peace talks and called on South Vietnam to take more responsibility for the war. How realistic the last point was was a matter of controversy in the United States. North Vietnam accepted Johnson's offer and began negotiations with the United States in Paris beginning in May 1968. Both sides, however, stuck to their war aims. Johnson held out the prospect of an end to bombing north of the 20th parallel, but tripled bombing in South Vietnam. He had insurgent areas such as the densely populated Mekong Delta bombed three times as heavily as the north. The military effect of this action was minimal because the enemy had moved large parts of its infrastructure and logistics below the surface. In half of the bombed areas in the south, the NLF was not active, so only the civilian population was hit there.
At the end of March, Johnson replaced Westmoreland with General Creighton Abrams. Abrams reduced the size of the U.S. units to mobile, close-combat units that also combed previously avoided swamp and jungle areas. He increased "search-and-destroy" operations, in which some 100,000 U.S. troops participated in March and April. The CIA's "Phoenix Program," launched in June 1968, was intended to permanently deprive the NLF of its base of operations. In the process, ARVN special forces trained by U.S. officers cracked down on local fighters. By mid-1971, they had arrested 28,000 guerrilla fighters, shot 20,000 and persuaded 17,000 to switch sides, including through torture. The Thieu regime used the program to eliminate opposition members, so the special forces also murdered many non-Communist civilians. In total, they killed up to 50,000 people.
In parallel, the U.S. military intensified the "pacification" that had begun in 1966 to bring the rural regions under the control of the Thieu regime. With a "Revolutionary Development Program," the ARVN imitated the methods of the NLF. Teams of 60 Vietnamese each moved into a village, offering social services and promising security in an effort to draw residents to Thieu's side. The program had so far failed due to frequent lack of coordination between U.S. and ARVN troops, decisions not forwarded or delayed in corrupt Saigon authorities, inadequate training of recruits, and many attacks on them by the NLF. It was only after the Tet Offensive and as a result of the Phoenix killing program that the attempts to influence had a broader impact.
Beginning in the fall of 1968, the U.S. military handed over more ownership to the ARVN as part of the "de-Americanization" promised by Johnson. To this end, it was enlarged from 685,000 to 800,000 troops, its training was improved, and its armament was modernized. Abrams had ARVN and U.S. units fight together for the first time, gradually leaving offensives against the NLF entirely to them. South Vietnam's generals, however, were not interested in expanding combat operations. Desertions in the ARVN skyrocketed. South Vietnam's urban population felt betrayed by the United States. On November 1, 1968, Johnson stopped bombing North Vietnam. This measure and the breakthrough announced by Johnson in the direction of peace negotiations with Vietnam also took place for tactical reasons against the background of the presidential election and went down in history as a so-called October Surprise.
"Vietnamization"
Republican Richard Nixon was known as a strict anti-communist. He had called for a U.S. air strike on Dien Bien Phu in 1954, supported Diem's dictatorship and the escalation of bombing without reservation. Like his predecessors, he believed in the domino theory, and therefore wanted to preserve South Vietnam at all costs and not give up U.S. support. However, he saw the Vietnam War as an obstacle to preserving U.S. global hegemony in a multipolar world dominated by several great powers. Therefore, he used secret diplomacy to seek a relaxation of relations with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, which would also end their arms assistance to North Vietnam. To this end, he centralized his administration's political decision-making processes in the National Security Council around security adviser Henry Kissinger. Nixon's secretary of state and secretary of defense remained unprofiled recipients of orders.
Nixon won the 1968 U.S. presidential election on a promise to negotiate a "peace with honor." Contributing to his election victory, Thieu canceled his participation in the Paris talks three days before the U.S. election date. Nixon had previously contacted Thieu through Anna Chennault and urged him to let the negotiations fail before the election. He did not want to look like a loser of the Vietnam War before U.S. citizens and allies any more than his predecessors had, but he wanted to convince them of his desire for peace and at the same time force North Vietnam to accept the Saigon regime in order to be able to end the U.S. war effort without losing credibility. That is why he and Kissinger rejected a unilateral withdrawal of U.S. troops. On May 14, 1969, in order to buy the time needed domestically for a successful negotiation with North Vietnam and to show his intention to de-escalate, Nixon proposed on U.S. television the simultaneous withdrawal of NVA and U.S. troops and guaranteed the preservation of the Thieu regime. On June 8, at their first meeting, he promised Thieu to adequately arm the ARVN for self-defense and to keep him informed at all times of any secret talks with Hanoi. On July 9, the first U.S. soldiers withdrew from South Vietnam. Hanoi, however, immediately rejected Nixon's proposals, saying that the U.S.-dependent ARVN was merely to continue their war. In July, the NLF formed a Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG), which immediately recognized Hanoi as the sole legitimate representative of the South Vietnamese people. The PRG was organized in all NLF-controlled areas and represented in Paris by Nguyễn Thị Bình. On July 30, Nixon, visiting Saigon in strict confidence, promised Thieu further bombing of North Vietnam so that Thieu would agree to U.S. troop withdrawal.
According to the Nixon Doctrine declared on July 25, 1969, the U.S. wanted to continue to support allied Asian states militarily and economically, but leave military self-defense to them. Thus Nixon passed off the de-escalation initiated by Johnson the previous year as his change of policy. In South Vietnam, this "Vietnamization" was rejected as U.S. domestic policy at the expense of the ARVN. Creighton W. Abrams slowed the pace of withdrawal because of his experience with the ARVN. The U.S. increased their troops to over a million, upgraded them with modern weapons systems, and trained them on them. ARVN fighting with the NLF and NVA decreased thereafter, and some ARVN units were militarily successful. However, desertions and corruption remained widespread in the ARVN. The Thieu regime remained unpopular and dependent on U.S. financial aid.
In March 1970, under U.S. pressure, Thieu expanded the pacification program and enacted land reform. By 1972, 800,000 South Vietnamese families had received land. Land ownership increased from 29% to 56% of the population. With infrastructure development and production incentives, Thieu's regime managed to control large parts of South Vietnam in two years. However, because of the changed settlement pattern due to refugee influxes, the continued Phoenix program whose brutality attracted new supporters to the NLF, corruption in the authorities, another rigged election, and general war weariness, Thieu continued to receive little popular sympathy and thus failed to achieve his goal of permanently stabilizing South Vietnam. A U.S. Senate report in February 1970 summed up the situation by saying that under Thieu, South Vietnam would remain dependent on U.S. aid and that Vietnamization could only fail with him.
Starting in June 1969, the U.S. withdrew 25,000 U.S. troops from South Vietnam, followed by another 60,000 in September, 150,000 in March 1970, and 177,000 in 1971. About every six months, another 50,000 troops followed. At the end of 1970 there were still 334,000, in 1971 157,000, in 1972 95,000 (of which only 6000 were combat troops), and at the beginning of 1973 27,000 U.S. soldiers were still in South Vietnam.
Invasions in Cambodia and Laos
Nixon wanted to use his reputation as an anti-communist to convince North Vietnam by acting unpredictably; he would even risk nuclear war to force a success of the Paris talks. He internally called this strategy Madman theory. In February 1969, he ordered the top-secret Operation MENU, which not even the Air Force chief of staff learned about. In this operation, the U.S. Air Force, with Prince Norodom Sihanouk's tacit approval, dropped about 100,000 tons of bombs on NLF and NVA retreat areas in Cambodia and Laos over a 14-month period. U.S. special forces then raided the affected areas to kill survivors. An unknown number of civilians died in the process. Supplies for the NLF decreased by only 10%. The NVA moved inland into Cambodia, intensifying the ongoing Cambodian Civil War. In June 1969, Nixon issued an ultimatum to North Vietnam by November 1 to agree to negotiations for a reciprocal withdrawal of troops from South Vietnam, threatening severe consequences if it did not. When Hanoi refused, his security advisers only with difficulty dissuaded Nixon from ordering air strikes on Hanoi and a naval blockade of North Vietnam.
On March 18, 1970, U.S.-friendly Minister Lon Nol overthrew Cambodia's regent, Prince Sihanouk, probably with the help of the CIA. Lon Nol wanted to drive out the Khmer Rouge and the NVA forces allied with them. The U.S. Army took advantage of this situation to launch a ground offensive against Cambodia's border areas near Saigon, where it suspected the NLF headquarters were located. On May 1, 1970, 43,000 ARVN troops and 31,000 U.S. troops moved in there. In the "Battle of Cambodia," they killed about 2,000 NLF fighters, destroyed many weapons caches and bunkers, but failed to find the headquarters. Most NLF forces moved further inland, where they helped the Khmer Rouge gradually extend their rule to nearly 50% of Cambodia. At the same time, the advance thinned U.S. and ARVN forces in South Vietnam, relieving pressure on NLF forces there. In the U.S., protests grew to a peak in the U.S. Congress as well, forcing Nixon to end the invasion of Cambodia in June 1970.
In September 1969, the U.S. Congress passed a legislative ban on U.S. ground troops in Thailand and Laos. On October 10, 1969, Nixon threatened his determination for a Third World War by launching nuclear-tipped bombers as part of Operation Giant Lance, in a futile effort to intimidate the Soviet Union. In December 1970, Congress prohibited Nixon from U.S. ground operations in Laos. From February 8 to March 24, 1971, the ARVN alone attempted to disrupt NLF supply lines in Laos (Operation Lam Son 719) to buy time for Vietnamization and negotiations with North Vietnam. However, the NLF learned of the operational plans and routed the ARVN forces. Only massive U.S. air strikes prevented them from being completely routed.
Other heavy U.S. air attacks on Cambodia and Laos took place in Operations Commando Hunt from 1968 to 72 and Freedom Deal from 1970 to 73. However, the objectives of these operations were not achieved. The Cambodian government later estimated that, in total, more than 20 percent of the country's goods were destroyed during the war.
Easter Offensive 1972
After the lost Tet Offensive, NLF General Giap had prioritized building up conventional forces in South Vietnam over guerrilla fighting. For this buildup, North Vietnam received new arms supplies from the Soviet Union and China in 1970, skillfully exploiting their conflict. The NLF consolidated its influence in the Mekong Delta during the 1970 Cambodian invasion, permanently tying down ARVN forces there and regaining a foothold in other parts of South Vietnam by mid-1971. In July 1971, Kissinger offered the PRC better relations with the United States if it would coerce Hanoi into agreeing to compromises at the Paris talks. Nixon planned to become the first U.S. president to visit the People's Republic of China in February 1972. North Vietnam's Prime Minister Phạm Văn Đồng could not dissuade Mao from this visit plan. To forestall the feared rapprochement between the U.S. and China, Hanoi hastily prepared a major NVA attack on South Vietnam.
Once again, U.S. intelligence agencies misjudged observed troop movements in North Vietnam. In March, 120,000 NVA troops crossed the borders into South Vietnam in three attack wedges and in a few days captured the five northern provinces, large parts of the central highlands with Kon Tum, and advanced to within 70 km of Saigon. Because Thieu had to mass all ARVN forces to protect the major cities, the NLF captured many ARVN bases in the Mekong Delta. This showed the Thieu regime that peace would only be achievable with the NLF, and the U.S. that Vietnamization was as illusory as military victory.
For Nixon, however, military defeat and the loss of South Vietnam were unacceptable in the election year of 1972. He announced on May 8, 1972, as the most serious escalation of the war to date, the mining of the port of HảiPhòng, a naval blockade and renewed area bombardments of North Vietnam. In this Operation Linebacker, the U.S. Air Force dropped 112,000 tons of bombs in June, including, for the first time, precision-guided munitions (eng. smart bombs) that steered themselves electronically to the target. These effectively cut off supplies to the NVA, allowing the ARVN to repel their forces by July. In the process, some 100,000 NVA and 25,000 ARVN soldiers died. Again, hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese fled their villages. Contrary to the warnings of Nixon's advisers, the Soviet Union and China protested only weakly against the escalation and continued their policy of détente with the United States. This showed Hanoi that compromise with the United States was inevitable. Most U.S. citizens approved of the renewed bombing of North Vietnam, according to polls. However, opposition grew in the U.S. Congress to continue funding the war.
Paris ceasefire
Kissinger had been in contact with North Vietnamese officials since 1967. On Nixon's behalf, of which neither Thieu nor U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers knew, he offered secret talks to Hanoi in December 1968 and again in May 1969 to circumvent the Paris talks, which were complicated with four parties, and to force Thieu, who rejected any reduction in U.S. aid, to compromise. He foresaw that the Saigon regime would not hold after the U.S. troop withdrawal. The secret talks were intended to allow U.S. withdrawal without loss of credibility. On February 21, 1970, Kissinger met for the first time with top communist leader Lê Đức Thọ, with whom he negotiated regularly from then on. Tho saw North Vietnam as the victor of the war and rejected any solution that would not give the communists in South Vietnam a dominant role. Only after the 1972 bombing did he see the U.S. concern to get out of the war without losing face as being in his own interest.
Kissinger, however, was unable to push through a reciprocal troop withdrawal because the unilateral U.S. troop withdrawal was well advanced and both the U.S. Congress and U.S. citizens opposed further escalation. In the fall of 1972, Tho provisionally recognized the continued existence of the Thieu regime and proposed a national council to prepare for general elections, which would include equal representation from the NLF and neutral groups. North Vietnam would agree to a cease-fire immediately and exchange all prisoners of war if the United States ceased its attacks and withdrew from South Vietnam in 60 days. Kissinger pushed for a joint cease-fire monitoring body and international oversight of the peace process.
Thieu, who had not been involved in negotiations in Paris, had in the meantime learned through his secret service about Kissinger's secret talks with Tho. As a result, he rejected the draft treaty outright. Kissinger tried to salvage the compromise with diplomatic pressure, declaring on October 25: "We believe peace is at hand." In so doing, he favored Nixon's high election victory in November 1972, when the latter wanted to negotiate an agreement more favorable to the United States and South Vietnam. He gave large U.S. Army weapons stockpiles to the ARVN (Operation Enhance Plus) and promised Thieu in secret letters that he would order more air strikes if Hanoi violated the cease-fire after the U.S. withdrawal. On Dec. 13, he ordered Operation Linebacker II to force Hanoi to relent. In the process, the U.S. Air Force flew 3,500 attacks on North Vietnam nonstop from December 18-29, 1972 (except on Christmas Eve), killing 2,000 civilians and destroying several neighborhoods of Hanoi. As a result, U.S. prestige worldwide reached an all-time low.
North Vietnam then rejoined the Paris talks. The October draft agreement was changed only in marginal details. On January 27, 1973, all parties signed the Paris Agreement. It committed the U.S. to complete troop withdrawal in 60 days, North Vietnam to release all prisoners of war, prohibited all foreign powers from military interference in Laos and Cambodia, allowed North Vietnam to leave some 140,000 NVA soldiers in South Vietnam, and the NLF to administer the areas it controlled until a general election. The demilitarized zone around the 20th parallel was transformed into a temporary demarcation line and was thus no longer a border recognized under international law. The treaty thus met all of North Vietnam's main demands, but not South Vietnam's, which had demanded that U.S. troops remain in the country and that the NVA withdraw. Its continued existence depended solely on whether the U.S. would honor Nixon's secret letter promises to Thieu. In addition, Nixon promised North Vietnam billions in aid for reconstruction in a secret supplementary protocol. By the end of March, the last stationed and prisoner-of-war U.S. soldiers officially left Vietnam. For the first time in about 100 years, there were no foreign troops there. The U.S. government portrayed the agreement as the "honorable peace" promised by Nixon five years earlier, although it was aware of the treaty's shortcomings. Kissinger estimated that the Thieu regime would survive for a year and a half.
North Vietnam conquers South Vietnam
From March to August 15, 1973, the U.S. Air Force continued to bomb the southern border areas of Cambodia with 250,000 tons of explosives. Two out of seven million Cambodians fled. Nixon had to have the attacks stopped because the U.S. Congress cut off all funding for them in June. In addition, Congress suspended economic aid to North Vietnam until all cases of missing U.S. soldiers were resolved. In November, it passed the War Powers Resolution. It limited any future U.S. military intervention to an initial 60 days, which the U.S. president could extend only with the permission of a majority of members of Congress or had to end in another 30 days. Congress also initiated impeachment proceedings against Nixon. Therefore, the latter could not keep his promise of assistance to Thieu.
Both regimes in Vietnam frequently broke the Paris Agreement. The ARVN generals did not participate in the National Council and occupied about 1,000 villages in 1973 to expand their sphere of influence. Although the ARVN had 1.1 million soldiers, nearly four times as many as the NVA, two-thirds of them (about 30,000 soldiers) had stationary and defensive duties, compared with only 10% of the NVA. They ceded territories to the ARVN without a fight that would be difficult to defend in the event of war. North Vietnam expanded the Ho Chi Minh Trail into a wide road with supply depots and laid a 2,000-km pipeline to southern Cambodia. By the end of 1974, the NVA controlled a relatively closed area in South Vietnam. The NLF tied up 50% of the ARVN forces in the Mekong Delta.
With the withdrawal of the U.S. Army, 300,000 South Vietnamese lost their jobs; unemployment in South Vietnam rose to 40%. The 1973 oil crisis made imports more expensive and exacerbated inflation and recession. In addition, the Thieu regime caused increased prices and decreasing supplies for rice through market control. Supply shortages occurred in urban areas. In 1974, the U.S. Congress still granted the ARVN $700 million in military aid, which dropped to $300 million after transportation costs were deducted, making effective combat operations almost impossible. Because of declining combat morale and insufficient pay, 240,000 ARVN soldiers deserted in 1974. Corruption grew within and among troop units. As many of their soldiers looted, more and more peasants rejected the ARVN altogether. South Vietnam's noncommunist opposition was divided. The upper classes gradually moved their property out of the country. Thieu remained passive and, until Nixon's resignation in August 1974, relied on the assurances of the 9,000 remaining U.S. military advisers that the United States would stand by him if necessary.
In early December 1974, the NLF occupied the provincial capital of Dong Xoai near Cambodia. On December 18, Hanoi then decided on a spring offensive by the NVA to conquer the central highlands of South Vietnam in order to initiate an uprising in the major cities in 1976. In March 1975, the NVA crossed the demarcation line into South Vietnam with 16 divisions and initially captured Ban Me Thuot as planned. Thieu then abandoned the Central Highlands and ordered the ARVN to retreat to the coastal region around Saigon to save his rule. However, the ARVN general in command left the country with his family. The leaderless ARVN troops fled in disarray, allowing the NVA to advance unimpeded. On March 25, it captured Huế, days later Đà Nẵng, and in April Pleiku, Nha Trang, and Bien Hoa without the expected casualty-filled battles. Now Hanoi decided to attack Saigon as well; this final act of the war is known in English-speaking countries as the Ho Chi Minh Campaign.
On April 21, 1975, Thieu fled abroad; General Duong Van Minh assumed office for nine days. Gerald Ford, who had succeeded Nixon as vice president and wanted to preserve his election chances as U.S. president, rejected renewed U.S. airstrikes and emergency aid to the ARVN against the advice of U.S. Chief of Staff Frederick C. Weyand. While the U.S. Congress was deliberating, the NVA was already advancing against Saigon.
It reached the outskirts of Saigon on April 21. Only then did CIA and U.S. military advisors initiate an evacuation. During the following week, U.S. pilots moved about 7,500 people per day out of Saigon on passenger planes. On April 28 and 29, North and South Vietnamese bombs destroyed the airport. Large U.S. helicopters transported another 7,014 people from the city to U.S. aircraft carriers off the coast on 29 and 30 April. In all, more than 130,000 South Vietnamese left their country; about 30,000 of these reached the Philippines. When its President Marcos refused to accept any more refugees, Guam took in 50,000 South Vietnamese. At the U.S. Embassy compound, the last 18 hours of evacuation by helicopter (Operation Frequent Wind) saw fighting between Vietnamese willing to flee and U.S. citizens, as well as exchanges of fire between U.S. guards and ARVN soldiers. On April 30, the NVA captured downtown Saigon and, at 11:30, the presidential palace without resistance. It was greeted joyfully by some South Vietnamese. In the afternoon Duong Van Minh declared the surrender, which was recorded only by the German journalist Börries Gallasch. Walter Skrobanek, who worked for the children's charity terre des hommes in Saigon at the time, describes everyday life during the last days of the old regime and the first weeks under the new rulers in a diary published in 2008.
