Berlin, Germany (Weltexpress). In the spring of 1975, the USA’s defeat in the war against Vietnam, which it had been waging in South Vietnam with over half a million ground troops since 1965, became apparent. The USA and Saigon had systematically sabotaged the Paris Peace Accords, signed on 2 March 1972 between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (FNL) on the one hand, and the USA and its South Vietnamese puppet government on the other. This happened despite the fact that the agreement had been approved by an international Vietnam conference attended by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, as well as Hungary, Poland, Canada and Indonesia. In Article 1, the U.S. had to recognise ‘the independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of Vietnam, as recognised in the 1954 Geneva Agreement on Vietnam’, which it had refused to do until then. They had to agree in Article 2 not only to a ceasefire with the fighting parties in the south beginning at midnight Greenwich Mean Time on 27 January 1972, which they had also refused to do until then, but also to accept in Article 3 the remaining of the armed forces of both sides where they were. This meant recognising the liberated areas of South Vietnam as territory controlled by the liberation forces. It also meant de facto recognition of the fact that North Vietnamese were fighting alongside the liberation forces.
Article 5 obliged the USA to withdraw ‘all troops, military advisers and military personnel, including military technical and military personnel working in connection with the pacification programme, as well as arms, ammunition and war material’ within sixty days. Article 4 already prohibited this group of people from interfering in the internal affairs of South Vietnam. Article 6 also obliged the USA to close all its military bases within 60 days. This included all forces of the USA’s allies from SEATO countries and South Korea in South Vietnam. Articles 9 to 14 contained provisions for the realisation of the right of self-determination of the people of South Vietnam. Both sides, that is, the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) formed by the FNL, the Republic of South Vietnam (RSV) founded by it and the Saigon government, were to ‘hold consultations in the spirit of national reconciliation and unity, mutual respect and mutual non-elimination in order to form a national council of national reconciliation and unity’ immediately after the ceasefire, which was to prepare ‘free and democratic general elections ‘.
With the ceasefire in South Vietnam, the USA was obliged to cease all military activities by its ground, air and naval forces against the territory of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and to end the mining of Vietnamese waters. The USA committed to clearing mines immediately.
Article 15 sanctioned the reunification of Vietnam and stipulated that it ‘shall be achieved by peaceful means, through discussions and agreements between North and South Vietnam, without coercion or annexation by either side, and without foreign interference’. In this context, the agreement explicitly confirmed the provisional character of the military demarcation line at the 17th parallel, as defined in the Geneva Accords of 1954. To implement the agreement, a Consultative Conference of the two South Vietnamese sides was set up in the Paris suburb of La Celle-Saint Cloud.
USA and their Saigon puppets sabotaged the Paris Accords
The Paris Agreements represented a catastrophic defeat for the Americans in their Vietnam policy. By adhering to them, Washington could have saved some face and withdrawn from Vietnam as contractually agreed. This is how France proceeded in 1954. Not so the USA. In order to avoid new military defeats, they withdrew their remaining troops after numerous delaying manoeuvres, but did not fulfil their other obligations. They left 25,000 military advisers and other military experts in South Vietnam, who continued their work as ‘civilians’. The US violated the terms of the agreement regarding the replacement of military material, which was allowed to both sides. Between 28 January and 10 July, the Pentagon supplied the Saigon army with an additional 696 aircraft, 1,100 tanks, 800 guns, 204 warships and other military equipment, including chemical weapons and vast quantities of ammunition.
The army of Saigon President Thieu
was to be enabled to take up new combat operations against the liberation army, which it soon did. As the PRR proved in a document published in January 1975, the Saigon air force carried out 29,897 air raids on the liberated areas or conducted reconnaissance flights over them in the period from January 1973 to January 1975. Their artillery fired on the territory 48,354 times and their ground troops invaded 59,794 times. In total, the ceasefire was violated 532,154 times by Saigon. As in previous years, tens of thousands of people, mostly women, children and the elderly, were killed or injured in ‘pacification’ operations. The Saigon authorities not only refused to release the approximately 200,000 people who had been imprisoned, but also threw a further 60,000 people who were campaigning for the implementation of the Paris Accords into prison. The leadership of the Saigon military and intelligence operations remained in the hands of the Pentagon and CIA military, whose headquarters were now in the US Embassy. In the bases of Da Nang, Nha Trang, Bien Hoa and Can Tho, which, like all other American bases, had not been dissolved but handed over to the South Vietnamese army, US consulates formed the command centres. On 4 February 1974, U.S. News & World Report wrote that the U.S. Embassy in Saigon formed the ‘Eastern Pentagon,’ a ‘battle-ready centre that is no different from a command post from the days when the Americans were still fighting.’
President Thieu, encouraged by the United States, publicly sabotaged the Paris Accords. On 9 March 1973, he declared his government and army ‘the only one in South Vietnam’. On 12 October, he threatened that anyone who ‘calls themselves a neutralist or pro-communist will not survive five minutes’. On 28 December 1973, he announced: ‘There will be no elections, no peace, and the conference at La Celle-Saint Cloud will never lead to a political solution.’ On 16 April 1974, the Saigon representatives left the conference, which was thus abandoned.
The last offensive in Vietnam
Protests against the violation of the Paris Accords by the RSV and the DRV, appeals not to block a peaceful settlement and warnings not to stand by idly any longer went unheard. In view of this situation, the Liberation Army began to prepare for its last major offensive from October 1974 onwards, with the aim of overthrowing the Thieu regime and finally liberating the whole of South Vietnam. It was led by RSV General Van Tien Dung. Between 4 and 18 March 1975, the troops went on the offensive in three groups at staggered intervals in the north, in the central highlands and north of Saigon. The force of the offensive and its moral effect arose from the fact that the liberation forces attacked much more strongly than before in modern battle formations and the enemy lost air superiority.
This was evident on 11 March during the first attack on the heavily fortified base of Be Me Thuot in the north. After intense artillery fire, tanks with mounted infantry advanced and took the fortress in just four hours. This coup de main was possible because the population of the region paved the way for the RSV units by rebelling. In a report, AFP correspondent Paul Léandri confirmed that ‘the local population played a decisive role in driving government troops out of the central highlands’ (‘Le Monde’, 2 April 1975). The regime’s police took revenge by murdering him in the street on 14 April.
As they advanced, the liberation fighters destroyed or incapacitated several military units. After taking Quang Tri, they advanced on the old imperial city of Hue, which fell into their hands almost without a fight on 25 March, as the South Vietnamese fled in wild panic to Da Nang to save themselves on ships of the 7th fleet. The disintegration of the regime was already becoming apparent. Units of the Saigon army disintegrated, many of their soldiers went on a rampage through the streets. Marines of the puppet army raped women and shot their way to the ships at the quay. On 29 March, the huge air force and naval base, once touted as impregnable, was in the hands of the RSV troops, who captured a large number of weapons, including dozens of aircraft and about 200 tanks.
The American military leadership, like Goebbels’ propaganda once did, tried to incite their Saigon puppets to resist to the last man and to the last bullet by using fear-mongering slogans against the Viet Cong. The army magazine ‘The Arms and Strips’ headlined one of its horror reports: ‘At least one million South Vietnamese will be murdered by the Reds.’ However, the slogans hardly worked anymore, especially since the liberation fighters often simply let captured Saigonese soldiers go and word got around. The guerrillas openly walked on the streets where the Saigonese fled. ‘They chatted with the villagers and told jokes, they waved to the soldiers of the southern government, who retreated in trucks on Highway One, the main road. A handmade poster along the way declared: ‘Victory without bloodshed’’. Where the soldiers did not flee, they surrendered. Entire troop units simply disbanded.
Thieu hastily evacuated the central highlands in order to shorten the front and to be able to better defend Saigon. He also tried to persuade the USA to redeploy its troops. The Liberation Army now advanced across the central highlands towards the capital of the puppet regime. The final stage of the last offensive began, led by General Dung under the name ‘Ho Chi Minh Campaign’.
On 8 April, South Vietnamese pilot Lieutenant Nguyen Thanh Trung took off from the Bien Hoa airbase in a Northrop F-5E and bombed the presidential palace. He then landed at a Liberation Army airfield. Trung was given the rank of captain in the Liberation Army and began training its pilots on captured A-37s. On 28 April, he led five of these aircraft in an attack on Than Son Nhut airfield. Paralyzing horror spread on the ground as the A-37s – i.e. ‘their own’ – swooped down and dropped bombs. They only destroyed the hangars, sparing the runways so that they could use them themselves after taking over the airfield.
On 9 April, the first positions in the forefront of the defence ring of Saigon were attacked, the airfield Than Son Nhut was already within range of the attackers’ artillery. On 19 April, the PRR made another peace offer. The only condition was the resignation of Thieu. There was no response.
