Foundations Republican ideas entered
French Indochina in the early 20th century, introducing new concepts about the modern nation-state, initially transmitted via China and Japan. By the 1920s, these ideas were embraced by Vietnamese elites, including both revolutionaries and reformers. They influenced Vietnamese independence movements, though suppressed by French colonial authorities. Republican activists were far more popular than
communists in the competition between the two groups for leadership of the nationalist movement. This schism long predated the global Cold War and US intervention. Drawing from the deep-rooted tradition of republicanism, South Vietnamese political forces, despite their dependence on American assistance, pursued their
nation-building projects while vehemently resisting foreign interference. ;Caught between communism and colonial reconquest
During World War II, Indochina was administered by
Vichy France and occupied by Japan in September 1940. Following the
ousting of the French in March 1945 and the
surrender of Japan in August of the same year, the Vietnamese were locked in a civil strife over the destiny of their post-colonial state. The nationalist sentiment that had intensified during World War II prepared the ground for the communist-led
Viet Minh, which, cloaked in nationalism, seized power from the collapsing
Empire of Vietnam during the
August Revolution and proclaimed the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in Hanoi. In the meantime, the
16th parallel was established following the
Potsdam Conference, dividing Vietnam into two military zones:
Chinese Nationalist forces occupied the North and British forces the South to disarm Japanese troops. In the South, British-led forces facilitated the return of the French, who
fought multiple Vietnamese groups and secured control over Saigon and other urban centers. The Viet Minh sought to consolidate power by terrorizing and purging rival Vietnamese
nationalist groups and
Trotskyist activists. In 1946, the Franco-Chinese and
Ho–Sainteny Agreements enabled French forces to replace the Chinese north of the 16th parallel and facilitated a coexistence between the DRV and the French that strengthened the Viet Minh while undermining the nationalists. That summer, the Viet Minh colluded with French forces to eliminate nationalists, targeted for their ardent anti-colonialism. By eliminating the nationalist parties, the Viet Minh had undermined Vietnam's broader ability to resist French reconquest. The
First Indochina War began on 19 December 1946, as French forces reasserted control over Hanoi and other cities. A number of anti-colonialist and anti-communist nationalists, caught between the two sides of the war, chose an uneasy neutrality and were at times labeled as
attentistes, including
Ngô Đình Diệm and certain
Đại Việt politicians. With the internationalization of the war in 1950, many of these figures ultimately stepped off the fence and entered the political fray. ;Enduring fragmentation The
communist destruction of opposition parties in the summer of 1946 hindered prospects for reconciliation. Nationalist partisans and politico-religious groups rallied around former emperor
Bảo Đại to negotiate with the French. The
State of Vietnam (SVN) was created through co-operation between
anti-communist Vietnamese and the French on 14 June 1949. Bảo Đại accepted the position of chief of state (
quốc trưởng). In 1950,
China, the
Soviet Union and other communist states recognised the DRV while the
United States and other non-communist contries recognised the SVN. The civil war and the colonial war in Indochina became internationalized and intertwined with the global
Cold War. As the communist-led Viet Minh became increasingly radicalized, many people left its
maquis and returned to the cities.
Anti-communists accused the communists of manipulating the collective Vietnamese desire for independence to achieve domination. They criticized the Viet Minh for their revolutionary
violence and repression,
class struggle, and thought control. . The State of Vietnam withdrew from the
French Union on July 20, 1954. The next day, France and the Viet Minh agreed at the
Geneva Conference that Vietnam would be temporarily divided at
17th parallel north and the State of Vietnam would rule the territory south of the 17th parallel, pending unification on the basis of supervised elections in 1956. The State of Vietnam and the United States were firmly opposed to the final settlement at Geneva and the division of Vietnam. ;Consolidations in the South A significant factor in shaping the anticommunist critique in South Vietnam came from the influx of educated
Northern émigrés (
Bắc di cư). Among them, most of the notable political and cultural voices were non-Catholic. Government and private writers illustrated how the communists had betrayed true nationalists, who referred to themselves as
quốc gia. They lamented that communism had corrupted the natural goodness of humanity and disrupted the traditional harmony of Vietnamese society, while the increasing radicalisation of the communist Viet Minh had come to hijack the struggle for independence. About 90,000 Việt Minh were evacuated to the North while 5,000 to 10,000 cadre remained in the South, most of them with orders to refocus on political activity and agitation. The Saigon-Cholon Peace Committee, the first
Viet Cong front, was founded in 1954 to provide leadership for this group. In July 1955, Prime Minister
Ngo Dinh Diem announced in a broadcast that South Vietnam would not participate in the elections specified in the Geneva Accords, asserting that elections held under communist rule in North Vietnam would not be free. US Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles stated that, under conditions of free elections, the communists would not win. Diệm held a
referendum on 23 October 1955 to determine the future political system of the country. He asked voters to approve a republic, thus removing Bảo Đại as head of state. The poll was supervised by his younger brother,
Ngô Đình Nhu. Diệm was credited with 98 percent of the votes. In many districts, there were more votes to remove Bảo Đại than there were registered voters (e.g., in Saigon, 133% of the registered population reportedly voted to remove Bảo Đại). His American advisors had recommended a more modest winning margin of "60 to 70 percent". Diệm, however, viewed the election as a test of authority. On 26 October 1955, Diệm declared himself the president of the newly proclaimed Republic of Vietnam. In December 1955, Diệm's South Vietnam ended its existing economic and financial agreements with France and withdrew its representatives from the French Union Assembly. The French, who needed troops to fight in
Algeria and were increasingly sidelined by the United States, completely withdrew from Vietnam by April 1956. "The elections were not held. South Vietnam, which had not signed the Geneva Accords, did not believe the Communists in North Vietnam would allow a fair election. In January 1957, the ICC agreed with this perception, reporting that neither South nor North Vietnam had honored the armistice agreement. With the French gone, a return to the traditional power struggle between north and south had begun again." In October 1956 Diệm, with US prodding, launched a
land reform program restricting rice farm sizes to a maximum of 247 acres per landowner with the excess land to be sold to landless peasants. More than 1.8m acres of farm land would become available for purchase, the US would pay the landowners and receive payment from the purchasers over a six-year period. Land reform was regarded by the US as a crucial step to build support for the nascent South Vietnamese government and undermine communist propaganda. The North Vietnamese Communist Party approved a "people's war" on the South at a session in January 1959 and this decision was confirmed by the Politburo in March. Diệm attempted to stabilise South Vietnam by defending against Việt Cộng activities. He launched an anti-communist denunciation campaign (Tố Cộng) against the Việt Cộng and military campaigns against three powerful groupthe
Cao Đài,
Hòa Hảo and the
Bình Xuyên organised crime syndicate whose military strength combined amounted to approximately 350,000 fighters. By 1960 the land reform process had stalled. Diệm had never truly supported reform because many of his biggest supporters were the country's largest landowners. While the US threatened to cut aid unless land reform and other changes were made, Diệm correctly assessed that the US was bluffing. The report, later excerpted in
The Pentagon Papers, continued: "Many feel that [Diem] is unable to rally the people in the fight against the Communists because of his reliance on virtual one-man rule, his tolerance of corruption extending even to his immediate entourage, and his refusal to relax a rigid system of public controls."
Military juntas (1963–1967) The Diệm government lost support among the populace, and from the
Kennedy administration, due to its mishandling of Buddhist activists and military defeats by the Viet Cong. Notably, the
Huế Phật Đản shootings of 8 May 1963 led to the
Buddhist crisis, provoking protests and
civil resistance. The situation came to a head when the
Special Forces were sent to
raid Buddhist temples across the country, leaving a death toll estimated to be in the hundreds. Diệm was
overthrown in a coup on 1 November 1963 with the tacit approval of the US. Diệm's removal and assassination set off a period of political instability and declining legitimacy of the Saigon government. General
Dương Văn Minh became president, but he was
ousted in January 1964 by General
Nguyễn Khánh.
Phan Khắc Sửu was named head of state, but power remained with a junta of generals led by Khánh, which soon fell to infighting. Meanwhile, the
Gulf of Tonkin incident of 2 August 1964 led to a dramatic increase in direct American participation in the war, with nearly 200,000 troops deployed by the end of the year. Khánh sought to capitalize on the crisis with the
Vũng Tàu Charter, a new constitution that would have curtailed civil liberties and concentrated his power, but was forced to back down in the face of widespread protests and strikes. Coup attempts followed
in September and
February 1965, the latter resulting in Air Marshal
Nguyễn Cao Kỳ becoming prime minister and General
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu becoming nominal head of state.
Second Republic (1967–1975) Kỳ and Thiệu functioned in those roles until 1967, bringing much-desired stability to the government. They intensified anticommunist efforts and occasionally imposed censorship. Under pressure from the US, they held elections for president and the legislature in 1967. The
Senate election took place on 2 September 1967. The
Presidential election took place on 3 September 1967, Thiệu was elected president with 34% of the vote in a widely criticised poll. The
Parliamentary election took place on 22 October 1967. On 31 January 1968, the
People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Việt Cộng broke the traditional truce accompanying the
Tết (Lunar New Year) holiday. The
Tet Offensive failed to spark a national uprising and was militarily disastrous. By bringing the war to South Vietnam's cities, however, and by demonstrating the continued strength of communist forces, it marked a turning point in US support for the government in South Vietnam. The new administration of
Richard Nixon introduced a policy of
Vietnamization to reduce US combat involvement and began negotiations with the North Vietnamese to end the war. Thiệu used the aftermath of the Tet Offensive to sideline Kỳ, his chief rival. On 26 March 1970 the government began to implement the Land-to-the-Tiller program of land reform with the US providing US$339m of the program's US$441m cost. Individual landholdings were limited to 15 hectares. US and South Vietnamese forces launched a series of
attacks on PAVN/VC bases in Cambodia in April–July 1970. South Vietnam launched an
invasion of North Vietnamese bases in Laos in February/March 1971 and were defeated by the PAVN in what was widely regarded as a setback for Vietnamization. Thiệu was reelected unopposed in the
Presidential election on 2 October 1971. North Vietnam launched a
conventional invasion of South Vietnam in late March 1972 which was only finally repulsed by October with massive US air support.
Final years: 1973–1975 In accordance with the
Paris Peace Accords signed on 27 January 1973, US military forces withdrew from South Vietnam at the end of March 1973 while PAVN forces in the South were permitted to remain in place. North Vietnamese leaders had expected that the ceasefire terms would favour their side. As Saigon began to roll back the Việt Cộng, they found it necessary to adopt a new strategy, hammered out at a series of meetings in Hanoi in March 1973, according to the memoirs of
Trần Văn Trà. As the Việt Cộng's top commander, Trà participated in several of these meetings. A plan to improve logistics was prepared so that the PAVN would be able to launch a massive invasion of the South, projected for 1976. A fuel pipeline would be built from North Vietnam to the Việt Cộng provisional capital in
Lộc Ninh, about north of Saigon. On 15 March 1973, Nixon implied that the US would intervene militarily if the communist side violated the ceasefire. Public reaction was unfavorable, and on 4 June 1973 the
US Senate passed the
Case–Church Amendment to prohibit such intervention. The
oil price shock of October 1973 caused significant damage to the South Vietnamese economy. A spokesman for Thiệu admitted in a TV interview that the government was being "overwhelmed" by the inflation caused by the oil shock, while an American businessman living in Saigon stated after the oil shock that attempting to make money in South Vietnam was "like making love to a corpse". One consequence of the inflation was the South Vietnamese government had increasing difficulty in paying its soldiers and imposed restrictions on fuel and munition usage. After two clashes that left 55 South Vietnamese soldiers dead, President Thiệu announced on 4 January 1974 that the war had restarted and that the Paris Peace Accord was no longer in effect. There were over 25,000 South Vietnamese casualties during the ceasefire period. The same month, China attacked South Vietnamese forces in the
Paracel Islands, taking control of the islands. In August 1974, Nixon was forced to resign as a result of the
Watergate scandal, and the
US Congress voted to reduce assistance to South Vietnam from $1 billion a year to $700 million. By this time, the Ho Chi Minh trail, once an arduous mountain trek, had been upgraded into a drivable highway with gasoline stations. In December 1974, the PAVN
launched an invasion at Phuoc Long to test the South Vietnamese combat strength and political will and whether the US would respond militarily. With no US military assistance forthcoming, the ARVN were unable to hold and the PAVN successfully captured many of the districts around the provincial capital of Phuoc Long, weakening ARVN resistance in stronghold areas. President Thiệu later abandoned Phuoc Long in early January 1975. As a result, Phuoc Long was the first provincial capital to fall to the PAVN. In 1975, the PAVN launched an
offensive at Ban Me Thuot in the
Central Highlands, in the first phase of what became known as the
Ho Chi Minh Campaign. The South Vietnamese unsuccessfully attempted a defence and counterattack but had few reserve forces, as well as a shortage of spare parts and ammunition. As a consequence, Thiệu ordered a withdrawal of key army units from the Central Highlands, which exacerbated an already perilous military situation and undermined the confidence of the ARVN soldiers in their leadership. The retreat became a rout exacerbated by poor planning and conflicting orders from Thiệu. PAVN forces also attacked south and from sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia
capturing Huế and Da Nang and advanced southwards. As the military situation deteriorated, ARVN troops began deserting. By early April, the PAVN had overrun almost 3/5th of the South. Thiệu requested aid from US President
Gerald Ford, but the US Senate would not release extra money to provide aid to South Vietnam, and had already passed laws to prevent further involvement in Vietnam. In desperation, Thiệu recalled Kỳ from retirement as a military commander, but resisted calls to name his old rival prime minister.
Fall of Saigon: April 1975 helicopter is jettisoned over the side of a carrier to provide room on the ship's deck for more evacuees to land. Morale was low in South Vietnam as the PAVN advanced. A last-ditch defense was made by the ARVN
18th Division at the
Battle of Xuân Lộc from 9–21 April. Thiệu resigned on 21 April 1975, and fled to
Taiwan. He nominated his Vice President
Trần Văn Hương as his successor. After only one week in office, the South Vietnamese national assembly voted to hand over the presidency to General Dương Văn Minh. Minh was seen as a more conciliatory figure toward the North, and it was hoped he might be able to negotiate a more favourable settlement to end the war. The North, however, was not interested in negotiations, and its forces
captured Saigon. Minh
unconditionally surrendered Saigon and the rest of South Vietnam to North Vietnam on 30 April 1975. During the hours leading up to the surrender, the United States undertook a massive
evacuation of US government personnel as well as high-ranking members of the ARVN and other South Vietnamese who were seen as potential targets for persecution by the Communists. Many of the evacuees were taken directly by helicopter to multiple
aircraft carriers waiting off the coast.
Provisional Revolutionary Government Following the surrender of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces on 30 April 1975, the
Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam officially became the government of South Vietnam, which merged with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to create the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam on 2 July 1976. ==Geography==