Vietnam: The End, 1975
CSC 1985
SUBJECT AREA History
ABSTRACT
Author: Bibby, Thomas M., Major USAF
Title: Vietnam: The End, 1975
Date: 1 April 1985
The purpose of this paper was to examine the reasons for the sudden and
total collapse of the Republic of Vietnam Armed forces (RVNAF) in the early
months of 1975, and determine if the final outcome was inevitable or if Ameri-
can will could have prevailed and insured South Vietnam's survival as a free
and independent nation. Also, through a discussion of "lessons learned", the
paper addresses the significant impact our experiences in Vietnam will have
upon future US actions in foreign affairs.
The paper begins with a brief introduction of the events surrounding the
final collapse and their interpretation by both the North and South Vietnamese.
Virtually everyone concerned considered the crucial turning point in the war
was the signing of the Paris Agreements of 1973: the United States viewed the
agreements as "peace with honor"; the North Vietnamese and Provisional Revolu-
tionary Government (PRG) viewed them as the surrender and defeat of the Ameri-
can "imperialists" and their "lackey puppet regime"; and the South Vietnamese
viewed them as "abandonment" by a strong ally they thought would always be
there.
The first chapter begins with an examination of the Paris Agreements and
describes what each of the parties concerned expected to achieve from the
agreements. Chapter two continues to examine the events which occurred after
the signing of the agreements and discusses the numerous violations of the
agreements, and their overall impact upon the final collapse of South Vietnam.
In chapter three, the policy of Vietnamization is discussed in order to
evaluate the overall capability of the RVNAF to effectively provide for
South Vietnam's defense in 1975. In doing so, both the American and South
Vietnamese assessments of the policy and its effectiveness are presented.
Chapter four examines the collapse of the RVNAF from the viewpoint of
failed leadership and destroyed morale. Although there were many reasons
for South Vietnam's collapse, the major ones centered around low morale, un-
controlled corruption, incompetent leadership, and lack of US military aid
and air support in the period following the Paris Agreements of 1973.
Finally, the paper identifies some lessons of the events surrounding
our experiences in South Vietnam, and how they will affect future US actions
in foreign affairs. They include: the requirement to distinguish between
problems which lend themselves to political solutions and those which re-
quire military solutions; the requirement for the US to have domestic sup-
port for its foreign policy to succeed; and the requirement to understand the
needs of the people we are trying to help. Above all, our political and
military leaders must do a better job in articulating our nation's foreign
policy to the US public and Congress to gain their support, and must care-
fully analyze the public's willingness to support that policy over an ex-
tended period of time, even under adverse conditions. However, despite US
foreign policy failure in South Vietnam, the Vietnam War was for the South
Vietnamese to win and not the Americans. The government of South Vietnam
needed to quickly implement significant political reforms to rally the sup-
port of its own people and soldiers, but simply ran out of time in 1975.
VIETNAM: THE END, 1975
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1: PARIS AGREEMENTS OF 1973
1. North Vietnamese and PRG Expectations 13
2. South Vietnamese Expectations 19
3. American Expectations 24
CHAPTER 2: BREAKDOWN OF THE AGREEMENTS
1. The Postwar War: 1973-1975 31
2. Violations 56
CHAPTER 3: VIETNAMIZATION
1. American Assessment 67
2. South Vietnamese Assessment 72
CHAPTER 4: COLLAPSE OF THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM
ARMED FORCES (RVNAF)
1. RVNAF Leadership 74
2. RVNAF Morale 81
CONCLUSION 86
CHRONOLOGY OF SIGNIFICANT EVENTS 96
CAST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS 99
ENDNOTES 103
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 112
INTRODUCTION
The Vietnam War is probably the most analyzed war and,
simultaneously, the least understood war involving the
United States since 1945. Of all U.S. allies, South Vietnam
enjoyed more support from the United States than any other
individual country throughout the free world. With over
$160 billion in aid and the sacrifice of more than 50,000
American lives, it is difficult to believe that South Vietnam
could have had a stronger ally than in the United States.1
Why then did South Vietnam fall? Even more disconcert-
ing, why did it collapse so quickly? Unfortunately, there
are not any easy answers to why the final outcome of this
divisive and costly war for both the United States and the
Republic of South Vietnam came to such a devastating
conclusion.
In this paper, I shall examine the events leading to
the final collapse on April 30, 1975. I shall also try to
determine if, as the Vietnamese would say, the "fates" were
against South Vietnam and the outcome was inevitable; or if
American will could have prevailed and insured South Viet-
nam's survival as a free and independent nation.
In my research, I read numerous accounts of the war on
the events from 1972 to 1975 by North Vietnamese, South
Vietnamese and American sources. Each tended to present
his own opinions with ideological biases; but, on the
whole, a common thread of truth emerged. The Paris
Agreements of 1973 (more formally called the Agreement
on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam) were
viewed by all concerned as the crucial turning point in
the war: The United States viewed the agreements as
"peace with honor"; the North Vietnamese and Provisional
Revolutionary Government (PRG) viewed them as the surren-
der and defeat of the American "imperialists" and their
"lackey puppet regime"; and the South Vietnamese saw them
as "abandonment" by a strong ally they thought would
always be there. It is highly questionable that if the
Paris Agreements were not signed that South Vietnam would
have survived in 1975; however, the conditions agreed to
in Paris by the four signatory parties were not in the
best interest of the government of South Vietnam (GVN).
In his book, Our Great Spring Victory, the North
Vietnamese Army (NVA) chief of staff, General Van Tien
Dung, presented a biased but extremely detailed account
of the final collapse of South Vietnam. During its 21st
plenum in October 1973, the Communist Party Central
Committee decided that "revolutionary violence" was still
the pathway to achieving North Vietnam's goals, despite
the terms of the Paris Agreements.2 The following March,
the Central Military Party Committee concluded, "the
Vietnamese revolution may have to pass through many transi-
tional stages, and can only gain victory through revolu-
tionary violence--carrying out popular uprisings, relying
on our political and military forces, or in the event that
large-scale war returns, carrying out revolutionary warfare
to gain complete victory."3
According to Dung's account, following the March confer-
ence, the military command carefully monitored the battle-
fields in the South; over the summer it reported to the
party that "the fighting ability of our mobile main-force
units was superior to that of the enemy's mobile main-force
units." The balance of forces had changed in Hanoi's favor.
In addition, resupply efforts were expanded and the Ho Chi
Minh Trail was substantially improved by labor battalions
working day and night. Arms, munitions and troops were now
trucked on a 26-foot wide, all-weather road running from
Quang Tri to eastern Nam Bo in the Mekong Delta region of
South Vietnam. General Dung wrote that their supply system
resembled "strong ropes inching gradually, day by day,
around the neck, arms, and legs of a demon, awaiting the
order to jerk tight and bring the creature's life to an
end."4
The North Vietnamese did assess the possibility of
renewed American intervention; they decided after a meeting
of the Central Military Party Committee in October 1974,
that the possibility seemed remote after the Watergate
scandal, Nixon's resignation, the economic difficulties
following the 1973 Arab oil embargo, and the sequence of
Congressional votes against additional U.S. aid to Saigon.
With the cutback of almost $2 billion annually in U.S. aid,
South Vietnam was now forced to fight "a poor man's war,"
which put them at a distinct disadvantage in overcoming the
overwhelming initiative enjoyed by both the North Vietnamese
regular troops and the Vietcong guerrillas. Le Duan, the
North Vietnamese Communist Party's First Secretary, stated:
"Now that the United States has pulled out of the South, it
will be hard for them to jump back in; no matter how they
may intervene, they cannot rescue the Saigon administration
from its disastrous collapse."5 The October 1974 conference
unanimously agreed on five points which favored implementing
their Spring 1975 offensive and would insure success:
First, the Saigon troops were growing weaker
militarily, politically, and economically every
day. Our forces were stronger than the enemy in
the South.
Second, the United States was meeting diffi-
culties at home and abroad, and its ability to give
political or military aid to its proteges was
declining every day. Not only had the United States
had to decrease its aid to Saigon, it also faced
increasing opposition to any effort to "jump back"
into the South. And even if troops did intervene,
they would not be able to rescue the collapsing
Saigon quisling administration.
Third, we had set up strategic positions
linking North and South, had increased our forces
and our stockpiles of materiel, and had completed
the system of strategic and tactical roads.
Fourth, movements calling for peace, improve-
ment of popular welfare, democracy, and national
independence, and demanding that Thieu be toppled,
gained momentum in the towns.
Fifth, our people's just struggle had the
sympathy and the strong support of the world's
people.6
With the fall of Song Be, the provincial capital of
Phuoc Long province, in January 1975, the North Vietnamese
Politburo met again and decided on a strategic plan which
called for large surprise attacks to be launched later in
the year, and "create conditions to carry out a general
offensive and uprising in 1976." The North Vietnamese
leaders planned to conquer all of South Vietnam by 1976;
however, they also stated that "if the opportune moment
presents itself at the beginning or the end of 1975, we
will immediately liberate the South in 1975."7
In his book, The Final Collapse, General Cao Van Vien,
Chairman of the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff,
states his personal belief that it was the cutback in U.S.
military aid and absence of U.S. intervention with air
power (especially B-52s), in response to North Vietnamese
and PRG treaty violations, that made defeat inevitable.
After the 1973 Paris Agreements, the Republic of Vietnam
armed forces (RVNAF) suddenly found it difficult to
operate at the greatly reduced level of U.S. appropriations;
they were now in a decidedly underdog position. Since their
superior firepower and mobility were gone, they found it
impossible to maintain tactical balance against an enemy
who held the initiative. The most the RVNAF could hope to
achieve was a delaying action pending restoration of
American military aid to its former level.8 American
military aid to the government of South Vietnam was cut
from over $2.5 billion in fiscal year 1973 to $700 million
in fiscal year 1975.9
General Vien explained how the cutback in aid led to
President Thieu's decision to abandon the Central Highlands
in March 1975. This strategic error on Thieu's part resulted
in disastrous consequences and significantly hastened the
collapse of the RVNAF. General Vien had this to say about
the impact the cutback in U.S. aid had upon the decision to
abandon the Central Highlands:
The big slash in appropriated funds made its
tragic impact felt not only on the battlefield,
but also in the minds of South Vietnamese strate-
gists as well. The ability to hold territory,
they felt, was a direct function of aid level.
With the reduction now in force, perhaps it was
no longer possible to maintain `territorial
integrity.' It might be best, they reasoned, to
tailor our defense effort to the aid appropriated.
Simplistic as it might sound, the idea reflected
the realities of the situation. Whatever the
motives behind it, President Thieu's decision
early in 1975 to redeploy forces was centainly
not taken lightly or without firm grounds. But
it was also this fateful decision that set in
motion a series of setbacks whose cumulative
effect led to the final collapse.10
However, it was the way in which the retreat was con-
ducted that hastened the collapse of South Vietnam.
Strategic withdrawals of the magnitude involved in 1975
require thorough planning with emphasis on its impact upon
the civilian population. General Vien's remarks describe
his feelings about the effect the execution of the retreat
had upon the final outcome of the war:
In the context of the Vietnam War whose political
and military aspects were intimately entwined, such a
retreat was predisposed to doom if no consideration
were given to the Vietnamese civilians who depended
on the troops for protection and for whom the war was
being fought. Our armed forces were not operating on
foreign soil; their role and mission differed from
those of an expeditionary force. Removing them from
an area without taking steps to evacuate the popula-
tion amounted to sheer dereliction. The redeployment
fiasco in Military Regions (MRs) II and I demonstrated
the tragic fact that the population could not be
separated from the troops and that troop movements
could be halted by a rushing mass of refugees. These
are the facts of the case. They explain the rapid
moral and physical disintegration of an army that had
fought well until undercut by events beyond its
control.11
In addition to aid cutbacks and poorly executed retreats
from the Central Highlands, the suddenness of the actual
collapse under the North Vietnamese offensive of 1975 was
due to a number of additional factors. One was the adverse
balance of forces that existed by 1975. In an attempt to
keep the balance of forces at the January 1973 level, the
terms of the Paris Agreements restricted the resupply of all
forces inside South Vietnam (both Communist and non-Communist)
to a one-for-one replacement schedule. In other words, only
similar equipment could be replaced and only after it
became unusable.
However, since the signing of the Paris Agreements,
North Vietnam had greatly strengthened the quantity and
quality of its offensive capabilities in the South through
the dramatic improvement of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Conse-
quently, through its improved logistics network, the North
was able to rapidly concentrate its forces, and attack
South Vietnamese points of weakness almost at will.12
Another factor for the South Vietnamese vulnerability
was the lack of a mobile reserve and strategic mobility due
to shortages of fuel, transport and spares. Their soldiers
had been conditioned by the U.S. to rely on massive air and
artillery support in combat and had "forgotten how to walk"
when military resources became increasingly scarce after
the Paris Agreements and American support decreased.13 The
South Vietnamese Army had too big a logistical "tail," with
too little actual fighters to put "teeth" into its combat
powder. General Tran Van Don, the last South Vietnamese
Minister of Defense, stated that out of 1.1 million men
under arms on paper, only 100,000 could be called "fighters.14
The rest belonged to logistical units. This inability to
field effective mobile reserve divisions proved deadly to
the RVNAF in 1975, for they were essential in order to
counter the massive conventional assault by the North
Vietnamese Army (NVA) that year.
The need to maintain huge numbers of non-combat per-
sonnel to support combat troops is a function of modern
conventional warfare and was not unique to South Vietnam.
Similar ratios hold true for all modern nations, but they
are most apparent in Western forces, particularly those of
the United States. On the other hand, the North Vietnamese
forces were less technologically-oriented, and their army
was more manpower-oriented. Consequently, a greater per-
centage of their soldiers were actually involved in combat.
In fact, of the 160,000 NVA regular troops inside South
Vietnam, there were only 71,000 administrative and logisti-
cal troops supporting them. However, the gross figures of
1.1 million South Vietnamese versus 160,000 NVA troops in
South Vietnam tell little about relative combat power. A
comparison of fighting forces portrays a more accurate
picture of the real balance of forces. At the end of
January 1973, the NVA combat strength in South Vietnam
consisted of 15 infantry divisions and 27 separate infantry
and sapper regiments, whereas the RVNAF consisted of only
13 divisions and 7 Ranger groups. Also, the South Vietnamese
forces were tied to a static defensive role, while the NVA
forces were able to devote their forces in the South almost
entirely to offensive operations, since they enjoyed a
relatively secure rear area in North Vietnam.15
Next among the fatal weaknesses of the RVNAF was the
lack of effective military leadership at the top. Many
senior officers received their appointments for reasons of
political loyalty rather than military competence. On the
civilian side, corruption and inflation adversely affected
both the national will and military morale. It was this
failure of leadership that was responsible for the tragic
and disastrous quick retreats from the Central Highlands,
resulting in one of the most devastating routs in the
course of military history.16
Although there were numerous factors involved in the
collapse of South Vietnam, the role the U.S. played in the
final outcome had a significant impact. Before the Paris
Agreements, the South Vietnamese perceived Washington as a
strong ally who would support them indefinitely. After the
Paris Agreements, however, the American role took the form
of gradual abandonment of South Vietnam when the U.S. with-
drew its combat troops, stopped air support, and cutback
military and economic aid.17 It was this feeling of aban-
donment--no longer being regarded by the United States as
worth saving--that had a devastating impact upon the people
and leaders of South Vietnam in those tragic last months of
1975.
The ability of the North Vietnamese to wage a revolu-
tionary war, which purported to offer the chance for a change
in the political order as it existed, was extremely effec-
tive in mobilizing the population in the South to support
its war effort. By contrast, the South Vietnamese govern-
ment's inability to offer its people a similar change
through the ideals of democracy and economic growth insured
a lack of support for the Thieu government, especially