Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was captured by North Vietnam on 30 April 1975. This caused the evacuation of thousands of civilians and U.S. personnel, and ended the Vietnam War. The aftermath ushered in a transition period under the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam until the formal reunification in 1976.
As part of the 1975 spring offensive, the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Viet Cong (VC) auxiliaries, under the command of General Văn Tiến Dũng, began their final attack on Saigon on 29 April 1975, with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) commanded by General Nguyễn Văn Toàn suffering a heavy artillery bombardment. By the next day, President Minh had surrendered while the PAVN/VC had occupied the important points of the city and raised the VC flag over the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace, ending the existence of South Vietnam and its predecessor (1949–1975). For the first time since 1954, Vietnam was unified under a single regime.
The capture of the city was preceded by Operation Frequent Wind, the evacuation of almost all American civilian and military personnel in Saigon, along with tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians who had been associated with the government. A small number of Americans chose not to be evacuated. United States ground combat units had left South Vietnam more than two years before the fall of Saigon and were not available to assist with either the defense or the evacuation of Saigon. The evacuation was the largest helicopter evacuation in history. In addition to the flight of refugees, the institution of new rules by the communist government contributed to a decline in the city's population until 1979.
On 2 July 1976, the reunification was formalized and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was established with the capital in Hanoi. The same day, the Vietnamese National Assembly renamed Saigon Ho Chi Minh City after Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese president who died in 1969.
Names
Various names have been applied to these events. The government of Vietnam officially calls it the "Day of the Liberation of the South and National Reunification" (Vietnamese: Ngày giải phóng miền Nam, thống nhất đất nước), "Liberation Day" (Ngày giải phóng), or "Victory Day" (Ngày Chiến thắng), while the term "fall of Saigon" is commonly used in Western accounts. It is alternatively called the "Day the Country Was Lost" (Ngày vong quốc), "Black April" (Tháng Tư Đen), "National Day of Shame" (Ngày Quốc hận) by many overseas Vietnamese who were refugees from the former South Vietnam. It is also known by the neutral names "April 30, 1975 incident" (Sự kiện 30 tháng 4 năm 1975) or simply "April 30" (30 tháng 4). Previously, the designation Ngày Quốc hận was associated with 20 July, in reference to the signing of the 1954 Geneva Accords by the French and the Viet Minh, which led to the partition of Vietnam and set the stage for the Vietnam War.
North Vietnamese advance
The 1973 Paris Peace Accords called for political reconciliation in South Vietnam and peaceful reunification to end the Vietnam War, a Cold War conflict. In reality, the Accords could not be fully implemented due to violations by both the PAVN/VC and the ARVN immediately. North Vietnam initially intended to take over the South by force in 1976 amid sharp cuts in US aid to South Vietnam and the loss of the possibility of renewed US military intervention after the Battle of Phước Long. The rapidity with which the South Vietnamese position collapsed in 1975 was surprising to most American and South Vietnamese observers, and probably to the North Vietnamese and their allies as well. A memo prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and U.S. Army Intelligence, published on 5 March, indicated that South Vietnam could hold out through the current dry season—i.e., at least until 1976. These predictions proved to be grievously in error. Even as that memo was being released, Dũng was preparing a major offensive in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, which began on 10 March and led to the capture of Buôn Ma Thuột. The ARVN began a disorderly and costly retreat, hoping to redeploy its forces and hold the southern part of South Vietnam, south of the 13th parallel. The collapse of the ARVN in the Central Highlands caused North Vietnam to accelerate its military plan.
Supported by artillery and armor, the PAVN continued to march towards Saigon, capturing the major cities of northern South Vietnam at the end of March—Huế on the 25th and Đà Nẵng on the 28th. Along the way, disorderly South Vietnamese retreats and the flight of refugees—there were more than 300,000 in Đà Nẵng—damaged South Vietnamese prospects for a turnaround. After the loss of Đà Nẵng, those prospects had already been dismissed as nonexistent by CIA officers in Vietnam, who believed that nothing short of B-52 strikes against Hanoi could possibly stop the North Vietnamese.
By 8 April, the North Vietnamese Politburo, which in March had recommended caution to Dũng, cabled him to demand "unremitting vigor in the attack all the way to the heart of Saigon." On 14 April, they renamed the campaign the "Hồ Chí Minh campaign", after revolutionary leader Hồ Chí Minh, in hopes of wrapping it up before his birthday on 19 May. Meanwhile, South Vietnam failed to garner any significant increase in military aid from the United States, snuffing out President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu's hopes for renewed American support.
On 9 April, PAVN forces reached Xuân Lộc, the last line of defense before Saigon, where the ARVN 18th Division made a last stand and held the city through fierce fighting for 11 days. The ARVN finally withdrew from Xuân Lộc on 20 April having inflicted heavy losses on the PAVN, and President Thiệu resigned on 21 April in a tearful televised announcement in which he denounced the United States for failing to come to the aid of the South. The North Vietnamese front line was now just 26 mi (42 km) from downtown Saigon. The victory at Xuân Lộc, which had drawn many South Vietnamese troops away from the Mekong Delta area, opened the way for the PAVN to completely encircle Saigon with their five Army Corps: Group 232, 3rd Corps, 1st Corps, 4th Corps, and 2nd Corps (deployed clockwise around Saigon), totaling 15 infantry divisions plus several independent regiments and three tank regiments.
The ARVN III Corps commander, General Nguyễn Văn Toàn, had organized five centers of resistance to defend the city. These fronts were so connected as to form an arc enveloping the entire area west, north, and east of the capital. The Củ Chi front, to the northwest, was defended by the 25th Division; the Bình Dương front, to the north, was the responsibility of the 5th Division; the Biên Hòa front, to the northeast, was defended by the 18th Division; the Phước Tuy and Route 15 front, to the southeast, were held by the 1st Airborne Brigade and one battalion of the 3rd Division; and the Long An and Route 4 front, for which the Capital Military District (CMD) Command was responsible, was defended by elements of the re-formed 22nd Division and under-strength 6th Ranger Group. South Vietnamese defensive forces around Saigon totaled approximately 125,000 troops, including 60,000 Regular troops, 40,000 RF plus 20,000 PF militia, and 5,000 police. However, as the exodus made it into Saigon, along with them were many ARVN soldiers, which swelled the "men under arms" in the city to over 250,000. These units were mostly battered and leaderless, which threw the city into further anarchy.
Evacuation
The rapid PAVN advances of March and early April led to increased concern in Saigon that the city, which had been fairly peaceful throughout the war and whose people had endured relatively little suffering, was soon to come under direct attack. Many feared that once the communists took control of the city, a bloodbath of reprisals would take place. In 1968, PAVN and VC forces had occupied Huế for close to a month. After they were ejected, American and ARVN forces had found mass graves. A study indicated that the VC had targeted ARVN officers, Catholics, intellectuals, businessmen, and other suspected counterrevolutionaries. More recently, eight Americans captured in Buôn Ma Thuột had vanished and reports of beheadings and other executions were filtering through from Huế and Đà Nẵng, mostly spurred on by government propaganda. Most Americans and citizens of other countries allied to the United States wanted to evacuate the city before it fell, and many South Vietnamese, especially those associated with the United States or South Vietnamese government, wanted to leave as well.
As early as the end of March, some Americans were leaving the city. Flights out of Saigon, lightly booked under ordinary circumstances, were full. Throughout April the speed of the evacuation increased, as the Defense Attaché Office (DAO) began to fly out nonessential personnel. Many Americans attached to the DAO refused to leave without their Vietnamese friends and dependents, who included common-law wives and children. It was illegal for the DAO to move these people to American soil, and this initially slowed down the rate of departure, but eventually the DAO began illegally flying undocumented Vietnamese to Clark Air Base in the Philippines.
On 3 April, President Gerald Ford announced "Operation Babylift", which would evacuate about 2,000 orphans from the country. One of the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy planes involved in the operation crashed, killing 155 passengers and crew and seriously reducing the morale of the American staff. In addition to the over 2,500 orphans evacuated by Babylift, Operation New Life resulted in the evacuation of over 110,000 Vietnamese refugees. The final evacuation was Operation Frequent Wind which resulted in 7,000 people being evacuated from Saigon by helicopter.
Ford administration's plans for the final evacuation
By this time, the Ford administration had also begun planning a complete evacuation of the American presence. The planning was complicated by practical, legal, and strategic concerns. The administration was divided on how swift the evacuations should be. The Pentagon sought to evacuate as fast as possible, to avoid the risk of casualties or other accidents. The U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam, Graham Martin, was technically the field commander for any evacuation since evacuations are part of the purview of the State Department. Martin drew the ire of many in the Pentagon by wishing to keep the evacuation process as quiet and orderly as possible. His desire for this was to prevent total chaos and to deflect the real possibility of South Vietnamese turning against Americans and to keep all-out bloodshed from occurring.
Ford approved a plan between the extremes in which all but 1,250 Americans—few enough to be removed in a single day's helicopter airlift—would be evacuated quickly; the remaining 1,250 would only leave when the airport was threatened. In the meantime, as many Vietnamese refugees as possible would be flown out.
American evacuation planning was set against the Ford administration's other policies. Ford still hoped that he would be able to gain additional military aid for South Vietnam. Throughout April, he attempted to get Congress behind a proposed appropriation of $722 million, which might cover the cost of the reconstitution of some of the South Vietnamese forces that had been destroyed. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger was opposed to a full-scale evacuation as long as the aid option remained on the table because the removal of American forces would signal a loss of faith in Thiệu and severely weaken him.
There was also a concern in the administration over whether the use of military forces to support and carry out the evacuation was permitted under the newly passed War Powers Act. Eventually, White House lawyers determined that the use of American forces to rescue citizens in an emergency was unlikely to run afoul of the law, but the legality of using military assets to withdraw refugees was unknown.
Refugees
While American citizens were generally assured of a simple way to leave the country just by showing up to an evacuation point, South Vietnamese who wanted to leave Saigon before it fell often resorted to independent arrangements. The under-the-table payments required to gain a passport and exit visa jumped sixfold, and the price of seagoing vessels tripled. Those who owned property in the city were often forced to sell it at a substantial loss or abandon it altogether; the asking price of one particularly impressive house was cut 75 percent within a two-week period. American visas were of enormous value, and Vietnamese seeking American sponsors posted advertisements in newspapers. One such ad read: "Seeking adoptive parents. Poor diligent students" followed by names, birthdates, and identity card numbers. A disproportionate fraction of Vietnamese in the 1975 wave of emigration who later achieved refugee status in the United States were former members of the South Vietnamese government and military. Though most expected to find political and personal freedom in the United States on account of their anti-Communist bonafides, they often encountered an unexpected and complex resettlement process, involving stays in U.S. military-operated processing centers for varying lengths of time before they could begin their new lives in America.