South Vietnam

• 1. Introduction

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  South Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam, existed for exactly twenty years, from 1955 to 1975. At its peak, it had diplomatic ties with 95 countries. At the time of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, it fielded what was counted as the fourth largest military force in the world. And yet, on the 30th of April 1975, communist forces overran Saigon and the republic ceased to exist.

  The story the world remembers is one of collapse, of helicopters lifting off rooftops and a war that ended in defeat. But that story tends to skip over the two decades of nation-building, political upheaval, civil society, economic growth, and contested identity that preceded those final hours. What kind of country was the Republic of Vietnam, and who were the people who built it? What drove its leaders toward authoritarianism even as they tried to anchor themselves to democratic ideals? Why did a state with over a million soldiers under arms in 1968 find itself unable to hold its own territory by 1975? The answers lie in the republic's origins, its fractured politics, and the grinding war that made both democracy and survival nearly impossible at the same time.

• 2. Before the Republic

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  Republican ideas reached French Indochina in the early twentieth century, traveling first through China and Japan. By the 1920s, Vietnamese elites had embraced these ideas, and republican activists were actually more popular than communists in the competition to lead the nationalist movement. That schism long predated the global Cold War.

  During World War II, Indochina was administered by Vichy France and occupied by Japan from September 1940. The ousting of the French in March 1945 and Japan's surrender that August left Vietnam in a political vacuum. The communist-led Viet Minh, under Ho Chi Minh, moved fast, seizing power during the August Revolution and proclaiming the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi.

  The 16th parallel, established following the Potsdam Conference, temporarily divided the country into military zones. Chinese Nationalist forces occupied the North; British forces came to the South. British-led forces then helped France return and retake Saigon and other urban centers. In the years that followed, the Viet Minh systematically eliminated rival Vietnamese nationalist groups and Trotskyist activists, colluding at moments with French forces to destroy the very nationalists whose anti-colonialism was most ardent. By eliminating those parties, the Viet Minh had undermined the country's broader capacity to resist French reconquest.

  The First Indochina War began on the 19th of December 1946. Caught between the Viet Minh and the French, a number of anti-colonialist and anti-communist nationalists chose an uneasy neutrality. Among them was Ngô Đình Diệm, who would later become the first president of the Republic of Vietnam.

• 3. Birth of a Republic

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  The State of Vietnam was created on the 14th of June 1949 through cooperation between anti-communist Vietnamese and the French, with former emperor Bảo Đại as head of state. During the transitional period following the 1954 Geneva Conference, roughly one million people moved south through Operation Passage to Freedom or by their own means. At least 500,000 of them were Catholics fleeing fears of religious persecution in the North.

  Ngô Đình Diệm, returning from exile in June 1954, was appointed prime minister. He was recognized as a prominent anti-communist and anti-colonialist. Within a year, he consolidated enough power to call a referendum on the country's future. The poll of the 23rd of October 1955 was supervised by Diệm's younger brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, and the results were spectacular in a troubling way. Diệm was credited with 98 percent of the votes. In Saigon alone, 133 percent of the registered population reportedly voted to remove Bảo Đại. Over 380,000 more votes were cast across the country than the total number of registered voters. His American advisors had recommended a more modest winning margin of 60 to 70 percent. Diệm ignored them. He viewed the election as a test of authority, not a measure of genuine support.

  On the 26th of October 1955, Diệm proclaimed himself president of the new Republic of Vietnam. The French completely withdrew from Vietnam by April 1956, and the republic was left to consolidate itself on its own terms.

• 4. Personalism and Its Contradictions

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  Diệm adopted personalism as the official ideology of the new republic. The doctrine positioned itself as a third way between what Ngô Đình Nhu described as Marxist collectivism and Western individualistic capitalism. Diệm argued that most Vietnamese were too poor to fully exercise political freedom, and that improving material conditions had to come first. Political liberalization could wait. This logic implicitly justified short-term authoritarianism.

  In October 1956, with American prodding, Diệm launched a land reform program that restricted rice farm sizes to a maximum of 247 acres per landowner, with excess land sold to landless peasants. More than 1.8 million acres of farmland would theoretically become available. But by 1960 the process had stalled. Diệm had never truly supported reform because many of his biggest supporters were the country's largest landowners. A 1961 US intelligence estimate, later excerpted in The Pentagon Papers, found that communist strength encircled Saigon and was moving closer into the city. The report described Diệm as unable to rally the people because of his reliance on virtual one-man rule and his tolerance of corruption extending to his immediate entourage.

  The Buddhist crisis of 1963 proved fatal to the regime. The Huế Phật Đản shootings of the 8th of May 1963 triggered protests and civil resistance. When Special Forces raided Buddhist temples across the country, leaving a death toll estimated in the hundreds, the Diệm government lost what remained of its popular legitimacy. He was overthrown and killed in a CIA-backed coup on the 1st of November 1963, led by General Dương Văn Minh.

• 5. Juntas, Coups, and Fragile Democracy

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  The period from 1963 to 1967 saw South Vietnam cycle through a dizzying succession of governments. General Dương Văn Minh was ousted in January 1964 by General Nguyễn Khánh. The Gulf of Tonkin incident of the 2nd of August 1964 led to a dramatic increase in direct American participation in the war, with nearly 200,000 US troops deployed by year's end. Khánh tried to capitalize on the crisis with a new constitution that would have concentrated power in his hands, then was forced to back down by widespread protests and strikes.

  Coups followed in September 1964 and again in February 1965. The second resulted in Air Marshal Nguyễn Cao Kỳ becoming prime minister and General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu as nominal head of state. Kỳ consolidated the government with what was described as an iron fist. In early 1966, protesters influenced by Buddhist monk Thích Trí Quang attempted an uprising in Da Nang that Kỳ suppressed.

  In 1967, Kỳ moved to establish a representative government and ratify a constitution modeled in part on that of the United States, granting freedoms of speech, press, and association. The Senate election took place on the 2nd of September 1967. The presidential election followed on the 3rd of September; Thiệu was elected with 34 percent of the vote in a widely criticized poll. A parliamentary election followed on the 22nd of October 1967.

  The period that followed was, paradoxically, the most politically free in South Vietnam's history. There was a functioning legislature, an active press, and a civil society that could publicly oppose both government authoritarianism and the Viet Cong. As one characterization from the source puts it, South Vietnam in its last years was "authoritarian enough to be unpopular, democratic enough to be inefficient."

• 6. The War Transforms

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  On the 31st of January 1968, the People's Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong broke the traditional truce that accompanied the Tết holiday. The Tet Offensive failed to spark a national uprising and was militarily disastrous for communist forces. By that point, South Vietnam had over a million soldiers in the field, alongside 500,000 US soldiers and 100,000 troops from allied nations including South Korea, Australia, and Thailand.

  What had started as a guerrilla insurgency was shifting into something closer to conventional warfare. The new administration of Richard Nixon introduced Vietnamization, intended to reduce US combat involvement while building up South Vietnamese capacity. Thiệu used the aftermath of Tet to sideline his chief rival, Kỳ.

  On the 26th of March 1970, the government implemented the Land-to-the-Tiller program of land reform, with the US providing $339 million of the program's $441 million cost. Individual landholdings were limited to 15 hectares. South Vietnam launched an invasion of North Vietnamese bases in Laos in February and March 1971 and was defeated, which was widely regarded as a setback for Vietnamization.

  Thiệu was reelected unopposed on the 2nd of October 1971, receiving 94 percent of the vote on an 87 percent turnout. North Vietnam launched a major conventional invasion in late March 1972, the Easter Offensive, which was only repulsed by October with massive US air support. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, once described as a six-month mountain trek through Laos, had by this point been upgraded into a drivable highway with gasoline stations.

• 7. The Fall

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  The Paris Peace Accords, signed on the 27th of January 1973, withdrew US military forces from South Vietnam by the end of March. North Vietnamese forces in the South were permitted to remain in place. Fighting resumed almost immediately. North Vietnamese leaders had expected the ceasefire terms to favor their side, and they began planning a massive invasion projected for 1976, with a fuel pipeline to be built from North Vietnam to the Viet Cong provisional capital in Lộc Ninh, about 60 miles north of Saigon.

  In August 1974, Nixon resigned as a result of the Watergate scandal, and Congress voted to reduce assistance to South Vietnam from $1 billion a year to $700 million. The oil price shock of October 1973 had already driven inflation to 200 percent. The South Vietnamese government had increasing difficulty paying its soldiers, imposing restrictions on fuel and ammunition usage.

  In December 1974, the PAVN launched a probe at Phuoc Long to test South Vietnamese will and whether the US would respond. No US military assistance came. Phuoc Long became the first provincial capital to fall. In early 1975, the PAVN launched an offensive at Ban Me Thuot in the Central Highlands as part of the Ho Chi Minh Campaign. Thiệu ordered a withdrawal of key army units from the Central Highlands, a decision that turned into a rout. PAVN forces captured Huế and Da Nang and advanced south. By early April, communist forces had overrun approximately three-fifths of South Vietnam.

  A last-ditch defense was made at the Battle of Xuân Lộc from the 9th to the 21st of April. Thiệu resigned on the 21st of April 1975 and fled to Taiwan, naming Vice President Trần Văn Hương as his successor. After one week, the national assembly transferred power to General Dương Văn Minh, who unconditionally surrendered on the 30th of April 1975. During the hours before the surrender, the United States evacuated government personnel and high-ranking South Vietnamese by helicopter to aircraft carriers waiting off the coast. The Embassy of the Republic of Vietnam in Washington later donated 527 reels of South Vietnamese-produced film to the Library of Congress before it closed.