Fall of Saigon

North Vietnam captured Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam, on 30 April 1975 as part of its 1975 spring offensive. This led to the collapse of the South Vietnamese government and the evacuation of thousands of U.S. personnel and South Vietnamese civilians, and marked the end of the Vietnam War. The aftermath ushered in a transition period under North Vietnamese control, culminating in the formal reunification of the country as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) under communist rule on 2 July 1976.

The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Viet Cong (VC), 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) forces 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 26 years of existence of pro-Western Saigon regimes.

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 Republic of Vietnam. A few Americans chose not to be evacuated. United States ground combat units had left South Vietnam more than two years prior to the fall of Saigon and were not available to assist with either the defense of Saigon or the evacuation. The evacuation was the largest helicopter evacuation in history. In addition to the flight of refugees, the end of the war and the institution of new rules by the communist government contributed to a decline in the city's population until 1979, after which the population increased again.

On 2 July 1976, Vietnam was unified for the first time since 1954. The same day, the National Assembly of Vietnam renamed Saigon in honor of Hồ Chí Minh, the late Chairman of the Communist Party of Vietnam and founder of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). 30 April has still been commemorated in Vietnam by the SRV as a national holiday called Reunification Day.

Various names have been applied to these events. The Vietnamese government 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 sỉ), or "National Day of Resentment" (Ngày quốc hận) by many overseas Vietnamese who were refugees from the former South Vietnam. It is also known by the neutral name "April 30, 1975 incident" (Sự kiện 30 tháng 4 năm 1975) or simply "April 30" (30 tháng 4).

The 1973 Paris Peace Accords called 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 Phuoc 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.