Black April : The Fall Of South Vietnam 1973-75

The defeat of South Vietnam was arguably America’s worst foreign-policy disaster of the twentieth century. Yet a complete understanding of the end-game-from the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on 27 January 1973 to South Vietnam’s surrender on 30 April 1975-has eluded us.

Black April addresses that deficit. The culmination of exhaustive research and of one of the largest Vietnamese translation projects ever accomplished, this important new book draws on American primary source documents, never-before-made-public interviews with key South Vietnamese players, and a trove of formerly top-secret North Vietnamese cables and memoranda to create the definitive history of one of the least understood and most traumatic military defeats in American history.

Black April explores the dynamics that ultimately triggered the shocking fifty-five day fall of South Vietnam, from the North’s complete abrogation of the Paris Peace Accords, to the vast reduction of U.S. aid, to President Nguyen Van Thieu’s insurmountable military blunders. Veith provides a counterweight to much of the prevailing wisdom concerning the war, including the view of our South Vietnamese allies as a crooked dictatorial regime dependent on American firepower, and the underestimation of a North Vietnamese military force that was far more sophisticated than previously believed.

Ultimately, whatever errors occurred on the American and South Vietnamese side, the fact remains that the country was conquered by a North Vietnamese military invasion despite a solemn agreement signed by Hanoi’s leadership against such action. Hanoi’s decision to destroy the Paris Peace Accords and end the war militarily sent a generation of South Vietnamese into exile, and exacerbated a societal trauma in America over our long Vietnam involvement that reverberates to this day. How that transpired deserves deeper scrutiny.