April 30, 1975: The Moment of Triumph

On April 29, 1975, the North Vietnamese army initiated a heavy artillery bombardment in order to prepare its final attack on Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh). By April 30, the last line of defense northeast of Saigon broke down and the North Vietnamese army advanced. In a matter of hours, they took control over most of the strategic places in Saigon, including the presidential palace. A North Vietnamese T-54B tank, which later became iconic, broke the gates of the palace—a symbolic instance famously depicted by the war photographer Francoise Demulder. Saigon had fallen, and the war was over. Earlier that month, on April 21, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam had resigned and was eventually replaced by General Minh, who on this day was serving his third and what would be his last day in office. Somewhat remarkably, there were no massacres and no ad hoc actions of revenge that day, and the takeover is generally described as being made in good order. This can partly be explained by the discipline that now marked the North Vietnamese Army (Hägerdal, 2005) but surely also by the fact that there was no longer any major resistance and that as many as 7,800 Americans and South Vietnamese had already been evacuated in the previous days.