On November 3, 1969, newly elected President Richard Nixon officially unveiled his "Vietnamization" program. The purpose of this program was to gradually transfer combat operations in Vietnam entirely to the South Vietnamese army. The "Vietnamization" program was meant to implement Nixon's 1968 campaign promise to bring the fighting to an "honorable" end.

With this policy, the South Vietnamese assumed a greater combat role and consequently suffered an increase in their casualty rate. However, serious questions arose concerning the South Vietnamese military capacity and willingness to take the offensive. Peak American troop levels of 543,400 fell to 334,600 by 1970, and had diminished to 156,800 at the end of 1971.

Find Out More

1954-1965: America's Commitment to the Vietnam War

1965-1968: The United States Takes Charge

1968-1975: "Vietnamization" Policy

Today: Thoughts on the Vietnam War

Maps

Vietnam Political Map

Vietnam Elevation Map

Student Video:
At the Dinner Table

If the nature of the war had changed on the U.S.-Saigon side, it was also transformed for the NLF and the North Vietnamese. NLF casualties as a result of the military failure of the Tet offensive and the ongoing bombing and defoliation efforts were enormous. Slowly the weight of fighting shifted from southern-born and organized guerrilla units to main-force North Vietnamese regular army troops. In the 1972 spring offensive and, more tellingly, in a final offensive in 1975, the war finally became that which the United States had always claimed it was: a war for the unification of Vietnam by force, under Hanoi's direction.

By the fall of 1972 both sides had reached a state of military stalemate. The situation facing the Nixon administration was almost brutal in its simplicity: how to extricate American troops without betraying what the President took to be a commitment to the Thieu government.

A breakthrough occurred in the peace talks that had been going on between Washington and Hanoi in Paris since 1968. Concessions on both sides yielded an agreement that National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger (negotiating for the U.S.) was confident would fulfill Nixon's pledge to end the war with honor. The Thieu regime's firm resistance to this agreement surprised the American government. To persuade Thieu that the U.S. would not desert him and to demonstrate to Hanoi a U.S. commitment to a separate independent South Vietnamese nation with an anti-communist leadership, Nixon ordered the heaviest bombing of the north in the history of the war ("Christmas bombing" of 1972). Shortly after this twelve-day offensive, the Paris peace agreement was signed.

The Paris Accords allowed North Vietnamese troops to remain in place in the south, and, for the first time, officially recognized the existence of the NLF and promised a future political role for its constituency. However, the agreement also permitted continuing American military supply of the Thieu government.

On July 31, 1973, Congress voted to end all bombing in Indochina and to ban any future military moves in the area without prior Congressional approval. Nixon's requests for aid were consistently cut down. It became increasingly clear that the Saigon government was on its own.

Although the American people and Congress had essentially disengaged from the war, the fighting continued between 1973 and 1975. The inherent weaknesses of the South Vietnamese government, no longer bolstered by American military participation, resulted in its ultimate defeat.

Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces on April 30, 1975. The war had come to an end.

Copyright 2007.