22-04-2025
The Vietnam War 50 years later: A timeline of events
BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) — April 30 will mark 50 years since the Fall of Saigon. It was the day South Vietnam's capital city was captured, bringing an end to the Vietnam War.
As we approach the anniversary, News Channel 11 is delving into the history, sharing the stories of those who served and discussing the issues those veterans still face today.
In the first part of our series, we learn more about the war, what led up to it and why it still shapes American military decisions today.
Stuart Frye is an assistant professor of history and humanities at Northeast State Community College. He teaches several lectures on the Vietnam War, along with classes on military science and history.
The conflict in French-occupied Indochina started well before the Vietnam War. The French had colonized Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam in 1858 for rubber and tea plantations.
'They began armed conflict. That was a popular uprising. The Cong Viet, as they were called, began fighting the French and sort of at a low level,' Frye said. (The Cong Viet were later referred to as the Viet Cong).
The French were defeated and left. That's when Paris signed the Peace Accords with the North Vietnamese, which allowed them to create a military presence in South Vietnam.
'South Vietnam was essentially created at that point,' Frye said. 'And they had to almost immediately start building up a defense network, a military.'
The Kennedy Administration gave them special forces in 1961, which Frye describes as a 'force multiplier,' where a certain number of men are trained, they train more, and so on, eventually creating an army.
After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson took the Oval Office. In August of 1964, Johnson told the nation American ships had been attacked twice near the Gulf of Tonkin, which is on the northern part of the country.
'Johnson went to Congress and received what was called the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, and that allowed him to put U.S. military personnel, active boots on the ground in South Vietnam,' Frye said.
Frye says it was part of the Truman Doctrine from the Cold War to stop communist expansion at any cost.
'There was a lot of communist involvement in Southeast Asia. The Korean War had occurred in '51-'52, and there was this belief at the top level of the American government of what they called the domino theory, that if one of these Southeast Asian countries would fall and they would just all fall,' Frye said.
By the mid-60s, there were 650,000 American soldiers in Vietnam. Young men were drafted and sent into the battlefield.
'The draft really changed, though, under the Kennedy and Johnson administration[s]. They made certain exemptions. So if you could go to college or you could get into a National Guard Reserve unit, you were exempt from service over in Vietnam,' Frye said. 'People may be from the poor, working class, people that couldn't get into college, those were the people that tended to be drafted.'
The war raged on, and the casualties grew. The American public was on board with the war effort at first, but what happened during the Lunar New Year in early 1968 was a turning point in shifting opinions.
The TET Offensive shocked the American people. General Westmoreland told leaders that the war was being 'successfully prosecuted.' That event proved the opposite, and that the North Vietnamese were fully capable of conducting military operations in South Vietnam.
'Anti-war and counterculture movements sort of coalesced together in the sixties, and [it] was quite a divisive war here in the United States politically,' Frye said. 'Many people thought of this as an example of American imperialism. That we were going there to colonize South Vietnam. And they thought, well, this is a war that has nothing to do with American political interests. Why are we sending American soldiers over there to die?'
There were anti-war protests, sit-ins on college campuses and Hollywood was getting in on the movement too.
'It wasn't uncommon for US soldiers, especially later on after the Tet Offensive. 68, 69, for them to be treated quite poorly,' Frye said. 'When they came back, they weren't heroes–looked upon as heroes defending the nation from communist aggression, but rather as imperialists conducting an evil foreign policy overseas. And that's regrettable because they did deserve much better than what they received.'
Politics played a major role in the war. In 1973, Nixon had the opportunity to use air power to push back.
'We were not allowed to attack North Vietnam per se. So what we were left with then is essentially trying to guard thousands of locations all over South Vietnam. And what we did then is we seeded the enemy [in] the field. They were able to concentrate forces at a specific area. And we just had to constantly guard all of these different strategic locations. And it just took that many troops to be able to do it effectively,' said Frye. 'The United States had exited militarily in 1973. The North Vietnamese immediately broke their treaty obligations. They had formally recognized South Vietnam and agreed not to attack. Of course, as soon as we left, they did exactly that. They attacked South Vietnam… Congress essentially cut off all the money. And Nixon has used up all of his political capital. There was nothing that we could do essentially by 1975 to stop the North Vietnamese, and they just simply rolled through South Vietnam.'
Frye describes South Vietnam as a 'political basket case.'
'You had pro-South Vietnamese government, South Vietnamese, and then you had anti-South Vietnamese government, South Vietnamese,' he said. 'So it was an internal civil war struggle even within South Vietnam.'
On April 30, 1975, South Vietnam's capital was captured.
'There was nothing that we could do essentially by 1975 to stop the North Vietnamese, and they just simply rolled through South Vietnam,' Frye said. 'The collapse really happened very, very quickly… so quickly that the ability to remove American personnel, civilians, especially a lot of civilian personnel were still in South Vietnam, it was quite difficult.'
What happened during the Fall of Saigon and throughout the Vietnam War still shapes American policy overseas.
'Any time the US military is proposed to be engaged in overseas conflict, the first thing that is said is that 'do we have an exit strategy, something that we didn't have in Vietnam?'' Frye said. 'So there's always a reference back to the end of the Vietnam War and how we don't want to make that same mistake again today.'
You can watch an extended interview with Professor Frye on the WJHL+ app.
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