The Vietnam War Ended Fifty Years Ago Today

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. When President Lyndon Johnson sent the first U.S. combat troops to South Vietnam in March 1965, few Americans recognized that they were entering a grueling war of attrition that would leave a lasting scar on American politics and society. For the people of Vietnam, it would be their second Indochina war, coming eleven years after the Viet Minh’s defeat of the French colonial army and the creation of North and South Vietnam. Roughly 59,000 Americans died fighting in Vietnam. The number of Vietnamese civilians and soldiers killed may have run as high as three million. The fighting spilled over into Cambodia and Laos, triggering two horrific civil wars and one of the worst genocides in history. 

I have written a lot on The Water’s Edge about Vietnam. It was one of the defining political events for my generation. So to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the war’s end, which does not seem that long ago, I have gathered what I have written over the years in an effort to make it easier for anyone wanting to learn more about a war that continues to echo in American politics today. 

• The Vietnam War in Forty Quotes 

• Ho Chi Minh’s 1945 Declaration of Vietnam’s Independence  

• Thich Quang Duc’s Self-Immolation 

• The Vietnam “Coup Cable”  

• TWE Remembers: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident 

• TWE Remembers: Congress Passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution 

• TWE Remembers: The First U.S. Combat Troops Arrive in Vietnam 

• General Westmoreland Says the “End Begins to Come Into View” in Vietnam  

• The Pentagon Papers  

• The Fall of Saigon  

• The Best Histories of the Vietnam War 

• The Ten Best Memoirs About the Vietnam War 

• Top Ten Vietnam War Movies 

• The Twenty Best Vietnam Protest Songs 

• Ten Vietnam War Novels to Read 

• Eleven More Classic Vietnam War Protest Songs 

• Remembering a Fallen Hero on Memorial Day 

I have recorded two short videos on major turning points in the Vietnam War: 

• Lessons Learned: The Tet Offensive 

• Lessons Learned: LBJ Announces He Will Not Seek Reelection 

I also recorded an episode of my podcast, The President’s Inbox, with Fredrik Logevall, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Embers of War, on the “Lessons of Vietnam.” 

Numerous films, documentaries, histories, memoirs, and books have been released since I made my “best of” picks a decade ago. When it comes to documentaries, nothing rivals Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s ten-part series, The Vietnam War, which debuted on PBS in 2017. A documentary released earlier this year, that I have not yet seen but will if I ever subscribe to Apple TV+, is Vietnam: The War That Changed America. You can watch the trailer here. 

As for books, here are five recent ones that I enjoyed reading: 

• Mark Bowden, Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam. Bowden, the author of Blackhawk Down, details the brutal fight to retake the former imperial capital of Hue after it was overrun by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces during the Tet Offensive in early 1968. The book won the 2018 Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Greene Award for a distinguished work of nonfiction. 

• Christopher Goscha, Vietnam: A New History. An American-Canadian historian, Goscha tells the history of Vietnam rather than the history of the Vietnam War. He begins with the nation’s origins among competing tribal groups and ends with the current communist government’s efforts to blend market economics with strict political control.  

• Max Hastings, Vietnam, An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975. An acclaimed British journalist and military historian who reported from Saigon, Hastings tells the story of both Indochina wars based on primary documents, secondary histories, and interviews with participants from the major combatants. 

• Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer. Nguyen’s novel is told by an anonymous narrator who was a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese army who flees to the United States after the fall of Saigon and continues to send reports to his handler about the activities of Vietnamese expatriates. The novel won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 

• Brian VanDeMark, Road to Disaster: A New History of America's Descent Into Vietnam. A historian at the U.S. Naval Academy and the co-author of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, VanDeMark explores why the Kennedy and Johnson administrations committed the United States to Vietnam and then failed to reverse course when it became evident that the war would not produce the quick and definitive victory they imagined. 

More good books, memoirs, and films will surely come out in the years to come. As has been said, history is a debate without end. 

Oscar Berry assisted in the preparation of this post.