xxivI ntroduction
return to the negotiating tables, but the agreement that was worked out was not
substantially different from the one that had been agreed to earlier in October.
The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973. The terms of the agree-
ment called for an in-place cease-fire and the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by
March 1973. There was no mention of the North Vietnamese troops left in South
Vietnam when the cease-fire went into effect, but Nixon promised Thieu that the
United States would support South Vietnam if Hanoi violated the terms of the
cease-fire.
The signing of the accords signaled the end of the war for the United States, but
only issued in a new phase in the war for the Vietnamese. Nixon continued to make
promises to President Thieu, but he was increasingly beset by the Watergate scan-
dal. In early August 1974, he resigned and, subsequently, Congress reduced mili-
tary aid to Vietnam. In December 1974, Hanoi launched a final offensive in the
South. The South Vietnamese forces fell back in disarray as the North Vietnamese
troops marched inexorably southward. On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks
crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, and South Vietnam
surrendered unconditionally.
Although U.S. forces, which had not been defeated on the battlefield, had been
gone for two years when Saigon fell, the North Vietnamese triumph represented
the first time that the United States had lost a war. More than 58,000 Americans
had been killed and over 300,000 wounded. South Vietnam had fallen to the Com-
munists. The war had sharply divided American society and made Americans
question the veracity of their own governmental institutions. The legacies of the
war would last for many years to come.
