History of the United States II / Unit 15 USH2 2146 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
From Paris to Saigon
The idea
On January twenty-seventh, nineteen seventy-three, Henry Kissinger signed an accord with the North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho, which ended American participation in the war. American troops had sixty days to withdraw, and North Vietnam kept its forces where they stood, over one hundred thousand soldiers in the South. Congress kept funding South Vietnam, but at far lower levels. On April twenty-ninth, nineteen seventy-five, as North Vietnamese forces reached the outskirts of Saigon, Americans and South Vietnamese who had worked with them were ordered evacuated.
In practice
North Vietnamese tanks crashing through the gates of the presidential palace on the morning of April thirtieth, Digital History records.
Where people slip
Two endings belong together. American participation ended with the accords in nineteen seventy-three; the war itself ended when Saigon fell in nineteen seventy-five, and the Yawp says that when fighting resumed North Vietnamese troops quickly overwhelmed the South. The anchor judges that, on the accords' terms, the South had no hope of defeating the North.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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