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Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75 By George J. Veith New York: Encounter Books, 2012 587 pages $29.95
Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75 is the first of two volumes in which the author, George J. Veith, intends to provide a comprehensive analysis of the last two years of the war in Vietnam. This first book covers the military aspects of South Vietnam's defeat and addresses five critical questions: (1) when did the North Vietnamese decide to renew the war; (2) how did they disguise their decision and construct a surprise assault on Ban Me Thuot; (3) why did President Nguyen Van Thieu withdraw his regular military forces from the Central Highlands; (4) what triggered South Vietnam's fall militarily in 55 days; and (5) was the South Vietnamese military inept? The second volume will discuss the political and diplomatic efforts to implement the Paris Peace Accords and the social and economic events that had a profound impact on the war. Given the length and detail of this military account it was probably necessary to divide the work into two volumes. Unfortunately, limiting this volume's scope to military decisions, actions, and events prevents the author from presenting a totally convincing explanation of South Vietnam's collapse. Readers might supplement their understanding of this excellent volume by reading Dr. Henry Kissinger's Ending the War in Vietnam while awaiting volume two.
Although many books explaining the fall of South Vietnam have been published, most of them date to the 1980s and none of their authors could take advantage of recently declassified documents, both American and North Vietnamese, that detail high-level decisionmaking. George Veith has exploited the newly available archive materials along with translations of North and South Vietnamese published general and unit histories, and interviews with the senior military participants. For example, his bibliography lists memoirs published in Vietnamese after 2000, and an account of the fall of the Saigon government through South Vietnamese documents published in 2010. Mr. Veith acknowledges...