Black April. The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75.pdf

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BLACK APRIL

PRAISE FOR

BLACK APRIL

“Veith tells his tale with a flair and passion equal to that of Shelby Foote writing about the

American Civil War. In this volume he has substantially elevated the level of scholarship with

regard to Vietnam, judiciously analyzing histories, memoirs, and official documents before

blending them into his narrative. The result is a superb book that should substantially change

popular assumptions about America’s allies in the long Vietnam conflict, the character of the

South Vietnamese and their military establishment, and the relevance of all this for current and

future American military involvement around the world.”

—Dr. Larry Engelmann, professor of history at

San Jose State University and author of

Tears Before the Rain:

An Oral History of the Fall of South Vietnam

“George Veith has produced the definitive account of the final battles that preceded the collapse

of the Republic of Vietnam and its capitulation to the Communist armed forces of North Vietnam.

This is a detailed, exhaustively researched, critically analyzed study of the interplay of politics,

strategy, logistics, and personalities in the decline and eventual disintegration of the Republic’s

armed forces. Mr. Veith skillfully weaves information from four types of source material into his

tragic tale: firsthand accounts and reports from South Vietnamese officers and units, American

intelligence reports, North Vietnamese official reports and accounts of the strategy and the

battles, and postwar interviews with South Vietnamese military participants. This book should put

to rest forever the popular misconceptions that the war in Indochina ended with the withdrawal of

American forces, and that the war was lost because the forces of the South lacked the will to

fight.”

—Colonel William E. Le Gro, former Intelligence Chief

of the Defense Attaché Office, Saigon,

and author of

Vietnam from Cease-Fire to Capitulation

“Masterful, empathetic, and insightful. Veith knows why South Vietnam still mattered even after

America got out, and he tells the story beautifully.

Black April

is an immensely important work

by a historian and writer of the first order.”

—Robert Kurson, author of

Shadow Divers