The victory in the anti-US resistance war for national salvation is a great success of Vietnamese revolution, an evidence of our people’s persistent will to unify the country, which has been built up throughout thousands of years of struggling against the invaders.

The people of Saigon welcome liberation troops on April 30th 1975 (file photo)

It is our Party and President Ho Chi Minh that represented the will and determination at utmost degree and were the soul of the resistance war. The Party’s sound leadership was the fundamental and deciding factor for the victory. Being steadfast in working class stance, Marxism-Leninism, Ho Chi Minh thoughts, our Party did exact evaluations of the situation, the US imperialist’s strong and weak points, thus proposing the strategic guidelines throughout the cause of liberating the South and unifying the country with 2 periods: “fighting to expel the US troops”, then “fighting to destroy the puppet regime”; and at the same time, mapping out relevant policies for each step of the struggle. Those strategic guidelines and policies of the Party were relevant not only with the Vietnamese revolution’s concrete characteristics and conditions, but also with the world situation at that time. They highlighted revolution-ness and science-ness, fully bringing into play factors of the nation and the times, and combining internal and external strengths. Party’s sound, creative, independent, and self-reliant political and military guidelines in the war for national salvation were the inheritance and development at a new-height and in a new condition of the independent and self-reliant lines in the previous resistance war against French colonialist, which we both fought the enemy and built the country at the same time.

That victory stemmed from the raising of the flag of national independence and socialism; from synchronous implementation of the two revolutionary strategies in the two regions (the North and the South) closely relevant to each other, namely ‘the people’s democratic national revolution’ in the South and ‘the socialist revolution’ in the North, aiming at a common target: fulfilling the common goal of the nationwide people democratic revolution, unifying and bringing the country to socialism. When evaluating and analyzing the two revolutionary strategies’ role and position, our Party clearly stated that: “the people’s democratic national revolution in the South played a directly decisive role in the defeat of the US invaders and its puppet regime ally while conducting the socialist revolution in the North was the most decisive task for the country’s whole revolution and reunification. 

Our Party’s overall strategy during that war for national salvation was offensive, maintaining attacks in any circumstance. It was a comprehensive offensive strategy combining military, politics, and diplomacy, in both the South and the North. That strategy was conducted consistently even when the enemy escalated the conflict. We still remember when the enemy massively deployed its troops into the South for a limited war and sabotaged the North with air strikes, our Party was consistent in realizing the offensive strategy, thus gave the enemy painful blows. The first victories gained in Nui Thanh, Van Tuong reaffirmed our capability to defeat the U.S. invasion, which had been doubted by a number of people previously. In the North, our military and people also gave the US Air Force shocking blows with the victory of “Hanoi- Dien Bien Phu in the air” by the end of 1972 , which broke down the US strategic air raid and its strong will of invasion, and forced them to sign the Paris Accords (27-01-1973). The offensive strategy was carried out with the motto: “defeating the enemy step by step, destroying it part by part, forcing  it to de-escalate, then defeating it completely for a final victory”. By firmly carrying out the offensive strategy, we defeated all the enemy’s steps to escalate the war, including special war, limited war, and Vietnamization war respectively.

Our Party’s measure to carry out revolution in that struggle was basically identified in the 15^th Congress of the Party Central Committee (January 1959). That was the implementation of combined violent revolution with the two main forces, namely mass political force and people’s armed force. At the same time, we had a close combination of military struggle and political, diplomatic struggle; mass uprising and offensive, offensive and uprising; fighting the enemy on 3 offensive aspects: military, political, and enemy propaganda ones; in 3 strategic areas: mountainous, rural plain, and urban ones; a close combination of regular warfare and guerrilla warfare, fighting the enemy with the 3 armies: regular forces, local armed forces, and guerrilla forces; carrying out operations in large, medium, and small scales; being proactive to attack and destroy the enemy, at the same time annihilating the enemy to obtain the proactiveness. That is consistency in the enduringly fighting strategy, also in the creating and seizing of opportunities to launch strategic offensive operations (in 1968, 1971, 1972) which changed the  situation, being a precondition for the General Offensive and Uprising (1975) to completely destroy the enemy and get the final victory.

The entire development of the war and the Great Victory of 1975 Spring were the evidences of the soundness of our Party’s ideology of offensive strategy, revolutionary measures, strategic guidelines, methods to conduct the war, Vietnam’s unique and creative military arts of the people’s war.

It is the Vietnamese people’s ardent patriotism, never-give-up and resilient fighting morale that symbolizes the strong will to unify the Homeland and burning desire for peace, which is also an important factor to build up the synergy to defeat the US invaders, This is our nation’s tradition of utmost value formed and developed over thousands of years constructing and protecting the country. Under the Party’s leadership, that tradition has unceasingly promoted in the cause of national liberation to gain independence for the Homeland, freedom, happiness for the people, which was deeply shown in Ho Chi Minh’s saying: “Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom”. In the war against the U.S. invaders, once again, the ardent patriotism and resilient fighting morale were aroused, vigorously developed with concrete actions and mottos, such as “determined to defeat the US invaders”, “liberate the South, protect the North”, “the South and the North are under the same roof”, “the South’s blood and flesh are Vietnam’s”, a river would dry up, a mountain would erode away, but that truth will never change. It is the patriotism and courageous fighting morale that provided our military and people a resource of tremendous political and spiritual power which is absolute overwhelm the enemy. Symbol of that strong will, morale, and determination of utmost degree were our Party and beloved President Ho Chi Minh.

One of the most important factors for the victory in that war was the unity, unanimity to follow Ho Chi Minh’s thought of “solidarity, solidarity, great solidarity/ success, success, great success”. It is the solidarity within the Party, the nation, the people between the South and the North, and international solidarity. Under the Party’s leadership, our people ushered in that war when the country were temporarily divided into the two, implementing two revolutionary strategies with numerous hardships and challenges. However, thanks to high-level solidarity and unity in will and action, our Party brought into full play the country’s synergy, combining internal and external strengths, national and epoch strengths to achieve the final victory and complete the common objectives of Vietnamese revolution, namely national independence, reunification, and the implementation of the people’s democratic national revolution nationwide.

Victory gained in the that war has left us a treasure of experiences; in which there are experiences of success and failure, and experiences drawn from failure are as valuable as those from success. The important thing to us now is to carry on studying and reviewing fully those lessons to effectively apply them to the cause of Homeland construction and protection in the new situation.

General Phung Quang Thanh

Member of the Politburo, Vice Secretary of the Central Military Commission

Minister of National Defence