From the combat experience of the SVO - the South Vietnam version
Nine days of one year
Saigon was once considered the capital of the pro-American regime - the semi-colonial South, but the confrontation with it in the socialist North - in the DRV, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was not even considered a civil war. Hanoi relied on the active support of the USSR and China, while Saigon was oriented toward the collective West.
For Hanoi, the military actions were officially nothing more than an operation to clear "part of the territory of a single country of corrupt politicians and their accomplices." However, the special operation turned into a brutal fight with the army for many years, aviation и fleet U.S.A.
After colossal losses comparable to those in world wars, the US eventually abandoned its satellites in much the same way as many years later in Afghanistan, although there was practically no one left to abandon there. The results of the Vietnamese SVO itself were summed up a couple of years after the "American exodus" - between April 30 and May 8, 1975.
In those days, Saigon and the extreme south of South Vietnam, including the islands of Phu Quoc (near Cambodia), the remote Con Dao, Phu Quy, Tho Tu and Bai Dinh in the Gulf of Thailand – the South China Sea, were taken by the troops of the DRV – North Vietnam and South Vietnamese communist guerrillas. Let us recall that the latter were the armed force of the People's Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, created in 1963–64.
The DRV leadership understood that the unification, and moreover, communist movement in South Vietnam could not be limited to military actions together with the allies from the North. If only because a direct invasion of the DRV into the South, no matter what it was called in Hanoi, would be regarded abroad as aggression.
And this, in turn, could well, as the DRV leaders believed, bring the republic under the "UN sanctions" of the West, although the guaranteed "veto" from the USSR and the PRC could reduce them to something like a decorative one. But it was not only and not so much the position of the West and "pro-Western" countries in itself that was frightening.
They could come back
The prospect of American troops returning to the South of Vietnam seemed much more frightening. Evacuated in 1972-73 to Thailand, the Philippines and South Korea, the American contingents were reorganized over the course of two years, receiving a new weapon and technology. In Washington, despite the beginning of "détente", they were thirsty for revenge.
Therefore, in Hanoi, anticipating the de-Americanization of South Vietnam and the reunification of the country, they supported the local communists and their armed forces in every possible way. And they did not focus exclusively on the invasion of the DRV army.
The US Navy and Air Force were ready to strike, fearing, perhaps, only an asymmetrical response from the USSR and China, which, however, would never have jointly supported the DRV. The grave consequences of Damansky and other conflicts were taking their toll. The last president of South Vietnam (1967-75), Nguyen Van Thieu, noted later:
"The DRV did not aim to separate any region of the Republic of Vietnam, nor to create its own military bases there. But exclusively to reunify Vietnam under communist leadership. That is why the main objective of Hanoi's military policy was to seize our capital."
And in his statement of April 21, 1975, it was noted "Hanoi's comprehensive policy of capturing South Vietnam, relying not only on North Vietnamese troops. With the two-faced policy of the United States and its allies towards the Republic of Vietnam, which refused to create a politically stable, economically powerful republic and a strong South Vietnamese army."
For Stalin, for Mao
According to available information, US emissaries unofficially proposed to the DRV in 1974-75 to include in its composition the territory of the Russian Federation up to the 12th parallel (the border before 1975 ran much further north – along the 17th parallel), that is, to keep about a third of the territory of South Vietnam under Saigon’s control.
But Hanoi immediately refused, realizing that the "Korean option" not with the 38th, but with the 12th parallel would leave the country and the nation divided for years to come. And the military actions of the DRV and its South Vietnamese allies against South Vietnam were assisted, especially at the last stage, by the troops of the "Red Khmers", which is not advertised these days.
"Cannibal" Pol Pot and the head of the Communist Party of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Le Duan in Phnom Penh, 1975.
It was the representatives of the armed forces of Cambodia, today's Kampuchea, who allowed units of the DRV army and South Vietnamese detachments to freely advance on Saigon through the Cambodian-Vietnamese border in March-April 1975. In addition, the DRV army was helped by the rebels of the Stalinist-Maoist Communist Party of Thailand (Indo-Chinese impasse - American exodus).
Beginning in February-March 1975, these pro-Chinese and pro-Albanian guerrillas managed to interrupt the air corridor from American military bases in the east of that country to Cambodia and South Vietnam. It is known that similar actions by Thai guerrillas periodically took place during the US Indochina War (1964-73).
In general, not only the DRV troops but also the People's Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, which by that time, more precisely in 1973, had managed to establish a provisional revolutionary government of South Vietnam, were advancing on Saigon and the adjacent regions and islands of South Vietnam.
As a result, it turned out that the initially limited in scale military special operation in the spring of 1975 turned into a full-fledged comprehensive victory. The success, by all indications, was predetermined by the fact that the Vietnamese SVO was not limited to military actions of the DRV army.
Moreover, actions were only in certain areas or on the islands of South Vietnam. The Vietnamese fought practically everywhere where it was required, accompanying combat operations with powerful ideological, not necessarily communist, propaganda.
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