Reply #15: The Thing to Remember is That [View All]

[On the Road]

most "South Vietnamese" people supported the North. Ho Chi Minh would have easily won the elections that were supposed to be held in the mid-1950s but which the US canceled. So when the US left, the North Vietnamese army already had majority support in the South, and the takeover was fairly easy from a military point of view.

Officials and prominent supporters of the former South government were considered quislings and traitors. Like the Chinese, the Vietnamese did not engage in wholesale slaughter of their opponents (to my knowledge), but in "reeducation". Opponents were often forced to work difficult jobs in the countryside. The new government also confiscated the wealth of many ethic Chinese, who owned most of the business in South Vietnam, on the grounds that they enriched themselves by trading with the enemy. They were often put out to sea in small boats, which is some cases sunk, drowning the passengers. In other cases, they made it to neighboring countries, and sometimes to the US, where they became known as the boat people.

There were suggestions on this thread that the North Vietnamese were somehow responsible for the Communist takeover in Cambodia. This is false -- the rebellion was on the other side of the country and had been going on for many years. The US-instigated military coup and the US bombing of Eastern Cambodia were more responsible for a rebel victory. In fact, Vietnam invaded Cambodia in the late 70s to replace the Pol Pot government with a less radical communist/socialist government.