Overview

The defeat of South Vietnam was arguably America's worst foreign policy disaster of the twentieth century. Yet a complete understanding of the endgame--from the January 27, 1973 signing of the Paris Peace Accords to South Vietnam's surrender on April 30, 1975--has eluded us. Black April addresses that deficit. A culmination of exhaustive research in three distinct areas: primary source documents from American archives, North Vietnamese publications containing primary and secondary source material, and dozens of articles and numerous interviews with key South Vietnamese participants, this book represents one of the largest Vietnamese translation projects ever accomplished, including almost one hundred rarely or never seen before North Vietnamese unit histories, battle studies, and memoirs. Most important, to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of South Vietnam's conquest, the leaders in Hanoi released several compendiums of formerly highly classified cables and memorandum between the Politburo and its military commanders in the south. This treasure trove of primary source materials provides the most complete insight into North Vietnamese decision-making ever complied. While South Vietnamese deliberations remain less clear, enough material exists to provide a decent overview.

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George J. Veith is the author of Code-Name Bright Light: The Untold Story of U.S. POW Rescue Efforts During the Vietnam War, published by the Free Press in December 1997. Veith has also published Leave No Man Behind: Bill Bell and the Search for American POW/MIAs from the Vietnam War in March 2004. He has published many symposium papers, various newspaper articles, and a well-received article on the battle for Xuan Loc in April 1975 that appeared in the January 2004 issue of the Journal of Military History. He presented papers at the following major conferences, including the October 2005 Australian War College symposium Entangling Alliances: Coalition Warfare in the Twentieth Century, in 2006 to the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency at Fort Belvoir, VA, at the May 2008 conference in Paris on War, Diplomacy, and Public Opinion: The Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam and the End of the Vietnam War (1968-1975), and at the 2009 Society for Military History Conference. Most recently, he helped organize a conference held in Washington, DC in April 2010 on 35-Year Retrospective Look on Vietnam. He has appeared on Fox News and other radio and TV stations, and testified twice on the POW/MIA issue before the US House of Representatives. He has been invited to speak at the American Legion National Conference, the National League of POW/MIA Families and National Alliance of Families annual meetings, and many other venues. Malcolm Hillgartner is an accomplished actor, writer, and musician. Named an AudioFile Best Voice of 2013 and the recipient of several Earphones Awards, he has narrated over 175 audiobooks.

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