MAPS OF HISTORY · COLD WAR · BATTLES AND EVENTS · Fall of SaigonCold War · TURNING POINT · 1975
Fall of Saigon (1975)
On the Cold War map as “The fall of Saigon”
30 Apr 1975 — A T-54 crushes the palace gate in Saigon as helicopters lift the last Americans from a rooftop. The domino falls, then stops. Vietnam is one country, achieved at staggering cost.
When 30 Apr 1975 Type Turning point Chapter Vietnam War (chapter 7 of Cold War)Atlas The Cold War, 1945–1991 Also in Refugee crises TURNING POINT · THE COLD WAR, 1945–1991 These maps are reconstructed from published sources · The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949 · North Atlantic Treaty: Algerian departments cease to apply from 3 July 1962 · Berlin’s four-power status and its termination · The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall · Cliopatria v0.2.1 historical polities · Decolonization of Asia and Africa, 1945–1960 · United Nations Command: the 1953 armistice · NATO membership chronology · Natural Earth v5.1.2 country geography · Natural Earth administrative references · The collapse of the Soviet Union · 1954 Geneva agreement, Annex I: demarcation line · South Yemen: independence and alignment chronology · South Yemen: Soviet relationship, 1971 intelligence estimate
Source details US government historical publication. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced NATO, treaty footnote 2. Historical treaty facts cited; no artwork or prose reproduced US government historical publication. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced US government historical publication. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced Cliopatria contributors / Seshat Global History Databank. CC BY 4.0 · Selected dated records; documented component selection, unions and shared-edge extraction. US Department of State, Office of the Historian. US government publication United Nations Command. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced NATO. Historical facts cited; no artwork or prose reproduced Natural Earth contributors. Public domain · Full source components and holes retained; documented historical unions and repairs. Natural Earth contributors. Public domain US Department of State, Office of the Historian. US government publication US Department of State, FRUS 1952–1954, Volume XVI, document 1035. US government publication of diplomatic documents US Department of State. US government historical publication US Department of State, FRUS 1969–1976, volume XXIV, document 182. US government historical publication This political-alignment geography uses national and administrative extents; it does not map every military front. Modern-reference perimeters are explicitly recorded where no more suitable reviewed historical geometry was adopted. All source parts and holes are retained.
The Soviet, Yugoslav, Czechoslovak, Sudanese and other historical unions remove later internal borders. Occupation and armistice lines retain their separate meanings.
South Yemen uses the 1969 source as a geographic proxy for earlier Aden/protectorates. The boundaries and status of individual protectorates are not resolved at this scale.
Israeli-controlled extents follow dated published source references. The coarse 1976–1982 record does not resolve each stage of the Sinai withdrawal, so chapter 10 uses the 1983 post-withdrawal source.
Dated assignments correct omissions across the legacy views: independent Algeria is non-aligned after July 1962; Greece and Turkey join NATO in 1952, and Spain in 1982. South Yemen is separate from North Yemen, with British administration before late 1967 and the Soviet-aligned Marxist government after 1969.
The narrative date for the chapter is 1968.65; the displayed source state is the named w68 timeline reference. Each layer records its date-specific source intervals and nearest-date choices.
proxy: 1945–1990, later municipal exterior reference · proxy: Natural Earth v5.1.2 contemporary reference · reconstruction: 1945–1991 · reconstruction: 1945–1991 geographic union · reconstruction: 1952–1991 · reconstruction: 1953 · reconstruction: 1953–1972 · reconstruction: 1954 (1956 vector proxy) · reconstruction: 1958–1989 · reconstruction: 1960–1991 · reconstruction: Postwar Yugoslav reference · vector: 1936–1986 · vector: 1948–1962 · vector: 1953–2023 · vector: 1956–1966 · vector: 1958–1959 · vector: 1958–1968 · vector: 1963–1972 · vector: 1967–1972 · vector: 1969–1986
Layer records and reconstruction methods
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