Vietnam War Ends
The war in Vietnam ended on April 30th, 1975 when the government in Saigon announced its unconditional surrender to North Vietnamese forces. This photo, taken on the day of the surrender, shows a North Vietnamese communist tank driving through the main gate of the presidential palace of the US-backed South Vietnam regime – a defining moment that led to the fall of the city and the eventual failure of US policy in Indo-China.

Although the Americans had vast military superiority over the Northern Vietnamese they failed to defeat them – despite sustained air bomb attacks, large scale chemical warfare and more than 120 billion US dollars spent, they could not undermine the political will of the communist army, who had been fighting for independence for 30 years. The Americans withdrew their support for the war in 1973, two years before the final surrender. Estimates of fatalities vary widely – it is thought that between 2 and 5 million people died in the war.

For more, see Vietnam War.