After nearly five years of negotiations, delegations signed the Paris Peace Accords, calling for a ceasefire, withdrawal of remaining US troops within 60 days, and the release of prisoners of war. Secretary of State William Rogers signed for the United States. The agreement did not end the war between North and South Vietnam, which continued until Saigon's fall in April 1975, but it marked the formal exit of American combat forces after over a decade of war.
The talks had dragged on since 1968, stalled repeatedly over the shape of the negotiating table, the legitimacy of the Viet Cong's political wing, and whether North Vietnamese troops would be allowed to remain in the South. Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho conducted secret back-channel negotiations for years, eventually sharing the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for the accords, an award so controversial that Le Duc Tho declined it, and two Nobel committee members resigned in protest.
The deal followed the ferocious 'Christmas Bombing' of Hanoi and Haiphong in December 1972, which many historians see as pressure that finally forced North Vietnam back to serious negotiation, though others argue South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu was the one being coerced into accepting terms he distrusted.
Within 60 days, the last American troops departed and prisoners of war, including future senator John McCain, came home to emotional reunions broadcast on national television. But the underlying conflict between Hanoi and Saigon was merely paused, not resolved; North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon just over two years later, on April 30, 1975, rendering the accords, in retrospect, a dignified label for an American withdrawal rather than a lasting peace.
Key people: Henry Kissinger, Le Duc Tho, William Rogers, Nguyen Van Thieu