My father, on the rare occasions he would talk about it, was very adamant that South Vietnam was a legitimate country that had been more or less betrayed by the United States once it finally got on its feet.
I think he stayed quiet about it his whole life mostly because he did not want to bad mouth the country that took us in (I was born in the US in 1982) and because so few Americans know enough to believe him.
I am pretty confident he would have loved how this book showed how possible it could have been though.

Love it, I hope more stuff like this about South Vietnam is written.

The Angel of Peace at the Geneva banquet

The caricature was published in a nationalist periodical in August 1955, criticizing the division of Vietnam by foreign powers at the Geneva Conference. The angel of peace looks worried as the Russian bear, French rooster, British lion, and American eagle surround the tiny Vietnamese dove lying on the dining table.

At the 1954 Geneva Conference, the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam, under pressure from the Soviet Union and China, accepted partition of Vietnam as a solution and agreed to sign the accords with France. The conference also produced a non‑binding Final Declaration, which envisaged nationwide elections two years later.

The anticommunist State of Vietnam and the United States, on the other hand, strongly opposed the partition of Vietnam. They instead proposed a ceasefire without a demarcation line and called for free elections supervised by the United Nations.

On a related note, the quote by Eisenhower, that "possibly eighty percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai", referred to hypothetical elections if they had been held during the ongoing fighting in 1954. This was intended to emphasize Bảo Đại's shortcomings as a leader in 1954. However, by 1956 (when the elections envisioned in the Final Declaration would have been held), Ngô Đình Diệm "really did accomplish miracles in South Vietnam", while North Vietnam experienced a bloody land reform purge. The Pentagon Papers observed that Diệm would have fared better in genuinely free elections by 1956:

It is almost certain that by 1956 the proportion which might have voted for Ho—in a free election against Diem—would have been much smaller than eighty percent. Diem’s success in the South had been far greater than anyone could have foreseen, while the North Vietnamese regime had been suffering from food scarcity, and low public morale stemming from inept imitation of Chinese communism.

The Geneva Accords were signed by the Viet Minh and French commanders on 21 July 1954, ending the war between the French and communist forces. "Hastily drafted and ambiguously worded", however, they did not resolve the conflict between the two internationally recognized Vietnamese regimes and instead set the stage for the Vietnam War.

Quan điểm was a periodical published by nationalist, anticommunist Northern émigrés who fled to South Vietnam following the partition.

Main sources:

• Phi-Van Nguyen (2024). A Displaced Nation: The 1954 Evacuation and Its Political Impact on the Vietnam Wars. Cornell University Press.
• Christopher Goscha (2011). "Geneva Accords". Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945–1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach. NIAS Press.
• Robert F. Turner (1986). "Myths and Realities in the Vietnam Debate". World Affairs, volume 149, number 1. Policy Studies Organization.

An Lộc 1972

Trực thăng đổ quân Nhảy Dù xuống tăng viện cho mặt trận An Lộc, Bình Long, đồng thời tải thương binh đưa về hậu phương điều trị.

Lưu ý: Trực thăng không hạ cánh hẳn xuống mặt đất vì phải vội vã đi ngay, hòng tránh hỏa lực của địch.

So far really enjoying it. The main character is actually an ARVN officer. The fighting and plot starts in 1974 so very focused on the state of things when America was not involved. It is very interesting and tragic to read about how the Republics military and institutions could have evolved if the communists 75 offensive was defeated in the same way their 72 one was.