ABSTRACT
After the overthrow of the Ngo Dinh Diem regime in 1963, the anticommunist position in South Vietnam precipitously declined. The Saigon army was confused and demoralized by the disunity and disarray in its ranks, and the local officials and militia in the countryside were uncertain about how the new Saigon government would develop. Taking advantage of this paralysis, the Communist Party devised and implemented a new, more aggressive strategy designed to exploit the opportunity created by the confusion. A major escalation of military pressure was ordered, in the hope that it would fatally weaken the Saigon forces and preempt large-scale U.S. military intervention. It nearly succeeded in its objective of shattering the Saigon army, but in the process triggered the very intervention of U.S. forces that the strategy had hoped to avoid.
