ABSTRACT
The American GIs were leaving, but Vietnamese were always skeptical of promises of peace. So often, for the past two generations, from the period of the first uprisings against the French colonialists, through the Japanese occupation and the "first" Indochinese war, they had been misled and deceived. Yet, when Henry Kissinger, during the peace talks in Paris in the fall of 1972, declared that peace was "at hand," it really seemed as if Vietnam were on the threshold of a new era, not just another turn in the old war. As the peace talks dragged on and American B52s and F111s swept over North Vietnam, including Hanoi, in the Christmas bombing of December 1972, Kissinger's promise again seemed to have been merely an empty act of diplomacy. Then, when the Vietnam peace agreement was finally signed in Paris on January 27,1973, Kissinger was temporarily vindicated.
