Nguyễn Văn Thiệu was a South Vietnamese military officer and politician who was the president of South Vietnam from 1967 to 1975. He was a general in the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF), became head of a military junta in 1965, and then president after winning a rigged election in 1967. He established rule over South Vietnam until he resigned and left the nation and relocated to Taipei a few days before the fall of Saigon and the ultimate North Vietnamese victory.
Official portrait, 1969
Thiệu and US President Lyndon B. Johnson
Thiệu and Vice President Nguyễn Cao Kỳ (left) meeting US President Lyndon B. Johnson (with back to camera) in Honolulu (1968)
Thiệu takes the oath of office, 31 October 1967
South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam, was a country in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of the Cold War after the 1954 division of Vietnam. It first received international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam within the French Union, with its capital at Saigon, before becoming a republic in 1955. South Vietnam was bordered by North Vietnam to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and Thailand across the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest. Its sovereignty was recognized by the United States and 87 other nations, though it failed to gain admission into the United Nations as a result of a Soviet veto in 1957. It was succeeded by the Republic of South Vietnam in 1975. In 1976, the Republic of South Vietnam and North Vietnam merged to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
About 1 million North Vietnamese refugees left the newly created communist North Vietnam during Operation Passage to Freedom.
US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles greeting President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam in Washington DC, 8 May 1957
A woman casting her ballot in the 1967 elections
An empty Huey helicopter is jettisoned over the side of a carrier to provide room on the ship's deck for more evacuees to land.