US soldiers riding an M113 APC, Vietnam, 1961.
Welcome to House of the Rising Sun! The name is derived from the American folk song, about a life gone wrong in New Orleans. It would be more fitting, for all intents and purposes of this timeline, for it to be a life gone wrong in London.
Historical Base[]
On November 1, 1955, the Second Indochina War began. More commonly known as the Vietnam War, it pitted the Communist North Vietnamese, backed by the Soviet Union and China, against the democratic South Vietnamese, backed by America and the Free World. In our timeline, the war ended on April 30, 1975, with the fall of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam.
However, in this timeline, there is no North Vietnamese victory.
Divergence[]
Clarence Watson, the murderer of Ho Chi Minh, photographed here in 1909.
In 1911, Ho Chi Minh, under the fake name of Ba, attempted to get a job with a French steamer. In OTL, he got this job, eventually ending up in France, where he became a Socialist under the fake name of Nguyen Ai Quoc. In this timeline, however, while he was living in London, he was murdered by a British nationalist, a man named Clarence Watson. Watson was charged with first-degree murder, and was sentenced to life in prison. With Ho Chi Minh dead, he never discovered socialism, and never came to power as a Communist dictator.
Repercussions[]
The reunification flag under Duong Van Minh.
As Ho Chi Minh was dead, he never came to power in North Vietnam. Le Duan, a Vietnamese politician (in OTL, the leader of Vietnam after Ho's death) came to power instead. Le was a less effective Communist leader than Ho, who, due to a miscommunication error with the treasury, ended up causing massive hyperinflation, leading to four major famines in between 1950 and 1959. However, as in OTL, Le Duan did invade South Vietnam in 1955, with massive conscription of the Vietnamese populace. Food riots broke out in Hanoi as the war stretched into 1956 and 1957. Even with Soviet and Chinese support, and wartime production, the Vietnamese economy was nearly beyond repair, leading to a crushing defeat from South Vietnam in Da Nang in 1959. In 1960, five years after the war began, the United States sent several thousand ground troops, supported by a large number of armored vehicles, along with hundreds of attack helicopters, utility helicopters, bombers, fighters, and everything in between. The Viet Cong posed a threat to American forces in South Vietnam, but, as the North Vietnamese were preoccupied, the VC were mostly on their own. In 1963, North Vietnam suffered another massive defeat at Hue City, further worsening the problems in both the economy and the military. In 1965, Le Duan was assassinated by an anti-war activist, which was the straw that broke the camel's back. After Le's death, the North Vietnamese government collapsed in on itself, driving the country into a state of chaos. An emergency government under Truong Chinh negotiated with the South Vietnamese and American governments for peace. The South Vietnamese government desired a harsh treaty with massive reparations, though the United States toned the terms down in the Hanoi Treaty. The Second Indochina War ended officially on February 12, 1966, with Vietnam being united under a democratic government led by Ngo Dinh Diem. Ngo Dinh was killed in a coup in 1969, and Duong Van Minh took power.