Taken from The Bloodbath That Wasn't by W. D. Ehrhart (reviewer):
Those Who Stayed: A Vietnam Diary
by Claudia Krich
(University of Virginia Press, 2025)
From the very beginning of Richard Nixon's presidency until the end of the Vietnam War and after, Americans and Vietnamese were told over and over again that if the Saigon regime lost the war, there would be a communist "bloodbath" in the South.
In a 1972 speech, for instance, Nixon declared that if the war were lost, an "inevitable bloodbath . . . would follow for hundreds of thousands who have dared to oppose Communist aggression."
Speaking at Brandeis University after the war ended, historian Howard Zinn stated that "rumors of a 'bloodbath' by the advancing armies spread panic in Saigon and brought thousands of Vietnamese crowding hysterically around the American Embassy, seeking evacuation. Secretary of Defense [James] Schlesinger spoke of 200,000 killed if the communists won.... Read More
