On April 30, 1975, advancing North Vietnamese Army tanks rolled into Saigon, paving the way for the South Vietnamese surrender and the end of the Vietnam War—a war which claimed nearly four million lives in the name of freedom, communism, or democracy. It depends who is telling the story. This program documents the story from the beginning, in 1941, when the only harassment of occupying Japanese forces was by Ho Chi Minh’s guerrillas, backed by the U.S. When the French returned after the end of World War II, Ho had proclaimed an independent republic with himself as president; efforts to negotiate independence within the French Union broke down and fighting began between the French and Ho’s National Liberation Movement, the Vietminh. The program covers the eight-year-long war with the French; the division of Indochina into Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos; the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu; the partitioning of Vietnam; the Geneva Conference; the unraveling of the South Vietnamese government and the arrival of increasing numbers of American advisers; the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu; the death of Ho Chi Minh; and the role of Prince Sihanouk and Cambodia. The program follows the escalation of war, from the presence of American naval vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, the battles from the air and in the jungles, the Tet offensive, the evacuation of American forces, and the North’s immediate and intense efforts to remove all traces of the vanquished South Vietnamese regime. (28 minutes, b&w/color)