Today in 1969, the second Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, a massive demonstration and teach-in across the US against the US involvement in the Vietnam War, took place in Washington DC.  500,000 people took part a month after the first Moratorium, which attracted 250,000 people.  When the new Republican president, Richard Nixon, took office on 20 January 20, 1969, about 34,000 Americans had been killed fighting in Vietnam by that point.  During Nixon's first year in office, about another 10,000 Americans were killed fighting in Vietnam.  Though Nixon talked much in 1969 of his plans for "Peace with honour" and Vietnamisation, the general feeling at the time was that Nixon's policies were essentially the same as Lyndon Johnson's.

In early November 1969, two disclosures had put the wind back into the sails of the antiwar movement. Colonel Robert Rheault of the US Army Special Forces was charged with ordering the murder of a South Vietnamese official suspected of being a Viet Cong spy, which was described euphemistically in an Army report as "termination with extreme prejudice.”  More shockingly to the American people, on 12 November 1969, journalist Seymour Hersh revealed the My Lai Massacre, which had occurred on 16 March 1968, which led to Lieutenant William Calley being charged with murder.  The My Lai massacre become a symbol to the anti-war movement of the brutality of the Vietnam war and much of the success of the second Moratorium march was due to the revelation of the My Lai massacre.

The tragic Vietnam war continued till April 1975 - it had started in November 1955.  Domestic and Congressional reluctance to re-engage in the war, economic constraints and, finally, the Watergate scandal weakened and distracted Nixon.  Having rebuilt their forces and upgraded their logistics system, North Vietnamese forces triggered a major offensive in the Central Highlands in March 1975. On April 30, 1975, NVA tanks rolled through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, effectively ending the war.