 Two years after the withdrawal of the last U.S. forces in 1973, Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, fell to the communists, and the South Vietnamese army surrendered in 1975.In 1976, the government of united Vietnam renamed Saigon as Hồ Chí Minh City in honor of Hồ, who died in 1969.The war left Vietnam devastated, with the total death toll standing at between 966,000 and 3.8 million, and many thousands more crippled by weapons and substances such as napalm and Agent Orange.