THE COURSE OF THE CAMBODIAN REVOLUTION.
The Khmer Rouge revolution had begun before the American bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The massive bombings and the corruption of the Lon Nol military and civil administration, "made it easier for the Khmer Rouge to attract popular support and march victoriously into Phnom Penh" allowing them to take control over the government.
The United States of America (USA) in the Vietnam War had left Cambodia devastated. Peasants had been forced off their land because of the bombing and other military operations and concentrated in to the larger towns and the city of Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh was separated from the rest of the world and was supplied only by airlifted rice. The city's population had risen from 600,000 to around two million people. Children wandered the street looking for food and the hospital overflowed with wounded from the bombing. More then a million people had been "killed, wounded or maimed" in the months before the fall of the Lon Nol government. When the Khmer Rouge soldiers arrived in Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, they were "cheered by many Khmer and Foreigners alike" . .
The Khmer Rouge promised to return Cambodia to the "glorious days of Angkor" , the ancient Khmer empire, and to return Cambodia to a "traditional agricultural and class-free society" , raising the living standards of the people. To achieve this, the lives of the urban and middle class people and employees of Lon Nol's government, were considered "expendable" . .
A day after their entry into Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge evacuated the city, "breaking up families, clearing hospitals and marching the entire population into the countryside" . This was the first act of power the people of Cambodia injured from "Angkar", "the organisation that now controlled their lives" . Any who challenged "Angkar" were executed. The calendar had been set back and "Year Zero" had begun.