remaining territory still held the majority of the population. It consisted of south-eastern Cambodia - roughly a triangle from Phnom Penh in the north via Sihanoukville in the south to the Vietnamese border in the east. By 1973 the CPNLAF controlled about 60 percent of the country's territory and 25 percent of the population. CPNLAF began its offensive on Phnom Penh at New Year 1975 - by then the last remnant of Khmer Republic territory. Khmer Rouge forces slowly encircled the city as all roads and riverine routes were cut. By early April most defensive positions had been overrun with FANK units annihilated and supplies exhausted. On 17 April the Khmer Republic fell and FANK was totally crushed, beaten by a disciplined enemy army in a conventional war of movement and manoeuvre. Cambodian Civil War Military developments under the Khmer Rouge The 68,000 troops of Democratic Kampuchea were led by a small group of intellectuals, inspired by Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China who aimed to convert Cambodia into an agrarian Utopia. With help from the Vietnamese, indoctrinated and highly dedicated to Maoist communist ideology, a handful of loose companies, recruited from peasantry developed into disciplined forces, trained in guerrilla warfare as well as in modern manoeuvre warfare. When North Vietnamese combat divisions had withdrawn from Cambodia by the end of 1972 these forces defeated FANK - the regular army of Cambodia on their own within 2 years. In 1975 that marked the beginning of Democratic Kampuchea, the CPNLAF (Cambodian People's National Liberation Armed Forces) were renamed RAK (Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea) once again. Led by long-time commander and then Minister of Defense Son Sen, RAK consisted of 230 battalions in 35 to 40 regiments in 12 to 14 brigades. The command structure in units was firmly based on an extreme form of peasant communist ideology with three-person committees where the political commissar ranked highest. The country was divided into military zones and special sectors, the boundaries of which changed slightly over the years. One of RAK's first tasks upon military and political consolidation, was the wholesale and summary execution of former FANK officers and governments officials and their families. The Khmers Rouge units were led by secretaries of the various military zones who exerted supreme political and military power. A national army was established in order to enforce discipline and to separate formerly autonomously operating forces as troops from