Between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s, more than one million Vietnamese “boat people” fled from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam by crossing the South China Sea. Some 700,000 were permanently resettled more than two dozen countries across the world. This essay compares the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees in West Germany and the United States to illuminate similarities and differences in international and local responses to the influx of this refugee population within the context of the Cold War.Covering topics such as government responses, humanitarian interventions, public perception/reception, and refugee networks in the US and West Germany, the essay emphasizes connections overlooked in previous studies that examine Vietnamese boat people resettlement in only one national context.It underscores the multilateral impacts of the Vietnamese boat people exodus and its legacies in contemporary Germany and America.