Tet Offensive

Tet Offensive, military campaign of the Vietnam War (1959-1975), in which almost every major city and province in South Vietnam was attacked by the Communist forces of the National Liberation Front (NLF), with support from the North Vietnamese Peoples’ Army of Vietnam (PAVN). Although the Communist forces failed to hold the cities, the Tet Offensive helped undermine American public support for the U.S military involvement in Vietnam.

The offensive was launched on January 30, 1968, the first day of Tet, the Vietnamese festival of the lunar new year. Although the United States intelligence community received some warning that an attack might take place near the Tet holiday, the strength of the offensive took the United States troops and the South Vietnamese forces, or the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), by surprise. The campaign lasted through February before U.S. and ARVN troops recaptured the cities, inflicting severe losses on the NLF and the North Vietnamese. The February phase of the offensive received the most media attention but the campaign also continued between May and June, and then from September through October.

By mid-1967 the war in Vietnam had reached a stalemate. Throughout much of 1967 and 1968 President Lyndon Johnson relied on aerial bombing to try to turn the tide of the war. The air war did cause profound damage to North Vietnam, but it also drew a storm of international criticism.

Realizing that military victory was beyond reach, the North Vietnamese leadership in Hanoi hoped that the war’s deadlock would affect public opinion in the United States and lead to U.S. withdrawal. Leaders of the NLF in South Vietnam, however, believed that they were strong enough to stage a large-scale military campaign. Plans for the campaign went forward, but General Vo Nguyen Giap, founder of the PAVN, cautioned that the best the Tet Offensive could accomplish would be to convince the United States to de-escalate the war and enter into negotiations for peace.

In December 1967 the PAVN mounted a diversionary assault on the U.S. Marine outpost at Khe Sanh, in the northeastern part of South Vietnam. General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, believed that the North Vietnamese hoped to inflict a serious defeat on U.S. forces at Khe Sanh. Their aim, however, was to draw as many U.S. troops out of the cities as possible in preparation for the long-planned NLF offensive. Soon, over 50,000 U.S. troops were deployed near Khe Sanh, making the NLF task further south considerably easier.

Both sides in Vietnam had informally observed a truce on the Tet holiday, so over half of the ARVN had gone home on leave. For months the guerrilla fighters of the NLF had been infiltrating arms to their urban supporters, whose numbers had grown as the cities swelled with refugees from the U.S. air war in the countryside. The first attack on January 31, 1968, shocked U.S. commanders, who were utterly unprepared when 85,000 guerrillas attacked the five largest cities of South Vietnam along with another 100 municipalities. The NLF took over the U.S. Embassy in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and held it for eight hours, as U.S. news cameras filmed the action. American and Vietnamese bodies littered the embassy compound. These images shook public confidence in the U.S. government’s involvement in the war.

United States forces beat back the offensive in most areas within days, although it took three weeks for 11,000 U.S. and ARVN soldiers to dislodge 1000 NLF fighters from Saigon. The battle for the ancient imperial capital of Hue was perhaps the bloodiest of the entire war. There the NLF quickly overwhelmed ARVN forces and set up an administration with numerous supporters in the city. Official estimates vary considerably, but between 400 and 5800 South Vietnamese government agents were apparently assassinated in retaliation for collaborating with the United States, and their bodies were buried in mass graves. Another 2000 civilians disappeared, perhaps murdered by ARVN troops as the city was recaptured. Far more civilians were killed, however, by indiscriminate U.S. bombardment of the city as the 1st Marine Regiment and the 101st Airborne Brigade were ordered to retake Hue. Approximately 5000 North Vietnamese fighters died in Hue, along with 500 U.S. and ARVN soldiers. More than half of the city’s houses were destroyed, and 100,000 people were left homeless. The Imperial Palace, one of Vietnam’s architectural treasures, was reduced to ruins.

Losses during the Tet Offensive, particularly to the NLF, were high. Westmoreland announced that his strategy of attrition, or aiming for a high enemy body count, was working and that Hanoi could not continue with such losses. He urged President Johnson to commit 206,000 more troops. The support of the U.S. public, however, was waning. Influential U.S. broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite announced over the air, “we are mired in stalemate.” After hearing the broadcast President Johnson said there was “no stopping the tide against the war.” A majority of Johnson’s advisers, both in his cabinet and outside it, agreed that the United States must begin to disengage. In a pointed rejection of Westmoreland’s policies, Johnson replaced Westmoreland as commander with General Creighton Abrams in March 1968.