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Vietnam The Tet Offensive
In mid-1967 the costs of the war mounted daily with no
military victory in sight for either side. Against this
background, the party leadership in Hanoi decided that the time
was ripe for a general offensive in the rural areas combined with
a popular uprising in the cities. The primary goals of this
combined major offensive and uprising were to destabilize the
Saigon regime and to force the United States to opt for a
negotiated settlement. In October 1967, the first stage of the
offensive began with a series of small attacks in remote and
border areas designed to draw the ARVN and United States forces
away from the cities. The rate of infiltration of troops from the
North rose to 20,000 per month by late 1967, and the United
States command in Saigon predicted a major Communist offensive
early the following year. The DMZ area was expected to bear the
brunt of the attack. Accordingly, United States troops were sent
to strengthen northern border posts, and the security of the
Saigon area was transferred to ARVN forces. Despite warnings of
the impending offensive, in late January more than one-half of
the ARVN forces were on leave because of the approaching Tet
(Lunar New Year) holiday.
On January 31, 1968, the full-scale offensive began, with
simultaneous attacks by the communists on five major cities,
thirty-six provincial capitals, sixty-four district capitals, and
numerous villages. In Saigon, suicide squads attacked the
Independence Palace (the residence of the president), the radio
station, the ARVN's joint General Staff Compound, Tan Son Nhut
airfield, and the United States embassy, causing considerable
damage and throwing the city into turmoil. Most of the attack
forces throughout the country collapsed within a few days, often
under the pressure of United States bombing and artillery
attacks, which extensively damaged the urban areas. Hue, which
had been seized by an estimated 12,000 Communist troops who had
previously infiltrated the city, remained in communist hands
until late February. A reported 2,000 to 3,000 officials, police,
and others were executed in Hue during that time as
counterrevolutionaries.
The Tet offensive is widely viewed as a turning point in the
war despite the high cost to the communists (approximately 32,000
killed and about 5,800 captured) for what appeared at the time to
be small gains. Although they managed to retain control of some
of the rural areas, the communists were forced out of all of the
towns and cities, except Hue, within a few weaks. Nevertheless,
the offensive emphasized to the Johnson administration that
victory in Vietnam would require a greater commitment of men and
resources than the American people were willing to invest. On
March 31, 1968, Johnson announced that he would not seek his
party's nomination for another term of office, declared a halt to
the bombing of North Vietnam (except for a narrow strip above the
DMZ), and urged Hanoi to agree to peace talks. In the meantime,
with U.S. troop strength at 525,000, a request by Westmoreland
for an additional 200,000 troops was refused by a presidential
commission headed by the new United States secretary of defense,
Clark Clifford.
Following the Tet Offensive, the communists attempted to
maintain their momentum through a series of attacks directed
mainly at cities in the delta. Near the DMZ, some 15,000 PAVN and
PLAF troops were also thrown into a three-month attack on the
United States base at Khe Sanh. A second assault on Saigon,
complete with rocket attacks, was launched in May. Through these
and other attacks in the spring and summer of 1968, the
Communists kept up pressure on the battlefield in order to
strengthen their position in a projected a series of four-party
peace talks scheduled to begin in January 1969 (that called for
representatives of the United States, South Vietnam, North
Vietnam, and the National Liberation Front to meet in Paris. In
June 1969, the NLF and its allied organizations formed the
Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South
Vietnam (PRG), recognized by Hanoi as the legal government of
South Vietnam. At that time, communist losses dating from the Tet
Offensive numbered 75,000, and morale was faltering, even among
the party leadership.
Data as of December 1987
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