Tet Offensive

Tet Offensive (1968).The attacks by Communist forces inside South Vietnam's major cities and towns that began around the Vietnamese New Year (“Tet”) of 1 February 1968 were the peak of an offensive that took place over a period of several months during the Vietnam War. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam, believed the attacks to be a last “throw of the dice” by the losing side. The attacks that Americans dubbed the “Tet Offensive” were just part of what the Communists called a “General Offensive and Uprising,” designed to jolt the war into a new phase. The offensive ultimately achieved the Communists' aim, but at a price many of them thought excessive.

The offensive had long‐term conceptual origins in Vietnam's August Revolution of 1945, in which the Communist‐led Viet Minh had instigated popular uprisings in the cities to seize power from a puppet government Japan had installed before its defeat. Two decades later, as American commitment to the anti‐Communist government in Saigon deepened in the early 1960s, the Communists looked to that earlier event for inspiration. Lacking the military power to inflict outright defeat on the American military, the Communists had somehow to destroy American confidence that “limited war” could eventually bring victory for the United States. By sending armed forces directly into the South's cities and fomenting rebellion there, the Communists hoped to pull down the Saigon government or facilitate the rise to power of neutralists who would demand the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Even if the offensive did not bring immediate victory, the Communists calculated it would allow rural forces to disrupt the pacification program, destroy the American illusion of success, and induce the United States to enter negotiations in which Hanoi could bargain from a position of strength.

The plan formally approved by the Communist Party political bureau in Hanoi in July 1967 recognized that American, allied, and Saigon forces constituted a much more formidable foe than the shaky regime the August Revolution had toppled in 1945. The offensive therefore actually began in September 1967, with artillery‐supported assaults by the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), supported from the North, on the U.S. combat bases located along route 9 just south of the demilitarized zone, and then with operations in the central highlands, to test American reactions. The tests revealed that the Americans would remain in defensive positions; and although PAVN troops would face devastating firepower, massing for attack on these positions in remote areas could lure significant forces away from population centers.

The American response encouraged the Communists to position up to 40,000 regulars of Divisions 304, 320, 325, and 324B in December 1967 around Khe Sanh, a U.S. Marine outpost near the western end of route 9. The outpost was an attractive target because it lay only fourteen kilometers beyond the terminus of an improved road over which the PAVN could move heavy equipment. Upon detecting the Communist buildup, the American command increased forces defending the base to 6,000 troops, including a battalion of Saigon's Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). After the PAVN opened the attack with a massive artillery barrage on 21 January, the United States shifted 15,000 more troops from the South's 5 northern provinces to route 9. Fifty thousand U.S. troops eventually fought at or supported the base.

Despite superficial similarities between the situation at Khe Sanh and Dien Bien Phu, where the PAVN had overrun a French force in 1954, PAVN commanders knew they could not duplicate that feat in the face of massive American air and ground firepower. The battle was worth the effort to them because of the attention and resources it drew from the lowlands. Still, their orders were to destroy if possible one or more of the route 9 bases to facilitate the movement of PAVN regulars into the South. Although unable to create a major breach, a PAVN regiment overran the Special Forces/Civil Indigenous Defense Group camp at Lang Vei, eight kilometers west of Khe Sanh, on 7 February. Soviet‐supplied PT‐76 light amphibious tanks of the People's Army made their first appearance of the war at Lang Vei.

Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence had detected preparations for attacks on urban centers, and in a few localities commanders had taken precautionary measures. But analysts did not believe the Communists were capable of achieving, or bold enough to attempt, what the evidence indicated they were planning. With General Westmoreland and Saigon's President Nguyen Van Thieu convinced that Khe Sanh was the Communists' primary target, Communist forces had begun attacking outposts around cities and towns. A mixed force of maneuver and guerrilla troops estimated at around 60,000 and composed largely of troops recruited and trained in the South, had then slipped past these outposts to enter 5 municipalities, 36 province capitals, and 64 district capitals.

In the night of 29 January, assault forces attacked government offices in Qui Nhon, Kontum, Pleiku, Darlac, and Nha Trang. Attacks in other cities began over the next two days. In Saigon, the sapper team that blasted into the U.S. Embassy compound captured the headlines, but attacks on Tan Son Nhut airfield, the ARVN general staff compound, government ministries, and the presidential palace involved larger forces and took greater effort to beat back. Tanks and helicopter gunships striking a battalion‐sized unit in Cholon leveled several city blocks. The attacks sputtered out in days, except in Hué, where a force of 7,500 Communist troops held out behind the walls of the old city until 24 February.

Only in scattered places did people join the Communists in demanding the establishment of “revolutionary administrations.” Despite initial disarray, the ARVN and Saigon government rallied rather than disintegrated. Perhaps half of the assault forces died in the attacks or retreat. Although the Communists increased control in rural areas when U.S. and Saigon forces redeployed to route 9 and the cities, they were unable to defend these gains when U.S. and ARVN units returned to the countryside.

The Communists launched follow‐up attacks against the cities in May and August, but the PAVN had taken such heavy casualties along route 9 that it could not move forward to support them, and forces attacking the lowlands suffered further grave depletion. The reasons for these disappointing results remained for years a source of controversy among the Communists themselves, who blamed inadequate PAVN involvement, too little time to organize popular participation, and decisions that left lowland forces too long in exposed positions. PAVN Gen. Tran Van Tra admitted in his memoir, Concluding the Thirty Years War (1982), that the offensive caused a decline in strength from which Communist forces did not recover for two years. With better planning, the Communists believed, the offensive could have brought the war to an end more quickly.

In the aftermath, General Westmoreland saw an opportunity to seize the initiative and requested 206,000 more troops, but for many Americans both the offensive and the request discredited claims that the war could be won soon or at an acceptable cost. Westmoreland's defenders blamed media coverage for turning public opinion against the war, but in fact the press generally accepted the official interpretation of Tet as a major military defeat for the Communists. It was evident nonetheless that the United States could not control the war's scope and duration. President Lyndon B. Johnson sought the advice of dovish civilians, announced he would not seek nomination for another term, declared a bombing halt over most of North Vietnam, and called for peace talks, which opened in May 1968. The offensive thus titled the United States away from expanding involvement and toward eventual withdrawal.
[See also News Media, War, and the Military; Vietnam War: Military and Diplomatic Course; Vietnam War: Changing Interpretations.]

Bibliography

Peter Braestrup , Big Story, 1977.
David Hunt , Remembering the Tet Offensive, Radical America (November 1977–February 1978), pp. 79–96.
Don Oberdorfer , Tet! The Turning Point in the Vietnam War, 1984.
Gabriel Kolko , Anatomy of a War, 1985.
Daniel Hallin , The Uncensored War, 1986.
William S. Turley , The Second Indochina War, 1986.
Philip B. Davidson , Vietnam at War, 1988.
Larry Berman , Lyndon Johnson's War, 1989.
James Wirtz , The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War, 1991.
Ngo Vinh Long , The Tet Offensive and Its Aftermath, in Jayne Werner and David Hunt, eds., The American War in Vietnam, 1993.
Ronnie E. Ford , Tet 1968: Understanding the Surprise, 1995.

William S. Turley