1968 Tet Offensive - military disaster, political victory

The Tet Offensive derives its name from the Vietnamese New Year holiday, during which the attacks occurred. As in the previous years, both sides to the conflict had wanted to declare a pause in fighting during the holidays. But beginning in the early hours of January 31, 1968, North Vietnamese forces attacked almost all major cities and dozens of military installations throughout South Vietnam.

The second Indochina war, called the "American War" in Vietnam, had been raging for 13 years before the Tet Offensive. Neither the millions of tons of American bombs nor some 500,000 US soldiers were able to secure a victory for Washington's allies in South Vietnam. The US strategy of killing more enemies than could be replaced did not work out.

Against the advice of some leading generals, the then General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Le Duan, had ordered the offensive to end the stalemate and for a resolution to the conflict. A Viet Cong commando unit even stormed the American Embassy in Saigon, killing five Americans, but failed to penetrate the main building.

Le Duan believed that the offensive would result in a South Vietnamese uprising that could overthrow the hated "puppet regime" of the South and the "American imperialists." But it proved to be a misjudgment as the war-weary populace only watched and waited. The initially rattled South Vietnamese and their American allies, however, eventually remobilized.

Within a few days, the offensive was defeated almost everywhere. It's estimated that thousands of Army of North Vietnam and Viet Cong troops were killed and injured during the offensive.

The Communist troops held fast only to the citadel of the central Vietnamese city of Hue. Upon capturing the city, they murdered some 2,800 civilians, accusing them of cooperating with the South Vietnamese regime. The ensuing fight lasted 25 days. From a purely military perspective, the Tet Offensive was a disaster for the Communists.

The Tet Offensive claimed more than 1,000 American soldiers when it first began. Like all other American war veterans, the names of the fallen are immortalized at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.

The offensive was widely covered by the American media, bringing home the brutality of the war to the American public. Edward Adams' dramatic photo of police general Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting and killing a Viet Cong officer on an open road in Saigon was testament to that.

Like his predecessors, President Lyndon B. Johnson had kept the Americans largely in the dark about the situation in Vietnam. There was talk of progress, and an end to the war. The Tet Offensive proved to be the opposite. For many Americans, Tet was no longer about victory or defeat, but only about ending the senseless slaughter.

Johnson did not run for office again, saying Vietnam put paid to that. His successor Richard Nixon intensified the bombing, and developed his policy of "Vietnamization," giving South Vietnamese soldiers increased combat roles. But Nixon could only delay the defeat. The war lasted another seven years before the last Americans retreated from Vietnam in April 1975.