Tet Offensive (1968): The Surprise Attack That Turned the War

The Tet Offensive was a surprise campaign launched by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong against South Vietnam and its American allies on 30-31 January 1968, during the Tet lunar new year holiday. Some 80,000 or more troops struck more than 100 cities, towns and military bases at once, including the capital Saigon. Although the attacks were defeated with heavy losses, the offensive became the political turning point of the Vietnam War.

Background: a war of claims

By late 1967 the United States had nearly 500,000 troops in South Vietnam. US commanders, led by General William Westmoreland, were fighting a war of attrition, and officials publicly said that they could see progress. In November 1967 Westmoreland told audiences in Washington that the war had reached a point where the end was coming into view.

In Hanoi, Communist Party leader Le Duan and his allies wanted a decisive blow. The plan they adopted, known as the General Offensive and General Uprising, aimed to strike the cities, destroy the South Vietnamese army’s will to fight, spark a popular uprising against the Saigon government and force the Americans to negotiate or leave. The role of the famous general Vo Nguyen Giap in planning it is still debated, as he had doubts about the strategy.

Preparations and deception

During late 1967 communist forces fought a series of battles in remote border areas, such as Dak To and Loc Ninh. In January 1968 North Vietnamese divisions surrounded the US Marine base at Khe Sanh, starting a siege on 21 January. These actions drew American attention and troops away from the cities.

Weapons and fighters were smuggled into towns hidden in vegetable carts, coffins and holiday traffic. The traditional Tet truce meant that many South Vietnamese soldiers had gone home on leave. US intelligence detected signs of a major attack, and some units were put on alert, but few expected an assault on such a scale against so many cities at once.

The attacks

In the early hours of 30 January some units in the central part of the country attacked a day early, apparently because of confusion over dates. The main wave struck on the night of 30-31 January. Attacks hit 36 of 44 provincial capitals, five of the six autonomous cities, dozens of district towns and many military bases.

In Saigon, about 19 Viet Cong sappers blew a hole in the wall of the new US Embassy compound. They never entered the main building and were killed or captured within about six hours, but television pictures of fighting at the embassy were broadcast across the United States. Other teams attacked the presidential palace, the national radio station, the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff headquarters and Tan Son Nhut air base. Fighting in parts of the city, especially the Chinese district of Cholon, lasted for weeks.

On 1 February the photographer Eddie Adams captured the South Vietnamese police chief, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, shooting a captured Viet Cong prisoner in a Saigon street. The photograph won a Pulitzer Prize and became one of the defining images of the war.

The longest battle was the Battle of Hue, the old imperial capital. Communist forces captured most of the city, including much of the Citadel, and held parts of it for about a month. US Marines and South Vietnamese troops retook it in house-to-house fighting that left much of the city in ruins. After the battle, mass graves were found containing the bodies of about 2,800 civilians killed during the occupation, with further people missing.

In most places the attackers were driven out within days. The expected popular uprising did not happen, and the South Vietnamese army, though shaken, did not collapse.

Losses

The Viet Cong bore the heaviest losses, and many of its experienced local cadres were killed. In later years North Vietnamese regulars carried more of the fighting in the South. Further offensive waves in May and August 1968, sometimes called Mini-Tet, cost both sides heavily again, and 1968 became the deadliest year of the war for American troops.

Impact on South Vietnam

The offensive caused enormous suffering in the South. Hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless, as fighting and American air and artillery strikes destroyed whole neighbourhoods in Saigon, Hue and many provincial towns. Refugee numbers rose sharply.

At the same time, the South Vietnamese government emerged in some ways stronger. Many city dwellers, who had been neutral, were angered by the attacks and the killings in Hue. President Nguyen Van Thieu’s government introduced general mobilisation in mid-1968, greatly increasing the size of the armed forces, and the South Vietnamese army, which had fought better than many expected, was gradually given more responsibility.

The Viet Cong’s political organisation in the countryside was badly weakened, partly because many of its members had come into the open during the offensive. In the following years, the South Vietnamese government and its allies extended their control over much of the rural population, even as American troop numbers began to fall.

The American reaction

The offensive came as a shock to a public that had been told the enemy was weakening. On 27 February the CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, back from Vietnam, told viewers that the war seemed “mired in stalemate” and that negotiation was the only rational way out. Reports from towns such as Ben Tre, heavily damaged in the fighting, raised further doubts.

Westmoreland and the Joint Chiefs asked for about 206,000 more troops. When the request was reported in The New York Times on 10 March, it suggested that the war was going badly. On 12 March the anti-war Senator Eugene McCarthy won about 42 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire Democratic primary against Johnson, and Robert F. Kennedy entered the race days later.

The new defense secretary, Clark Clifford, and a group of senior advisers known as the Wise Men told Johnson that the war could not be won at an acceptable cost. On 31 March 1968 Johnson announced in a televised address that he was limiting the bombing of North Vietnam under Operation Rolling Thunder, seeking talks, and would not run for re-election. Peace negotiations opened in Paris in May.

Key people

Le Duan, first secretary of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party, was the main driving force behind the offensive. Vo Nguyen Giap, the defence minister and victor of Dien Bien Phu, oversaw military preparations despite his reservations.

William Westmoreland commanded US forces and maintained that Tet was a crushing defeat for the enemy. He was succeeded by General Creighton Abrams in mid-1968. Lyndon B. Johnson saw his presidency effectively ended by the political fallout.

Hanoi’s assessment

North Vietnamese leaders later admitted privately that the offensive had fallen short. The general uprising they hoped for had not happened, the cities had not been held, and their forces in the South had suffered losses that took years to replace. Official Vietnamese histories acknowledge serious mistakes in the later waves of 1968.

Yet Hanoi also recognised the political gains. The United States had stopped escalating, agreed to talks and soon began to withdraw. From that point, North Vietnamese strategy combined fighting with negotiation, waiting for American forces to leave before a final offensive, which came in 1975.

Myths and facts

Myth: the media lost the war at Tet. Some argued that news coverage turned a military victory into a defeat. Most historians conclude that public support was already falling, and that the offensive mainly exposed the gap between official optimism and reality.

Myth: Tet was a complete military failure for Hanoi. Its military aims were not met and losses were enormous, but it achieved a major strategic effect by pushing the United States towards de-escalation.

Myth: the US Embassy was captured. Early reports suggested the attackers were inside the embassy building, but they only entered the grounds.

Timeline

• 1968, 21 January: North Vietnamese forces begin the siege of Khe Sanh.
• 1968, 30 January: Premature attacks hit several towns in central South Vietnam.
• 1968, 31 January: The main offensive strikes Saigon, Hue and over 100 other places.
• 1968, 1 February: Eddie Adams photographs General Loan shooting a prisoner in Saigon.
• 1968, 24-25 February: South Vietnamese troops retake the Imperial Palace in Hue’s Citadel.
• 1968, 27 February: Walter Cronkite calls the war a stalemate on CBS.
• 1968, 12 March: Eugene McCarthy’s strong showing in the New Hampshire primary.
• 1968, 31 March: Johnson limits the bombing and announces he will not seek re-election.
• 1968, 13 May: US and North Vietnamese delegations begin talks in Paris.

Why it matters

The Tet Offensive was a battlefield defeat for the communists that became a strategic victory. It broke American confidence in the war, ended Johnson’s political career and began the long process of US withdrawal from the Vietnam War. It remains a classic example of how public perception can shape the outcome of a conflict.