There doesn’t seem to be much action on this forum so I thought I’d try to generate some as the Vietnam War is almost as high in my interests as WWII. Since there seemed to by some discussion on Tet I thought I’d start there.
In everthing I have read it is agreed that Tet 1968 was a major turning point of the war. It was a military failure and a political success all at the same time.
Prior to to the Tet Offensive the majority of the enemy faced by the Americans and her compatriots were Viet Cong Guerrilas. This was the first time America had engaged an enemy in this kind of war fair on this scale. American doctrine was not prepared for it. American doctrine of the time placed an emphasis on organized battle fronts that could be dominated by superior weapons and tactics. Instead they found themselves engaging an enemy that refused to recognize the traditional battle front philosophy. As a result the entirety of South Vietnam was in a sense the battle front.
The Tet Offensive was an attempt to engage the Americans and allies in a decisive battle. It was hoped that the people of South Vietnam would rise up to join the attackers (a seemingly recurrent hope of guerrila fighters). They hoped that the poeple would revolt against the current regime and at the same time convince the Americans that the war was unwinnable. The attack was to led off by the Viet Cong. The V.C. were to begin the attack followed by the North Vietnamese Army. However, the V.C. attack were successfully reppelled everywhere except Saigon and Hue. The NVA was unable to capitalize on the elemant of suprise and did not engage. This led the near decimation of the V.C. They never recovered from the loss of both men and materiel.
Since there was no general uprsing and they failed to secure any of their objectives the Tet Offensive was a military failure. However it was a critical point for the US opinion. It was at this point that American losses exceeded the losses of the Korean war. Public opinion for the war took a nose dive in the US. Without the support of the American public the war was destined to be a politcal loss no matter the amount of military successes.
Ironically had the American’s stayed in the fight they would have seen their battle front philosophy come to fruition and may have been able to win the war. By 1972 over 80% of fighting was being done by the NVA in an organized front style push to the south. It was a style the American’s were accustomed to and might have able to combat effectively. But by then support for the war had been lost. Morale both in the American people and american troops was virtually non-existent. Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap’s prediction that the American people would not tolerate a prolonged high casualty war were correct.
