Tet Offensive

The Tet Offensive was both a major escalation and one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Viet Cong (VC) launched a surprise attack on 30 and 31 January 1968 against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the United States Armed Forces and their allies, targeting military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. The name is the truncated version of the Lunar New Year festival name in Vietnamese, Tết Nguyên Đán, a holiday period when most ARVN personnel were on leave. The North Vietnamese Politburo and leader Lê Duẩn intended to trigger political instability and hoped that mass armed assaults on urban centers would trigger defections and uprisings. The offensive was launched prematurely in the early morning hours of 30 January in large parts of the I and II Corps Tactical Zones of South Vietnam. This allowed allied forces some time to prepare defensive measures. When the main operation began during the early morning of 31 January, the offensive was countrywide; 77,000 PAVN/VC troops struck more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 of 44 provincial capitals, 5 of 6 autonomous cities, 72 of 245 district towns, and the capital Saigon. It was the largest military operation conducted by either side to that point in the war. Hanoi launched the offensive in the belief it would trigger a popular uprising leading to the collapse of the South Vietnamese government. Although the initial attacks stunned the allies and they lost control of several cities temporarily, they quickly regrouped, repelled the attacks, and inflicted heavy casualties on PAVN/VC forces. The popular uprising anticipated by Hanoi never materialized. During the Battle of Huế, intense fighting lasted for a month, resulting in the destruction of the city. During its occupation, PAVN/VC forces executed thousands of people in the Massacre at Huế. Around the American combat base at Khe Sanh, fighting continued for two more months. The offensive was a military defeat for North Vietnam, and neither uprisings nor ARVN unit defections occurred in South Vietnam. However, it had far-reaching consequences on the views of the Vietnam War held by the American public and the international community. The offensive had a strong effect on the U.S. government and shocked the American public, which had been led to believe by its political and military leaders that the North Vietnamese were being defeated and incapable of launching such an ambitious military operation. American public support for the war declined as a result of the Tet casualties and the escalation of draft calls. Subsequently, the Johnson administration sought negotiations to end the war. Shortly before the 1968 United States presidential election, Republican candidate and former vice president Richard Nixon discouraged South Vietnamese president Nguyễn Văn Thiệu from cooperating in the negotiations, to cast doubt on Johnson's ability to bring peace. The name "Tet Offensive" usually refers to the January–February 1968 offensive, but also can be extended to cover all of the 21 weeks of intense combat after the initial attacks in January (including the "Mini-Tet" offensive in May), or the Phase III offensive in August.

Background

=== South Vietnam political context === The years prior to the Tet Offensive were marked by political instability and a series of coups after the 1963 South Vietnamese coup. In 1966, the leadership in South Vietnam, represented by the Head of State Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ were persuaded to commit to democratic reforms in an effort to stabilize the political situation during a conference in Honolulu. Prior to 1967, the South Vietnamese constituent assembly was in the process of drafting a new constitution and setting eventual elections. After the 1967 South Vietnamese presidential election, the South Vietnamese political situation looked increasingly stable. Rivalries between the generals were becoming less chaotic, and Thiệu and Kỳ formed a joint ticket for the election. Despite efforts by North Vietnam to disrupt elections, higher than usual turnouts marked a shift towards a more democratic structure and ushered in a period of political stability after the instability that had characterized the preceding years. Protests, campaigning, and the atmosphere of elections were interpreted by the Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam and Lê Duẩn as signs the population would embrace a 'general uprising' against the government of South Vietnam. The Politburo sought to exploit perceived instability and maintain political weakness in South Vietnam.

United States war strategy

During late 1967, the question of whether the U.S. strategy of attrition was working in South Vietnam weighed heavily on the minds of the American public and the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson. General William C. Westmoreland, the commander of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), believed that if a "crossover point" could be reached, meaning the number of communist troops killed or captured during military operations exceeded those recruited or replaced, the Americans would win the war. There was a discrepancy, however, between the order of battle estimates of the MACV and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) concerning the strength of VC guerrilla forces within South Vietnam. In September, members of the MACV intelligence services and the CIA met to prepare a Special National Intelligence Estimate that would be used by the administration to gauge U.S. success in the conflict.

Provided with an enemy intelligence windfall collected during Operations Cedar Falls and Junction City, the CIA members of the group believed the number of VC guerrillas, irregulars, and cadre within the South could be as high as 430,000. The MACV Combined Intelligence Center, on the other hand, maintained the number could be no more than 300,000. Westmoreland was deeply concerned about the possible perceptions of the American public to such an increased estimate since communist troop strength was routinely provided to reporters during press briefings. According to MACV's chief of intelligence, General Joseph A. McChristian, the new figures "would create a political bombshell", since they demonstrated the North Vietnamese "had the capability and the will to continue a protracted war of attrition". In May, MACV attempted to reach a compromise with the CIA by maintaining VC militias did not constitute a fighting force but were essentially low-level fifth columnists used for information collection. With the groups deadlocked, George Carver, CIA Special Assistant for Vietnam Affairs, represented the CIA in the last stage of the negotiations. In September, Carver devised a compromise: The CIA would drop its insistence on including the irregulars in the final tally of forces and add a prose addendum to the estimate explaining the agency's position. George Allen, Carver's deputy, placed responsibility for the agency's capitulation with Richard Helms, the director of the CIA. He believed that "it was a political problem ... [Helms] didn't want the agency ... contravening the policy interest of the administration." During the second half of 1967, the administration had become alarmed by criticism, both inside and outside the government, and by reports of declining public support for its Vietnam policies. According to public opinion polls, the percentage of Americans who believed the U.S. had made a mistake by sending troops to Vietnam had risen from 25 percent in 1965 to 45 percent by December 1967. This trend was fueled not by a belief that the struggle was not worthwhile, but by mounting casualty figures, rising taxes, and the feeling there was no end to the war in sight. A poll taken in November indicated that 55 percent wanted a tougher war policy, exemplified by the public belief that "it was an error for us to have gotten involved in Vietnam in the first place. But now that we're there, let's win—or get out." This prompted the administration to launch a so-called "success offensive", a concerted effort to alter the widespread public perception that the war had reached a stalemate and to convince the American people that the administration's policies were succeeding. Under the leadership of National Security Advisor Walt W. Rostow, the news media then was inundated by a wave of effusive optimism. Every statistical indicator of progress, from "kill ratios" and "body counts" to village pacification, was fed to the press and to the Congress. "We are beginning to win this struggle", asserted Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey on NBC's Today show in mid-November. "We are on the offensive. The territory is being gained. We are making steady progress." At the end of November, the campaign reached its climax when Johnson summoned Westmoreland and the new U.S. Ambassador, Ellsworth Bunker, to Washington, D.C., for what was billed as a "high-level policy review". Upon their arrival, the two men bolstered the administration's claims of success. From Saigon, pacification chief Robert Komer stated the Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS) pacification program in the countryside was succeeding, and that sixty-eight percent of the South Vietnamese population was under the control of Saigon while only seventeen percent was under the control of the VC. General Bruce Palmer Jr., one of Westmoreland's three Field Force commanders, claimed that "the Viet Cong has been defeated" and that "He can't get food and he can't recruit. He has been forced to change his strategy from trying to control the people on the coast to try to survive in the mountains." Westmoreland was even more emphatic in his assertions. At an address at the National Press Club on 21 November, he reported that, as of the end of 1967, the communists were "unable to mount a major offensive ... I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing...We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view." By the end of the year the administration's approval rating had crept up by eight percent, but an early January Gallup poll indicated that forty-seven percent of the American public still disapproved of the President's handling of the war. The American public, "more confused than convinced, more doubtful than despairing ... adopted a 'wait and see' attitude." During a discussion with an interviewer from Time magazine, Westmoreland dared the communists to launch an attack: "I hope they try something because we are looking for a fight."

North Vietnam

=== Party politics === Planning in Hanoi for a winter-spring offensive during 1968 had begun in early 1967 and continued until early the following year. According to American sources, there has been an extreme reluctance among Vietnamese historians to discuss the decision-making process that led to the general offensive and uprising, even decades after the event. In official Vietnamese literature, the decision to launch the Tet offensive is usually presented as the result of a perceived U.S. failure to win the war quickly, the failure of the American bombing campaign against North Vietnam, and the anti-war sentiment that pervaded the population of the U.S. The decision to launch the general offensive, however, was much more complicated. The decision signaled the end of a bitter, decade-long debate within the North Vietnamese Government between two, and later three, factions. The moderates believed that the economic viability of North Vietnam should come before support of a massive, conventional southern war and they generally followed the Soviet line of peaceful coexistence by reunifying Vietnam through political means. Heading this faction were party theorist Trường Chinh and Minister of Defense Võ Nguyên Giáp. The militant faction, on the other hand, tended to follow the foreign policy line of the People's Republic of China and called for the reunification of the nation by military means and that no negotiations should be undertaken with the Americans. This group was led by Communist Party First Secretary Lê Duẩn and Lê Đức Thọ (no relation). From the early to mid-1960s, the militants had dictated the direction of the war in South Vietnam. General Nguyễn Chí Thanh, the head of Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN), headquarters for the South, was another prominent militant. The followers of the Chinese line centered their strategy against the U.S. and its allies on large-scale, main force actions rather than the protracted guerrilla war espoused by Mao Zedong. By 1966–1967, however, after suffering massive casualties, stalemate on the battlefield, and destruction of the northern economy by U.S. aerial bombing, there was a dawning realization that if current trends continued, Hanoi would eventually lack the resources necessary to affect the military situation in the South. As a result, there were more strident calls by the moderates for negotiations and a revision of strategy. They felt a return to guerrilla tactics was more appropriate since the U.S. could not be defeated conventionally. They also complained that the policy of rejecting negotiations was in error. The Americans could only be worn down in a war of wills during a period of "fighting while talking". During 1967 things had become so bad on the battlefield that Lê Duẩn ordered Thanh to incorporate aspects of protracted guerrilla warfare into his strategy. During the same period, a counter-attack was launched by a new, third faction (the centrists) led by President Ho Chi Minh, Lê Đức Thọ, and Foreign Minister Nguyễn Duy Trinh, who called for negotiations. From October 1966 through April 1967, a very public debate over military strategy took place in print and via radio between Thanh and his rival for military power, Giáp. Giáp had advocated a defensive, primarily guerrilla strategy against the U.S. and South Vietnam. Thanh's position was that Giáp and his adherents were centered on their experiences during the First Indochina War and that they were too "conservative and captive to old methods and past experience... mechanically repeating the past." The arguments over domestic and military strategy also had a foreign policy element, as North Vietnam, like South Vietnam, was largely dependent on outside military and economic aid. The vast majority of North Vietnam's military equipment was provided by either the Soviet Union or China. Beijing advocated that North Vietnam conduct a protracted war on the Maoist model, fearing that a conventional conflict might draw China in, as had happened in the Korean War. They also resisted the idea of negotiating with the allies. Moscow, on the other hand, advocated negotiations, but simultaneously armed Hanoi's forces to conduct a conventional war on the Soviet model. North Vietnamese foreign policy therefore consisted of maintaining a critical balance between war policy, internal and external policies, domestic adversaries, and foreign allies with "self-serving agendas." To "break the will of their domestic opponents and reaffirm their autonomy vis-à-vis their foreign allies", hundreds of pro-Soviet, party moderates, military officers, and intelligentsia were arrested on 27 July 1967, during what came to be called the Revisionist Anti-Party Affair. All of the arrests were based on the individual's stance on the Politburo's choice of tactics and strategy for the proposed general offensive. This move cemented the position of the militants as Hanoi's strategy: the rejection of negotiations, the abandonment of protracted warfare, and the focus on the offensive in the towns and cities of South Vietnam. A second wave of arrests occurred in November and December.

General offensive and uprising

The operational plan for the general offensive and uprising originated as the "COSVN proposal" at Thanh's southern headquarters in April 1967 and was relayed to Hanoi the following month. Thanh was then ordered to the capital to explain his concept in person to the Military Central Commission. At a meeting in July, Thanh briefed the plan to the Politburo. On the evening of 6 July, after receiving permission to begin preparations for the offensive, Thanh attended a party and died of a heart attack after drinking too much. An alternative account is that Thanh died of injuries sustained in a U.S. bombing raid on COSVN after having been evacuated from Cambodia. After cementing their position during the Party crackdown, the militants sped up planning for a major conventional offensive to break the military deadlock. They concluded the Saigon government and the U.S. presence were so unpopular with the population of the South that a broad-based attack would spark a spontaneous uprising of the population, which, if the offensive was successful, would enable the North Vietnamese to sweep to a quick, decisive victory. Their basis for this conclusion included: a belief that the South Vietnamese military was no longer combat-effective; the results of the 1967 presidential election (in which the Thiệu/Kỳ ticket had only received 24 percent of the popular vote); the Buddhist crises of 1963 and 1966; well-publicized anti-war demonstrations in Saigon; and continuous criticism of the Thiệu government in the southern press. Launching such an offensive would also put an end to what had been described as "dovish calls for talks, criticism of military strategy, Chinese diatribes of Soviet perfidy, and Soviet pressure to negotiate—all of which needed to be silenced."

In October, the Politburo decided on the Tet holiday as the launch date and met again in December to reaffirm its decision and formalize it at the 14th Plenary session of the Party Central Committee in January 1968. The resulting Resolution 14 was a major blow to domestic opposition and "foreign obstruction". Concessions had been made to the center group, however, by agreeing negotiations were possible, but the document essentially focused on the creation of "a spontaneous uprising in order to win a decisive victory in the shortest time possible." Contrary to Western belief, Giáp did not plan or command the offensive himself. Thanh's original plan was elaborated on by a party committee headed by Thanh's deputy, Phạm Hùng, and then modified by Giáp. The Defense Minister may have been convinced to toe the line by the arrest and imprisonment of most of the members of his staff during the Revisionist Anti-Communist Party Affair. Although Giáp went to work "reluctantly, under duress", he may have found the task easier due to the fact he was faced with a fait accompli. Since the Politburo had already approved the offensive, all he had to do was make it work. He combined guerrilla operations into a conventional military offensive and shifted the burden of sparking the popular uprising to the VC. If it worked, all would be well and good. If it failed, it would be a failure only for the Communist Party militants. For the moderates and centrists, it offered the prospect of negotiations and a possible end to the American bombing of the North. Only in the eyes of the militants did the offensive become a "go for broke" effort. Others in the Politburo were willing to settle for a much less ambitious "victory".

The PAVN official history states the objectives of the Tet offensive were to: annihilate and cause the total disintegration of the bulk of the puppet army, overthrow the "puppet" (South Vietnamese) regime at all administrative levels, and place all government power in the hands of the people; annihilate a significant portion of the American military's troop strength and destroy a significant portion of his war equipment in order to prevent the American forces from being able to carry out their political and military missions; and crush the American will to commit aggression and force the United States to accept defeat in South Vietnam and end all hostile actions against North Vietnam. In addition, this would achieve the immediate goals of the revolution, which were independence, democracy, peace, and neutrality in South Vietnam, and then move toward achieving peace and national unification. The operation would involve a preliminary phase, with diversionary attacks would be launched in the border areas of South Vietnam to draw American attention and forces away from the cities. The general offensive and uprising would then commence with simultaneous attacks on major allied bases and most urban areas, and with particular emphasis on the cities of Saigon and Huế. Concurrently, a substantial threat would have to be made against the U.S. Khe Sanh Combat Base. The Khe Sanh operation would draw PAVN forces away from the offensive into the cities, but Giáp considered it necessary to protect his supply lines and divert American attention. Attacks on other U.S. forces were of secondary, or even tertiary importance, since Giáp considered his main objective to be weakening or destroying the South Vietnamese military and government through popular revolt. The offensive, therefore, was aimed at influencing the South Vietnamese public. There is conflicting evidence as to whether, or to what extent, the offensive was intended to influence either the March primaries or the November presidential election in the U.S.

The offensives of 1968 had three distinct phases: Phase I, scheduled to begin on 31 January (though some attacks were launched prematurely on 30 January), would be a countrywide assault on the cities, conducted primarily by VC forces. Concurrently, a propaganda offensive to induce ARVN troops to desert and the South Vietnamese population to rise up against the government would be launched. If outright victory was not achieved, it might still lead to the creation of a coalition government and the withdrawal of the Americans. If the general offensive failed to achieve these purposes, follow-up operations would be conducted to wear down the enemy and lead to a negotiated settlement. Phase II began on 5 May and Phase III on 17 August. Preparations for the offensive were already underway. The logistical build-up began in mid-year, and by January 1968, 81,000 tons of supplies and 200,000 troops, including seven complete infantry regiments and 20 independent battalions made the trip south on the Ho Chi Minh trail. This logistical effort also involved re-arming the VC with new AK-47 assault rifles and B-40 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, which gave them superior firepower against the ARVN. To pave the way and to confuse the allies as to its intentions, Hanoi launched a diplomatic offensive. Foreign Minister Trinh announced on 30 December that Hanoi would rather than could open negotiations if the U.S. unconditionally ended Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign against North Vietnam. This announcement provoked a flurry of diplomatic activity during the last weeks of the year. South Vietnamese military intelligence estimated PAVN/VC forces in South Vietnam at the end of 1967 totaled 323,000 men, including 130,000 regulars (this figure did not distinguish PAVN from VC), 160,000 guerrillas and members of the infrastructure, and 33,000 service and support troops. They were organized into nine divisions composed of 35 infantry and 20 artillery or anti-aircraft artillery regiments, which were, in turn, composed of 230 infantry and six sapper battalions. MACV intelligence estimated total PAVN/VC forces in January 1968, on the eve of the offensive, at 225,346, of whom 55,744 were in PAVN units, and another 10,000 to 12,000 were North Vietnamese serving in Viet Cong units. This total included 115,016 regulars, 72,605 guerrillas, and 37,725 service and support troops. MACV believed the infrastructure had a strength of 84,000, but did not include these in the figure it called "grand total." Including the infrastructure would have raised the total to 309,346. MACV decided long afterward that its January 1968 figures had been serious underestimates, and that actual PAVN/VC strength (not including infrastructure) in January 1968 had been 287,465, of which 155,945 were regulars.

U.S. unpreparedness

=== Suspicions and diversions === Signs of impending communist action were noticed by allied intelligence organizations in Saigon. During the late summer and fall of 1967 both South Vietnamese and U.S. intelligence agencies collected clues that indicated a significant shift in communist strategic planning. By mid-December, mounting evidence convinced many in Washington and Saigon something big was underway. During the last three months of the year intelligence agencies had detected signs of a major North Vietnamese military buildup. In addition to captured documents (a copy of Resolution 13, for example, was captured by early October), observations of enemy logistical operations were also quite clear: in October, the number of trucks observed heading south through Laos on the Ho Chi Minh trail jumped from the previous monthly average of 480 to 1,116. By November this total reached 3,823 and, in December, 6,315. On 20 December, Westmoreland cabled Washington that he expected the PAVN/VC "to undertake an intensified countrywide effort, perhaps a maximum effort, over a relatively short period of time."

Despite all the warning signs, however, the allies were still surprised by the scale and scope of the offensive. According to ARVN Colonel Hoang Ngoc Lung the reason was allied intelligence methodology itself, which tended to estimate the enemy's probable course of action based upon their capabilities, not their intentions. Since, in the allied estimation, the communists hardly had the capability to launch such an ambitious enterprise: "There was little possibility that the enemy could initiate a general offensive, regardless of his intentions." The answer could also be partially explained by the lack of coordination and cooperation between competing intelligence branches, both South Vietnamese and American. The situation from the U.S. perspective was summed up by an MACV intelligence analyst: "If we'd gotten the whole battle plan, it wouldn't have been believed. It wouldn't have been credible to us." The Tet offensive would later be used in a textbook at West Point as an example of "an allied intelligence failure to rank with Pearl Harbor in 1941 or the Ardennes offensive in 1944." Lieutenant Colonel Dave R. Palmer: Current Readings in Military History. From early to late 1967, the U.S. command in Saigon was perplexed by a series of attacks initiated by the PAVN/VC in the border regions. On 24 April a U.S. Marine Corps patrol prematurely triggered a PAVN offensive aimed at taking Khe Sanh Combat Base, the western anchor of the Marines' defensive positions in Quảng Trị Province. For 49 days during early September and lasting into October, the PAVN began shelling the U.S. Marine outpost of Con Thien, just south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The intense shelling (100–150 rounds per day) prompted Westmoreland to launch Operation Neutralize, an intense aerial bombardment campaign of 4,000 sorties into and just north of the DMZ. On 27 October, an ARVN battalion at Sông Bé, the capital of Phước Long Province, came under attack by an entire PAVN regiment. Two days later, another PAVN regiment attacked a U.S. Special Forces border outpost at Lộc Ninh, in Bình Long Province. This attack sparked a ten-day battle drawing in elements of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division and the ARVN 18th Division and left 800 PAVN troops dead at its conclusion. The most severe of what came to be known as "the Border Battles" erupted during October and November around Dak To, another border outpost in Kontum Province. The clashes there between the four regiments of the PAVN B3 Front against the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, four ARVN infantry/airborne battalions, and the reinforced U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade lasted for 22 days. By the time the fighting was over, between 1,200 and 1,600 PAVN and 262 U.S. troops had been killed. MACV intelligence was confused by the possible motives of the North Vietnamese in initiating such large-scale actions in remote regions where U.S. artillery and aerial firepower could be applied indiscriminately. By their estimation, tactically and strategically, these operations made no sense. From the North Vietnamese perspective they had accomplished the first stage of their plan: to fix the attention of the U.S. command on the borders and draw the bulk of U.S. forces away from the heavily populated coastal lowlands and cities. Westmoreland was most concerned with the situation at Khe Sanh, where, on 21 January 1968, a force estimated at 20,000–40,000 PAVN troops had besieged the U.S. Marine garrison. MACV was convinced the PAVN planned to stage an attack and overrun the base as a prelude to an all-out effort to seize the two northernmost provinces of South Vietnam. To deter any such possibility, he deployed 250,000 men, including half of MACV's U.S. maneuver battalions, to I Corps. This course of events disturbed Lieutenant General Frederick Weyand, commander of U.S. forces in III Corps, which included the sensitive Capital Military District. Weyand, a former intelligence officer, was suspicious of the pattern of communist activities in his area of responsibility and notified Westmoreland of his concerns on 10 January. Westmoreland agreed with his estimate and ordered 15 U.S. battalions to redeploy from positions near the Cambodian border back to the outskirts of Saigon. When the offensive did begin, a total of 27 allied maneuver battalions defended the city and the surrounding area. This redeployment may have been one of the most critical tactical decisions of the war.

Before the offensive

By the beginning of January 1968, the U.S. had 331,098 Army personnel and 78,013 Marines in nine divisions, an armored cavalry regiment, and two separate brigades in South Vietnam. They were joined there by the 1st Australian Task Force, a Royal Thai Army regiment, two Republic of Korea Army infantry divisions, and the Republic of Korea Marine Corps brigade. South Vietnamese strength totaled 350,000 regulars in the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. They were in turn supported by the 151,000-man South Vietnamese Regional Forces and 149,000-man South Vietnamese Popular Forces, which were the equivalent of regional and local militias. In the days immediately preceding the offensive, the preparedness of allied forces was relatively relaxed. Hanoi had announced in October it would observe a seven-day truce from 27 January to 3 February for the Tet holiday, and the South Vietnamese military made plans to allow leave for approximately half of its forces. General Westmoreland, who had already cancelled the truce in I Corps, requested that South Vietnam cancel the upcoming cease-fire, but President Thiệu (who had already reduced the cease-fire to 36 hours), refused to do so, claiming it would damage troop morale and only benefit communist propagandists. On 28 January, eleven VC cadres were captured in the city of Qui Nhơn carrying two pre-recorded audio tapes whose message appealed to the populace in "already occupied Saigon, Huế, and Da Nang". The following afternoon, General Cao Văn Viên, chief of the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff, ordered his four Corps commanders to place their troops on alert. There was still a lack of a sense of urgency on the part of the allies. If Westmoreland had a grasp of the potential danger, he did not communicate it clearly others. On the evening of 30 January, 200 U.S. officers—all of whom served on the MACV intelligence staff—attended a pool party at their quarters in Saigon. According to James Meecham, an analyst at the Combined Intelligence Center who attended the party: "I had no conception Tet was coming, absolutely zero ... Of the 200-odd officers present, not one I talked to knew Tet was coming, without exception." Westmoreland also failed to communicate his concerns adequately to Washington. Although he had warned the President between 25 and 30 January that "widespread" communist attacks were in the offing, his admonitions were so oblique or so hedged with official optimism that even the administration was unprepared. No one—in either Washington or Vietnam—was expecting what happened. Weyand invited CBS News Correspondent John Laurence and Washington Post reporter Don Oberdorfer to his III Corps headquarters in the week before the Tet offensive to alert them that a major enemy attack was coming "just before or just after Tet." He said the Vietnamese had too much respect for the holiday to attack during Tet itself. Weyand said he had moved 30 U.S. and South Vietnamese battalions closer to Saigon to defend the city.

== Offensive == "Crack the Sky, Shake the Earth" The first wave of attacks began shortly after midnight on 30 January as five provincial capitals in II Corps and Da Nang, in I Corps, were attacked. Nha Trang, headquarters of the U.S. I Field Force, was the first to be hit, followed shortly by Buôn Ma Thuột, Kon Tum, Hội An, Tuy Hòa, Da Nang, Qui Nhơn, and Pleiku. Typically these were battalion or multi-battalion attacks, sometimes preceded by mortar or rocket bombardments. The operations, however, were not well coordinated at the local level. By daylight almost all communist forces had been repelled from their objectives. In Nha Trang, 377 Vietcong had been killed and another 77 captured, while the ARVN garrison had lost 88 killed and another 32 civilian fatalities. General Phillip B. Davidson, the new MACV chief of intelligence, notified Westmoreland that "This is going to happen in the rest of the country tonight and tomorrow morning." All U.S. forces were placed on maximum alert and similar orders were issued to all ARVN units. The allies, however, still responded without any real sense of urgency. Orders cancelling leaves either came too late or were disregarded.

At 03:00 on 31 January PAVN/VC forces attacked Saigon, Cholon, and Gia Định in the Capital Military District; Quảng Trị city, Huế, Tam Kỳ and Quảng Ngãi as well as U.S. bases at Phú Bài and Chu Lai in I Corps; Phan Thiết, Tuy Hòa and U.S. installations at Bong Son and An Khê in II Corps; and Cần Thơ and Vĩnh Long in IV Corps. The following day, Biên Hòa, Long Thanh, Bình Dương in III Corps and Kien Hoa, Dinh Tuong, Gò Công, Kiên Giang, Vĩnh Bình, Bến Tre, and Kien Tuong in IV Corps were assaulted. The last attack of the first phase was launched against Bạc Liêu in IV Corps on 10 February. A total of approximately 84,000 PAVN/VC troops participated in the attacks while thousands more remained uncommitted to act as reinforcements or as blocking forces. Palmer gave a figure of 70,000. PAVN/VC forces also mortared or rocketed every major allied airfield and attacked 64 district capitals and scores of smaller towns. In most cases the defense was led by the South Vietnamese. Local militia or ARVN forces, supported by the South Vietnamese National Police, usually drove the attackers out within two or three days, sometimes within hours; but heavy fighting continued several days longer in Kon Tum, Buôn Ma Thuột, Phan Thiết, Cần Thơ, and Bến Tre. The outcome in each instance was usually dictated by the ability of local commanders—some were outstanding, others were cowardly or incompetent. During this crucial crisis, however, no South Vietnamese unit broke or defected to the communists. According to Westmoreland, he responded to the news of the attacks with optimism in both media presentations and his reports to Washington. According to closer observers, however, the General was "stunned that the communists had been able to coordinate so many attacks in such secrecy", and he was "dispirited and deeply shaken." According to Clark Clifford, at the time of the initial attacks the reaction of the U.S. military leadership "approached panic". Although Westmoreland's appraisal of the military situation was correct, he made himself look foolish by continuously insisting Khe Sanh was the real objective of the North Vietnamese and that 155 attacks by 84,000 troops was a diversion (a position he maintained until at least 12 February). Washington Post reporter Peter Braestrup summed up the feelings of his colleagues by asking "How could any effort against Saigon, especially downtown Saigon, be a diversion?"

Saigon

Although Saigon was the focal point of the offensive, the PAVN/VC did not seek a total takeover of the city. Rather, they had six primary targets to strike in the downtown area: the headquarters of the ARVN Joint General Staff, Tan Son Nhut Air Base, the Independence Palace, the US Embassy in Saigon, the Republic of Vietnam Navy Headquarters and Radio Saigon. Elsewhere in the city or its outskirts, ten VC Local Force Battalions attacked the central police station and the Artillery Command and the Armored Command headquarters (both at Gò Vấp). The plan called for all these initial forces to capture and hold their positions for 48 hours, by which time reinforcements were to have arrived to relieve them. The defense of the Capital Military District was primarily a South Vietnamese responsibility initially conducted by eight ARVN infantry battalions and the local police force. By 3 February they had been reinforced by five ARVN Ranger, five Marine Corps, and five ARVN Airborne battalions. U.S. Army units taking part in the defense included the 716th Military Police Battalion, seven infantry battalions (one mechanized), and six artillery battalions. At the Armored Command and Artillery Command headquarters on the northern edge of the city, the initial PAVN plan called for the use of tanks and artillery pieces they hoped to capture in the initial assault. Their planners had not known the tanks had been moved to another base two months earlier and the breechblocks of the artillery pieces had been removed, rendering them useless.

One of the most important symbolic and propagandistic targets in the city was Radio Saigon. PAVN troops had brought along a tape recording of Hồ Chi Minh announcing the liberation of Saigon and calling for a "General Uprising" against the Thiệu government. They seized the building, held it for six hours and, running out of ammunition, the last eight attackers destroyed it and killed themselves using explosive charges. They were unable to broadcast due to the cutting of the audio lines from the main studio to the tower as soon as the station was seized. The US Embassy in Saigon, a massive six-floor building situated within a four-acre compound, was attacked at 02:45 by a 19-man sapper team that gained entry by blowing a hole in the 8-foot-high (2.4 m) surrounding wall. Their officers were killed in the initial attack and when their attempt to gain access to the building failed the sappers occupied the chancery grounds. By 09:20 the compound was secured by U.S. reinforcements, with the loss of five U.S. personnel. At 03:00 on 31 January, 12 VC sappers approached the Vietnamese Navy Headquarters in two civilian cars, killed two guards at a barricade at Me Linh Square and then advanced towards the base gate. The gunfire alerted base sentries, who secured the gate and sounded the alarm. A .30-caliber machine gun on the second floor of the headquarters disabled both cars and killed or wounded several sappers while the Navy security force organized a counterattack. Simultaneously a U.S. Navy advisor contacted U.S. military police who soon attacked the VC from adjoining streets. The resulting crossfire killed eight sappers while two were captured.

Small squads of VC fanned out across the city to attack various officers and enlisted men's billets, homes of ARVN officers, and district police stations. Provided with "blacklists" of military officers and civil servants, they began to round up and execute any that could be found.

On 1 February, General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, chief of the National Police, publicly executed VC officer Nguyễn Văn Lém in front of photographer Eddie Adams and a film cameraman. That photograph, with the title Saigon Execution, won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and is widely seen as a defining moment in the Vietnam War for its influence on U.S. public opinion, even being called "the picture that lost the war". Outside the city proper, two VC battalions attacked the U.S. logistical and headquarters complex at Long Binh Post. Biên Hòa Air Base was struck by a battalion, while the adjacent ARVN III Corps headquarters was the objective of another. Tan Son Nhut Air Base, in the northwestern part of the city, was attacked by three battalions. A combat-ready battalion of ARVN paratroopers, awaiting transport to Da Nang, went directly into action supporting the United States Air Force's 377th Security Police Squadron and the U.S. Army's 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment in halting the attack. A total of 35 PAVN/VC battalions, many of whom were undercover cadres who had lived and worked within the capital or its environs for years, had been committed to the Saigon objectives. By dawn most of the attacks within the city center had been defeated, but severe fighting between VC and allied forces erupted in the Chinese neighborhood of Cholon around the Phú Thọ racetrack, southwest of the city center, which was being used as a staging area and command and control center by the PAVN/VC. Bitter and destructive house-to-house fighting erupted in the area. On 4 February, the residents were ordered to leave their homes and the area was declared a free fire zone. Fighting in the city came to a close only after a fierce battle between the ARVN Rangers and PAVN forces on 7 March.

On the morning of 2 March 1968, while patrolling 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Tan Son Nhut Air Base near the small village of Quoi Xuan to locate VC rocket sites, Company C, 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment walked into an ambush losing 48 killed in eight minutes. U.S. forces claimed they killed 20 VC. Specialist Nicholas J. Cutinha would be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at Quoi Xuan. General Fillmore K. Mearns would describe this as "a classic example of a properly executed ambush." The following day as US troops swept the area they were engaged by VC forces in an eight-hour battle losing three dead while killing 10 VC. While their attacks on Saigon had been quickly repulsed, by early March more than 20 VC battalions remained near Gia Định Province, threatening Saigon. While most of these units had suffered heavy losses in the offensive, their continued presence applied pressure on Saigon and prevented the reestablishment of complete South Vietnamese Government control. From 11 March to 7 April, Allied forces launched Operation Quyet Thang to pacify the area around Saigon. The operation was considered a success and the U.S. claimed 2,658 VC killed and 427 captured. It was followed immediately by Operation Toan Thang I (8 April – 31 May), which expanded the security operation across III Corps and resulted in a further 7,645 VC killed and 1,708 captured for South Vietnamese losses of 708 killed, U.S. losses of 564 killed and other Allied losses of 23 killed.

Huế

At 03:40 on the morning of 31 January, allied defensive positions north of the Hương River in the city of Huế were mortared and rocketed and then attacked by VC formations accompanied by two battalions of the PAVN 6th Regiment. Their target was the ARVN 1st Division headquarters located in the Citadel, a three-square mile complex of palaces, parks, and residences, surrounded by a moat and a massive earth and masonry fortress. The undermanned ARVN defenders, led by General Ngô Quang Trưởng, managed to hold their position, but the majority of the Citadel fell to the PAVN. On the south bank of the river, the PAVN 4th Regiment attempted to seize the local MACV headquarters, but was held at bay by a makeshift force of approximately 200 Americans. The rest of the city was overrun by PAVN forces that initially totaled approximately 7,500 men. Both sides then rushed to reinforce and resupply their forces. Lasting 25 days, the battle of Huế became one of the longest and bloodiest single battles of the Vietnam War. During the first days of the North Vietnamese occupation, U.S. intelligence vastly underestimated the number of PAVN troops involved. Westmoreland informed the Joint Chiefs that "the enemy has approximately three companies in the Huế Citadel and the marines have sent a battalion into the area to clear them out." A later assessment ultimately noted three Marine and 11 Vietnamese battalions engaged at least 8 PAVN/VC battalions of the PAVN 6th Regiment, not including the large number of forces outside the city. There were no U.S. formations stationed in Huế, and relief forces had to move up from Phu Bai Combat Base, eight kilometers to the southeast. In a misty drizzle, U.S. Marines of the 1st Marine Division and soldiers of the 1st ARVN Division and Marine Corps cleared the city street by street and house by house, a deadly and destructive form of urban combat the U.S. military had not engaged in since the Battle of Seoul during the Korean War, and for which neither side was trained. Because of poor weather conditions, logistics problems and the historical and cultural significance of the city, American forces did not immediately apply air and artillery strikes as widely as they had in other cities.

VC forces around Huế included six main-force battalions, and two PAVN regiments operated in the area. As the battle unfolded three more PAVN regiments shifted from Khe Sanh arrived as reinforcements. The North Vietnamese plan of attack on Huế involved intensive preparation and reconnaissance. Over 190 targets, including every government and military installation on both sides of the river would be hit on January 31 by a force of five thousand. Other forces would block American and ARVN reinforcement routes, mainly Highway 1. Over half of the ARVN 1st Division was on holiday leave and PAVN commanders believed the population of Huế would join the fight as a part of the General Uprising. Outside Huế, elements of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division and the 101st Airborne Division fought to seal PAVN access and cut off their lines of supply and reinforcement. By this point 16 to 18 PAVN battalions (8,000–11,000 men) were involved in the fighting for the city or the approaches to the city. During most of February, the allies gradually fought their way towards the Citadel, which was recaptured after 25 days of intense fighting. The city was not declared secured by U.S. and ARVN forces until 25 February, when members of the ARVN 2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment, 1st Division raised the South Vietnamese flag over the Palace of Perfect Peace. During the intense action, the allies estimated PAVN forces lost between 1,042 and 5,000 killed and 89 captured in the city and in the surrounding area. 216 U.S. Marines and soldiers had been killed during the fighting and 1,609 were wounded. 421 ARVN troops were killed, another 2,123 were wounded, and 31 were missing. More than 5,800 civilians had lost their lives during the battle and 116,000 were left homeless out of an original population of 140,000. 40–50% of Huế was destroyed by the end of the battle.

In the aftermath of the recapture of the city, the discovery of several mass graves (the last of which were uncovered in 1970) of South Vietnamese citizens of Huế sparked a controversy that has not diminished with time. The victims had either been clubbed or shot to death or simply buried alive. The official allied explanation was that during their initial occupation of the city, the PAVN had quickly begun to systematically round up (under the guise of re-education) and then execute as many as 2,800 South Vietnamese civilians they believed to be potentially hostile to communist control. Those taken into custody included South Vietnamese military personnel, present and former government officials, local civil servants, teachers, policemen, and religious figures. Historian Gunther Lewy claimed a captured VC document stated that the communists had "eliminated 1,892 administrative personnel, 38 policemen, 790 tyrants." The North Vietnamese officer, Bùi Tín, later further muddied the waters by stating that their forces had indeed rounded up "reactionary" captives for transport to the North, but that local commanders, under battlefield exigencies, had executed them for expediency's sake. Trưởng believed that the captives had been executed by the communists to protect the identities of members of the local VC infrastructure. The exact circumstances leading to the deaths of those citizens of Huế discovered in the mass graves may never be known exactly, but most of the victims were killed as a result of PAVN and VC executions, considering evidence from captured documents and witness testimonies.

Khe Sanh

The attack on Khe Sanh, which began on 21 January, probably served two purposes—as a real attempt to seize the position or as a diversion to draw American attention and forces away from the population centers in the lowlands, a deception that was "both plausible and easy to orchestrate." In Westmoreland's view, the purpose of the base was to provoke the North Vietnamese into a focused and prolonged confrontation in a confined geographic area, one that would allow the application of massive U.S. artillery and air strikes that would inflict heavy casualties in a relatively unpopulated region. By the end of 1967, MACV had moved nearly half of its manoeuvre battalions to I Corps in anticipation of just such a battle.

Westmoreland—and the American media, which covered the action extensively—often made inevitable comparisons between the actions at Khe Sanh and the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, where a French base had been besieged and ultimately overrun by Viet Minh forces under the command of General Giáp during the First Indochina War. Westmoreland, who knew of Nguyen Chi Thanh's penchant for large-scale operations—but not of his death—believed this was going to be an attempt to replicate that victory. He intended to stage his own "Dien Bien Phu in reverse." Khe Sanh and its 6,000 U.S. Marine Corps, Army and ARVN defenders was surrounded by two to three PAVN divisions, totaling approximately 20,000 men. Throughout the siege, which lasted until 8 April, the allies were subjected to heavy mortar, rocket, and artillery bombardment, combined with sporadic small-scale infantry attacks on outlying positions. With the exception of the overrunning of the U.S. Special Forces camp at Lang Vei, there was never a major ground assault on the base and the battle became largely a duel between American and North Vietnamese artillery, supplemented with massive air strikes conducted by U.S. aircraft. By the end of the siege, U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy aircraft had dropped 39,179 tons of ordnance in the defense of the base. In the end, a major allied relief expedition (Operation Pegasus) launched by all three brigades of the 1st Cavalry Division reached Khe Sanh on 8 April, but PAVN forces were already withdrawing from the area. Both sides claimed the battle had served its intended purpose. MACV estimated that 5,500 PAVN troops had been killed and considerably more wounded. During the entire battle from 1 November 1967 to 14 April 1968, 730 U.S. personnel were killed and another 2,642 wounded. Khe Sanh Base was later closed on 5 July 1968 because the base was seen as having less of a strategic importance than before.

== Aftermath == Except in Huế and mopping-up operations in and around Saigon, the first surge of the offensive was over by the second week of February. The U.S. estimated during the first phase (30 January – 8 April) approximately 45,000 PAVN/VC soldiers were killed and an unknown number were wounded. For years this figure has been held as excessively optimistic, as it represented more than half the forces involved in this battle. Westmoreland himself claimed a smaller number of enemies disabled, estimating that during the same period 32,000 PAVN troops were killed and another 5,800 captured. According to Max Hastings, the Tet Offensive, including the following "Mini-Tet" offensives in May and August of 1968, resulted in the deaths of 50,000 VC (total casualties drained 60-70% of their strength), while US forces lost 4,000 killed and ARVN 6,000 dead. The South Vietnamese suffered 2,788 killed, 8,299 wounded, and 587 missing in action. U.S. and other allied forces suffered 1,536 killed, 7,764 wounded, and 11 missing. According to the best estimates by MACV intelligence officers, the combined Viet Cong and PAVN forces in South Vietnam numbered 262,000 at the end of 1967. Expansion of the forces in preparation for the Tet Offensive increased the figure to 287,000 by the end of January 1968. Both Viet Cong and PAVN forces suffered heavy losses during the following months. They were able to find replacements for some but not all of the losses, and at the end of 1968, the Viet Cong and PAVN forces had an estimated strength of 251,000.

North Vietnam

The leadership in Hanoi was disappointed with the outcome of the offensive. Their first and most ambitious goal, producing a general uprising, was a failure. In total, about 85,000–100,000 PAVN/VC troops had participated in the initial offensive and in the follow-up phases. According to historian James Willbanks, Hanoi underestimated the strategic mobility of the allied forces. This mobility allowed them to redeploy at will to threatened areas. The battle plan was also too complex and difficult to coordinate, which was amply demonstrated by the 30 January attacks. Hanoi's plan also violated the military principle of mass - attacking everywhere instead of concentrating their forces on a few specific targets - allowing their forces to be defeated piecemeal. When they did use mass, PAVN/VC forces launched attacks directly towards an enemy with vastly superior firepower. According to Trần Văn Trà: "We did not correctly evaluate the specific balance of forces between ourselves and the enemy, did not fully realize that the enemy still had considerable capabilities, and that our capabilities were limited, and set requirements that were beyond our actual strength."

The PAVN/VC effort to regain control of the countryside was somewhat more successful. According to the U.S. State Department, the VC "made pacification virtually inoperative. In the Mekong Delta, the Viet Cong was stronger now than ever and in other regions the countryside belongs to the VC." General Earle Wheeler reported that the offensive had brought counterinsurgency programs to a halt and "that to a large extent, the VC now controlled the countryside". This state of affairs did not last; heavy casualties and military operations of the South Vietnamese and Americans resulted in more territorial losses and heavy casualties. One historian claims heavy losses inflicted on VC units struck into the heart of the infrastructure that had been built up for over a decade, claiming that 181,149 PAVN/VC troops had been killed during 1968. Marilyn B. Young writes:

In Long An province, for example, local guerrillas taking part in the May—June offensive had been divided into several sections. Only 775 out of 2,018 in one section survived; another lost all but 640 out of 1,430. The province itself was subjected to what one historian has called a "My Lai from the Sky"—non-stop B-52 bombing. However, according to historian Erik Villard the Viet Cong remained a viable fighting force until the end of the war. A PRG Justice Minister who later defected, Trương Như Tảng, claimed the Tet offensive had wiped out half of the Viet Cong's strength,. Allied operations over the next few years also impacted the strength of the Viet Cong. One official Vietnamese publication states that by the end of 1969, very little communist-held territory ("liberated zones") was held. "We could not maintain the level of local recruitment we had maintained in previous years. In 1969 we were only able to recruit 1,700 new soldiers in Region 5 (compared with 8,000 in 1968), and in the lowlands of Cochin China we recruited only 100 new soldiers (compared with 16,000 in 1968)." The same source continues, "because our armed local forces had suffered severe losses, guerrilla operations had declined." However, this change had little effect on the overall result of the war, since the PAVN had little difficulty making up the casualties inflicted by the offensive. Some Western historians have come to believe that one possible motive for the campaign was the elimination of competing southern members of the Party, thereby allowing the northerners more control once the war was won. One estimate indicated that by late 1968, approximately 70% of the main force troops in the south were from North Vietnam. It was not until after the conclusion of the first phase of the offensive that Hanoi realized that the offensive might have succeeded in some aspects. General Tran Do, PAVN commander at the battle of Huế, gave some insight into how defeat was translated into victory:

In all honesty, we didn't achieve our main objective, which was to spur uprisings throughout the South. Still, we inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans and their puppets, and this was a big gain for us. As for making an impact in the United States, it had not been our intention—but it turned out to be a fortunate result.

On 5 May, Trường Chinh rose to address a congress of Party members and proceeded to castigate the Party militants and their bid for quick victory: his "faction-bashing" tirade sparked a serious debate within the party leadership that lasted for four months. As the leader of the "main force war" and "quick victory" faction, Lê Duẩn also came under severe criticism. In August, Chinh's report on the situation was accepted in toto, published, and broadcast via Radio Hanoi, single-handedly shifting the nation's war strategy and restoring himself to prominence as the Party's ideological conscience. The Lê Duẩn faction, which favored quick, decisive offensives meant to paralyze South Vietnam-United States responses, was replaced by Giáp and Trường Chinh, who favored a strategy of more protracted, drawn-out warfare. High-intensity, so-called "big-unit battles" were replaced with smaller-scale, quick attack and quick withdrawal operations designed to continually put pressure on the allied forces while mechanized and combined-arms capabilities within the PAVN were being built. The plan for a popular uprising or people's war was abandoned for a greater combination of guerrilla and conventional warfare. During this period, the PAVN would undergo a significant strategic re-structuring, being built into a combined-arms capable force while applying pressure on the U.S./ARVN with lighter infantry units. In line with the revamped strategy of Hanoi, on April 5, 1969, COSVN issued Directive 55 to all of its subordinate units: "Never again and under no circumstances are we going to risk our entire military force for just such an offensive. On the contrary, we should endeavor to preserve our military potential for future campaigns." The PAVN official history describes the first phase of the Tet offensive as a "great strategic victory" that "killed or dispersed 150,000 enemy soldiers including 43,000 Americans, destroyed 34 percent of the American war reserve supplies in Vietnam, destroyed 4,200 strategic hamlets and liberated an additional 1.4 million people."