The North Vietnamese Tet Offensive of 30-31 January 1968 That Struck More Than 100 Cities Across South Vietnam

By January 1968 the Vietnam War had cost approximately 19,000 US dead and the deployment of approximately 540,000 US troops to South Vietnam. The official US military assessment under General William Westmoreland in late 1967 was that the war was being won — that the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) were approaching collapse.

The North Vietnamese plan — endorsed by General Vo Nguyen Giap and approved by the Hanoi Politburo in July 1967 — was a coordinated nationwide attack designed to trigger a South Vietnamese popular uprising against the Saigon government.

A traditional lunar new year truce — Tet — had been observed across the previous years of the war.

30-31 January 1968

The offensive began prematurely in approximately 13 South Vietnamese cities at approximately 02:00 on 30 January 1968, then expanded to more than 100 cities and military installations at approximately 02:00 on 31 January 1968. Approximately 80,000 NVA and VC troops were committed.

The principal targets included:

— Saigon — VC sappers penetrated the US Embassy compound at 02:47 on 31 January 1968 and held the courtyard for approximately six hours before being killed — Hue — NVA and VC forces seized the Imperial Citadel and held the city for 25 days — Khe Sanh — the parallel 77-day siege of the US Marine combat base — More than 30 provincial capitals

The South Vietnamese popular uprising the Hanoi plan had anticipated did not occur.

The Battle of Hue

Hue, the former imperial capital with approximately 140,000 residents, was attacked by approximately 10,000 NVA and VC troops. They occupied the citadel and conducted house-to-house identification of South Vietnamese government officials, Catholic priests, teachers, and US-affiliated residents from prepared lists.

US Marine and South Vietnamese army forces fought through the city across 31 January - 25 February 1968 in the largest urban combat engagement of the war. Approximately 5,800 Hue civilians had been executed by NVA-VC forces during the occupation and buried in mass graves discovered across 1969-1971. Approximately 80 percent of the city was destroyed.

US Marine casualties at Hue were 216 dead, 1,584 wounded. South Vietnamese army casualties were 384 dead, 1,800 wounded. Estimated NVA-VC casualties were approximately 5,000 dead.

Political effect

Tet was a tactical and operational defeat for the NVA-VC. The Viet Cong infrastructure in particular was approximately 80 percent destroyed and never fully reconstituted. Total NVA-VC dead from the offensive were approximately 45,000.

The political effect in the United States was the opposite. The televised footage of the US Embassy attack, the Hue battle, and the 1 February 1968 Eddie Adams photograph of South Vietnamese police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a VC suspect contradicted the Johnson administration’s “light at the end of the tunnel” assessment of late 1967.

CBS anchor Walter Cronkite travelled to Vietnam during Tet and broadcast his “Report from Vietnam” on 27 February 1968 concluding that the war was a stalemate. Johnson reportedly told aides “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Westmoreland’s 25 February 1968 request for an additional 206,000 troops was leaked to the New York Times. Public opinion turned. Johnson announced on 31 March 1968 that he would not seek re-election and that he was opening peace negotiations.

The Paris peace negotiations opened in May 1968. The war continued for another seven years.