THE 1968 TET OFFENSIVE term paper

American confidence in winning the Vietnam War (1957–1975) in late 1967 was quite high. In November General William C. Westmoreland, the commander of American forces in Vietnam, told the nation he believed U.S. forces could begin withdrawing from Vietnam in 1969. American troop strength was then approaching 500,000 men. President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara had repeatedly characterized the Vietnam War with the optimistic phrase “There is light at the end of the tunnel.”

American optimism did not deter the leaders of Communist North Vietnam, President Ho Chi Minh and his chief military advisor General Vo Nguyen Giap. On 30 January 1968 the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and their South Vietnamese allies in the National Liberation Front (FLN or Viet Cong) launched a military offensive against the U.S. Marine base at Khe Sanh to coincide with the Vietnamese lunar New Year celebrations of Tet. The NVA also infiltrated 80,000 NVA and Viet Cong soldiers into South Vietnam’s cities during the traditional Tet New Year’s truce.

Despite meticulous planning, the NVA launched the Tet offensive prematurely in six northern provinces of South Vietnam. By 31 January 1968, South Vietnamese and American military were well aware that a widespread, well-coordinated offensive was under way. Emblematic of the fighting was the firefight, shown on U.S. television, between Viet Cong and U.S. Marines inside the American Embassy compound in Saigon. By the end of April 1968, the Tet offensive had been broken. The American and South Vietnamese forces, although surprised by the attack, had taken back all the territory they had lost initially and had inflicted heavy casualties on the NVA and especially the Viet Cong. The NVA and Viet Cong had sustained 45,000 casualties, while the South Vietnamese and American casualties were less than 4,000. The dramatic television images, especially scenes from the United States embassy compound in Saigon, the fighting in Hue, and, above all, the execution of a captured Viet Cong by a South Vietnamese official on a Saigon street, shocked Americans. Many were also perturbed to see how unrealistic General Westmoreland’s optimistic assessment of the situation in South Vietnam was. Paradoxically, many perceived the failed Tet offensive as a military victory for the communists. Neither President Johnson nor General Westmoreland could disabuse Americans of this perception. It remains one of the great ironies of the Vietnam War that the Tet offensive, a clear military defeat for the NVA and Viet Cong, nevertheless became a great communist propaganda victory, one that energized the American antiwar effort and ultimately convinced President Johnson not to seek reelection. Despite its failure, the Tet offensive was the decisive battle of the Second Indochina War, for it convinced the American public that the Vietnam War was unwinnable.
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Do a research project on the Battle of Khe Sanh. Why, after holding Khe Sanh for months at great expense, were the Marines ordered to evacuate the battlefield?
2. View episodes 6 and 7 of the film series Vietnam, 1945–1975: The Ten Thousand Day War (see Suggested Sources) and write a commentary on how the American media portrayed the Tet offensive.
3. Drawing on General Westmoreland’s account of Tet and essays in Gilbert and Head’s The Tet Offensive (see Suggested Sources), write a paper evaluating the American military’s response to the Tet offensive. Determine why an American military victory was perceived by the general public as a defeat. 4. Beginning in February 1968, read Time, Newsweek, and other magazines and newspapers and write a paper discussing their reporting of the Tet offensive.
5. What was Tet’s impact on the American antiwar movement, especially during the period between the March on the Pentagon in the fall of 1967 and the October and November 1969 moratoriums, when millions of middle-class Americans participated in anti-war protests?
6. Investigate the career of General Vo Nguyen Giap, the man who planned the Tet offensive, and write a paper on his leadership during the war against the United States.

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese War Against the French, 1946–1954” (#41) and “Pol Pot and the Cambodian Incursion, 1970–1978” (#72). Search under Geneva Conference (1954), Vietnam War, and Ellsworth Bunker.

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

United States. Pacific Command. Report on the War in Vietnam, as of 30 June 1968: Index. Section I:Report on Air and Naval Campaigns Against North Vietnam and Pacific Command-wide Support of the War, June 1964–July 1968, by U.S.G. Sharp, USN, Commander in Chief Pacific. Section II:Report on Operations in South Vietnam, January 1964–June 1968. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1969. Commonly referred to as the “Sharp Report,” this also contains General Westmoreland’s reflections on Tet.

Vietnam, 1945–1975: The Ten Thousand Day War [videorecording]. Los Angeles: Embassy Home Entertainment, 1985. Episodes 6 and 7 document Tet and its effects on American public opinion.

Westmoreland, William C. A Soldier Reports. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. This memoir contains the American commander’s account of how the Tet offensive was broken.

Secondary Sources

Braestrup, Peter. Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. An incisive, detailed account of efforts by the media to report the Vietnam War. Braestrup accuses the media of inaccurate and biased reporting.

Gilbert, Marc Jason, and William Head, eds. The Tet Offensive. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996. A balanced collection of fourteen essays examining the importance of Tet in the full context of the Vietnam War.

McMaster, H. R. Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Written by a U.S. Army officer, this is a candid appraisal of the muddled thinking that led to Tet.

Oberdorfer, Don. Tet! Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971. A reliable narrative of the offensive.

Wirtz, James J. The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. The authoritative study of the intelligence breakdown in the American military command.

World Wide Web

“The National Security Archive.” http://www/gwu.edu/~nsarchiv. Good documentation on the entire Vietnam War.

“Department of History Map Library.” http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/dhistorymaps//MapsHome.htm. Click on “Atlases” for United States Military Academy (West Point) maps of the Vietnam War.

“Vietnam, 1954–1968.” http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/11. Based on CNN’s Cold War documentary series, the Web site includes background, documents, a transcript of the program, and other features.