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The 1968 Tet Offensive In The Vietnam War

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The 1968 Tet Offensive In The Vietnam War
The 1968 Tet Offensive displayed how leadership and its inability to properly analyze the battlefield can ultimately reshape a war and inspire the political landscape. Many analytical flaws caused the Tet Offensive to become a negative turning point in the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. A main example of this is how the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF, or more commonly known as the Viet Cong) used deception as a tactical advantage. This had a profound effect on the American military leadership’s ability to properly assess the NVA’s intentions leading up to Tet. In addition, poor planning and cooperation with allied agencies caused many Americans to view the Johnson Administration with distrust and questioned the legitimacy of US involvement in Vietnam.
The NVA, led by General Vo Nguyen Giap and the North Vietnamese Defense Minister, began their offensive planning in early 1967. Their intentions were to inspire a mass uprising against the South Vietnamese government and humiliate the South Vietnamese military. Success would depend on masking the NVA’s true intentions from American Planners. The first goal was to draw US forces into large battles in the …show more content…
These locations included over 1,100,000 troops in South Vietnam and an estimated 492,000 Americans were engaged by an approximately 67,000 NVA and VC soldiers. The American Embassy in Saigon was breached by a eight man VC sapper team along with several NVA and VC Divisions totaling over 3,000 troops. A bitter 26-day battle in the city of Hue was swiftly defeated by South Vietnamese and US forces. Near the end of February 1968 marked a tactical defeat for the US and South Vietnam, but the NVA and VC seeds of change were sprouting. Figure 1 shows the extent of the NVA and VC attacks in South
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