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The 1968 Tet Offensive was the decisive battle for Vietnam. Masterminded by the brilliant North Vietnamese General, Vo Nguyen Giap, it was intended to trigger a general uprising in South Vietnam. However, the bloody fighting for Saigon, Hue and other cities actually resulted in a catastrophic defeat for the North. In this excellent assessment of the key battle of the Vietnam conflict, James Arnold details the plans and forces involved and explains how, despite the outcome of the battle, the American people and their leaders came to perceive the war for Vietnam as lost.
In this account of one of the worst intelligence failures in American history, James J. Wirtz explains why U.S. forces were surprised by the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive in 1968. Wirtz reconstructs the turning point of the Vietnam War in unprecedented detail. Drawing upon Vietcong and recently declassified U.S. sources, he is able to trace the strategy and unfolding of the Tet campaign as well as the U.S. response.
This book brings to light many aspects of the Tet offensive of 1968, an event acknowledged as the turning-point of the Vietnam War. Using previously unseen Communist Vietnamese documents combined with sources of Western origin, the author provides a more accurate version of the events, their significance, and reveals the crucial role played by US intelligence.
Author : James H. Willbanks Publisher : Columbia University Press Page : 297 pages File Size : 45,8 Mb Release : 2008-12-09 Category : History ISBN : 9780231502351
In the Tet Offensive of 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces launched a massive countrywide attack on South Vietnam. Though the Communists failed to achieve their tactical and operational objectives, James Willbanks claims Hanoi won a strategic victory. The offensive proved that America's progress was grossly overstated and caused many Americans and key presidential advisors to question the wisdom of prolonging combat. Willbanks also maintains that the Communists laid siege to a Marine combat base two weeks prior to the Tet Offensive-known as the Battle of Khe Sanh—to distract the United States. It is his belief that these two events are intimately linked, and in his concise and compelling history, he presents an engaging portrait of the conflicts and singles out key problems of interpretation. Willbanks divides his study into six sections, beginning with a historical overview of the events leading up to the offensive, the attack itself, and the consequent battles of Saigon, Hue, and Khe Sahn. He continues with a critical assessment of the main themes and issues surrounding the offensive, and concludes with excerpts from American and Vietnamese documents, maps and chronologies, an annotated list of resources, and a short encyclopedia of key people, places, and events. An experienced military historian and scholar of the Vietnam War, Willbanks has written a unique critical reference and guide that enlarges the debate surrounding this important turning point in America's longest war.
With Americans turning against the war in ever greater numbers, struggles for power between the government and the military, and no end in sight to the fighting, the Tet Offensive of 1968 proved to be the turning point of the Vietnam War. In The Tet Offensive, historian William Thomas Allison provides a clear, concise overview of the major events and issues surrounding the Tet Offensive, and compiles carefully selected primary sources to illustrate the complex military, political, and public decisions that made up Tet. The Tet Offensive is composed of two parts: an accessible, well-illustrated narrative overview, and a collection of core primary source documents. Throughout the narrative, historiographic questions are addressed within the text to highlight discussion among historians over pivotal points of debate. The objectively selected documents provide students with raw material from which to gain insight into these events through their own analysis, and to improve their ability to discuss and understand the importance of historical scholarship. Approachable and insightful, The Tet Offensive is not only a great introduction to reading history through primary sources, it is an essential tool for understanding what made the Tet Offensive such an important turning point of the Vietnam War.
On January 30, 1968 approximately 84,000 North Vietnamese Army and National Liberation Front forces launched nearly simultaneous attacks against over 100 cities and military installations in South Vietnam. The well-coordinated urban attacks came during the most sacred of Vietnamese holidays and caught American commanders by surprise. The results of the Tet Offensive were monumental, tens of thousands were killed and many more wounded. But its importance goes far beyond its military outcome to the powerful political, psychological, and economic impact in the United States. In this new work, historian David F. Schmitz analyzes what is arguably the most important event in the history of the Vietnam conflict. Schmitz situates the Tet Offensive in the context of American foreign policy and the state of the war up to 1968 while carefully considering the impact of the media on American public opinion. Through his up-to-date analysis of recently available sources, Schmitz works to dispel myths and clarify the central debates surrounding this pivotal event that brought an end to American escalation of the war and led to LBJ's decision to withdraw from the presidential race.
The author of Black Hawk Down vividly recounts a pivotal Vietnam War battle in this New York Times bestseller: “An extraordinary feat of journalism”. —Karl Marlantes, Wall Street Journal In Hue 1968, Mark Bowden presents a detailed, day-by-day reconstruction of the most critical battle of the Tet Offensive. In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched attacks across South Vietnam. The lynchpin of this campaign was the capture of Hue, Vietnam’s intellectual and cultural capital. 10,000 troops descended from hidden camps and surged across the city, taking everything but two small military outposts. American commanders refused to believe the size and scope of the siege, ordering small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city block by block, in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II. With unprecedented access to war archives in the United States and Vietnam and interviews with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple viewpoints. Played out over 24 days and ultimately costing 10,000 lives, the Battle of Hue was by far the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only about how to leave. A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in History Winner of the 2018 Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Greene Award for a distinguished work of nonfiction
The 1968 Tet Offensive Battles Of Quang Tri City And Hue [Illustrated Edition] by Erik Villard Pdf
[Includes 10 maps, 5 illustrations] “This monograph focuses on the battles of Quang Tri City and Hue that took place during the 1968 Tet offensive. The offensive itself, an all-out effort by Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces to overrun the major cities of South Vietnam, marked the turning point of the Vietnam War. Although the attacks were costly failures in military terms, they set the United States on a path of disengagement from the war that ultimately led to the fall of Saigon some seven years later. The battles for the two northernmost provincial capitals in South Vietnam, Quang Tri City and Hue, are particularly worth examining because the enemy regarded them as key objectives, second only to Saigon, the national capital. To a large extent, the success or failure of the offensive depended on what happened there. The battles tell us much about how the enemy prepared for the offensive, why he achieved a high degree of surprise and initial success, and why his attacks ultimately failed. The battle for Quang Tri City, a textbook example of a vertical envelopment, resulted in a quick allied victory. The fight for Hue turned into a slow, grinding campaign of attrition that lasted nearly a month before the enemy was finally defeated. Together, they offer instruction on the strengths and limitations of airmobile warfare and a primer on urban fighting in a counterinsurgency environment, subjects that continue to be a major Army interest throughout the world.”
As Vietnam’s former imperial capital, Hue occupied a special place in the hearts of the Vietnamese people. Over decades of conflict, it had been spared the terrible effects of war. But that all changed on January 31, 1968, the eve of Tet—the lunar new year, Vietnam’s most important national holiday Tet had previously been marked by a mutual ceasefire, but this time the celebrations and hopes for a happy new year were shattered. All of South Vietnam erupted in a cataclysm of violence as the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched a massive military and political offensive. The American embassy in Saigon came under siege and Vietnam’s ancient capital city was captured nearly in its entirety. The only forces immediately available to counterattack into Hue were two Marine infantry companies based ten miles south of the city. For the next four weeks, as the world looked on, fewer than two thousand U.S. Marines fought street by street and building by building, with virtually no air support, to retake the symbols of Hue’s political and cultural importance. It was savage work. Ground gained was often measured in yards, with every alley, street corner, window, and garden adding to the butcher’s bill. In the end, the Marines retook the city, but scores of Americans and thousands of Vietnamese civilians died there. This pictorial is a testament to their will and their sacrifice. The Vietnam War is often pictured as a jungle conflict, punctuated by American troops fighting in rural hut-filled villages. But in the 1968 Tet Offensive, the war spilled out of the jungle into the streets of Hue City. The battle for Hue became one of the most important of the war, a month of grueling house-to-house fighting through buildings and around civilians. Marines In Hue City documents the intense urban combat in Hue with many never-before-published photographs, including more than one hundred in full color.
In the Tet Offensive of 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces launched a massive countrywide attack on South Vietnam. Though the Communists failed to achieve their tactical and operational objectives, James Willbanks claims Hanoi won a strategic victory. The offensive proved that America's progress was grossly overstated and caused many Americans and key presidential advisors to question the wisdom of prolonging combat. Willbanks also maintains that the Communists laid siege to a Marine combat base two weeks prior to the Tet Offensive-known as the Battle of Khe Sanh--to distract the United States. It is his belief that these two events are intimately linked, and in his concise and compelling history, he presents an engaging portrait of the conflicts and singles out key problems of interpretation. Willbanks divides his study into six sections, beginning with a historical overview of the events leading up to the offensive, the attack itself, and the consequent battles of Saigon, Hue, and Khe Sahn. He continues with a critical assessment of the main themes and issues surrounding the offensive, and concludes with excerpts from American and Vietnamese documents, maps and chronologies, an annotated list of resources, and a short encyclopedia of key people, places, and events. An experienced military historian and scholar of the Vietnam War, Willbanks has written a unique critical reference and guide that enlarges the debate surrounding this important turning point in America's longest war.
A portrait of the American recon platoon of the 101st Airborne Division describes their sixty-day fight for survival during the 1968 Tet Offensive, tracing their postwar difficulties with acclimating into a peacetime America that did not want to hear their story.
Finalist for the 1971 National Book Award In early 1968, Communist forces in Vietnam launched a surprise offensive that targeted nearly every city, town, and major military base throughout South Vietnam. For several hours, the U.S. embassy in Saigon itself came under siege by Viet Cong soldiers. Militarily, the offensive was a failure, as the North Vietnamese Army and its guerrilla allies in the south suffered devastating losses. Politically, however, it proved to be a crucial turning point in America's involvement in Southeast Asia and public opinion of the war. In this classic work of military history and war reportage—long considered the definitive history of Tet and its aftermath—Don Oberdorfer moves back and forth between the war and the home front to document the lasting importance of this military action. Based on his own observations as a correspondent for the Washington Post and interviews with hundreds of people who were caught up in the struggle, Tet! remains an essential contribution to our understanding of the Vietnam War.