Walter Cronkite's Ridiculous Spin on the 1968 Tet Offensive in South Vietnam

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

A version that Tet turned the American people against the war is correctly found among all factions of pro- and anti-war Americans today.

 

[Hector12]

The War in Vietnam had been going on for too long. It was time to admit defeat and leave. The only honorable way to end that dishonorable war was to evacuate those Vietnamese who did not want to live under the Communists and settle them in the United States. I have known Vietnamese war refugees. They are good people.

We never should have gotten involved in what was nothing more than a civil war that should not have concerned us. Our involvement made a bad situation vastly worse.

 

[mikegriffith1]

A version that Tet turned the American people against the war is correctly found among all factions of pro- and anti-war Americans today.

And just never mind the polling numbers, hey? Just believe what you want to believe and assume that all the polls got it wrong, hey? Are these mental gymnastics part of how you justify defending the handing over of South Vietnam to Communist tyranny?

Again, if Tet turned the American people against the war, how do you explain the 1968 and 1972 elections? If the American people turned against the war after Tet, it's very odd that they decisively rejected Humphrey in '68 and McGovern in '72.

To repeat some inconvenient facts: In the '68 election, the pro-war candidates, Nixon and Wallace, got 56.9% of the popular vote, compared to Humphrey's 42.7%. Over a month before the election, Humphrey called for an end to all bombing of North Vietnam, wanted to start withdrawing troops, and even advocated a ceasefire. In addition, his running mate was a prominent dove, Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine. Yet, Humphrey got only 42.7% of the popular vote.

In 1972, if the people had turned against the war, you would have expected McGovern to win handily. Instead, Nixon won 60% of the popular vote and 49 states in one of the biggest landslides in American history.

During the Korean War, polling data showed that after just one year, public opinion on the war changed dramatically. When Americans were asked in August 1950, two months into the war, if defending South Korea was a mistake, only 20% said yes, while 65% said no. However, by the following January, opinion had shifted dramatically, with 49% saying yes and only 38% saying no (13% were undecided) (LINK).

Yet, by January 1953, soon after Eisenhower was elected and truce talks began again, public opinion shifted again, with half of Americans saying the war was not a mistake, while 36% said it was a mistake (LINK).

I think the vast majority of Americans would now agree that it was a very good thing that we did not let North Korea overrun South Korea, even though at times the number of Americans who thought the war was a mistake was larger than the number who thought it was not a mistake.

If we had abandoned South Korea and allowed North Korea to win, ala the anti-war Democrats' sabotaging of South Vietnam and enabling Hanoi to win, would you be saying that, gee, we never should have tried to save South Korea in the first place because there were times when the number of Americans who viewed the war as a mistake was 11 percentage points higher than the number who did not view it as a mistake?

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Most Americans ended up believing, rightly or wrongly, that the NVA was in it for the long haul.

 

[AZrailwhale]

The War in Vietnam had been going on for too long. It was time to admit defeat and leave. The only honorable way to end that dishonorable war was to evacuate those Vietnamese who did not want to live under the Communists and settle them in the United States. I have known Vietnamese war refugees. They are good people.

We never should have gotten involved in what was nothing more than a civil war that should not have concerned us. Our involvement made a bad situation vastly worse.

The problem with that attitude is that we DIDN'T admit defeat. We beat the PRVN and they signed the Paris Peace Accords because we had cut off all their aid from the USSR and the PRC. The PRVN couldn't even feed itself at that point, let alone prosecute an expensive war in South Vietnam.

 

[Hector12]

The problem with that attitude is that we DIDN'T admit defeat. We beat the PRVN and they signed the Paris Peace Accords because we had cut off all their aid from the USSR and the PRC. The PRVN couldn't even feed itself at that point, let alone prosecute an expensive war in South Vietnam.

When Americans fled South Vietnam in helicopters it did not look like a victory parade.

 

[AZrailwhale]

When Americans fled South Vietnam in helicopters it did not look like a victory parade.

Americans never fled Vietnam on helicopters. We’ve had this discussion before.

 

[mikegriffith1]

When Americans fled South Vietnam in helicopters it did not look like a victory parade.

Such an absurd, juvenile comment shows that you are brainwashed beyond persuasion. Trying to reason with you is a waste of time.

Anyway, to further highlight one of the two main points of my OP, i.e., that Tet was a military disaster for the Communists, I will present some paragraphs from two books written by Dr. Erik Villard, the world’s foremost expert on the Tet Offensive. Both books are available for free online. Dr. Villard is a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History. He was part of the panel of experts in the video I linked on lessons from the Tet Offensive (LINK).

I’ve added section titles to introduce each segment. Due to the length of the segments, I will post part of them now and the remainder tomorrow.

From his book Staying the Course, October 1967-December 1968 (LINK):

Failure of the Tet Offensive

Hanoi’s general offensive–general uprising [the Tet Offensive] brought the war to South Vietnam’s cities for the first time and disrupted the allied pacification program that was just beginning to take hold in some rural areas formerly controlled by the Communists. For the enemy, however, those achievements came at a staggering cost in manpower and material; more importantly, the Tet offensive failed to cripple the South Vietnamese government or convince the United States to abandon its ally.

As the dust settled from the Viet Cong attacks, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered his military commanders to press ahead with their current strategy unchanged apart from some short-term tactical adjustments and a modest increase in the U.S. troop deployment. His decision to stay the course seemed to bear fruit as the allies repaired their losses and then forged new gains throughout the summer and autumn of 1968 despite two more Communist offensives, each one proving to be weaker than the last. (p. xiii)

Disaffection ran high in the enemy’s ranks after the failed offensive. Not even senior officers were immune to criticism. Two high-ranking officials in the B1 Front accused General Man of gross incompetence. The general, they said with bitterness, had not accomplished a single objective during the offensive. Losses had been heavy. Morale had plummeted. The whole enterprise had been a fiasco. A little over a month later, however, both men recanted after the Politburo praised Man. Still, as the B1 Front commander would acknowledge in his postwar memoir, he felt partly responsible for the debacle, for he had not spoken out against a plan that in his mind “had no foundation in reality.” (p. 321)

U.S. Forces Knew the Attack Was Coming

Westmoreland, meanwhile, issued a nationwide alert to all U.S. personnel warning them to prepare for enemy attacks that night [the night before the main Tet attacks began]. He was confident in their readiness, since all U.S. and Free World forces units had remained at full operational status going into the Tet holiday. In recent weeks, MACV had issued numerous bulletins alerting U.S. personnel that enemy attacks were likely to occur at various locations around the country. Now, given the wave of attacks that had hit allied targets across the upper midsection of South Vietnam, anticipation of more attacks elsewhere ran high. (p. 323)

The Bungled Attack on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon

Shortly after 0300, a taxi and a truck rolled up to the southeastern corner of the compound [the U.S. Embassy compound]. Fifteen sappers armed with AK47 rifles, B40 grenade launchers, and Chinese-made pistols jumped out. Their orders were to seize the embassy grounds, break into the chancery building [the Embassy itself], and take hostage the people inside. It was a dangerous mission but not suicidal by design. The sappers had been told by the Sub-Region 6 headquarters that hundreds of antiwar and antigovernment university students would converge on the embassy that morning to stage a sit-down strike. The sappers also expected one or more local force battalions to relieve them at some point during the next twenty-four hours. . . .

The sappers launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the front entrance to the chancery building. The warhead blew a small hole in the heavy teak door and shattered the glass that adorned the interior reception area, injuring several embassy personnel hunkered down near the front desk. The sappers fired several more rocket grenades at the upper floors of the chancery, but they barely chipped its honeycomb carapace. Deciding to conserve their remaining rocket grenades or to deal with allied armor should that be necessary, the sappers crouched behind the concrete planters in the front yard and waited for help to arrive. . . .

Fifteen minutes later [after all the VC sappers had been killed or captured by around 0845], General Westmoreland and his security detail arrived by car just as two UH–1 helicopters landed on the roof, discharging a platoon from the 101st Airborne Division that checked and secured all six levels of the chancery building. Ambassador Bunker and his entourage drove up a few minutes later. Taken on a short tour of the grounds, the two leaders could see that the chancery had suffered little more than cosmetic damage. Ambassador Bunker ordered the building reopened for business later that afternoon. (pp. 328-330)

An NVA Assessment of Tet

When COSVN [NVA HQ in South Vietnam] leaders held a secret conference with B2 Front officials in late March to review the results of the Tet offensive, General Thai and Secretary Hung asked whether a new round of attacks could be organized before the rainy season began in mid-May. Le Duan, still the preeminent voice in North Vietnam’s Politburo, was pushing hard for a resumption of the general offensive.

Some regional commanders expressed their doubts. The Viet Cong units that had spearheaded the first wave were still in bad shape, they said, and the North Vietnamese troops coming into theater were inexperienced youths, often weak from malaria and other tropical diseases that they had contracted on the journey south. As for the soldiers who had lived through the Tet offensive, many were demoralized after seeing their hopes for victory dashed. Supplies were an issue as well. Most of the forward depots were either empty or destroyed. Replacing them would not be easy with U.S. and South Vietnamese units constantly sweeping the provinces around Saigon. Those problems, combined with the heightened allied vigilance, led some B2 Front officials to conclude that “there was no longer any opportunity to liberate the cities and province capitals” with a Tet-style offensive. (p. 529)

Communist Forces Got Mauled in Quang Tri City

In the ensuing firefight, the paratroopers killed 108 enemy soldiers with the help of artillery and helicopters at a cost of 5 dead and 42 wounded. South Vietnamese troops scored another blow against the 812th Regiment when they located its command post in the woods just east of La Vang and killed the North Vietnamese regimental commander. The government troops also captured the regiment’s chief of staff along with a trove of cryptographic equipment and codes, plus the regimental logbook that contained a desperate final entry: “Help. Being attacked by American Airborne. Give idea.”

All told, the enemy lost an estimated 914 soldiers killed and another 86 captured between 31 January and 6 February in the battle for Quang Tri City. The badly mauled 812th Regiment disappeared into the western mountains for the next several months. The 808th and the 814th Battalions dropped from sight for an even longer period, only returning to offensive action in the latter part of 1968. . . .

The battle for Quang Tri City proved to be one of the most one-sided allied victories of the Tet offensive. (p. 387)

 

[Hector12]

Such an absurd, juvenile comment shows that you are brainwashed beyond persuasion. Trying to reason with you is a waste of time.

Anyway, to further highlight one of the two main points of my OP, i.e., that Tet was a military disaster for the Communists, I will present some paragraphs from two books written by Dr. Erik Villard, the world’s foremost expert on the Tet Offensive. Both books are available for free online. Dr. Villard is a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History. He was part of the panel of experts in the video I linked on lessons from the Tet Offensive (LINK).

I’ve added section titles to introduce each segment. Due to the length of the segments, I will post part of them now and the remainder tomorrow.

From his book Staying the Course, October 1967-December 1968 (LINK):

Failure of the Tet Offensive

Hanoi’s general offensive–general uprising [the Tet Offensive] brought the war to South Vietnam’s cities for the first time and disrupted the allied pacification program that was just beginning to take hold in some rural areas formerly controlled by the Communists. For the enemy, however, those achievements came at a staggering cost in manpower and material; more importantly, the Tet offensive failed to cripple the South Vietnamese government or convince the United States to abandon its ally.

As the dust settled from the Viet Cong attacks, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered his military commanders to press ahead with their current strategy unchanged apart from some short-term tactical adjustments and a modest increase in the U.S. troop deployment. His decision to stay the course seemed to bear fruit as the allies repaired their losses and then forged new gains throughout the summer and autumn of 1968 despite two more Communist offensives, each one proving to be weaker than the last. (p. xiii)

Disaffection ran high in the enemy’s ranks after the failed offensive. Not even senior officers were immune to criticism. Two high-ranking officials in the B1 Front accused General Man of gross incompetence. The general, they said with bitterness, had not accomplished a single objective during the offensive. Losses had been heavy. Morale had plummeted. The whole enterprise had been a fiasco. A little over a month later, however, both men recanted after the Politburo praised Man. Still, as the B1 Front commander would acknowledge in his postwar memoir, he felt partly responsible for the debacle, for he had not spoken out against a plan that in his mind “had no foundation in reality.” (p. 321)

U.S. Forces Knew the Attack Was Coming

Westmoreland, meanwhile, issued a nationwide alert to all U.S. personnel warning them to prepare for enemy attacks that night [the night before the main Tet attacks began]. He was confident in their readiness, since all U.S. and Free World forces units had remained at full operational status going into the Tet holiday. In recent weeks, MACV had issued numerous bulletins alerting U.S. personnel that enemy attacks were likely to occur at various locations around the country. Now, given the wave of attacks that had hit allied targets across the upper midsection of South Vietnam, anticipation of more attacks elsewhere ran high. (p. 323)

The Bungled Attack on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon

Shortly after 0300, a taxi and a truck rolled up to the southeastern corner of the compound [the U.S. Embassy compound]. Fifteen sappers armed with AK47 rifles, B40 grenade launchers, and Chinese-made pistols jumped out. Their orders were to seize the embassy grounds, break into the chancery building [the Embassy itself], and take hostage the people inside. It was a dangerous mission but not suicidal by design. The sappers had been told by the Sub-Region 6 headquarters that hundreds of antiwar and antigovernment university students would converge on the embassy that morning to stage a sit-down strike. The sappers also expected one or more local force battalions to relieve them at some point during the next twenty-four hours. . . .

The sappers launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the front entrance to the chancery building. The warhead blew a small hole in the heavy teak door and shattered the glass that adorned the interior reception area, injuring several embassy personnel hunkered down near the front desk. The sappers fired several more rocket grenades at the upper floors of the chancery, but they barely chipped its honeycomb carapace. Deciding to conserve their remaining rocket grenades or to deal with allied armor should that be necessary, the sappers crouched behind the concrete planters in the front yard and waited for help to arrive. . . .

Fifteen minutes later [after all the VC sappers had been killed or captured by around 0845], General Westmoreland and his security detail arrived by car just as two UH–1 helicopters landed on the roof, discharging a platoon from the 101st Airborne Division that checked and secured all six levels of the chancery building. Ambassador Bunker and his entourage drove up a few minutes later. Taken on a short tour of the grounds, the two leaders could see that the chancery had suffered little more than cosmetic damage. Ambassador Bunker ordered the building reopened for business later that afternoon. (pp. 328-330)

An NVA Assessment of Tet

When COSVN [NVA HQ in South Vietnam] leaders held a secret conference with B2 Front officials in late March to review the results of the Tet offensive, General Thai and Secretary Hung asked whether a new round of attacks could be organized before the rainy season began in mid-May. Le Duan, still the preeminent voice in North Vietnam’s Politburo, was pushing hard for a resumption of the general offensive.

Some regional commanders expressed their doubts. The Viet Cong units that had spearheaded the first wave were still in bad shape, they said, and the North Vietnamese troops coming into theater were inexperienced youths, often weak from malaria and other tropical diseases that they had contracted on the journey south. As for the soldiers who had lived through the Tet offensive, many were demoralized after seeing their hopes for victory dashed. Supplies were an issue as well. Most of the forward depots were either empty or destroyed. Replacing them would not be easy with U.S. and South Vietnamese units constantly sweeping the provinces around Saigon. Those problems, combined with the heightened allied vigilance, led some B2 Front officials to conclude that “there was no longer any opportunity to liberate the cities and province capitals” with a Tet-style offensive. (p. 529)

Communist Forces Got Mauled in Quang Tri City

In the ensuing firefight, the paratroopers killed 108 enemy soldiers with the help of artillery and helicopters at a cost of 5 dead and 42 wounded. South Vietnamese troops scored another blow against the 812th Regiment when they located its command post in the woods just east of La Vang and killed the North Vietnamese regimental commander. The government troops also captured the regiment’s chief of staff along with a trove of cryptographic equipment and codes, plus the regimental logbook that contained a desperate final entry: “Help. Being attacked by American Airborne. Give idea.”

All told, the enemy lost an estimated 914 soldiers killed and another 86 captured between 31 January and 6 February in the battle for Quang Tri City. The badly mauled 812th Regiment disappeared into the western mountains for the next several months. The 808th and the 814th Battalions dropped from sight for an even longer period, only returning to offensive action in the latter part of 1968. . . .

The battle for Quang Tri City proved to be one of the most one-sided allied victories of the Tet offensive. (p. 387)

The Tet Offensive was a propaganda victory for the Communists. Until then the anti war movement was not popular on college campuses. After Tet it was. The Tet Offensive contributed to the eventual Communist victory. Walter Cronkite's opposition also contributed.

In "On War" Sun Tzu wrote, "Though the enemy be stronger in numbers, we may prevent him from fighting."

The Tet Offensive made the War in Vietnam unpopular on college campuses among the men the U.S. military wanted to be officers. After the Lt. Calley massacre became known a recruiting office for the Army said, "Calley would never have been given a commission if we were not short handed. Why are we short handed? The bastards at Harvard won't fight."

As the War in Vietnam became unpopular it became impossible for President's Johnson and Nixon to do what would have been necessary to win. Consequently the Tet Offensive was worth it from the Communist standpoint. What matters in war is the outcome.

If we really cared about the South Vietnamese who did not want to live under Communism we would not have continued to try to win. We would have negotiated a conditional surrender to the Communists that would have included the evacuation of South Vietnamese who supported us, and their settlement in the United States. I have known Vietnamese war refugees. They are good people.

 

[PeterPilot]

Imagine if shortly after the start of the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, an American newsman had announced on TV that perhaps we needed to seek a negotiated end to WWII because the Germans had launched a massive attack that no one thought possible?

This is not too drastically different from what Walter Cronkite did on February 27, 1968, less than four weeks after the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong subordinates launched their disastrous Tet Offensive on January 30. Here are the two most often-quoted statements from Cronkite's commentary:

To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.

But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.

You would never guess from Cronkite's spin that the Communists had suffered a horrendous military defeat, suffering staggering losses while failing to seize nearly all of the towns and cities they had targeted (and the few places they did manage to seize were retaken in a matter of weeks).

We now know from North Vietnamese sources that the Tet Offensive was a desperate gamble that Hanoi's leaders took because they realized they were losing the war. Also, the North Vietnamese had assumed that once the offensive began, the majority of South Vietnamese would rise up and help them overthrow the Saigon government, but the vast majority of South Vietnamese remained loyal to their government.

Walter Cronkite and most of the rest of the news media turned the Communists' crushing military defeat into a key propaganda victory for the Communist war effort.

The Tet Offensive Revisited: Media's Big Lie

Hello Mike

Do you suppose Walter understood what you apparently do not? The Battle of the Bulge and WWII were the last time the US Constitution was honored in formally declaring war. Vietnam was not declared, it was military aggression, pure and simple. It was illegitimate.

Do you see the difference between a legit war and the opposite? Was Walter more perceptive than you?

Your thread begins with a very poor comparison sir.

 

[Hector12]

Imagine if shortly after the start of the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, an American newsman had announced on TV that perhaps we needed to seek a negotiated end to WWII because the Germans had launched a massive attack that no one thought possible?

This is not too drastically different from what Walter Cronkite did on February 27, 1968, less than four weeks after the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong subordinates launched their disastrous Tet Offensive on January 30. Here are the two most often-quoted statements from Cronkite's commentary:

To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.

But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.

That analogy does not work. By the Battle of the Bulge it was obvious that Germany had lost the war. After the Invasion of Normandy succeeded Gen. Rommel told Hitler the war had been lost, and advised surrendering. Hitler had no incentive to surrender, because he knew he would be executed if Germany lost. Several SS men kidnapped Rommel, and gave him a choice. If he took poison and died his death would be attributed to allied bombing, and he would be given a military burial with full honors. If he refused to take the poison he and the members of his family would be sent to a death camp to be gassed.

 

[mikegriffith1]

That analogy does not work. By the Battle of the Bulge it was obvious that Germany had lost the war. After the Invasion of Normandy succeeded Gen. Rommel told Hitler the war had been lost, and advised surrendering. Hitler had no incentive to surrender, because he knew he would be executed if Germany lost. Several SS men kidnapped Rommel, and gave him a choice. If he took poison and died his death would be attributed to allied bombing, and he would be given a military burial with full honors. If he refused to take the poison he and the members of his family would be sent to a death camp to be gassed.

I already addressed this argument and addressed the resemblances and differences between the two situations. But you've ignored my points on this issue and have again repeated your argument.

 

[Hector12]

I already addressed this argument and addressed the resemblances and differences between the two situations. But you've ignored my points on this issue and have again repeated your argument.

I meant that Hitler knew he would be handed if Germany surrendered.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Such an absurd, juvenile comment shows that you are brainwashed beyond persuasion. Trying to reason with you is a waste of time.

Anyway, to further highlight one of the two main points of my OP, i.e., that Tet was a military disaster for the Communists, I will present some paragraphs from two books written by Dr. Erik Villard, the world’s foremost expert on the Tet Offensive. Both books are available for free online. Dr. Villard is a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History. He was part of the panel of experts in the video I linked on lessons from the Tet Offensive (LINK).

I’ve added section titles to introduce each segment. Due to the length of the segments, I will post part of them now and the remainder tomorrow.

From his book Staying the Course, October 1967-December 1968 (LINK):

Failure of the Tet Offensive

Hanoi’s general offensive–general uprising [the Tet Offensive] brought the war to South Vietnam’s cities for the first time and disrupted the allied pacification program that was just beginning to take hold in some rural areas formerly controlled by the Communists. For the enemy, however, those achievements came at a staggering cost in manpower and material; more importantly, the Tet offensive failed to cripple the South Vietnamese government or convince the United States to abandon its ally.

As the dust settled from the Viet Cong attacks, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered his military commanders to press ahead with their current strategy unchanged apart from some short-term tactical adjustments and a modest increase in the U.S. troop deployment. His decision to stay the course seemed to bear fruit as the allies repaired their losses and then forged new gains throughout the summer and autumn of 1968 despite two more Communist offensives, each one proving to be weaker than the last. (p. xiii)

Disaffection ran high in the enemy’s ranks after the failed offensive. Not even senior officers were immune to criticism. Two high-ranking officials in the B1 Front accused General Man of gross incompetence. The general, they said with bitterness, had not accomplished a single objective during the offensive. Losses had been heavy. Morale had plummeted. The whole enterprise had been a fiasco. A little over a month later, however, both men recanted after the Politburo praised Man. Still, as the B1 Front commander would acknowledge in his postwar memoir, he felt partly responsible for the debacle, for he had not spoken out against a plan that in his mind “had no foundation in reality.” (p. 321)

U.S. Forces Knew the Attack Was Coming

Westmoreland, meanwhile, issued a nationwide alert to all U.S. personnel warning them to prepare for enemy attacks that night [the night before the main Tet attacks began]. He was confident in their readiness, since all U.S. and Free World forces units had remained at full operational status going into the Tet holiday. In recent weeks, MACV had issued numerous bulletins alerting U.S. personnel that enemy attacks were likely to occur at various locations around the country. Now, given the wave of attacks that had hit allied targets across the upper midsection of South Vietnam, anticipation of more attacks elsewhere ran high. (p. 323)

The Bungled Attack on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon

Shortly after 0300, a taxi and a truck rolled up to the southeastern corner of the compound [the U.S. Embassy compound]. Fifteen sappers armed with AK47 rifles, B40 grenade launchers, and Chinese-made pistols jumped out. Their orders were to seize the embassy grounds, break into the chancery building [the Embassy itself], and take hostage the people inside. It was a dangerous mission but not suicidal by design. The sappers had been told by the Sub-Region 6 headquarters that hundreds of antiwar and antigovernment university students would converge on the embassy that morning to stage a sit-down strike. The sappers also expected one or more local force battalions to relieve them at some point during the next twenty-four hours. . . .

The sappers launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the front entrance to the chancery building. The warhead blew a small hole in the heavy teak door and shattered the glass that adorned the interior reception area, injuring several embassy personnel hunkered down near the front desk. The sappers fired several more rocket grenades at the upper floors of the chancery, but they barely chipped its honeycomb carapace. Deciding to conserve their remaining rocket grenades or to deal with allied armor should that be necessary, the sappers crouched behind the concrete planters in the front yard and waited for help to arrive. . . .

Fifteen minutes later [after all the VC sappers had been killed or captured by around 0845], General Westmoreland and his security detail arrived by car just as two UH–1 helicopters landed on the roof, discharging a platoon from the 101st Airborne Division that checked and secured all six levels of the chancery building. Ambassador Bunker and his entourage drove up a few minutes later. Taken on a short tour of the grounds, the two leaders could see that the chancery had suffered little more than cosmetic damage. Ambassador Bunker ordered the building reopened for business later that afternoon. (pp. 328-330)

An NVA Assessment of Tet

When COSVN [NVA HQ in South Vietnam] leaders held a secret conference with B2 Front officials in late March to review the results of the Tet offensive, General Thai and Secretary Hung asked whether a new round of attacks could be organized before the rainy season began in mid-May. Le Duan, still the preeminent voice in North Vietnam’s Politburo, was pushing hard for a resumption of the general offensive.

Some regional commanders expressed their doubts. The Viet Cong units that had spearheaded the first wave were still in bad shape, they said, and the North Vietnamese troops coming into theater were inexperienced youths, often weak from malaria and other tropical diseases that they had contracted on the journey south. As for the soldiers who had lived through the Tet offensive, many were demoralized after seeing their hopes for victory dashed. Supplies were an issue as well. Most of the forward depots were either empty or destroyed. Replacing them would not be easy with U.S. and South Vietnamese units constantly sweeping the provinces around Saigon. Those problems, combined with the heightened allied vigilance, led some B2 Front officials to conclude that “there was no longer any opportunity to liberate the cities and province capitals” with a Tet-style offensive. (p. 529)

Communist Forces Got Mauled in Quang Tri City

In the ensuing firefight, the paratroopers killed 108 enemy soldiers with the help of artillery and helicopters at a cost of 5 dead and 42 wounded. South Vietnamese troops scored another blow against the 812th Regiment when they located its command post in the woods just east of La Vang and killed the North Vietnamese regimental commander. The government troops also captured the regiment’s chief of staff along with a trove of cryptographic equipment and codes, plus the regimental logbook that contained a desperate final entry: “Help. Being attacked by American Airborne. Give idea.”

All told, the enemy lost an estimated 914 soldiers killed and another 86 captured between 31 January and 6 February in the battle for Quang Tri City. The badly mauled 812th Regiment disappeared into the western mountains for the next several months. The 808th and the 814th Battalions dropped from sight for an even longer period, only returning to offensive action in the latter part of 1968. . . .

The battle for Quang Tri City proved to be one of the most one-sided allied victories of the Tet offensive. (p. 387)

Here's the second part of the segments from Dr. Villard's books. Again, I added the segment titles.

From his book The 1968 Tet Offensive Battles of Quang Tri City and Hue (LINK):

Miscommunication Among Communist Forces

Another problem emerged in the early morning hours of 30 January, when Communist forces in more than a dozen cities in southern I Corps and II Corps launched their Tet attacks prematurely. These strikes gave the allies warning that more attacks were probably soon to come. At 0945 on 30 January, President Thieu canceled the Tet cease-fire everywhere in South Vietnam and ordered all troops on leave to rejoin their units. (p. 31)

Battle of Hue [Hue, pronounced “Way,” was the only city that the Communists managed to hold for more than a few hours/days during the offensive]

Meanwhile, in the southwestern sector, the enemy was rapidly running out of time and space. The North Vietnamese troops bottled up there tried to relieve some of the pressure on their perimeter by launching a sudden counterattack against the Vietnamese marines. The maneuver came as no surprise to the government troops, who broke up the assault with a well-timed artillery barrage that killed approximately 150 Communist soldiers. To the east, South Vietnamese soldiers forced their way into the Imperial Palace and began clearing out the snipers who had long resided there. (p. 74)

The allies crushed the last organized enemy resistance in the [Hue] Citadel on 25 February. At 0300, the Vietnamese marines attacked toward the southern corner and wiped out the few enemy troops remaining there. Just east of the old city, the two South Vietnamese ranger battalions on Gia Hoi finished their sweep of the island. The three-day operation netted hundreds of Communist cadre, many of whom were university students. According to local residents, those students had played a key role in rounding up government officials and intellectuals the enemy regarded as threats to their new regime. (p. 77)

The month-long struggle for Hue, the longest battle of the Tet Offensive, generated more casualties than any other single engagement of the war to that date. A total of 142 U.S. marines were killed in the fighting for Hue and another 1,100 or so were wounded. The South Vietnamese Army lost 333 men killed and 1,773 wounded in the operation and the Vietnamese marines another 88 killed and 350 wounded. The 1st Cavalry Division reported losses of 68 killed and 453 wounded while the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, listed its casualties as 6 dead and 56 wounded. Allied estimates of the number of enemy killed ranged from between 2,500 to 5,000. . . .

South Vietnamese Army’s (ARVN’s) Performance During Tet

By most standards, the South Vietnamese armed forces had performed well during the battle. The Hac Bao Company, the 3d Regiment of the South Vietnamese 1st Infantry Division, and the paratroopers of the South Vietnamese 1st Airborne task force fought with exceptional skill and valor. The South Vietnamese had fewer heavy weapons, such as recoilless rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, because they tended to rely on artillery and air strikes for supporting fire. Despite the fact that they were outgunned by the enemy at the company and battalion level, the government troops not only held their own but eventually overcame a sizable force of North Vietnamese regulars in prolonged, close-range battle. The 1st Division’s command-and-control system also proved to be excellent. (p. 78)

Communists Paid a Severe Price for Occupying Hue for Just One Month

The battle of Hue proved to be the enemy’s most successful operation of the Tet Offensive. The equivalent of two infantry divisions, mostly disciplined and well-equipped North Vietnamese regulars, had been maneuvered to the very doorstep of Hue without tipping off the allies. . . .

Despite their accomplishments, the Communists paid a dear price for their nearly month-long occupation of Hue. The 4th, 5th, and 6th Regiments took heavy losses, with some battalions reduced to approximately one hundred men out of an original force of nearly four hundred. Other units that arrived later in the battle were only marginally better off. The North Vietnamese would need several months to rest and reconstitute their units before they were once again combat ready.

The battering the Communists took in Hue also exacted a psychological toll. According to captured documents, many soldiers in the 6th Regiment became reluctant to operate in the lowlands in the weeks and months following Tet.

The enemy also experienced severe command-and-control problems during the battle. A high percentage of units lost their way during the initial phase of the offensive, which prevented the Communists from bringing their full weight to bear on critical targets, such as the 1st Division headquarters. The enemy also failed to destroy the two most important bridges in the city, the Nguyen Hoang and An Cuu Bridges, in the critical opening hours of the offensive. That error permitted the allies to move men and supplies into the city when they were most needed. The inability of the North Vietnamese to overrun the 1st Division headquarters and the advisory compound gave the allies key footholds in the city that they were then able to use to counterattack.

The other conspicuous failure of the North Vietnamese was their inability to organize a general uprising. Before the battle, the Communists had recognized that their “armed forces alone would fail to win.” They had counted on tens of thousands of citizens flooding the streets and taking over government buildings to demand an immediate end to the war and a policy of national reconciliation with the North. When the shooting started, however, few civilians offered to help the enemy with food, information, or labor.

The Communists had no more success trying to co-opt Buddhist leaders who had spoken out against the government and the war in the past. Although many sympathized with the Communists’ call for national independence, unification, and reconciliation and a handful of prominent monks took positions in the revolutionary government, most refused to help the enemy during the battle. Communist political officers and armed propaganda teams had almost no success convincing South Vietnamese fighters to switch sides. Aside from a few para-military soldiers, who may have changed allegiance rather than face certain death, the morale and loyalty of the government troops held firm. Indeed, anti-Communist sentiment hardened among all segments of Hue society, including the formerly neutral-leaning Buddhist monks, as a result of the enemy attack and the murderous policy of the revolutionary Viet Cong government. (pp. 79-80)

Communists Massacred At Least 2,800 Civilians in Hue While They Controlled It

The most significant cost of all [of the battle of Hue] was the more than 4,000 confirmed civilian deaths that occurred during the 25-day battle. Approximately 1,200 of those fatalities came as a result of errant bombs and bullets, but the remaining citizens perished at the hands of Communist cadres who had orders to execute a long list of government officials and sympathizers.

After the battle, the allies discovered mass graves containing the bodies of approximately 3,000 civilians. Some had their hands and feet tied, and many showed signs of having been shot at close range. At least 600 had been buried alive. The Communists also abducted several thousand other people to serve as porters during the battle; most were never seen again. The North Vietnamese never publicly admitted to killing more than a small number of civilians, blaming most of the deaths on the allies or on collateral damage from the battle. A captured document from April 1968, however, revealed the “elimination” of nearly 3,000 “tyrants and puppet administrative personnel.” (p. 81)

Communist Failure in I Corps (northern South Vietnam) Mirrored Failure Elsewhere

The Communists’ defeat in northern I Corps mirrored their lack of success elsewhere during Tet. . . . The popular uprising the Communists had envisioned never materialized, leaving their forces isolated in the cities and vulnerable to allied counterattacks. MACV intelligence estimated that as many as 45,000 of the 84,000 enemy soldiers who participated in the offensive may have perished in the course of the battle. The Communists mounted a second, smaller offensive in early May that also came to disaster, but this attack affected Saigon more so than northern I Corps. Attesting to the soundness of the enemy’s defeat at Quang Tri City and Hue during Tet of 1968, another four years would pass, at a time when most of the American forces had withdrawn from the country, before the North Vietnamese would try to take these cities once again. (p. 82)

 

[Hector12]

Here's the second part of the segments from Dr. Villard's books. Again, I added the segment titles.

From his book The 1968 Tet Offensive Battles of Quang Tri City and Hue (LINK):

Miscommunication Among Communist Forces

Another problem emerged in the early morning hours of 30 January, when Communist forces in more than a dozen cities in southern I Corps and II Corps launched their Tet attacks prematurely. These strikes gave the allies warning that more attacks were probably soon to come. At 0945 on 30 January, President Thieu canceled the Tet cease-fire everywhere in South Vietnam and ordered all troops on leave to rejoin their units. (p. 31)

Battle of Hue [Hue, pronounced “Way,” was the only city that the Communists managed to hold for more than a few hours/days during the offensive]

Meanwhile, in the southwestern sector, the enemy was rapidly running out of time and space. The North Vietnamese troops bottled up there tried to relieve some of the pressure on their perimeter by launching a sudden counterattack against the Vietnamese marines. The maneuver came as no surprise to the government troops, who broke up the assault with a well-timed artillery barrage that killed approximately 150 Communist soldiers. To the east, South Vietnamese soldiers forced their way into the Imperial Palace and began clearing out the snipers who had long resided there. (p. 74)

The allies crushed the last organized enemy resistance in the [Hue] Citadel on 25 February. At 0300, the Vietnamese marines attacked toward the southern corner and wiped out the few enemy troops remaining there. Just east of the old city, the two South Vietnamese ranger battalions on Gia Hoi finished their sweep of the island. The three-day operation netted hundreds of Communist cadre, many of whom were university students. According to local residents, those students had played a key role in rounding up government officials and intellectuals the enemy regarded as threats to their new regime. (p. 77)

The month-long struggle for Hue, the longest battle of the Tet Offensive, generated more casualties than any other single engagement of the war to that date. A total of 142 U.S. marines were killed in the fighting for Hue and another 1,100 or so were wounded. The South Vietnamese Army lost 333 men killed and 1,773 wounded in the operation and the Vietnamese marines another 88 killed and 350 wounded. The 1st Cavalry Division reported losses of 68 killed and 453 wounded while the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, listed its casualties as 6 dead and 56 wounded. Allied estimates of the number of enemy killed ranged from between 2,500 to 5,000. . . .

South Vietnamese Army’s (ARVN’s) Performance During Tet

By most standards, the South Vietnamese armed forces had performed well during the battle. The Hac Bao Company, the 3d Regiment of the South Vietnamese 1st Infantry Division, and the paratroopers of the South Vietnamese 1st Airborne task force fought with exceptional skill and valor. The South Vietnamese had fewer heavy weapons, such as recoilless rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, because they tended to rely on artillery and air strikes for supporting fire. Despite the fact that they were outgunned by the enemy at the company and battalion level, the government troops not only held their own but eventually overcame a sizable force of North Vietnamese regulars in prolonged, close-range battle. The 1st Division’s command-and-control system also proved to be excellent. (p. 78)

Communists Paid a Severe Price for Occupying Hue for Just One Month

The battle of Hue proved to be the enemy’s most successful operation of the Tet Offensive. The equivalent of two infantry divisions, mostly disciplined and well-equipped North Vietnamese regulars, had been maneuvered to the very doorstep of Hue without tipping off the allies. . . .

Despite their accomplishments, the Communists paid a dear price for their nearly month-long occupation of Hue. The 4th, 5th, and 6th Regiments took heavy losses, with some battalions reduced to approximately one hundred men out of an original force of nearly four hundred. Other units that arrived later in the battle were only marginally better off. The North Vietnamese would need several months to rest and reconstitute their units before they were once again combat ready.

The battering the Communists took in Hue also exacted a psychological toll. According to captured documents, many soldiers in the 6th Regiment became reluctant to operate in the lowlands in the weeks and months following Tet.

The enemy also experienced severe command-and-control problems during the battle. A high percentage of units lost their way during the initial phase of the offensive, which prevented the Communists from bringing their full weight to bear on critical targets, such as the 1st Division headquarters. The enemy also failed to destroy the two most important bridges in the city, the Nguyen Hoang and An Cuu Bridges, in the critical opening hours of the offensive. That error permitted the allies to move men and supplies into the city when they were most needed. The inability of the North Vietnamese to overrun the 1st Division headquarters and the advisory compound gave the allies key footholds in the city that they were then able to use to counterattack.

The other conspicuous failure of the North Vietnamese was their inability to organize a general uprising. Before the battle, the Communists had recognized that their “armed forces alone would fail to win.” They had counted on tens of thousands of citizens flooding the streets and taking over government buildings to demand an immediate end to the war and a policy of national reconciliation with the North. When the shooting started, however, few civilians offered to help the enemy with food, information, or labor.

The Communists had no more success trying to co-opt Buddhist leaders who had spoken out against the government and the war in the past. Although many sympathized with the Communists’ call for national independence, unification, and reconciliation and a handful of prominent monks took positions in the revolutionary government, most refused to help the enemy during the battle. Communist political officers and armed propaganda teams had almost no success convincing South Vietnamese fighters to switch sides. Aside from a few para-military soldiers, who may have changed allegiance rather than face certain death, the morale and loyalty of the government troops held firm. Indeed, anti-Communist sentiment hardened among all segments of Hue society, including the formerly neutral-leaning Buddhist monks, as a result of the enemy attack and the murderous policy of the revolutionary Viet Cong government. (pp. 79-80)

Communists Massacred At Least 2,800 Civilians in Hue While They Controlled It

The most significant cost of all [of the battle of Hue] was the more than 4,000 confirmed civilian deaths that occurred during the 25-day battle. Approximately 1,200 of those fatalities came as a result of errant bombs and bullets, but the remaining citizens perished at the hands of Communist cadres who had orders to execute a long list of government officials and sympathizers.

After the battle, the allies discovered mass graves containing the bodies of approximately 3,000 civilians. Some had their hands and feet tied, and many showed signs of having been shot at close range. At least 600 had been buried alive. The Communists also abducted several thousand other people to serve as porters during the battle; most were never seen again. The North Vietnamese never publicly admitted to killing more than a small number of civilians, blaming most of the deaths on the allies or on collateral damage from the battle. A captured document from April 1968, however, revealed the “elimination” of nearly 3,000 “tyrants and puppet administrative personnel.” (p. 81)

Communist Failure in I Corps (northern South Vietnam) Mirrored Failure Elsewhere

The Communists’ defeat in northern I Corps mirrored their lack of success elsewhere during Tet. . . . The popular uprising the Communists had envisioned never materialized, leaving their forces isolated in the cities and vulnerable to allied counterattacks. MACV intelligence estimated that as many as 45,000 of the 84,000 enemy soldiers who participated in the offensive may have perished in the course of the battle. The Communists mounted a second, smaller offensive in early May that also came to disaster, but this attack affected Saigon more so than northern I Corps. Attesting to the soundness of the enemy’s defeat at Quang Tri City and Hue during Tet of 1968, another four years would pass, at a time when most of the American forces had withdrawn from the country, before the North Vietnamese would try to take these cities once again. (p. 82)

The lack of a South Vietnamese uprising during the Tet Offensive is seen as a defeat for the Communists. During the Battle of the Bulge during World War II, no one expected a French uprising to support the Germans.

 

[mikegriffith1]

The War in Vietnam had been going on for too long. It was time to admit defeat and leave.

"Admit defeat"??? We had just won an enormous victory! We had just wiped out about 80% of the Viet Cong's infrastructure, so much so that in some areas the VC were essentially non-existent. I suspect you still have not bothered to even read what former Viet Cong officials said about what a disaster the Tet Offensive was for the Communists.

You keep ignoring the fact that we have known for years from North Vietnamese sources that Hanoi's Politburo launched the Tet Offensive because they concluded that their protracted-war strategy was failing, and because they had suffered a series of costly defeats in 1967.

The only honorable way to end that dishonorable war was to evacuate those Vietnamese who did not want to live under the Communists and settle them in the United States. I have known Vietnamese war refugees. They are good people.

Did you apologize to those refugees for helping to cause their country's defeat, for helping to cause their sad fate, and for cheering for the Communists? Did you apologize to them for being part of a so-called "anti-war" movement that proudly waved the Viet Cong flag at many/most of its rallies, that praised Ho Chi Minh, that claimed that North Vietnam had no desire to rule South Vietnam but just to expel foreign forces, and that said that Communist rule in South Vietnam would be an improvement over the Saigon government?

We never should have gotten involved in what was nothing more than a civil war that should not have concerned us. Our involvement made a bad situation vastly worse.

This is Communist mythology. You should be ashamed of yourself for repeating this garbage, especially in 2024, given all that we now know about the war.

It was just a "civil war," huh? Then what about the tens of billions of dollars of weapons and ammo that the Soviet Union and Red China gave to North Vietnam? What about the tens of thousands of Chinese support troops in North Vietnam who were building/repairing railroad lines, roads, and supply depots? What about the thousands of Soviet advisors who were running North Vietnam's air defense system and training NVA AAA and SAM operators?

And just on a point of fact and history, how could the Vietnam War have been a "civil war" when South Vietnam made no effort to conquer North Vietnam or to overthrow the Hanoi regime. South Vietnam just wanted to be left alone.

There would have been no war if North Vietnam had not invaded South Vietnam. It is astounding that you refuse to admit this indisputable fact of history.

Tell me: Do you think we should have stayed out of the Korean War, since our involvement prolonged the fighting and greatly increased the casualties?

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

mikegriffith1, yet we lost the war because Americana did not see Tet as a great victory for us.

 

[Hector12]

Vietnam was never important to our security or our economy. After ten years and 55 thousand dead we decided we had had enough of that futile mistake, so we boogied on out.

All we had to do to avoid that war was to sign and honor the Geneva Agreement of 1954.

Internet History Sourcebooks: Modern History

 

[Hector12]

 

[Hector12]