Shock and Awe of Tet Offensive Shattered U.S. Illusions

By James. H. Willbanks

This week, we mark the 41st anniversary of the 1968 Tet Offensive, generally recognized as the watershed event of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The outcome of the offensive ultimately led to a major shift in American strategy from trying to defeat the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army to finding a way to disengage from the conflict. That being said, it is easy 41 years later to forget that the Tet Offensive was a crushing defeat for the Communist forces. It was simply the audacity and ferocity of the attack that caught American leaders so off guard and so shocked American TV viewers that the course of the war changed in an instant, ending the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson in the process.

The preliminary phase of the offensive actually began with the attack on the Marine base at Khe Sanh on January 21. Ten days later, in the early morning hours of January 31, during the traditional Tet holiday truce, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces launched a massive countrywide attack on the cities and towns of South Vietnam. More than 80,000 Communist troops mounted a coordinated assault on five of six autonomous cities, including Saigon and Hue, 36 of 44 provincial capitals, 64 of 245 district capitals, and more than 50 hamlets.

The timing, magnitude, and violence of the attacks achieved maximum surprise and caught the South Vietnamese and American forces almost totally off guard. In one of the most spectacular actions, Viet Cong sappers attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. A 19-man suicide squad seized the courtyard of the U.S. Embassy and held it for six hours until an assault force of U.S. paratroopers landed by helicopter on the building's roof and routed them. Although the attackers were all killed or captured, the television news footage of the battle on the embassy grounds shocked viewers back home in the United States.

Nearly a thousand Viet Cong were believed to have infiltrated Saigon and it took a week of intense fighting by an estimated 11,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops to dislodge them. Further to the north, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops seized the old imperial capital at Hue. It took almost a month of savage house-to-house fighting by U.S. Marines and South Vietnamese troops to retake the city.

The scope of the offensive stunned the White House, the media, and the American people. Adding to the impact of the surprise attacks was the fact that they followed in the wake of repeated reassurances from both the military and the Johnson administration that progress was being made in the war and that the end was in sight. Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News anchorman and perhaps the most trusted journalist in the nation, spoke for many Americans when he declared upon return from the battlefield at Hue that the bloody war in Vietnam was destined to "end in a stalemate."

Despite Cronkite's consternation, the allies had quickly recovered from the initial surprise of the Communist attacks and reacted in a strong manner. With the exception of the fighting that continued in Hue, parts of Saigon, and Khe Sanh, the opening phase of the offensive was crushed. By the end of March, the Communists had not achieved any of their objectives and had lost 32,000 soldiers and had 5,800 captured in the process. The general uprising among the South Vietnamese people for which the Communists had hoped never materialized. However, the bitter fighting took a heavy toll on allied forces; U.S. losses were 3,895 dead and the South Vietnamese suffered 4,954 killed in action.

The offensive, which extended in later phases into the early fall months of 1968, was a costly military defeat for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, whose casualties, by some estimates, would total more than 58,000 by year's end. However, the early reporting of a smashing Communist victory went largely uncorrected in the media, and this contributed to a great psychological victory for the Communists at the political level.

The boldness of the Communist offensive, the sensationalist reports from the media, and the heavy U.S. casualties incurred during the fighting, coupled with the disillusionment over earlier, overly optimistic reports of progress in the war by administration officials, including Gen. William C. Westmoreland, senior U.S. commander in Vietnam, accelerated the growing disenchantment with President Johnson's conduct of the war.

The reaction to the Tet Offensive provided new strength to the war protestors and led Democrats to challenge the president's leadership within his own party. It convinced Johnson that military victory in Vietnam was not attainable and forced a re-evaluation of American strategy. The president, frustrated with his inability to reach a solution in Vietnam, announced on March 31, 1968, that he would neither seek nor accept the nomination of his party for re-election. The Tet Offensive had effectively driven the sitting president from office. Thus, the offensive proved to be the turning point of the war that set into motion the events that would lead to Richard Nixon's election, the long and bloody U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia, and ultimately to the fall of South Vietnam in 1975.

How a defeat at the tactical level in 1968 could be turned into a victory at the strategic level that changed the entire course of the war is worthy of reconsideration. There are several reasons for the outcome of the Tet Offensive. The Johnson administration, letting political expediency overcome realistic intelligence assessments, built a set of expectations about American progress in the war that could not stand close scrutiny. That scrutiny came in a dramatic fashion when the Tet Offensive exploded on the TV screens of America. The impact of these images beamed back from Saigon, Hue, Khe Sanh, and the other Tet battlefields was so powerful because they effectively put the lie to the reassurances that had come from the White House and MACV headquarters in Saigon.

The irony is that there were numerous indications that the Communists were planning something big. Had these indications been heeded and acted upon, it is very likely that the Communists would have failed to achieve the stunning surprise that was so devastating. However, these indications flew in the face of what Westmoreland and his military intelligence analysts believed about enemy capabilities. Falling prey to their own pronouncements about the success against the Communist forces, they did not think that the Communists had the capability to launch such a massive campaign. Having convinced themselves that the tactical situation was better than it was, Westmoreland and the military leadership failed to anticipate the offensive because they were blinded by the inability to overcome their preconceived notions about enemy strength; they were in effect, "drinking their own bath water." When the offensive came, it was so sudden and unexpected that it achieved almost total surprise. The political ramifications of that surprise widened the credibility gap and further shook the confidence of the American people in their president and his war effort.

The Tet Offensive demonstrates a vital aspect of warfare that is just as applicable today as it was in 1968. Despite the fact that the Communists were defeated during the fighting, it was the political component of the offensive that had such a huge impact on the ultimate outcome of the war. Today's military leaders will be wise to have learned the lessons of the Tet Offensive. They must never underestimate the enemy and must be judicious in their pronouncements about progress in order not to build impossible or unrealistic expectations for success. They must also avoid being blinded by their own preconceived notions in the intelligence arena, while at the same time being very careful never to forget that all warfare has a political component that has potential far-reaching ramifications beyond the battlefield.

James H. Willbanks is director of the Department of Military History, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He is a Vietnam veteran and author of The Tet Offensive: A Concise History (Columbia University Press, 2007), Abandoning Vietnam (University Press of Kansas, 2004), a study of Richard Nixon's Vietnamization policy and its aftermath, and the forthcoming Vietnam War Almanac to be published by Facts on File.