Tet Offensive

What is "tet"?

A celebration of the lunar new year that is the most important holiday on the Vietnam calendar

What was the tet offensive?

A coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam

Who was Giap?

General Vo Nguyen Giap was a military commander who chose January 31 as the occasion for a coordinated offensive of surprise attacks aimed at breaking the stalemate in Vietnam

What did Giap believe?

He believed that the attacks would cause Army of the Republic of Vietnam forces to collapse and foment discontent and rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and he thought the alliance between South Vietnam and the US was unstable

What did Johnson do after the tet offensive?

He declared that he was limiting bombing of North Vietnam to the area below the 20th parallel and called negotiations to end the war and announced that he wouldn't be running for reelection

What was the tet offensive in the Vietnam war?

The attacks marker a turning point in the war and the beginning of the slow painful American withdrawl from the region

Was the tet offensive successful?

The tet offensive was a strategic success for the North Vietnamese and some of Johnson's advisers that had supported past military buildup in Vietnam argued for scaling back US involvement

What would be the purpose of attacking the US embassy in Saigon?

The viet cong platoon would get inside the complex's courtyard before US forces destroyed it

How did the Tet offensive begin on January 30th 1968?

The vietcong attacked 13 cities in the early morning and 24 hours later PAVN and Viet Cong forces struck a number of other targets throughout South Vietnam massing to more than 120 attacks

What was the outcome of the attack?

Though Giap had succeeded in achieving surprise, his forced were spread too thin in the offensive and the US and AVRN forces successfully counter most of the attacks and the Viet Cong had many losses

How did the public react to the attacks?

Though U.S and South Vietnamese forces managed to hold off the attacks, news coverage of the massive offensive shocked the American public and eroded support for the war effort

What was the battle of hue?

It raged more than three weeks after PAVN and Viet Cong forces burst into the city and Viet Cong soldiers conducted searches arresting intellectuals and people connected with American forces or South Vietnamese regime

Why did the attacks happen?

It was an attempt to forment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back it's involvement in the Vietnam war

What was the Khe Sanh Attack?

January 21 1968 the PAVN forces began a massive artillery bombardment of the US Marine garrison at Khe San