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The National Liberation Front (NLF), was designed to replicate the success of the Viet Minh, and the umbrella nationalist organization that successfully liberated Vietnam from French colonial rule. Also, the NLF was dominated by the Lao Dong Party Central Committee (North Vietnamese Communist Party) and served as the North’s shadow government in South Vietnam.

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North Vietnam announces the formation of the National Front for the Liberation of the South at a conference held "somewhere in the South." This organization, more commonly known as the National Liberation Front (NLF), was designed to replicate the success of the Viet Minh, the umbrella nationalist organization that successfully liberated Vietnam from French colonial rule.

The NLF reached out to those parts of South Vietnamese society who were displeased with the government and policies of President Ngo Dinh Diem. One hundred delegates representing more than a dozen political parties and religious groups-both communists and non-communists-were in attendance at the conference. However, from the beginning, the NLF was dominated by the Lao Dong Party Central Committee (North Vietnamese Communist Party) and served as the North's shadow government in South Vietnam. The Saigon regime dubbed the NLF the "Viet Cong," a pejorative contraction of Viet Nam Cong San (Vietnamese Communists).

The NLF's military arm was the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF). In February 1965, the PLAF attacked U.S. Army installations at Pleiku and Qui Nhon, which convinced President Lyndon B. Johnson to send the first U.S. ground troops to South Vietnam a month later. Ultimately, more than 500,000 U.S. troops were sent to Vietnam to fight the PLAF and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN, or North Vietnamese Army).

The NLF reached the height of its power during the 1968 Tet Offensive, when the communists launched a massive coordinated attack against key urban centers throughout South Vietnam. Although the Viet Cong forces were soundly defeated during the course of the offensive, they achieved a great psychological victory because the attack prompted many long time supporters of the war to question the Johnson administration's optimistic predictions.

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National Liberation Front formed - Dec 20, 1960 - HISTORY.com

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North Vietnam announces the formation of the National Front for the Liberation of the South at a conference held "somewhere in the South." This organization, more commonly known as the National Liberation Front (NLF), was designed to replicate the success of the Viet Minh, the umbrella nationalist organization that successfully liberated Vietnam from French colonial rule.

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The My Lai Massacre was the Vietnam War mass murder of unarmed civilians by U.S troops in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968. Between 347 and 504 unarmed people were massacred by the U.S Army soilders from company C

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My Lai Massacre - Vietnam War - HISTORY.com

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Find out more about the history of My Lai Massacre, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

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The Tet Offensive officially called The General Offensive and Uprising of Tet Mau Than 1968 by North Vietnam and the NLF, was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam that took place in over 100 cities.

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What Was the Tet Offensive?

As the celebration of the lunar new year, the Tet holiday is the most important holiday on the Vietnamese calendar. In previous years, the holiday had been the occasion for an informal truce in the Vietnam War between South Vietnam and North Vietnam (and their communist allies in South Vietnam, the Viet Cong).

In early 1968, however, the North Vietnamese military commander General Vo Nguyen Giap chose January 31 as the occasion for a coordinated offensive of surprise attacks aimed at breaking the stalemate in Vietnam. Giap, in coordination with North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh, believed that the attacks would cause Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces to collapse and foment discontent and rebellion among the South Vietnamese population.

Furthermore, Giap believed the alliance between South Vietnam and the United States was unstable-he hoped the offensive would drive the final wedge between them and convince American leaders to give up their defense of South Vietnam.

Did you know? In February 1968, in the wake of the Tet Offensive, the respected TV journalist Walter Cronkite, who had been a moderate and balanced observer of the war's progress, announced that it seemed "more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate." President Johnson reportedly told an aide, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."

Khe Sanh Attacked

In preparation for the planned offensive, Giap and his troops in the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) launched a series of attacks in the fall of 1967 on isolated American garrisons in the highlands of central Vietnam and along the Laotian and Cambodian frontiers.

On January 21, 1968, PAVN forces began a massive artillery bombardment of the U.S. Marine garrison at Khe Sanh, located on the principal road from northern South Vietnam into Laos. As President Lyndon B. Johnson and General William Westmoreland focused their attention on the defense of Khe Sanh, Giap's 70,000 poised to begin their true objective: the Tet Offensive.

Tet Offensive Begins

On the early morning of January 30, 1968, Viet Cong forces attacked 13 cities in central South Vietnam, just as many families began their observances of the lunar new year.

Twenty-four hours later, PAVN and Viet Cong forces struck a number of other targets throughout South Vietnam, including cities, towns, government buildings and U.S. or ARVN military bases throughout South Vietnam, in a total of more than 120 attacks.

In a particularly bold attack on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, a Viet Cong platoon got inside the complex's courtyard before U.S. forces destroyed it. The audacious attack on the U.S. Embassy, and its initial success, stunned American and international observers, who saw images of the carnage broadcast on television as it occurred.

Though Giap had succeeded in achieving surprise, his forces were spread too thin in the ambitious offensive, and U.S. and ARVN forces managed to successfully counter most of the attacks and inflict heavy Viet Cong losses.

The Battle of Hue

Particularly intense fighting took place in the city of Hue, located on the Perfume River some 50 miles south of the border between North and South Vietnam.

The Battle of Hue would rage for more than three weeks after PAVN and Viet Cong forces burst into the city on January 31, easily overwhelming the government forces there and taking control of the city's ancient citadel.

Early in their occupation of Hue, Viet Cong soldiers conducted house-to-house searches, arresting civil servants, religious leaders, teachers and other civilians connected with American forces or with the South Vietnamese regime. They executed these so-called counter-revolutionaries and buried their bodies in mass graves.

U.S. and ARVN forces discovered evidence of the massacre after they regained control of the city on February 26. In addition to more than 2,800 bodies, another 3,000 residents were missing, and the occupying forces had destroyed many of the city's grand temples, palaces and other monuments.

The toughest fighting in Hue occurred at the ancient citadel, which the North Vietnamese struggled fiercely to hold against superior U.S. firepower. In scenes of carnage recorded on film by numerous television crews on the scene, nearly 150 U.S. Marines were killed in the Battle of Hue, along with some 400 South Vietnamese troops.

On the North Vietnamese side, an estimated 5,000 soldiers were killed, most of them hit by American air and artillery strikes.

"What I saw was probably the most intense ground fighting on a sustained basis over several days of any other period during the war," Howard Prince, a U.S. Army captain, later told NPR.

"We didn't know where the enemy was, in which direction even," Mike Downs, a Marine captain, told NPR.

Impact of the Tet Offensive

Despite its heavy casualty toll, and its failure to inspire widespread rebellion among the South Vietnamese, the Tet Offensive proved to be a strategic success for the North Vietnamese.

Before Tet, Westmoreland and other representatives of the Johnson administration had been claiming that the end of the war was in sight; now, it was clear that a long struggle still lay ahead, shaking their confidence in their ability to win the Cold War. Westmoreland requested more than 200,000 new troops in order to mount an effective counteroffensive, an escalation that many Americans saw as an act of desperation.

"You had the incredible rose-colored reports coming from General William Westmoreland, who was the American commander in Vietnam," Mark Bowden, author of the book Hue 1968, told NPR. "[He was] assuring the American people that the end was near, that the enemy was really only capable of small kinds of ambushes in the far reaches of the country."

Antiwar Movement Grows

As antiwar sentiment and Vietnam War protests on the home front gathered strength, some of Johnson's advisers in the White House that had supported past military buildup in Vietnam (including soon-to-be Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford) now argued for scaling back U.S. involvement.

On March 31, a beleaguered President Johnson declared that he was limiting the bombing of North Vietnam to the area below the 20th parallel (thus sparing 90 percent of communist-held territory) and calling for negotiations to end the war. At the same time, Johnson announced he would not run for re-election that November.

Though peace talks would drag on for another five years-during which more American soldiers were killed than in the previous years of the conflict-Johnson's decision to halt escalation after the Tet Offensive marked a crucial turning point in American participation in the war in Vietnam.

Sources

Military Victory But Political Defeat: The Tet Offensive 50 Years Later. NPR.
U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive, 1968. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian.
Jan 30, 1968 CE: Tet Offensive. National Geographic.
Tet Offensive at Fifty. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

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Tet Offensive: 1968, Definition & Date - HISTORY

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The Tet Offensive of 1968 was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks against more than 100 cities and outposts in U.S.-supported South Vietnam.

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The Pentagon Papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg to the New York Times. Daniel released these papers because he felt it was necessary for the public to be able to see what was really happening in Vietnam Daniel released these papers

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Explore the circumstances surrounding the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967, to the public.

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The Search & Destroy mission was an integral part of General William Westmoreland’s strategy to destroy the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. It ideally suited to fight against the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army. There was no distinction between “Search and Destroy” and “Clear and Hold” missions.

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How successful were the tactics search and destroy?

Were Search & Destroy missions effective?

Search and Destroy or Seek and Destroy (S&D) was an integral part of General William Westmoreland's strategy to destroy the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. Westmoreland was convinced that attrition warfare, which required wearing down the Viet Cong's personnel and materiel until they lost either the capacity to continue their military effort or their will to fight, with Search and Destroy as its key tactic, was ideally suited to fight against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army.

However, Search and Destroy strategy, despite the help of superior American firepower and mobility, cost the lives of thousands of American servicemen without making any clear impact on the conflict.

Flaws

Search and Destroy strategy had many flaws. First, there was no distinction between "Search and Destroy" and "Clear and Hold" missions. As the war became more and more aggressive particularly after the Tet Offensive, so did the missions. That continued to the point where "clear and hold" missions, which were less brutal, eventually turned into a maniacal form of tactic just as "search and destroy" missions were.

Second, during each Search and Destroy mission, U.S. patrols were required to search South Vietnamese homes for the Viet Cong - Charlie, which exposed themselves to ambush. That, as a consequence, led to many atrocities such as zippo raids to burn down villages and unprovoked massacres such as the infamous My Lai in 1968. Those made the jobs of winning hearts & minds of local people become harder and harder if not impossible.

Moreover, as there was no distinction between the two strategies, pacification was never fully established. As a result, the Viet Cong was able to gain more control in many Southern areas as well as receive more unconditional support from South Vietnamese peasants who could provide them personnel, food and hiding places.

Now American troops got stuck in a vicious circle where the more aggressive they became, the more Vietnamese people turned against them and the less effective their missions were. The Viet Cong might be pushed out of certain territories initially, but as soon as American patrols left the areas, they would return with even more reinforcements and weapons.

Last but not least, U.S. generals & war planners had made an erroneous assumption about North Vietnamese people's determination at the first place. General Westmoreland believed that attrition warfare alone would conquer the Viet Cong & North Vietnamese Army (NVA). However, Hanoi once again taught Americans the lesson they had taught the French more than a decade ago that North Vietnamese people would fight to the final victory even if they had to suffer more than ten times the enemy's loss as in Ho Chi Minh's words. For North Vietnam, the end justified the means. Although immense numbers of Viet Cong and NVA troops would be killed or captured, they would be soon replaced and even grown faster. The U.S., on the other hand, was unable to absorb such huge human losses under enormous pressure of the anti-war movement across the country. Eventually, the U.S. had to sign the Paris Peace Accords and left their ally alone in an unequal war against North Vietnam.

Ineffectiveness

The effectiveness of the Search and Destroy missions were also dubious. "Body count" was used as a measuring tool to determine the success of each Search and Destroy mission as well as the whole strategy in general. 1,106 North Vietnamese soldiers were reported killed in the very first search and destroy operation - Operation Attleboro while Operation Cedar Fall - a major assault on the Iron Triangle, resulted in 720-enemy killed and 213 captured.

However, those figures were usually obtained and gathered through indirect means such as sightings of secondary explosions, sensor readings, extrapolation, inference or reports of POWs. Hence, they usually flattered to deceive. In fact, these figures created a general over-optimism among U.S. commanders and policy makers & were usually used as a propaganda to convince American people of their success in Vietnam who eventually turned against them after the surprising and bloody Tet Offensive.

Besides, even in Operation Junction City - American only airborne operation and one of its largest operations in the conflict, American forces also failed to destroy Viet Cong's headquarter nor capture any high-ranking NFL officers although they did inflict heavy casualties on the enemy. Junction City, therefore, had little impact on Hanoi's insurgency plan in South Vietnam.

Department of Defense officials believed that these body count figures need to be deflated by 30 percent as roughly one-third of the reported enemy killed might have been civilians.

Conclusion

"Search and Destroy" strategy could be seen as ineffective as it made a low impact on undercutting guerrilla tactics successfully utilized by the Viet Cong. In fact, Attrition strategy in general and Zippo missions, together with the " Operation Rolling Thunder " bombing campaigns, in particular failed to achieve its desirable goals that could lead to a turning point in the war.

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Why did Search & Destroy fail in Vietnam? - The Vietnam War

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Similar Question: How successful were the tactics search and destroy? Were Search & Destroy missions effective? Search and Destroy or Seek and Destroy (S&D) was an integral part of General William Westmoreland's strategy to destroy the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.

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Paris Peace Accords was an agreement between both North and South Vietnam and the United States to end the Vietnam war. The United States agreed to the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and advisers and the North Vietnamese agreed to release all U.S. and other prisoners of war. It was signed on January 27, 1973. Both sides agreed to the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Laos and Cambodia.

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The United States, South Vietnam, Viet Cong and North Vietnam formally sign "An Agreement Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam" in Paris. Due to South Vietnam's unwillingness to recognize the Viet Cong's Provisional Revolutionary Government, all references to it were confined to a two-party version of the document signed by North Vietnam and the United States-the South Vietnamese were presented with a separate document that did not make reference to the Viet Cong government. This was part of Saigon's long-time refusal to recognize the Viet Cong as a legitimate participant in the discussions to end the war.

The settlement included a cease-fire throughout Vietnam. In addition, the United States agreed to the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and advisors (totaling about 23,700) and the dismantling of all U.S. bases within 60 days. In return, the North Vietnamese agreed to release all U.S. and other prisoners of war.

Both sides agreed to the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Laos and Cambodia and the prohibition of bases in and troop movements through these countries. It was agreed that the DMZ at the 17th Parallel would remain a provisional dividing line, with eventual reunification of the country "through peaceful means." An international control commission would be established made up of Canadians, Hungarians, Poles, and Indonesians, with 1,160 inspectors to supervise the agreement. According to the agreement, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu would continue in office pending elections. Agreeing to "the South Vietnamese People's right to self-determination," the North Vietnamese said they would not initiate military movement across the DMZ and that there would be no use of force to reunify the country.

Footnote: The last U.S. serviceman to die in combat in Vietnam, Lt. Col. William B. Nolde, was killed by an artillery shell at An Loc, 60 miles northwest of Saigon, only 11 hours before the truce went into effect.
READ MORE: Vietnam War: Dates and Timeline

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The United States, South Vietnam, Viet Cong and North Vietnam formally sign "An Agreement Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam" in Paris. Due to South Vietnam's unwillingness to recognize the Viet Cong's Provisional Revolutionary Government, all references to it were confined to a two-party version of the document signed by North Vietnam and [...]

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The Ho Chi Minh Trail was an elaborate system of mountain and jungle paths and trails used by North Vietnam to infiltrate troops and supplies into South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos during the Vietnam War. It was first put into operation in the beginning of 1959 with an intent to reunite North and South Vietnam.

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Ho Chi Minh Trail | History, Route, & Map

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Ho Chi Minh Trail: Description of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a major supply route used by North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

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4 Kent state University students were killed and 9 people were injured on May 4, 1970. Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd gathered to protest the Vietnam War. General Canterbury ordered his men to load their weapons, and to fire tear gas into the crowd. 70 shots were fired in 13 seconds. This event is important because it shows how people felt about the Cambodian invasion, and they didn’t like it at all so this was their way of showing protest against it.

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Kent State Shooting - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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Find out more about the history of Kent State Shooting, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

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Was a strategy that reduced American involvement with the Vietnam war by moving the responsibilities to the South of Vietnam. This is significant because it reduced the number of US combat troops through a program of expanding and equipping the South Vietnam forces.  However, this plan was deeply flawed from the beginning.

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Vietnamization was a strategy that aimed to reduce American involvement in the Vietnam War by transferring all military responsibilities to South Vietnam. The increasingly unpopular war had created deep rifts in American society. President Nixon believed his Vietnamization strategy, which involved building up South Vietnam's armed forces and withdrawing U.S. troops, would prepare the South Vietnamese to act in their own defense against a North Vietnamese takeover and allow the United States to leave Vietnam with its honor intact. But the Vietnamization process was deeply flawed from the beginning.

Nixon and the Vietnam War

When President Richard M. Nixon took office in January 1969, the U.S. had been sending combat troops to fight in Vietnam since 1965, and some 31,000 American lives had been lost.

However, the full-scale U.S. military commitment seemingly had made little progress in defeating communist North Vietnam and its Viet Cong guerrilla allies. The enemy forces had absorbed tremendous punishment but remained determined to overthrow the U.S.-supported government of South Vietnam and reunite the country under Communist rule.

Facing intense pressure from a war-weary public and widespread Vietnam War protests, Nixon sought a way to disengage American combat forces without appearing to abandon South Vietnam to the communists. He rejected calls from the anti-war movement to order an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops and publicly expressed a desire to achieve "peace with honor" in Vietnam.

Toward this end, Nixon and his advisors-including Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird-developed a new strategy they called Vietnamization. The Vietnamization plan provided for a gradual, phased withdrawal of American combat forces, combined with an expanded effort to train and equip South Vietnam to take over military responsibility for its own defense.

The president announced his Vietnamization strategy to the American people in a nationally televised speech on November 3, 1969. He emphasized how his approach contrasted with the "Americanization" of the war that had taken place under his predecessor, President Lyndon B. Johnson.

"The defense of freedom is everybody's business, not just America's business. And it is particularly the responsibility of the people whose freedom is threatened," Nixon explained in his speech. "In the previous administration, we Americanized the war in Vietnam. In this administration, we are Vietnamizing the search for peace."

Did you know? Democrat Hillary Clinton (1947-) did a college internship with Melvin Laird, creator of Nixon's Vietnamization strategy. "I've always kidded Bill Clinton that Hillary went wrong after meeting him," Laird said in a 2008 Reader's Digest interview. "She was a good Republican when she worked for me."

Invasion of Cambodia

In addition to U.S. troop withdrawals and efforts to prepare and modernize the South Vietnamese army, Nixon's Vietnamization strategy also featured programs designed to strengthen the South Vietnamese government and expand its political base in rural areas. He offered U.S. assistance to help South Vietnamese officials organize local elections and implement social reforms and economic development initiatives.

At the same time that the Vietnamization plan was put in place, however, the Nixon administration also escalated U.S. military activity in other parts of Southeast Asia. In April 1970, for example, the president secretly authorized bombing campaigns and a ground invasion of Cambodia, a neutral country.

When his expansion of the war came to public attention, Nixon asserted that the incursion into Cambodia was necessary to keep pressure on the enemy until the Vietnamization strategy took root. The president's actions nonetheless came under harsh criticism and prompted massive anti-war demonstrations across America.

Nixon gradually reduced the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam in several stages, from a peak of 549,000 in 1969 to 69,000 in 1972. However, during this same period, North Vietnamese leaders launched several offensives that tested the president's resolve and cast doubt on his Vietnamization strategy.

The March 1972 Easter Offensive, for instance, highlighted the poor performance of the South Vietnamese army and its heavy reliance on U.S. air power to repel the Communist attack.

Effectiveness of Vietnamization

In January 1973, the Nixon administration negotiated a peace agreement with North Vietnamese leaders. Under the terms of the settlement, the U.S. agreed to withdraw its remaining troops within 60 days in exchange for an immediate cease-fire, the return of American prisoners of war, and North Vietnam's promise to recognize the legitimacy of South Vietnam's government and submit future disputes to an international commission.

In his final report before leaving office that month, Laird declared the Vietnamization process completed: "As a consequence of the success of the military aspects of Vietnamization, the South Vietnamese people today, in my view, are fully capable of providing for their own in-country security against the North Vietnamese."

However, later events proved that the Laird's confidence was completely unfounded, as South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese communist forces in 1975.

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Vietnamization was a strategy that aimed to reduce American involvement in the Vietnam War by transferring all military responsibilities to South Vietnam. The increasingly unpopular war had created deep rifts in American society. President Nixon believed his Vietnamization strategy, which involved building up South Vietnam's armed forces and withdrawing U.S.

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The Operation Rolling Thunder was when a U.S. military aircraft attacked targets throughout North Vietnam from March 1965 to October 1968. The U.S attacked North Vietnam with an intent to put military pressure on North Vietnam’s communist leaders and reduce their capacity to wage war against the U.S.-supported government of South Vietnam. Overall, America was the first to initiate the Operation Rolling Thunder.