# data[].attributes.headline
Vietnam Cong/National Liberation Front vs ARVN

# data[].attributes.subject
Vietnam Cong/National Liberation Front vs ARVN

# data[].attributes.body
This was a war fair strategy

# data[].attributes.body
This 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.

# data[].attributes.body
Vietnamization was a policy provided by Richard Nixon to try and end America's involvement in the Vietnam war. His plan was "to expand, equip, and train South Vietnamese forces" it began in 1969

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"We Americans are a do-it-yourself people.... Instead of teaching someone else to do a job, we like to do it ourselves. And this trait has been carried over into our foreign policy," President Richard Nixon told the nation in a televised address on November 3, 1969, explaining that the United States would no longer take the lead in the fight against the North Vietnamese. Instead, US forces would train the South Vietnamese military to handle the conflict on its own.

"In the previous administration," Nixon said into the camera, "we Americanized the war in Vietnam. In this administration, we are Vietnamizing the search for peace."

Nixon with US Army 1st Infantry Division troops during a visit to Dian, South Vietnam, July 30, 1969.

This strategy-dubbed "Vietnamization" by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and the "Nixon Doctrine" by the press-was best captured, Nixon said, by a leader of another Asian country who once told him: "When you are trying to assist another nation defend its freedom, US policy should be to help them fight the war but not to fight the war for them."

In addition to a withdrawal of US forces, Nixon pledged an increase in the training and equipping of the South Vietnamese military, as well as an adherence to all treaty commitments. "This withdrawal will be made from strength and not from weakness," he asserted. "As South Vietnamese forces become stronger, the rate of American withdrawal can become greater."

Nixon and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu met at Midway Island in the Pacific, June 8, 1969, where the US president announced withdrawal of 25,000 troops by the end of August-to be replaced by South Vietnamese forces.

Referencing the massive antiwar protests on the home front, Nixon asked those who were not protesting-the "great silent majority of my fellow Americans"-for their support of his withdrawal plan. It was a winning one-liner with longevity, as this televised address (below) is widely referred to as Nixon's "silent majority" speech.

Nixon's handwritten notes preparing for his "silent majority" speech.

INCURSION INTO CAMBODIA

Nixon used visual aids to explain to the American people the importance of bombing sites in Cambodia.

In his first year, Nixon attempted to settle the war on favorable terms. But when negotiators failed to make progress through the public peace talks being held in Paris, Nixon turned to more clandestine channels. Through secret negotiations between National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and the North Vietnamese, the president warned that if major progress were not made by November 1, 1969, he would be "compelled-with great reluctance-to take measures of the greatest consequences."

None of it worked. The North Vietnamese did not yield. Nixon did not carry out his threats; the war continued. Bringing the conflict to a successful resolution proved elusive.

Publicly, Nixon said his strategy was a combination of negotiating and Vietnamization. In fact, he began the withdrawals even before he issued his secret ultimatum to the Communists, and continued to announce partial troop withdrawals throughout his first term.

But Vietnamization could work only if American withdrawal was offset by improvement in Saigon's fighting capacity. And with Communist forces continuing to move down the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos and Cambodia and on into South Vietnam, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) would remain continually under siege.

By the spring of 1970, developments in the region seemed to offer a way not only to take the heat off the South Vietnamese, but to deal the Communists a more punishing blow.

A Cambodian coup in March 1970 had replaced neutralist leader Prince Sihanouk with a pro-American military government, albeit of dubious survivability. American officials also believed they had located in Cambodia the Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN)-the headquarters for Communist operations below the 17th parallel. Seeking to bolster the fledgling force in Cambodia and to strike at COSVN, as well as to buy time for ARVN's improvement, Nixon ordered a temporary invasion of Cambodia-the administration called it an incursion-by a combined force of American and South Vietnamese troops.

On April 28, 1970, the president authorized a preemptive strike in Cambodia, sending US troops across the border from South Vietnam in order to destroy Viet Cong base camps that were providing support to the Communists fighting in South Vietnam.

Two days later, Nixon took to the airwaves again, to explain to the American people that the US military, along with the South Vietnamese People's Army, were invading Cambodia in order to intensify the destruction of Viet Cong base camps and to impede North Vietnamese supply lines.

Several years later, looking back on the bombing and incursion in Cambodia, Nixon revealed in the recording below how those actions destabilized the Southeast Asian nation. Nixon told Treasury Secretary John B. Connally that it was a mistake for him not to retaliate militarily against North Korea after it shot down an American EC-121 reconnaissance plane in April 1969, shortly after he became president. He recalled the great popularity of his "silent majority" speech, then revealed to Connally for the first time that in 1969 he had secretly ordered American B-52s to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the border area of Cambodia. The code name was Operation Menu, with individual rounds of bombing named Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Supper, and Snack.

The assault had an unintended consequence: It drove the North Vietnamese deeper into Cambodia, destabilizing the neutralist government. Read the transcript here.

KENT STATE

Nixon has an impromptu meeting with Vietnam War protestors at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

The Cambodian incursion energized lawmakers on Capitol Hill to claw back some of the power it had ceded to the executive during the course of the war. Not only did it generate proposals to limit the powers of the president; it sparked bipartisan legislation to limit US military action in Cambodia and to end the American war in Vietnam.

The Cambodian operation also provoked the largest round of antiwar rallies in American history. In response to the protests specifically at universities, according to the New York Times, Nixon told Pentagon civilian employees on May 1, 1970: "You see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are burning up the books, storming around about this issue. You name it. Get rid of the war there will be another one.

Hard hats presented to Nixon after riots on May 8, 1970, as construction workers protested New York City Mayor John Lindsay's decision to fly the American flag at half-mast after the Kent State shootings. The construction workers rioted in the city on May 7 and 8, prompting Nixon to thank them for their public demonstration of support. (National Archives, Nixon Library)

"Then out there we have kids who are just doing their duty. They stand tall and they are proud. I am sure they are scared. I was when I was there. But when it really comes down to it, they stand up and, boy, you have to talk up to those men. They are going to do fine and we have to stand in back of them."

It was during these campus demonstrations in May 1970 that National Guardsmen fired at rock-throwing protestors at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four. Two weeks later, police fired on students at Jackson State University in Mississippi, leaving two more dead.

THE WITHDRAWAL

White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman's detailed records are housed at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum and include seven handwritten diaries, 36 dictated diaries as sound recordings, and two handwritten audio cassette tape subject logs.

By the end of 1970, Nixon had planned to wrap up the American military withdrawal from Vietnam within 18 months. But Kissinger talked him out of it. Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, documented a discussion about the president's plans in his diary on December 21, 1970:

"Henry was in for a while and the president discussed a possible trip for next year. He's thinking about going to Vietnam in April [1971] or whenever we decide to make the basic end-of-the-war announcement. His idea would be to tour around the country, build up [South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van] Thieu and so forth, and then make the announcement right afterwards. Henry argues against a commitment that early to withdraw all combat troops because he feels that if we pull them out by the end of '71, trouble can start mounting in '72 that we won't be able to deal with, and which we'll have to answer for at the elections. He prefers instead a commitment to have them all out by the end of '72 so that we won't have to deliver finally until after the [US presidential] elections [in November 1972] and therefore can keep our flanks protected. This would certainly seem to make more sense, and the president seemed to agree in general, but he wants Henry to work up plans on it."

MISSION IN LAOS

Communist supply lines running along the Ho Chi Minh trail from North Vietnam, through Laos, and south to Cambodia were a logical target for interdicting the North's operation. But American troops were not able to take part in ground combat operations in either Laos or Cambodia because of the Cooper-Church Amendment, passed by Congress in late 1970, prohibiting such action on the ground.

US troops could, however, assist from the air. So on February 8, 1971, South Vietnamese ground forces, with American air support, took part in Lamson 719, an offensive in Laos intended to sever the Ho Chi Minh trail. Lamson was considered at least a partial test of the success of Vietnamization. It went badly, but did manage to disrupt Communist supply lines long enough to aid the war effort.

In this recording from March 11, 1971, Nixon and Kissinger discussed the timing of the South Vietnamese military's departure from Laos as it concluded Lamson 719. Read the transcript here.

MORE PROTESTS ON THE HOMEFRONT

On the eve of mass antiwar demonstrations in April and May of 1971, the president's pollsters found just 28 percent in favor of the protests and 65 percent opposed. President Nixon smelled opportunity, telling Haldeman to "make a note there: Take on the f**king demonstrators."

But in April 1971 when the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) arrived in the nation's capital with plans for a weeklong protest, Nixon responded more gingerly. The Interior Department had denied the VVAW permission to encamp overnight on the National Mall, but the group set up anyway, filing appeals that they ultimately took to the Supreme Court. Recalling the public outcry when President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army to evict the Bonus Expeditionary Force-a large group of WWI veterans demanding cash payments during the depths of the Great Depression-Nixon instructed White House special counsel John W. Dean that no one, including DC police, should touch the Vietnam veterans.

Two days later, in this Oval Office conversation, Nixon and his advisors discussed the recent press coverage of VVAW. They were particularly impressed by the performance of John F. Kerry before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the previous day.

Kerry's testimony included sharp accusations of war crimes being committed on a daily basis by US troops, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

The protests continued. On May 3, 1971, police clashed with the self-described "Mayday Tribe"-antiwar protesters who demonstrated for three days in DC. They tried blocking traffic and courting mass arrest in an attempt to bring the city to a halt-and with it, the war.

They succeeded in getting arrested, making people late for work, and providing the president with the political opportunity to take a popular hard line against disruptive protest. They did not, however, succeed in shortening the war.

The president hoped to bring the last American troops home from Vietnam sometime between July 1972 and January 1973, when enough US troops remained in South Vietnam to prevent the fall of Saigon before Election Day 1972. In the meantime, he relished the opportunity to score political points off the unpopular demonstrations, as this conversation indicates. Read the transcript here.

PENTAGON PAPERS

When work was completed on what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers on January 15, 1969, the team of 36 military personnel, historians, and defense analysts from the RAND Corporation and the Washington Institute for Defense Analysis had produced 47 volumes and 7,000 pages.

A defense analyst specializing in nuclear weapons strategy and counterinsurgency theory, Dr. Daniel Ellsberg was a member of the Vietnam Study Task Force created in 1967 to study the history of America's role in Vietnam. His brief stint with the task force confirmed what he had already come to suspect: The US government's involvement in Vietnam was one of deception. Ellsberg became increasingly frustrated with the Nixon administration, believing that its conduct in Vietnam was merely a continuation of his predecessors' patterns of deception and escalation. As his frustration grew, Ellsberg began to contemplate leaking the study so that its contents and its lessons could be made public.

Over the course of several weeks in the fall of 1969, Ellsberg managed to secretly photocopy the study. With these copies in his possession, Ellsberg turned to members of Congress such as Senator J. William Fulbright (D-AK), Senator Charles Mathias Jr. (R-MD), Senator George McGovern (D-SD), and Congressman Paul (Pete) McCloskey Jr. (R-CA), all in the hope that one of them would be willing to enter the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record. Despite his pleas, all four declined. But Senator McGovern suggested that he provide his copies to the press. So in March 1971, Ellsberg decided to show the study to New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan.

Sheehan and the Times understood how big of a story they had. On June 10, word reached Sheehan that against the advice of the paper's attorneys, the management of the Times had decided that the need to reveal the history of deception outweighed the danger of possible criminal prosecution. The New York Times published its first Pentagon Papers article on Sunday, June 13, 1971. It was, the Times announced, part one of a series.

Taking legal action against the Times was not Nixon's first reaction. In a June 13, 1971, conversation with Kissinger, the president recognized that in some ways the publication of the Pentagon Papers helped him politically, since the study reminded readers that the Vietnam War was more the product of his predecessors' mistakes than his own. Nixon and Kissinger both assumed, mistakenly, that the release of the study was timed to affect an upcoming vote on the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment, which would require the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam. To be sure, Nixon denounced the publication as "unconscionable" and worse, but the lesson he drew from it was that the administration should just plow ahead and make sure to "clean house" of disloyal people who might partake in such a "treasonable" act.

BROOKINGS BREAK-IN

In response to the leak of the Pentagon Papers, the president met in the Oval Office on June 17, 1971, with his closest aides. Haldeman suggested blackmailing Nixon's predecessor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, on the Vietnam issue that nearly cost Nixon the 1968 presidential election: the "bombing halt." Less than a week before the election, Johnson had ordered a complete halt to American bombing of North Vietnam in exchange for secret military concessions by Hanoi and the start of new peace talks between North and South Vietnam. Republicans charged that Johnson had stopped the bombing to bolster the presidential campaign of Hubert H. Humphrey, Johnson's vice president. (The declassified record shows otherwise.)

Nixon's reaction to Haldeman's suggestion stunned his aides. He told them to implement the Huston Plan, which called for using illegal break-ins, wiretaps, and mail-opening against domestic terrorists. But instead of terrorists, Nixon wanted to use the plan against former Johnson administration officials who (the president mistakenly believed) had a secret file on the bombing halt in a classified safe at Brookings. Read the transcript here.

NIXON'S REELECTION

Nixon and Kissinger, standing in front of a window in the Oval Office on February 10, 1971.

Nixon with Vice President Spiro Agnew at the 1972 Republican National Convention on August 23, 1972.

Nixon and Kissinger's worst fears were realized when the North Vietnamese regular army poured into the South in March 1972. Nixon responded by implementing some of the plans he had considered in 1969. He mined Haiphong Harbor and used B-52s to bomb the North. The combined power of the American and South Vietnamese military ultimately stopped the offensive, though not before the Communists had more territory under their control.

The North Vietnamese were eager to reach a settlement before the American presidential election, after which Nixon would no longer have to face the electorate at the ballot box. Hanoi made a breakthrough proposal in October 1972 and reached agreement with Kissinger rapidly. The South Vietnamese government balked, however, chiefly because the agreement preserved North Vietnamese control of all the territory Hanoi currently held. To turn up the political pressure on Nixon, the North Vietnamese began broadcasting provisions of the agreement. Kissinger held a press conference announcing that "Peace is at hand," without giving away too many details.

After Nixon's re-election, he told South Vietnamese president Thieu that if he did not agree to the settlement, Congress would cut off aid to his government-and that conservatives who had supported South Vietnam would lead the way. He promised that the United States would retaliate militarily if the North violated the agreement.

To coax Saigon into signing the agreement, and to bring Hanoi back to the conference table, Nixon launched the "Christmas Bombings" of 1972. Both parties responded as Nixon desired, and peace seemed imminent. Negotiations resumed in January to resolve the few outstanding issues that remained.

Secretary of State William Rogers signs the peace agreement to end the US involvement in the Vietnam War on January 27, 1973.

In this recorded conversation from January 23, 1973, Nixon laments the news coverage of him finally ending this unpopular war. "You'd think, you know, that even at this time, even those a**holes would say, 'Well, you know...maybe it's good news.' But no!" Nixon told Kissinger. Four days later, the Paris Peace Accords went into effect, bringing an end to the American war in Vietnam.

In his last statement as defense secretary in 1973, Laird said, "Vietnamization...today is virtually completed.... The South Vietnamese people today, in my view, are fully capable of providing for their own in-country security against the North Vietnamese."

That statement would prove incorrect within two years. On April 30, 1975, the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam captured Saigon, thus eliminating the dividing line at the 17th parallel and reunifying North and South under a Communist regime. America's ally South Vietnam had lost the war.
*Adapted from "Richard Nixon: Foreign Affairs" by Ken Hughes and "First Domino: Nixon and the Pentagon Papers"-both first published on millercenter.org.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"We Americans are a do-it-yourself people.... Instead of teaching someone else to do a job, we like to do it ourselves. And this trait has been carried over into our foreign policy," President Richard Nixon told the nation in a televised address on November 3, 1969, explaining that the United States would no longer take the lead in the fight against the North Vietnamese.

# data[].attributes.body
General Westmoreland built this tactic to destroy the Viet Cong. Search and Destroy is an American approach to ground combat meant to minimize U.S casualties. Americans would destroy the supplies of the enemy and hoped that in time they would loose the will to fight. This method was later proven to be ineffective.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A controversial term used to describe the American approach to ground combat in Vietnam in the period from 1964 to 1968. Allegedly developed by General William Westmoreland, commander of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), and some of his staff officers, search and destroy was used to support the strategy of victory by attrition. According to this strategy, American troops would exact such heavy losses on both the Viet Cong (VC) and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) that both would, in time, lose their willingness to fight. Westmoreland, who denied that search and destroy was ever a specific tactic, hoped that it would simultaneously minimize U.S. casualties.

The key to search and destroy was American superiority in equipment and technology. American forces would be dropped by helicopter, or march in from base camps, to areas that had perhaps already been cleared of jungle cover by napalm or defoliation attacks. They were to locate VC or NVA units, fix them in place, and destroy them as well as their base areas and stocks of supplies. Then, U.S. troops could be lifted out again by helicopter. The strategy was not designed to take and hold enemy territory.

Not all military commanders agreed with Westmoreland's approach, and in time search and destroy proved ineffective. One reason why was a steady supply of NVA reinforcements, which negated the tactic of attrition. Another was the fact that Communist forces, rather than American ones, frequently initiated the fighting and often chose to fade away before search-and-destroy tactics could begin. Moreover, many U.S. politicians and ordinary citizens, when they learned of search-and-destroy missions or saw pictures of operations taken by soldiers or journalists, were horrified at the violence and brutality, especially when it seemed like entire villages were being destroyed for no reason. Still others wondered why the tactic did not result in taking territory, rather than simply upping the enemy body count.

This approach to ground combat began to shift to more conventional fixed battles in 1969, by which time Westmoreland had been replaced as MACV commander and more of the fighting turned over to the South Vietnamese army.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A controversial term used to describe the American approach to ground combat in Vietnam in the period from 1964 to 1968. Allegedly developed by General William Westmoreland, commander of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), and some of his staff officers, search and destroy was used to support the strategy of victory by attrition.

# data[].attributes.body
The pentagon papers included top secret government information regarding the war, Daniel Ellsburg decided the public should know about the terrible things going on so he secretly gave the papers to The New York Times, they published the papers in 1971

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
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.

# data[].attributes.body
The U.S, South and North Vietnam agreed to a peace settlement on January 27, 1973 at Paris because it was an agreement to ending the war and restoring peace to vietnam

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
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 [...]

# data[].attributes.body
The Tet Offensive was a series of North Vietnamese attacks ordered by General Vo Nguyen Giap on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. This was an attempt to spread rebellion among the South Vietnamese and to also encourage the U.S to back down their involvement in the war. North Vietnam was successful with the Tet Offensive. The massive news coverage of this raised support for the war effort.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
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.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tet Offensive: 1968, Definition & Date - HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
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.

# data[].attributes.body
President Johnson was involved in a bombing on March 2, 1965 at the U.S Airbase at Pleiko because they were shifting U.S. stragety to include systematic aerial assualts on North Vietnam

# data[].attributes.body
Agent Orange was a powerful herbicide used by the U.S. troops in Vietnam with a plan to deforest and eliminate crops during the war from 1961-1971 in order to see the enemy without the trees to hide them, this ultimately backfired because it caused many illnesses including cancer and American troops later died because of it

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Agent Orange - Vietnam War - HISTORY.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find out more about the history of Agent Orange, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

# data[].attributes.body
On August 7, 1964 Lyndon B Johnson sent over a resolution to North Vietnam suggesting that they stop because we will stop at thing to protect the people. This was an effort to confront Vietnam on what they are doing with out going ALL the way over to  Vietnam.

# data[].attributes.body
On May 4, 1970, students of Kent State University were protesting the bombing of Cambodia by U.S. military forces. Members of the Ohio National Guard shot at the crowd of protesters, resulting in 4 deaths and nine injuries. Shortly after, a student led force of 4 million students temporarily closed colleges and universities all across the country.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kent State Shootings - Ohio History Central

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The various protests drew to an end as President Richard Nixon, who served from 1969-1974, began to withdraw U.S. soldiers from North and South Vietnam. With the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, which basically ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the protests drew to a formal close.

# data[].attributes.body
It is a massacare lead by william calleylocated in a small village called son my in south veitnam and the incident happened on March 16, 1968 and it happened because a platoon of soldiers called charlie company recieved word they were in the village

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
My Lai Massacre - Vietnam War - HISTORY.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
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