11/23/98 11:40
Tet Offensive - 1968
Giap was prepared to take a gamble. His divisions had been
battered whenever they met the American forces in conventional
combat and the VC- if not exactly on the retreat -was at least
being pushed backwards. Hanoi was perfectly aware of the growing
US peace movement and of the deep divisions the war was causing
in American society What Giap needed was a body-blow that would
break Washington's will to carry on and at the same time would
undermine the growing legitimacy of the Saigon Government once
and for all. In one sense, time was not on Giap's side. While
Hanoi was sure that the Americans would tire of the war as the
French had before them, the longer it took, the stronger the
Saigon Government might become. Another year or so of American
involvement could seriously damage the NLF and leave the ARVN
capable of dealing with its enemies on its own. Giap opted for a
quick and decisive victory that would be well in time for the
1968 US Presidential campaign.
Giap prepared a bold thrust on two fronts. With memories of
the victory at Dien Bien Phu still in his mind, he planned an
attack on the US Marines' firebase at Khe Sanh. At the same
time. the NVA and the NLF planned coordinated attacks on
virtually all South Vietnam's major cities and provincial
capitals. If the Americans opted to defend Khe Sanh, they would
find themselves stretched to the limit when battles erupted
elsewhere throughout the South. Forced to defend themselves
everywhere at once, the U~ARVN forces would suffer a multitude
of small to major defeats which would add up to an overall
disaster Khe Sanh would distract the attention of the US
commanders while the NVA/VC was preparing for D-day in South
Vietnam's cities but, when this full offensive was at its
height, it was unlikely that the over-stretched American forces
would be able to keep the base from being overrun and Giap would
have repeated his triumph of fourteen years before.
It's highly doubtful that the NVA/VC expected to hold all or
even some of the cities and towns they attacked, but the NLF
apparently did expect large sections of the urban populace to
rise up in revolt With a few exceptions, this didn't happen.
South Vietnam's city dwellers were generally indifferent to both
the NLF and the Saigon Government but the VC clearly expected
more support than it actually got. The object of attacking the
cities was not so much to win in a single blow as it was to
inflict a series of humiliating defeats on the Americans and to
destroy the authority of the Saigon Government. When the US/ARVN
forces finally drove the NVA/VC back into the jungle, there
would be left behind a wasteland of rubble, refugees, and
simmering discontent. Stung by their defeats, the Americans
would lose heart for the war and what was left of the Saigon
Government would be forced to reach an agreement with the NLF
and Hanoi which - after a time - would simply take over in the
South. This offensive would begin in January 1968 at the time of
the Vietnamese Tet (New Year) holidays.
The village of Khe Sanh lay in the northwest corner of South
Vietnam just below the DMZ and close to the Laotian border Khe
Sanh had been garrisoned by the French during the first
Indochina war and became an important US Special Forces base
early on during the second. Its importance lay in its proximity
to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. From Khe Sanh, US artillery could
shell the trail and observers could keep an eye on NVA traffic
moving southwards. If necessary they could call in air-strikes
or alert CIA/Meo raiding parties across the border in Laos.
Special Forces working with local Montagnard tribesmen also
harried NVA traffic in the area and were a definite nuisance to
Hanoi. In 1967, the Marines took over Khe Sanh and converted it
into a large fire base. The Special Forces moved their base to
the Montagnard village of Lang Vei.
Towards the end of 1967, it was obvious that Giap was
planning something. Broadcasts from Hanoi were speaking of great
victories and of ta king the war into the cities of South
Vietnam. Two NVA divisions- the 325th and the 304th were spotted
moving into the Khe Sanh area and a third was positioning itself
along Rout#9 where it would be able to intercept reinforcements
coming in from Quang Tn. The two NVA divisions near Khe Sanh had
fought at Dien Bien Phu and the warning was clear Westmoreland
picked up the gauntlet and began to reinforce the base despite
predictions of upcoming bad weather which could hinder air
support and interfere with vital supply planes. Appearances to
the contrary, Westmoreland had no intention of duplicating the
French mistakes at Dien Bien Phu. American airpower was capable
of delivering devastating attacks on concentrations of enemy
troops and - apart from anti-aircraft guns - was unopposed.
Helicopters and parachute drops by low-flying cargo planes
reduced the dependence on re-supply by road.
By late January, some 6,000 Marines had been flown in to
reinforce the Khe Sanh garrison and thousands of reinforcements
had been moved north of Hue. The NVA build-up also continued;
20,000 North Vietnamese were ultimately moved in around Khe Sanh
but other estimates put the number at twice that Initially, Giap
would position his artillery in the DMZ and then send his
assauIt troops against the fortified hills surrounding Khe Sanh
which the Marines had captured in the dogged fighting in 1967.
Having captured the hill positions, Giap reasoned, the NVA
artillery could be moved onto the heights above the beleaguered
base. Then - as happened at Dien Bien Phu - waves of determined
infantry would steadily grind away until the defenders were
pushed into a corner and finally over-run. The White House and
the US media became convinced that the decisive battle of the
war had begun. TV news reports were so obsessed with Giap's
threatened replay of Dien Bien Phu that day-to-day life at Khe
Sanh became lead-story material even when it showed nothing
other than anxious Marines waiting for something to happen.
The first attack began shortly before dawn on January 21st,
when the NVA attempted to cross the river running past the base.
It was beaten back but followed by an artillery barrage which
damaged the runway, blew up the main ammunition stores, and
damaged a few aircraft. Secondary attacks were launched against
the Special Forces' defenses at Lang Vel and against the Marines
dug-in on the hills surrounding Khe Sanh but these attacks were
aimed more attesting the defenses than anything else. The next
day, helicopters and light cargo aircraft flew in virtually
every few minutes replacing lost ammunition but the weather
began turning worse.
The NVA began a concentrated artillery barrage and moved
their troops forward to begin building a network of entrenched
positions in which they could prepare for further assaults on
Khe Sanh's outer defenses. Anti-aircraft guns and the worsening
weather made incoming supply flights difficult running
skirmishes designed to break through on Rout#9. Air and
supporting US forces moved-up to engage the NVA in running
skirmishes around Khe Sanh were intensified and despite the
weather- pounded the North Vietnamese hour after hour.
Electronic sensors of the types running along the McNamara Line
surrounded Khe Sanh. Seismic and highly sensitive listening
devices enabled the Americans to monitor everything from normal
conversations to radio communications. Overhead, high-flying
signal-intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft intercepted communications
traffic over the entire front and to and from command centers in
North Vietnam.
While the world was watching the drama unfolding at Khe San
h, however, NVA and VC regulars were also drifting into Saigon,
Hue, and most of South Vietnam's cities. They came in twos and
threes, disguised as refugees, peasants, workers, and ARVN
soldiers on holiday leave. In Saigon, roughly the equivalent of
five battalions of NVA/VC gradually infiltrated the city without
anyone informing or any of the countless security police taking
undue notice. Weapons came separately in flower carts,
jury-rigged coffins, and trucks apparently filled with
vegetables and rice. There was also a VC network in Saigon and
the other major cities which had long stockpiled stores of arms
and ammunition drawn from hit-and-run raids or bought openly on
the black-market. It was also no secret that VC drifted in and
out of the cities to see relatives and on general leave from
their units. Viet Cong who were captured during the pre Tet
build up were mistaken for regular holiday-makers or deserters.
In the general pattern of the New Year merry-makers, the VC's
secret army of infiltrators went completely unnoticed.
Tet had traditionally been a time of truce in the long war
and both Hanoi and Saigon had made announcements that this year
would be no different - although they disagreed about the
duration. US Intelligence had gotten wind that something was
brewing through captured documents and an overall analysis of
recent events but Westmoreland's staff tended to disregard these
generally vague reports. At the request of General Frederick
Weyand, the US commander of the Saigon area, however, several
battalions were pulled back from their positions near the
Cambodian border. General Weyand put his troops on full alert
but- due to a standing US policy of leaving the security of
major cities to the ARVN -there were only a few hundred American
troops on duty in Saigon itself the night before the attack
began. Westmoreland later claimed to have anticipated Tet but
the evidence suggests that he was not prepared for anything
approaching the intensity of the attack that came and that he
was still concentrating his attentions on the developing battle
at Khe Sanh where he thought Giap would make his chief effort.
In the early morning hours of January 31st, the first day of
]the Vietnamese New Year, NLF/NVA troops and commandos
attacked virtually every major town and city in South
Vietnam as well as most of the important American bases and
airfields. There were some earlier attacks around Pleiku, Quang
Nam, and Darlac but these were largely misinterpreted as the
enemy's main thrust by those who were expecting some activity
during Tet Almost everywhere the attacks came as a total
surprise. Vast areas of Saigon and Hue suddenly found themselves
"liberated" and parades of gun-waving NVA/VC marched through the
streets proclaiming the revolution while their grimmer-minded
comrades rounded up prepared lists of collaborators and
government sympathizers for show trials and quick executions.
In Saigon, nineteen VC commandos blew their way through the
outer walls of the US Embassy and overran the five MP's on duty
in the early hours of that morning. Two MP's were killed
immediately as the action-team tried to blast their way through
the main Embassy doors with anti-tank rockets. They failed and
found themselves pinned-down by the Marine guards who kept the
VC in an intense firefight until a relief force of US lO1st
Airborne landed by helicopter. By mid-morning, the battle had
turned. All nineteen VC were killed, their bodies scattered
around the Embassy courtyard. Five Americans and two Vietnamese
civilians were among the other dead. The commandos had been
dressed in civilian clothing and had rolled-up to the Embassy in
an ancient truck. The security of the Embassy was not in serious
danger after the first few minutes and the damage was slight but
this attack on 'American soil" captured the imagination of the
media and the battle became symbolic of the Tet Offensive
throughout the world. Other NVA/VC squads attacked Saigon's
Presidential Palace, the radio station, the headquarters of the
ARVN Chiefs of Staff, and Westmoreland's own MACV compound as
part of a 7O0 man raid on the Tan Son Nhut air-base. During the
heavy fighting that followed, things became sufficiently
worrying for Westmoreland to order his staff to find weapons and
join in the defense of the compound. When the fighting at Tan
Son Nhut was over, twenty-three Americans were dead, eighty-five
were wounded and up to fifteen aircraft had suffered serious
damage. Two NVA/VC battalions attacked the US air-base at Bien
Hoa and crippled over twenty aircraft at a cost of nearly 170
casualties. Further fighting at Bien Hoa during the Tet
offensive would take the NVA/VC death total in Saigon to nearly
1200. Other VC units made stands in the French cemetery and the
Pho Tho race track. The mainly Chinese suburb of Cholon became
virtually a NVA/VC operations base and, as it later turned out,
had been the main staging area for the attacks in Saigon and its
immediate area. President Thieu declared Marshal law on January
31st but it would take over a week of intense fighting to
clear-up the various pockets of resistance scattered around
Saigon. Sections of the city were reduced to rubble in heavy
street by street fighting. Tanks, helicopter gunships, and
strike aircraft blasted parts of the city as entrenched
guerrillas fought and then slipped off to fight somewhere else.
The radio station, various industrial buildings, and a large
block of lowcost public housing were leveled along with the
homes of countless civilians who were forced to flee. The city
dissolved into a chaos which took weeks to begin to put right.
The fighting within Saigon itself was pretty much over by
February 5th but it carried on in Cholon until the last week of
the month. Cholon was strafed, bombed, and shelled but the
NVA/VC held on and even mounted sporadic counter-offensives
against US/ARVN positions within the city and against Tan Son
Nhut airport. B-52 strikes against communist positions outside
Saigon came within a few miles of the city When the NVA/VC were
finally driven out of Saigon's suburbs, they retreated into the
surrounding government villages and fought there. US and ARVN
artillery and strike-aircraft bombed and shelled these
supposedly pacified villages before troops moved in to reoccupy
them. The NVA/VC repeated this tactic again and again in a clear
effort to make the Saigon Government destroy their own fortified
villages and, by doing so, further alienate the rural
population. A month after the offensive began, US estimates put
the number of civilian dead at some 15,000 and the number of new
refugees at anything up to two million and still the battles
went on.
Elsewhere in South Vietnam, the success of the Tet offensive
was erratic. Many of the attacks on the provincial cities and US
bases were easily beaten back within the first minutes or hours,
but others involved bitter fighting. In the resort city of
Dalat, the ARVN put up a spirited defense of the Vietnamese
Military Academy against a determined VC battalion. Fighting
raged over the Pasteur Institute - which changed hands several
times-and the VC dug themselves in the central market Fighting
in Dalat went on until mid-February and left over 200 VC dead.
In cities like Ban Me Thuot, My Tho, Can Tho, Ben Tre, and
Kontum, the VC entrenched themselves in the poorer sections and
held out against repeated efforts to push them out The biggest
battle, however occurred at Hue.
The Buddhist crisis had left bitter feelings towards the
Saigon Government in the ancient Vietnamese capital and, within
a few hours of their attack, the disguised insurgents supported
by some ten NVA/VC battalions had overrun all of the city except
for the headquarters of the ARVN 3rd Division and the garrison
of US advisors. The main NVA/VC goal was the Citadel, an ancient
imperial palace covering some two square miles with high walls
several feet thick. NVA troops assaulted the Citadel and ran up
the VC flag on the early morning of January 31st but were unable
to displace ARVN holding out in the northeast section. Having
overrun the city and found considerable support among sections
of Hue's populace, the NVA/VC began an immediate revolutionary
"liberation" program. Thousands of prisoners were set free and
thousands of "enemies of the state" - government officials,
sympathizers, and Catholics were rounded up and many were shot
out of hand on orders from the security section of the NLF which
had sent in its action squad with a prepared hit-list. Most of
the others simply vanished.
After Hue was finally recaptured at the end of February
South Vietnamese officials sifting through the rubble found mass
graves with over 1200 corpses and-sometime later-other mass
burials in the provincial area. The total number of bodies
unearthed came to around 2500 but the number of civilians
estimated as missing after the Hue battle was nearly 6000. Many
of the victims found were Catholics who sought sanctuary in a
church but were taken out and later shot Others were apparently
being marched off for political "re-education" but were shot
when American or ARVN units came too close.
The mass graves within Hue itself were largely of those who
had been picked up and executed for various "enemy of the
people" offenses. There is some doubt that the NVA/VC had
planned all these executions beforehand but unquestionably it
was the largest communist purge of the war.
US Marines and ARVN drove into the city and, after nearly
two days of heavy fighting, secured the bank of the Perfume
river opposite the Citadel. Hue was a sacred city to the
Vietnamese and apart from the ancient Citadel held many other
precious historical buildings. After much deliberation, it was
reluctantly decided to shell and bomb NVA/VC positions.
Resistance was heavy and sending the Marines into the city
without air and artillery support would have meant an
unacceptable cost in lives. To many, the battle for Hue reminded
them of the bitter street-by-street fighting that occurred
during World War lI. The NVA had blown the main bridge across
the Perfume River. US forces crossed in a fleet of assault craft
under air and artillery cover which blasted away at the
enemy-held Citadel. Its walls were so thick that few were killed
but the covering fire made the enemy keep their heads down while
the Marines and soldiers hit the bank below.
While the ARVN, with US support, fought its way through the
streets of Hue block by block, the Marines prepared to assault
the Citadel. On February 2Oth American assault teams went in
through clouds of tear gas and the burning debris left over from
air and artillery attacks. The NVA/VC were pushed into the
southwestern corner of the Citadel and finally overwhelmed on
February 23rd. Enemy resistance in Hue was finally reduced to
isolated pockets and sniper teams. As the Citadel fell, NVA/VC
units began retreating- some of them marching groups of soon to
be massacred prisoners before them - into the suburbs while
their rear guards fought holding actions with the advancing
ARVN. The fight for Hue ended by February 25th at a cost of 119
Americans and 363 ARVN dead compared to about sixteen times that
number of NVA/VC dead.
The dramatic difference in fatalities makes the battle look
a one sided affair But it wasn't! The difference in casuaity
figures came largely from the heavy use of artillery and
aircraft back-up to devastate NVA/VC positions throughout Hue
which reduced large sections of the city to body-laden piles of
rubble. Had the commanders decided to preserve the ancient and
revered city US/ARVN casualties would have been much higher
American wounded during the battle for Hue came to just under a
thousand compared to slightly over 1,200 ARVN. Nearly 120,000
citizens of Hue were homeless and, of the close to 6,000
civilian dead, many died in the bombing and shell-fire.
Contrary to many reports, large sections of Hue escaped
relatively undamaged but after the battle they were forced to
suffer days of looting by soldiers from the original ARVN
garrison who had spent the previous weeks keeping their heads
low. Their commander-who had also sat out the city's Buddhist
rebellion against Ky-was later accused of having known about the
coming attack for days beforehand. His defense was that he had
allowed the NVA/VC battalions into Hue in order to spring a
trap! In the villages outside Hue, the battle went on for
another week or so as the retreating NVA/VC took over the
villages just long enough for them to be destroyed by bombing
and concentrated artillery shelling. Civilian deaths and
refugees increased.
On February 5th, the fighting died out in Saigon and the
Marines prepared for their river assault on the Citadel in Hue.
The electronic sensors around the besieged fire-base at Khe Sanh
warned of enemy preparations to assault the entrenched positions
on Hill 881, which was outside the main camp. Intensive
artillery fire broke up the assembling NVA troops but a second
planned attack on Hill 881 had gone unnoticed until the Marines
found themselves fighting off waves of oncoming North Vietnamese
regulars. For half an hour the beleaguered Marines battled the
NVA in hand to-hand fighting - even trusting their flak jackets
enough to use grenades at close quarters - until the artillery
could be brought to bear on the hill and the attackers forced to
withdraw.
Two days later, the Green Beret's camp at Lang Vei was
attacked by an NVA assault force led by ten Soviet-built, FT-76
light, amphibious tanks. Despite a shortage of anti-tank
ammunition three of the armored vehicles were put out of action
before the NVA swarmed over the wire. Because of the very real
likelihood of an ambush, no relief force was sent and the Lang
Vei commander, Captain Frank Willoughby, ordered his men into
the jungle, and called down air and artillery strikes directly
onto the camp. Of the original force of twenty four Special
Forces and 900 Montagnard, only Willoughby and seventy-three
others managed to struggle into Khe Sanh. The next day NVA
troops overran nearly half of an outer Marine position at Khe
Sanh before being blasted back by artillery, aircraft, and
armor.
Giap's ambition to win a massive victory against the
Americans was thwarted by massive aerial bombardments of NVA
positions. B-52's and strike aircraft dropped their loads with
pin-point accuracy within a few hundred feet of Khe Sanh's
perimeter. During the course of the battle, tons of bombs and
napalm were dropped around Khe Sanh. Bad weather and increasing
anti-aircraft fire inhibited the steady flow of incoming
supplies but the vital cargo planes and helicopters kept coming
despite losses. The fortified hills around Khe Sanh were
supplied by Sea Knight Helicopters, frequently accompanied by
fighter escorts. The battle settled down into a siege. The NVA
concentrated on shelling the base and trying to stop the supply
planes with anti-aircraft fire while digging in around the camp.
Both sides employed teams of snipers to harass each other's
movements.
The NVA launched further attacks on February 17th, 1&h, and
29th but massed artillery and air-strikes broke the first up
fairly easily while the second involved heavy fighting. In early
April, relief forces reached the base. A 1st Cavalry helicopter
assault force landed near Khe Sanh as American and ARVN forces
hit NVA positions along Rout#9. Khe Sanh was relieved on April
6th and, four days later, Lang Vei was reccu- pied. Fighting
continued around Khe Sanh for a time but Giap had long since
given up any hope of overrunning the base. The drive to relieve
Khe Sanh had gone smoothly and without heavy resistance. From
this, many inferred that the whole siege of Khe Sanh had been a
feint to cover preparations for the Tet Offensive in the South.
And to an extent, this was true but the evidence suggests that
Giap's moves on Khe Sanh had a more deadly purpose than simply
drawing American attentions away from the South at the critical
time. By the middle of February it was obvious that the battle
for South Vietnam's cities was failing and that US airpower
would deny the NVA another Dien Bien Phu. Seeing the inevitable,
Giap seems to have began a slow wind down of the siege before
the US counter-attack began.
The After-Effects of Tet
The Tet Offensive and Khe Sanh may well have reminded Johnson
and Westmoreland of the Duke of Wellington's dictum:
"If there's anything more melancholy than a battle lost, it's a
battle won" Giap had been frustrated at Khe Sanh and defeated in
South Vietnam's cities. NVA/VC dead totaled some 45,000 anc the
number of prisoners nearly 7000. But the shockwave of the battle
finished Johnson's willingness to carry on. Westmoreland was
pressuring Washington for 206,000 troops to carry on the
campaign in the South and to make a limited invasion of North
Vietnam just above the DMZ. As the battle for Hue died out,
Johnson asked Clark Clifford (who had recently replaced a
disillusioned McNamara as Secretary of Defense) to find ways and
means of meeting Westmoreland's request.
Clifford and an advisor group looked at the war to date and
among others, consulted CIA Director Richard Helms who presented
the Agency's gloomy forecasts in great detail. On March 4th
Clifford told Johnson that the war was far from won and that
more men would make little difference. Johnson then turned to
his chief group of informal advisors (which included among
others, Generals Omar Bradley, Matthew Ridgway, and Maxwell
Taylor; Cyrus Vance, Dean Acheson, and Henry Cabot Lodge).
Johnson soon found that they too, like Clifford, had turned
against the war. According to Thomas Powers, Johnson's "wise old
men" had been told that recent CIA studies showed that the
pacification programme was failing in forty of South Vietnam's
forty-four provinces and that the N LF's manpower was actually
twice the number that had been estimated previously. Not only
had Tet shown that the optimism of the previous year had been an
illusion but it now seemed that the enemy was far stronger than
anybody had thought and that the long efforts to win Vietnamese
"hearts and minds" had largely been a disaster
If Tet wasn't a full-scale shock to the American public, it
was at the very least, an awakening. The enemy that Johnson and
the generals had described as moribund had shown itself to be
very alive and, as yet, unbeaten. America and its ARVN ally had
suffered over 4,300 killed in action, some 16,000 wounded and
over 1,000 missing in action. The fact that the enemy suffered
far more and had lost a major gamble mattered little because the
war looked like a never ending conflict without any definite,
realistic objective. The scenes of desolation in Saigon, Hue,
and other cities looked to be war without purpose or end.
Perhaps the most quoted US officer of the time was the one who
explained the destruction of about one-third of the provincial
capital of Ben Tre with unintended black humor: "It became
necessary to destroy it," he said, "in order to save it". For
many, this oft-quoted statement was not just a classic example
of Pentagon double-think but also a symbol of the war's
futility. Westmoreland became the parody "General
Waste-mor-land" of the anti-war movement.
Being against the war became more-or-less politically
respectable for liberal elements. Robert Kennedy spoke of giving
up the illusion of victory and Democratic Senator Eugene
McCarthy challenged Johnson for the Presidential nomination on a
peace platform. He was supported by thousands of students and
young Americans opposed to the war. Vocal elements of the
extreme right largely supported the war but condemned the
Administration for not going all out for victory. The JCS backed
Westmoreland but convinced him to settle for half of the over
200,000 additional troops he wanted to take the initiative. The
JCS then reported to the White House that the extra men were
needed to get things back to normal following the battles of the
Tet Offensive.
Johnson's dilemma was complete. He couldn't meet the
generals' manpower requests without either depleting Europe of
American troops- which was unacceptable- or without calling up
the active reserves which would have been a political disaster
His most senior advisors had turned against the war and Johnson
took another briefing from the CIA analyst whose gloomy reports
had soured some of his most hawkish counselors. A few days after
this briefing, Johnson went on TV to announce a bombing halt of
the North and America's willingness to meet with the North
Vietnamese to seek a peace settlement. Johnson then said that he
was not a candidate for reelection under any circumstances and
would spend the rest of his term in a search for peace in
Indochina.
One of those present at the special CIA briefing which
convinced Johnson that a change of course was inevitable was
General Creighton Abrams, Westmoreland's deputy commander.
Shortly after Johnson's turnabout, Abrams replaced Westmoreland
as head of US forces in Vietnam. Westmoreland came home to
become Army Chief of Staff- a move many saw as a kick upstairs-
but, whatever the reasons behind the changeover, Abrams went to
Saigon with a mission. He was to institute a program of'
Vietnamization" in other words, to take all necessary measures
to enable the ARVN to bear the main burden of the fighting and
gradually return the chief role of American troops to that of
advisors. Vietnamization had always been a feature of America's
role in Vietnam but it had been on a back-burner since 1965 when
it seemed that Saigon was incapable of doing the job. Now things
were to be returned to what they were supposed to have been from
the beginning. Vietnamization is usually credited to Nixon but
it began in the wake of the Tet Offensive and Johnson's
turnabout.
Giap's gamble had another side effect When the Tet Offensive
began, many US officials believed that the N LF had offered the
Americans a golden opportunity by fighting a pitched battle
where it could be defeated in open combat. In effect, the NLF
was "leading with its chin" and the massive losses it suffered
bear this out The VC was not broken by the Tet Offensive but it
was severely crippled by it and, from then on, the North took on
the main burden of the war Further fighting in 1968 and the
increasing activity of the Phoenix Program further decimated the
NLF's ranks and the role of the North grew even larger. The
northern and southern parts of Vietnam had ancient cultural and
social differences and while the communist cadres at the center
of the N LF had managed largely to suppress these natural
antagonisms, there still were basic differences in goals and
approach. The N LF had gone into the Tet Offensive in the hope
of giving a death-blow to the Saigon Government and, if it
couldn't capture power directly, it could at least gain a
coalition leading to ultimate authority. The NLF's dream
vanished in the rubble of South Vietnam's cities and it would be
Hanoi that conquered Saigon.