The Tet offensive in Vietnam was a series of orchestrated attacks on hundreds of US and South Vietnam settlements and outposts, on the Vietnam holiday, Tet. This day, on January 31st, had been known as an unofficial truce between North and South Vietnam in previous years, but North Vietnam took advantage of this in order to make their attack most efficient. One of the most discussed topics of not only the war, but the outcome of this specific aspect of it, is its effect on the anti-war sentiment in America. The Vietnam war was already one of the most controversial wars in the nation’s (America’s) history, and the Tet Offensive but added fuel to the fire. There are various factors that contributed to the drop in support of the war, and this essay aims not only to observe these factors, but also to obtain first-hand accounts of the distaste towards the war. In addition, this essay will take an in depth look at the Tet offensive, and how it contributed to the aforementioned subject. In order to accomplish this, we must first take an in depth look into the battle and examine the perspectives of the people, media, and soldiers that witness the events during this time.
Beginning on November 1st, 1955, The Vietnam war would rage on for decades to come, and approximately 1.14 million soldiers and civilians would lose their lives to it. However through all the inhuman and disturbing events that took place during the war, there was a glimmer of humanity. The holiday of Tết, also known as Tết Nguyên Đán or the Lunar New Year, is a Buddhist holiday meaning “Feast of the First Morning of the First Day”. On this day, since the beginning of the war, Peace would be brought to the battlefield as a day of truce between the North and South Vietnamese forces. However, the North took this as an opportunity for a shock tactic attack, and continued to attack almost every developed South Vietnamese center, even those considered impenetrable such as the embassy in Saigon or the American base in Danang. They were able to accomplish this feat despite their inferior equipment and attack position because of their element of surprise. In the coming weeks, the anti-communists would take back every piece of land lost, more than doubling the casualties on the communist side. When all the information is accounted for, it sounds as though the anti-communists redeemed themselves in an already difficult situation, however this is not how the people understood it.
This attack, while carried out on January 31st 1968, began its planning phase early in the previous year. Orchestrated by General Vo Nguyen Giap, one of North Vietnam’s greatest military minds, the offensive was designed to accomplish 3 main goals: to cause unrest in the people of South Vietnam and fill their minds with revoltuous ideas, decimate the South Vietnam militant forces, and damage the patriotic and steadfast resolve of the Americans by inflicting heavy losses against both them and the South Vietnam. If above all failed, they hoped to, at the least, find themselves (North Vietnam) to be found in a fortunate position in terms of peace negotiations.
Arguably one of the most important factors to winning a war is the support of your people, and up until the vietnam war, this was not something that the soldiers nor the government had to worry about, as news coverage of war was poor if at all existent, and the people believed that war was a courageous and willful feat for soldiers. Once press and cameras were present on the battlefield, however, this all changed. War is filled with horrors and atrocities that most never have to experience in their lives, so when a camera catches a platoon massacring an entire village with no context, an example given by Captain Serrano in a private interview, they would understandably be in shock and potentially change their perspective of war altogether. This new form of news coverage was foreign not just to the people, but to the press, as there was much confusion and haste that came with the wild unpredictable tides of war, and because of this many of the first reports were misleading or misinformed, as stated by Peter Braestrup in Big Story (1978). The distaste of the war spanning to such a larger population of people during this time can be attributed in part to the misleading, misinformed, and/or biased press. Apart from the nation’s continued newspaper efficiency, the new coming technology of television sets and televised newscasting gave way for the war to enter family’s living rooms all over the country.