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New issue alert. Receive exclusive offers and updates from Oxford Academic. Citing articles via Google Scholar. The Long History of American Slavery. American counterattacks in the Chinese district of Cholon in Saigon are believed to have killed hundreds of civilians. Scenes of terrified refugees pouring from the district were beamed around the world. That our coverage was said to polarize the American public's view of the war was not our intent.
Far to the north, just 30 miles below the demilitarized zone dividing north and south, the city of Hue was overrun by almost 8, North Vietnamese troops. The enemy had dug into a massive complex called the Citadel, which was surrounded by a moat and stone ramparts, some as thick as 40 feet.
More than American troops died in the day battle, with 1, wounded; South Vietnamese soldiers were killed. After hearing reports of unprecedented destruction in South Vietnamese villages, Arnett joined a press trip Feb. There he saw the ruins of shacks, homes, businesses and restaurants badly damaged by U. Hundreds of civilians had been killed. Arnett interviewed a dozen military advisers in the town, who explained how the U.
An utterance by one of those advisers made it into the lead of Arnett's next AP dispatch, which in the 50 years since it was written has been often cited as the essence of America's quixotic involvement in Vietnam: "It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it. That didn't happen. The Viet Cong suffered particularly heavy losses.
Willbanks, who was deployed to South Vietnam in , never saw any Viet Cong during his tour. But the Tet Offensive did set into motion developments in the U. Tet had deepened an ongoing internal debate within the Johnson administration between those who wanted to intensify the war -- mainly military leaders -- and those who wanted to de-escalate, primarily civilian advisers, said Mark Moyar, author of "Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, " and director of the Military and Diplomatic History Project at the.
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. As President Lyndon B. On the early morning of January 30, , Viet Cong forces attacked 13 cities in central South Vietnam, just as many families began their observances of the lunar new year. In a particularly bold attack on the U.
The audacious attack on the U. 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. 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.
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. The toughest fighting in Hue occurred at the ancient citadel, which the North Vietnamese struggled fiercely to hold against superior U. In scenes of carnage recorded on film by numerous television crews on the scene, nearly U. Marines were killed in the Battle of Hue, along with some South Vietnamese troops. In fighting to secure other government positions, two carriers were damaged and disabled.
By early afternoon on 6 February both tasks were complete and the company returned to Nui Dat. Overall, the casualty toll on both sides had been relatively small — including five Australians killed and nearly 50 Viet Cong.
Operation Coburg was brought to an end on 1 March, and the task force elements returned to Nui Dat. The Viet Cong had also lost considerable quantities of weapons, equipment and rice. If the Australians could count themselves as successful, so could the allies generally across the country. Although initially overwhelmed by the scale of the Tet Offensive, they were able to recover their balance within about six hours of its start.
The communists were driven out of most of the towns within four days and the general uprising which they hoped to trigger did not eventuate. Fighting continued in Saigon until mid-February, but the cost to the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army was out of all proportion to the losses they inflicted.
In all, some 45, enemy personnel were killed by the end of February out of a total of 84, committed to the offensive , compared to allied military deaths of about 6, With the locally based communist infrastructure in the South effectively annihilated, the leadership of North Vietnam would be obliged to send increased numbers of troops from its own territory to keep the war going.
Judged on this scale, the offensive had been an unmitigated disaster — in every sense except public perception. The very fact that the communists had been able to mount such a concerted effort, at a time when allied military authorities had been providing assurances that they were well on top in the conflict, was sufficient for pundits to deduce that the communists must be winning the war after all. It did not matter, for example, that the enemy troops who stormed the US Embassy in Saigon had been on a suicide mission, with all being cut down in the outer grounds.
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