World History Final by Tommy Kelley

At 3:00 in the morning on January thirty first, 1968, North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces underwent a lot of concurrent assaults on South Vietnamese and American forces in major cities, towns and military bases throughout South Vietnam. The combat, the wars fiercest, was on the same day as the New Year, or Tet, and ever since, it was called the text offensive It was a turning point in the war, but in its painful demonstration of the limits of American power in Asia and in the mental impact it was to have on Americans at home it was far more than that.

The Tet attackers’ daring reached into the depths of Saigon and, most surprising, into the walls of the American Embassy. A few Vietcong, in South Vietnamese uniforms, held sections of the embassy for the first six hours of the offensive. According to Hanoi radio, the aim of the attacks was to overthrow South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu. The day after, the South Vietnamese president declared martial law all over Vietnam. The Offensive is thought to have finished Feb. 25, when the last of the Enemy units were driven from the imperial citadel in Hue. But the battles in Vietnam continued for seven years afterword; eventually, an angry and disheartened United States withdrew from the war and, at the finish, North Vietnam's communist army went right through the demoralized forces of South Vietnam.

By the middle of February (two weeks into the offensive.) Washington estimated that enemy fatalities had risen to 33,249 killed. Allied fatalities were gauged at 3,470 dead, a third of them Amerians, and 12,062 wounded, almost half of them Americans. on Feb. 25, the commander of the United States forces, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, compared the Tet offensive to Nazi Germany's last major drive in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944,’advantage, but defeat.’ ''Although the enemy has achieved some temporary psychological advantage, he suffered a military defeat,'' the general in Saigon said, But U.S officials in Saigon also said that the South Vietnamese And American governments’ work to ''pacify'' the country were halted as a consequence of the offensive.

In the U.S, a Poll in February showed that President Lyndon B. Johnson's handling of the war In March was disapproved by 50 percent of the population and supported by 35 percent., The poll showed a flood of doubt about the war. Later that month, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson said victory in Vietnam was not possible within the limits of public tolerance, in a private meeting with the president of the U.S. On the 31st of March, the President announced that he would not be running for re-election. By then, about 4,000 Americans had perished since the beginning of the year in battles that raged in most of South Vietnam's 44 provincial capitals. The North Vietnamese had lost 58,000 soldiers. More than 14,000 South Vietnamese civilians also had died.