Forty years on from Tet: how the US won Vietnam

For the last few days they have been putting the flags and bunting up in the streets of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in preparation for the nationwide celebrations which will mark the Lunar New Year or Tet. Forty years ago, on the night of 30–31 January 1968, the Liberation Army, as it is now known here, launched its famous Tet offensive with a series of co-ordinated surprise attacks on a wide range of targets south of the 17th parallel. In and around Saigon, mortars pounded the US airbase at Tan Son Nhut, as well as the US embassy, the Presidential Palace, the General Staff Headquarters of the South Vietnamese Army and the Navy Command.

In the United States, the Tet offensive had a devastating impact on public opinion. President Lyndon Johnson might have proclaimed: ‘We cannot be defeated by force of arms. We will stand in Vietnam.’ But at the end of April 1968, he announced — in a televised addressed to the nation — that he would not run again for President.