![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In their history of the war, Clark Dougan and Stephen Weiss wrote that the commander of American forces in Vietnam, Gen. That kind of reinforcement and troop movement is hard to hide, especially when the CIA is watching the Ho Chi Minh Trail. North Vietnam massed 80,000 troops and the supplies needed to launch the Tet Offensive in the days before Jan. The United States knew an offensive was coming. With his disgraceful response to the Tet Offensive, Thieu's government lost popular support in the countryside, which leaned toward the communists.Ĥ. Some 14,300 civilians were killed, with another 24,000 wounded and 630,000 forced to flee their homes. Still, it was the first time the north brought the war to the cities in any meaningful way. As a result, Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN) forces took the brunt of the casualties. ![]() Thieu's mismanagement of the military made it much easier for the North Vietnamese Army to surprise and hit the south. The communists believed it would be followed by a massive uprising against the corrupt, repressive South Vietnamese government of President Nguyen Van Thieu. 30-31, 1968, North Vietnam launched a massive, coordinated assault on nearly every city, town and military installation in South Vietnam. The Battle of Hue was part of the Tet Offensive. More importantly, the Vietnamese had been at war against outside rule for so long, they could boast multiple generations of veteran soldiers fighting on their home turf.ģ. The north had a talented air force, weapons supplied by China and the Soviet Union, tanks, APCs, artillery and more. The North Vietnamese weren't just a ragtag bunch of farmers.Īlthough the Viet Cong - also known as the VC, they were South Vietnamese who actively supported the communist north - had their share of peasant soldiers, North Vietnam's armed forces were much more sophisticated than popular perception allows. Until 1968, the communists were largely unable to hit major urban centers because they didn't have enough men, supplies or support inside South Vietnam's cities to make such attacks effective. ![]()
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