Introduction to the Lunar New Year Offensive

In late January 1968, North Vietnam launched the Lunar New Year Offensive (Tet Offensive) on an unprecedented scale. More than 80,000 North Vietnamese troops and Viet***anese guerrillas launched an offensive against almost all the large and small cities in South Vietnam. However, the South Vietnamese people did not unleash the massive unrest that had been expected, allowing North Vietnamese forces to suffer from the overwhelming conventional force of U.S. forces, most of the offensive was defeated within the first few hours, but sustained for up to three days in Saigon, and a month of heavy fighting in Hue, Vietnam's traditional capital.