Why The North Vietnamese Launched A Major Military Offensive During Tet 1968

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Text originally published in 1991 under the same title.

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WHY THE NORTH VIETNAMESE LAUNCHED A MAJOR MILITARY OFFENSIVE DURING TET 1968

By

MAJ M.K. Lietz, USA.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

ABSTRACT 4

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 5

CHAPTER ONE — INTRODUCTION 6

Purpose 6

Context of the Problem 6

Assumptions 19

Definitions 19

Research Methodology 24

Limitations 26

Organization 26

Significance of the Study 26

CHAPTER TWO — MAO TSE-TUNG’S THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY WAR AND THE VIETNAMESE STRATEGY OF DAU TRANH 27

Introduction 27

The Framework of Dau Tranh 28

The Differences between Mao’s Strategy and Dau Tranh 32

Political Struggle-Dau Tranh Chinh Tri 34

Transitioning in Dau Tranh 36

A Historical Example 37

Summary 40

CHAPTER THREE — POLITICAL ISSUES 41

Introduction 41

The Political Situation in the Soviet Union and China 41

United States Political Issues 45

South. Vietnam’s Political Issues 48

North Vietnam’s Political Issues 49

Peace Negotiations 50

The Political Decision to Transition 52

Summary 54

CHAPTER FOUR — MILITARY ISSUES 55

Introduction 55

Military Operations-1966 55

Military Statistics-Early 1967 57

The Threat of More U.S. and Allied Soldiers 58

Military Operations-1967 59

1967 Year End Statistics 60

Effects of Pacification Programs 62

Dau Tranh Phasing Debate 64

The Decision of the Thirteenth Plenum 65

Giap Targets Pacification Efforts 66

Summary 67

CHAPTER FIVE — ECONOMIC ISSUES 68

Introduction 68

United States Economic Issues 68

The Budget Dollar 1967 69

South Vietnam’s Economic Issues 70

North Vietnam’s Economic Issues 71

Loss of South Vietnamese Support for the VC 71

Loss of Transportation Assets 75

Manpower Shortage 76

Loss of Industrial Base 79

Economic Support for the Offensive 80

Summary 81

CHAPTER SIX — SOCIAL ISSUES 82

Introduction 82

Social Issues Within the United States 82

Social Issues Within South Vietnam 84

Social Issues Within North Vietnam 85

Support of Other Nations 85

Loss of Support in South Vietnam 86

Lies to Leadership concerning Political Struggle 89

Summary 93

CHAPTER SEVEN — DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS 94

Introduction 94

Why Transition to a General Offensive? 94

Political Reasons 94

Military Reasons 95

Economic Reasons 95

Social Reasons 95

Was this transition correct using the Dau Tranh model? 96

Conclusion 98

APPENDIX 1 — REVIEW OF LITERATURE 99

APPENDIX 2 — ACRONYMS 103

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 104

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 105

BOOKS 105

PERIODICALS AND ARTICLES 109

GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS 110

ABSTRACT

This study examines the reasons why the North Vietnamese launched a general offensive during the Tet holiday of 1968. Based on events of the previous year, conditions did not appear favorable for the North Vietnamese to undertake such a massive and risky operation. Several reasons accounted for this decision; political pressure from Russia and China for a resolution to the war, military failure to achieve victory through the use of the dau tranh strategy of war, the increasing inability of the Vietnamese people-North and South-to provide economic and social support for the war, and impatience on the part of the North Vietnamese leaders. North Vietnam’s goal was to hasten the resolution of the war by a massive offensive and to quickly bring the United States and South Vietnam to the negotiating table. By prematurely launching this offensive, the North Vietnamese did not comply with the dau tranh model strategy of revolutionary war.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I extend my gratitude to Colonel V. Paul Baerman, Committee Chairman, to Colonel Robert W. Duffner, Consulting Faculty Member, and to Lieutenant Colonel Ralph K. Bodenner and Major Butch B. Baker, both members of my committee, without whose generous guidance I could not have completed this thesis. I also wish to thank my Mom and Dad for wholeheartedly supporting my endeavors for the past 36 years.

M. K. L.

CHAPTER ONE — INTRODUCTION

We make war in the Vietnamese manner. . . . A Soviet Marshal once asked me how I defeated the Americans. He asked me how many infantry divisions, tank divisions, artillery divisions we had. How much aviation [laughter]. If we had fought like that, we would have been beaten in less than two hours, but we fought differently and we won.{1} — Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap, 1990

Purpose

This research paper will explain why the North Vietnamese thought January 1968 was the correct time to launch a major offensive. It will also analyze why that decision was an incorrect one based on the protracted war model of Mao Tse-Tung, as applied to the more specific Vietnamese strategy for revolutionary war.

Context of the Problem

It is widely thought the North Vietnamese offensive of Tet 1968 was the turning point in the Vietnam war. In order to understand why this offensive occurred when it did, the reader requires some background of Vietnam and its leaders.

Prior to the United States intervention in the 1960s, Vietnam had struggled against outside aggression for over two thousand years. In the mid-nineteenth century the French began a policy to colonize Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos into French Indochina. Since the 1920s there were groups of communists and nationalists in Indochina who opposed the French.{2} Both groups wanted to control the country, but above all, they wanted Vietnam ruled by Vietnamese people, not colonialists.

In an interview with a western journalist in 1990, Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap discussed why the Vietnamese people turned to communism during the French occupation. Giap, a revolutionist since 1926 and one of the key developers of the Vietnamese strategy for revolutionary war, believed development of an organized communist party resulted from French repression.{3} He explained, In 1930, the global depression had hit Vietnam, and peasant unrest spread through the country, spurring radicals to rebel against the French, who summarily executed hundreds in reprisal.{4}

According to the French Supreme Command, Far East’s Lessons learned from the Indochina War, Volume II, the French also pinpointed the beginning of the communist insurgency in Vietnam as response to their forceful military actions against the depression-caused peasant unrest in North-Annam (northern part of what is now South Vietnam) and in the Tonkin Delta area (North Vietnam) in 1930. For example, a village shelled by the French in retaliation for peasant unrest remained a hotbed of peasant revolt.{5}

According to Douglas Pike, author and noted expert on the Vietnamese army and culture, the French reprisal was a result of the communist movement replacing the officials in sixteen villages with communist leaders. The communists planned to use these leaders as the nucleus for revolution. The 1930 peasant uprisings in Annam’s Nghe An and Ha Tin provinces spread to revolts and, for a brief time, were national in scale. The French swiftly retaliated and through systematic, direct military action, removed the village communist leaders and put down the rebellion. In all, 10,000 Vietnamese were killed, 50,000 exiled, and 100,000 jailed by the French.{6}

In response to this French action, the Vietnamese officially formed the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) in October 1930. The party’s policy summary was written in absentia by ICP leader Ho Chi Minh residing in Hong Kong.{7} Ho Chi Minh, who would later become the leader of North Vietnam, stated the ICP"s goal was to lead the national democratic revolution of the Vietnamese people against the imperialists and the feudal landlord class of French colonists in Vietnam.{8}

When the Japanese occupied Indochina in 19.40, they left the French colonial administration intact, but controlled its actions.{9} This gave the Japanese control of the country without having to deal with the political infrastructure and also caused the Vietnamese to partly blame the French for the Japanese repression that followed. In 1941, Ho Chi Minh, leader of the ICP, returned to Vietnam after thirty years of traveling around the world, to the United States, China, Hong Kong, the Soviet Union, and various countries within Europe.{10}

As discussed by Thomas Latimer in his doctorate thesis on Hanoi’s Leaders and their South Vietnam Policies, Ho was exposed to many different cultures through his travels. He started his wanderings as a mess boy aboard a French freighter in 1911. During his thirty years roaming outside Vietnam, he traveled for the Communist party as a revolutionist, serving everywhere the party needed an experienced and able revolutionary, gaining political but not military experience.{11} Ho joined the French Communist party in 1920 and throughout the 1920s, he traveled from Brooklyn, New York, to London, Paris, Moscow and Canton.{12} Ho wrote and lectured avidly on his major ideological theory-that anti-colonial nationalism and socioeconomic revolution were inseparable.{13} Throughout the 1930s, Ho spent time in China, the Soviet Union, Thailand, and Asia.{14} Ho’s experiences in these different cultures taught him about using the united front tactic of getting many different factions to work together toward a common goal.{15}

Ho and his Indochinese Communist Party were determined to expel the French and Japanese forces that occupied Vietnam. After France fell to Germany on the European continent during World War II in June 1940, Ho Chi Minh began to discuss strategy within the ICP. He felt political action should have primacy in the revolution process. Remembering the disastrous results of direct political action taken by the ICP during the 1930 depression, Ho still wanted to resolve differences with political action before trying to force the issue with military action. He knew his military arm of power, under the leadership of Giap, was still not strong enough to overthrow the Japanese military in Vietnam. Its arms and ammunition were outdated. Some were captured from the French, others from Chaing Kai-shek’s army of China. Therefore, his strategy was political action should precede military action.{16}

However, in February 1941 after Ho returned to Vietnam from China, he made plans to conduct armed military struggle against the French and Japanese occupation forces. During the Indochinese Communist Party’s Eighth Plenum (general assembly) held in Kwangsi, China, in May 1941, the ICP officially decided that armed dau tranh (struggle) would be conducted through a united front.{17}

The united front, a Leninist concept, was an organized coalition of the three different communist groups within Vietnam, the Indo-China Communist Party, the Annamite Communist Party, and the Revolutionary Youth Movement, and several groups of nationalists dedicated to ousting the Japanese and French.{18} The most noteworthy of these groups of nationalists was the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang, created and assisted by Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalists. These associations gave a greater legitimacy to the united front by showing that its membership was open to all groups of people, not just communists.{19}

This front, formed on 1 May 1941, was called the Vietnamese Doc Lap Dong Minh (Front of the Allies for the Independence of Vietnam) or the Vietminh, as it became known colloquially.{20} Using his political savvy, Ho Chi Minh appointed non-communist Ho Ngoc Lam as chairman of this front, hoping to further encourage the support of non-communist party elements within Vietnam.{21}

In the summer of 1941, Ho sent Vo Nguyen Giap, a trusted disciple of the cause and his main source of military expertise, into the rural regions of Vietnam recruiting peasants for membership in the communist party. Giap was assigned by Ho to lead the military arm of the Vietminh’s struggle against the Japanese and French.

Previously Giap spent two years with the Chinese Nationalists in China studying armed struggle and kept copious notes of this training. He relied on the advice of Chinese Nationalist advisors, his notes, and his own thoughts, to develop small cells of communists.{22} Under Giap’s organizational management and as the French repressive actions further degraded the quality of life of the Vietnamese, the initially established cells of five members multiplied swiftly. These small cells were organized to provide a foundation for spreading the word of communism throughout the country and to recruit more members. Each cell was autonomous for security reasons. The political cadres of the ICP, seeing a need for security for the developing movement, established guerrilla bands within Vietnam that were also placed under the leadership of Giap in 1941.{23}

On 9 March 1945 the Japanese disarmed and interned the French military forces and assumed all governing powers of Vietnam because of a fear of an allied invasion. On 10 March, the Japanese ambassador informed Emperor Bao Dai that Vietnam was now an independent state. Bao Dai proclaimed this independence on 11 March 1945. Ho, as well as General de Gaulle of France, expected the allies to assist in recovering Vietnam colony for France. Therefore, Ho decided to wait for better conditions for his takeover.{24}

Ho Chi Minh’s concern with proper timing of military action was evident in his address to the Central Committee of the Indochinese Communist Party on 12 March 1945. Ho stated Conditions are not yet ripe for an uprising. The political crisis is acute but the conditions are not yet ripe for an uprising... Ho felt the population was still in a euphoric mood due to the proclamation of independence and therefore were not ready to provide the ICP military forces with the popular uprising necessary to defeat the Japanese forces.{25} To develop this support, Ho advocated change in the focus of the actions being taken to incite the people to rise up against the Japanese, such as more propaganda. Ho also felt the local forces were not ready for such an undertaking. He agreed to work with the French for the common goal of ousting the Japanese, however he never gave up the ultimate goal of independence for Vietnam. In addition, Ho called for general strikes in workshops and markets, sabotage, and armed demonstrations and guerrilla activity. Ho asked for patience and the Central Committee agreed to