Customer Reviews

Tet! The Turning Point in the Vietnam War

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this is not a war story. it is an insightful book that focuses on the political causes and repercussions of the tet offensive in early 1968. it starts with the attempted takeover of the u.s. embassy in saigon and ends with the decision of president johnson not to run for reelection. if you are looking at the military aspects of this offensive, this is not the book for you.

by jumping back and forth from washington to south vietnam to north vietnam, the author clearly explains how such a military failure on the part of north vietnam could result in such a huge victory that ultimately wins the war. it is very enlightening regarding what happens in the united states. it is much less so regarding south vietnam. from the north's perspective it gives a good understanding of why they did it, but is surprisingly lacking as to their reaction to the clear defeat.

one interesting aspect is that the book is written before the war ends. this gives the reader more knowledge than the author, but also shows how perceptive the author is in understanding the long term impact even to today.

of particular interest is how the individual bits of the story, whose impact cannot be understood at the time they occur, match up to change the climate in the united states and bring about the end of the johnson presidency and ultimately the vietnam war.

Don Obendorfer's book Tet is a well written book. His experience as a newspaper reporter (I believe) allows him to effectively suppress any biases he might have possesed toward the conflict in Viet Nam. He makes it hard to put down.I immediatly wanted to know what was going to happen next. He covers the attack upon the US embassy in Saigon in depth. He also covers the worries US military brass had about Khe Sanh. Additionaly, he covers General Westmoreland's attempts to secure another 209,000 troops and the negative publicity and the anti-war backlash created in America by the Tet offensive that would not allow President Johnson to send that amount of troops. This book is a must for those who want to know about the Tet offensive.

Don Oberdorfer does a great job in describing the key battle in the Vietnam war. The political decisions made by both sides about the battle are included. The background and key players on our side and their thoughts are described.
The battle of Hue is gone into in some detail, including the killing of thousands of civilians, and some other foreign nationals by the North Vietnamese.
For anyone wondering why we got out of Vietnam, this is a must read. The shift in attitude from the pro war stance of Johnson's "wise men" is gone into in some detail as they move from pro war in Nov '67 to we must negotiate in early '68.
The chronology of events at the end of the book is a great help.

The "We had to destroy the village to save it" comment, by Peter Arnett is told too. Peter Arnett was an anti war reporter from the beginning. In 1965 he wrote a bogus report about our Marines using toxic gas on the VC. It was just tear and pepper gas, and was widely used in Vietnam to clear bunkers and tunnels. It was thought more humane than blowing up the people in the tunnels or bunkers. Arnett reported it as poison gas and made world wide headlines. This is discussed in Utters Battalion, another book.
In this book, he invents a quote "We had to destroy the village to save it" and again it makes world wide headlines.
During the Tet offensive at the battle of Ben Tre, Arnett says an Army Major made the comment. Neither the Major, or any other living person heard the comment.
The story of how Westmoreland came to generate the request of 206,00 more troops is told too.

Contrary to the previous reviewer, I think Oberdorfer tackled the Tet subject comprehensively and covered all bases in explaining the turning point of the Vietnam conflict.
Oberdorfer begins the book by fully explaining what really happened at the American Embassy that fateful January night in 1968. Although most Americans today believe the Embassy was 'overrun,' Oberdorfer explains the true story of a platoon of Viet Cong blasting a hole in the wall to enter the compound but never being able to enter the Chancery building. I believe the reason Oberdorfer starts his book off with the subject is to dispel the 'overrun' myth of VC running through the building capturing documents and, even though it was a minor military skirmish compared to the street-by-street fighting in Hue and siege at Khe Sanh, the American Embassy attack was the paramount event which woke America up to what was happening in SE Asia.

Also, the previous reviewer complains the book focuses too much on the politics and media coverage of Tet, not realizing Oberdorfer's main point of the book is that Tet might have been won on the battlefield, but it was an epic defeat on American televisions and in world newspapers. The Tet offensive's primary aim was to cause political upheaval in America to give the Communists a victory exactly like what defeated the French a decade earlier. In a 1947 tract by Hanoi called "The Resistance Will Win", it states "...as a result of the long war the enemy troops become weary and discouraged, and are tormented by home-sickness. The French economy and finances are exhausted; supplying the army is difficult, the French people do not want the war to go on any longer. The movement against the diehards in France goes stronger and more fierce. World opinion severely condemns France...world movement for peace and democracy scores great successes, etc. ...

Subtract France from the quote and insert the US and there is the political reasoning for starting the General Offensive. Also, Tet not only caused US and ARVN troop casualties, but it ended a presidential administration and forever changed how the news is presented to the American public by the media. A study of Tet not involving the White House, LBJ, McNamara, Clifford, or for that matter Cronkite, the Wall Street Journal and Time, would be like reading about the light bulb and failing to mention Edison.

Oberdorfer's does a great job balancing his information by devoting whole chapters to subjects like the history of Vietnam, pre-Tet America, the shockwave that hit the US after the attack, the 'shot seen around the world' of the Saigon police chief shooting a VC prisoner on the street, the military disaster of Tet to the Viet Cong ranks, the battle of Hue and a section on one of the most decisive months in US history - March 1968.

My only gripe is that the book was first written in 1971, which interestingly gives the reader an unusual perspective as the war was still going on, but is begging for a complete Afterword section to fill in the gaps as more information on the North is now available. BTW, there is a great Chronology at the end of the book which makes it easy to follow the play-by-play and would be a student's dream in helping research information.

Gives the reader a good idea of how the Tet offensive changed the course of the Vietnam War. Gives good descriptive accounts of the battle at the U.S. embassy and Hue. This is a must book for those who want to know more about the Vietnam War.

A new edition of this book was published in 2001 with, I believe, a new introduction by the author. I am using the old edition for my own political purposes. I will read the new introduction at some point and add comment at that time.

Recently I was listening to Talk of the Nation on National Public Radio and the subject concerned formation of political consciousness. One of the callers identified himself as an ardent 1960's anti-Vietnam War protester and self-styled `hippie' who in 1984 `got religion' and saw the error of his ways. The formative point of this new found wisdom was a documentary on the Public Broadcast System (PBS) that indicated to him that the Tet Offensive of 1968 has not been a military victory for the North Vietnamese/South Vietnamese Liberation Front forces (hereafter NVA/NLF). Somehow along the way he had assumed, based, he said, on information from Walter Cronkite that it was a military victory. Well, this writer then as now, as we celebrate the 40th Anniversary of that event, can confirm for that caller that, indeed, Tet was not a military victory NVA/NLF. Here is the point, however, military victory or not, it was certainly a political victory for those NVA/NLF forces. In modern conditions, sometimes political victories are more important that military ones. The book under review, what else it shortcomings might be, confirms this view.

Is this book the best one on the history of the Tet offensive? Probably not. However it has the virtue of having been written a short time after this major political event. Thus, although it is not the first draft of history it is close enough for our purposes. The drawback here is that it was written while the war was still going on so that the relationship between Tet 1968, Tet 1972 and then the final military victory in 1975 does not give the event its full impact in the overall scheme of NVA/NLF strategy and American/South Vietnamese counter-strategy.

The author hits all the high points of this decisive several month period from about the summer of 1967 when the NVA/NLF decided to make a major push against the South to Tet itself and its immediate aftermath. The author starts off his book with a description the famous NLF raid on the American embassy, goes on to the discuss the strategic aims of the North Vietnamese and the American response to it, the personal saga of one Lyndon Baines Johnson and the in-fighting in the old Cold war national security establishment about the proper American response and then the results and aftermath of the offensive.

Reading history with a purpose, in short, to learn some lessons is sometimes a chancy thing. Here that purpose can be encapsulated in the following few words- to draw the lessons of history of the Vietnam War in order to apply them to the opposition struggle against the Iraq war. Yes, the differences between Vietnam and Iraq, in the final analysis are probably greater than the similarities however the American hubris that led Lyndon Johnson to escalation in Vietnam and George W. Bush to occupation in Iraq is still in operation. In the end the author draws the conclusion that history will eventually draw on Tet 1968, and that today's American leaders seem to be willfully ignoring- in modern military warfare the political question is the question. From the NVA/NLF side that entailed heavy and dramatic losses but I would argue that their decision to probe American resolve was essentially correct. Read on.

Contrary to the previous reviewer, I think Oberdorfer tackled the Tet subject comprehensively and covered all bases in explaining the turning point of the Vietnam conflict.
Oberdorfer begins the book by fully explaining what really happened at the American Embassy that fateful January night in 1968. Although most Americans today believe the Embassy was 'overrun,' Oberdorfer explains the true story of a platoon of Viet Cong blasting a hole in the wall to enter the compound but never being able to enter the Chancery building. I believe the reason Oberdorfer starts his book off with the subject is to dispel the 'overrun' myth of VC running through the building capturing documents and, even though it was a minor military skirmish compared to the street-by-street fighting in Hue and siege at Khe Sanh, the American Embassy attack was the paramount event which woke America up to what was happening in SE Asia.

Also, the previous reviewer complains the book focuses too much on the politics and media coverage of Tet, not realizing Oberdorfer's main point of the book is that Tet might have been won on the battlefield, but it was an epic defeat on American televisions and in world newspapers. The Tet offensive's primary aim was to cause political upheaval in America to give the Communists a victory exactly like what defeated the French a decade earlier. In a 1947 tract by Hanoi called "The Resistance Will Win", it states "...as a result of the long war the enemy troops become weary and discouraged, and are tormented by home-sickness. The French economy and finances are exhausted; supplying the army is difficult, the French people do not want the war to go on any longer. The movement against the diehards in France goes stronger and more fierce. World opinion severely condemns France...world movement for peace and democracy scores great successes, etc. ...

Subtract France from the quote and insert the US and there is the political reasoning for starting the General Offensive. Also, Tet not only caused US and ARVN troop casualties, but it ended a presidential administration and forever changed how the news is presented to the American public by the media. A study of Tet not involving the White House, LBJ, McNamara, Clifford, or for that matter Cronkite, the Wall Street Journal and Time, would be like reading about the light bulb and failing to mention Edison.

Oberdorfer's does a great job balancing his information by devoting whole chapters to subjects like the history of Vietnam, pre-Tet America, the shockwave that hit the US after the attack, the 'shot seen around the world' of the Saigon police chief shooting a VC prisoner on the street, the military disaster of Tet to the Viet Cong ranks, the battle of Hue and a section on one of the most decisive months in US history - March 1968.

My only gripe is that the book was first written in 1971, which interestingly gives the reader an unusual perspective as the war was still going on, but is begging for a complete Afterword section to fill in the gaps as more information on the North is now available. BTW, there is a great Chronology at the end of the book which makes it easy to follow the play-by-play and would be a student's dream in helping research information.

This book is waaaay to detailed. If you want to know all kinds of facts that really have nothing to do with the battle, like what every politician was thinking, what every correspondent was reporting and all kinds of other side facts, this book is for you. It begins with no real history or set up and concentrates on the embassy in Ho Chi Mihn City like that's the center of it. No way. I enjoy history, but why does almost every historical book I read have to be an epic bogged down by minutia. Give me a really strong overview with only the essential facts, and if I want to know every detail I will pursue further books. I have so many books like this I can't finish, and I'm a patient reader. That's it!