The American intervention in Vietnam began in 1963 with the direct aim of stopping the South falling into 'communist' hands. In August of that year, Lyndon Johnson, who had taken over the American presidency in the wake of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, ordered the first air strikes on the North. Only 6 months later the "rolling thunder" air campaign was constructed. In just this campaign alone more bombs were dropped on North Vietnam than in all of World War two. Seven million tons of bombs and other hazardous weapons were dropped le

Even though all of this is going on and many casualties are being had approximately 25,000 already there are still other battles being fought throughout the country. For example there was the battle for Hue, which was also another huge fight because it was the last chance for the American forces and troops to push the whole communist party out of South Vietnam. The fighting continued and didn't seem to have an end in the city of Hue, which was the imperial capital of Vietnam located halfway between Danang and the DMZ (Demilitarize zone). This city was completely dominated by the massive Imperial Citadel of the Nguyen emperors, known for its boulevards and pagodas. At 3:40 only a little more than an hour after the Vietcong mission a barrage of rockets flew right into the side of the Imperial Citadel, signaling the attack for the communists who were waiting outside the city. The marines were sent to the spot to try and clear out the Vietcong and North Vietnamese. They threw grenades and used sniper rifles to get them out of what was called spider holes. The communists seemed to have everything under control as the invaded Hue from three different directions encountering little resistance from the ARVN troops who were based there. There was an estimated 7,500-man assault force consisting mostly of NLF regulars who were entrenched behind well-fortified walls of the citadel for nearly a month. The US realized that the communists were dug in so they requested artillery strikes, helicopter gun ships, and air strikes to help get the enemy out of the city. The US marines and their artillery neutralized the battleground and they were finally able to take the tower which was a great location for snipers. The battle went on for ten days and pushed ahead into the old structures, which were now abandoned. The US and ARVN troops were going to desperate measures but they got done what needed to be done.

The Tet Offensive was militarily a defeat for the Communists; it had weakened them very substantially. However, in public relations it was a Communist victory. There were several reasons for this. The most important reason was the way the statements US spokesmen had been making about Communist weakness contrasted with the strength the Communists had shown in this battle. US spokesmen had been saying for months that the Communist forces were weakening. The Tet Offensive made it obvious that the Communist forces were far stronger than US spokesmen had admitted. When the same spokesmen said after the Tet Offensive that the Communists had been badly weakened, they were actually telling the truth, but they had a lot of trouble persuading anyone to believe them. When General Westmoreland, the US commander in Vietnam, asked for 200,000 more American soldiers to be sent to Vietnam, this made people even less willing to believe that the Tet Offensive had been an American victory. Another reason for this was that the Tet Offensive made the brutality of the war very visible to Americans. The US Air Force had been bombing South Vietnamese villages for years; during Tet the Air Force was bombing South Vietnamese cities. The ARVN had been killing prisoners for years; during Tet the American television viewing public actually got to watch a prisoner, with his hands bound behind his back, being shot through the head by a South Vietnamese general. This all took the Americans by surprise and made them realize the disgustingness of the Vietnam War. The third and final reason this could be thought of, as a victory by either side is that even though militarily it was clearly an American victory it wasn't an easy one. The total tallied number of US soldiers killed in the year of 1968 was 14,000, which was the most out of any year during the war.

aving an outstanding number of 2.6 million Vietnamese dead. On the night of January 31,1968 there were 70,000 Vietnamese soldiers launched as The Tet Offensive. It began so sudden that the allied fo

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