during the vietnam war the tet offensive what conflict was called the soviet union's vietnam

during the vietnam war the tet offensive what conflict was called the soviet union

Fighting continued mostly, by now, it was against the North Vietnamese Army. 'The Americans' war'Īfter 1968 the number of Americans in Vietnam decreased year-by-year.

However, it was also a propaganda victory from which the United States was unable to recover. The Tet offensive was a military defeat for the Viet Cong, who never recovered from the losses they suffered. When communist forces launched the Tet offensive in February 1968, attacking major centres and infiltrating the American embassy in Saigon, American public opinion turned decisively against the war. Mounting losses and a growing sense that the war was not being won, despite assertions to the contrary by leading political and military figures in the United States, gave strength to anti-war activists in America. Using equipment supplied by the Soviet Union and China, the North Vietnamese Army and the South Vietnamese communists, known as the Viet Cong, were able to frustrate the Americans who were rarely able to draw their opponents into open battle. But as the war dragged on, and as ever increasing numbers of American soldiers were deployed to Vietnam, it became apparent that the Vietnamese communists were a tougher, more resourceful enemy than had been imagined. American military planners and political leaders – from the wealthiest, most technologically and militarily advanced nation on earth – expected to defeat the communists in Vietnam – a land peopled mainly by rural peasants – with relative ease. Some three million United States personnel served in Vietnam over the ten years of American involvement.

United States military intervention in Vietnam began in 1961, when advisers were sent to South Vietnam to bolster that country's defences against a communist-backed insurgency sponsored by North Vietnam. In this way the conflict between communist forces in South Vietnam and the North Vietnamese Army on one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other, is distinguished from the eight-year-long war against France that ended in 1954 and the five-year-long Japanese occupation during the Second World War. The war that is known around the world as the 'Vietnam War' is referred to in Vietnam as the 'American War'.

During the vietnam war the tet offensive what conflict was called the soviet union's vietnam