ABSTRACT
The Tet Offensive was the largest and most important campaign of the American Vietnam War, and it also changed the course of that war. Taking advantage of the cease-fire called to celebrate Tet, the beginning of the lunar New Year and Vietnam's most important holiday, some 84,000 VietCong and NVA soldiers launched simultaneous attacks during the early morning hours of January 30, 1968, extending from the demilitarized zone in the north to the Ca Mau peninsula in the south. Tet-68 represented Hanoi's belated response to the Americanization of the war that had occurred in the summer of 1965. Washington's decisions to escalate the conflict in South Vietnam posed a severe challenge to the Vietnamese revolution. Tet-68 was the turning point of the American Vietnam War. In the weeks following Tet-68, the "wise men" persuaded the president to abandon his failed war policy. "March 31, 1968, marked an inglorious end to the policy of gradual escalation".
