But there was still the traditional hostility between the China and Vietnam remained. The Vietnamese had not forgotten the 1000 years of occupation they had under the Chinese. It suited the Russians and the Chinese to see the USA trapped in a long and difficult war in Vietnam. But it also suited the Chinese to see a weakened Vietnam so that they could spread their own influence in the region. The Russians and the Chinese were also quarrelling between. The USSR had recently adopted a policy of peaceful co-existence with the USA. The Chinese fiercely rejected this approach. Both China and the USSR tried to use North Vietnam as an ally against the other. But North Vietnam skilfully played each county against the other which got them the best result, support from both countries. Although support for Ho Chi Minh was very strong in communist countries all over the world, the American State Department got one thing wrong Vietnam was not going to be a puppet state for either China or the Soviet Union. This was guaranteed because the only reason that the North Vietnamese fought the war was so that they could have a united independent country.
Although the Americans had miscalculated the will of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Vietcong (VC) to win the war surely one of the world’s greatest superpowers should have been able to defeat a small country of peasants like Vietnam? There were many reasons why they didn’t win. The Vietnamese people were able to live off very little food for very long amounts of time. They could live and hide in the jungle terrain very easily. So even though the Americans had superior firepower they did not have enough men to run after the Vietcong into their jungle hideouts. If the Vietcong were under attack and finding it difficult to defend a point they could just melt into the jungle and disappear. Soldiers sometimes found the heat rain and insects to be worse than the enemy. Another advantage that the VC had was that they looked just like any ordinary Vietnamese man or woman. Even their uniform, black pyjamas and pointy hats, were just like what the ordinary Vietnamese wore. This made the job very difficult for the Americas. Many Vietnamese would just work on their farmland during the day and then become Charlie, as the American troops called the Vietcong, during the night.
The Vietcong did not cooperate with American forces. They did not fight the war how the Americans wanted them to fight it. Instead of conventional battles where the Americans would have been much superior the VC used guerrilla tactics. They would hide in the jungles and ambush isolated enemy units and vehicles; plant mines and set up booby traps such as the Punji traps which did not kill may Americans but did wound them and had a frightening psychological effect on American soldiers; and use sabotage, terrorism and murder to achieve their aims. The VC and NVA had the widespread support of a lot of the people n South Vietnam especially in the countryside where they mixed with the peasants and could move around easily. One of the main reasons for this support was because the supposedly democratic government of South Vietnam lead by Ngo Dinh Diem which was supported by the United States was extremely corrupt. Also Diem was a Catholic and the majority of Vietnamese were Buddhist. It angered the Buddhists when Diem gave all the top government jobs to Catholics and passed laws which gave Catholics extra privileges. There were many protests over this including a very famous one where an elderly monk set himself on fire to protest.
The Americans and the ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) had little support. The US Army was not used to fighting a guerrilla war and had never fought in nor had training for jungle terrain. The American Army had just recently been reorganised. Everyone in America had expected a new era of warfare where nuclear weapons would be used. These would make many existing weapons useless. A huge emphasis was put on helicopters which were small and versatile and could be used to move around surviving troops from a nuclear strike. There were a lot of helicopters in the army at the time of the Vietnam War and although they were good for getting troops in and out of difficult terrain quickly they were very easy to shoot down. All the generals of the US Army that died in the Vietnam War died when their helicopters were shot down. The US Army was not prepared to fight a guerrilla war in the jungle. They did not have many extremely effective weapons to use against the VC and as long as they continued to receive arms they could keep fighting. The VC received supplies from the Ho Chi Minh trail which was a network of track from North Vietnam through Cambodia too South Vietnam. It went through very dense jungle and even though it was repeatedly bombed by US bomber with Napalm and Agent range, a defoliant, supplies continued to get through. A major problem with bombing was that it was very inaccurate and civilians could very easily be killed. This turned many Vietnamese against the Americans and in support of the North Vietnamese.
In late 1967 the war had reached a stalemate; the Communist forces could not match the American firepower and the Americans did not have enough soldiers to chase the VC into the jungles so the government in Hanoi came up with a plan called the Tet Offensive. It took place on 31st January 1968 during the Vietnamese New Years festival of Tet. 700 000 Vietcong launched a massive attack on 100 towns and cities across South Vietnam. Half the ARVN forces were on Tet leave and the Americans were taken by surprise. But the element of surprise was not enough of an advantage for the Communist forces who were used to fighting guerrilla battles in the jungles. This was just what the American’s had been hoping for, conventional warfare. The NLF (National Liberation Front) was not equipped to fight in the cities. They found themselves forced to hold positions that they couldn’t really defend. In the jungle they could easily avoid fighting battles where the odds were against them, they would just have simply merged with the surroundings and fled. They couldn’t do this in the Tet offensive. They lost their number one advantage and therefore paid the penalty. The Communists lost 58 400 fighters whereas the ARVN lost 2000 and the Americans lost only 4000 as well as the 14 300 civilians that died.
In the short term this may have seemed like suicide but the North Vietnamese knew that the Tet Offensive would be a big risk, the thinking of the long term effects. But the North Vietnamese also knew that public opinion in the USA was quickly becoming very anti-war. Many people did not believe that the war was worth the lives of Americans and that it others countries should be allowed to govern themselves however they wish to. Although there were a lot of socialists and radicals in the anti-war movement there were also a lot of “grass root” Americans who were becoming more and more anti-war, as well as the pacifists, who were against the war on moral and religious grounds.
The resentment of the war increased dramatically because of the way that the media presented the war. They were given unrestricted access during the war and they filmed many of the great atrocities in the war such as the pictures of the My Lai Massacre. Another event which deeply shocked the American public happened during the Tet Offensive and was one of the main factors in the anti-war movement increasing. A fifteen man suicide squad of VC guerrillas fought there way into the American embassy in the heart of Saigon. They held out for six hours before being killed. This event was seen in fifty million homes across the United States and it gave people the impression that America was seriously losing the war if even the American embassy had been invaded by the enemy. From then on public support for the war all around the world plummeted. This was even though the Tet Offensive had militarily been a failure for the Communists and at this point the Americans could have gone on to win the war.
