Just before the end of January 1968, South Vietnam's communist guerilla force, the Viet Cong (VC), launched an unprecedented offensive in coordination with the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) that would change the course of the Vietnam War.
The Tet Offensive saw the VC and the NVA attack all of South Vietnam's largest towns and cities — bringing a war that had been mostly confined to the countryside into the streets of metropolitan cities.
With a combined force of 85,000 soldiers and guerrillas, the objective was to take over the cities, destroy political and military targets, and provoke a popular uprising all over South Vietnam.
The offensive would be a battlefield failure for the communists; the general uprising they had hoped to provoke didn't happen, they didn't hold on to a single town or city that was seized, and the Viet Cong was effectively wiped out as an independent fighting force.
But it would prove to be a political and propaganda victory. American and international news crews had broadcasted the shocking images and scenes from the war right into the living rooms of the US. They were a stark contrast to what they had been told; that the Communists were losing, and the war could be over soon.
Public opinion began to change, and attitudes towards the war became negative. Here's what happened during the Tet Offensive:
A map showing the targets of NVA and VC attacks during the Tet Offensive, 1968.
The NVA and Viet Cong took advantage of the Tet Lunar New Year, a major holiday in Vietnam that had always had a traditional truce and suspension of hostilities.
As a result, the South Vietnamese military (ARVN) were not prepared for such a huge onslaught. The attacks gave the impression that the communists were far stronger than the American public had been told.
Vietnamese national policeman holds a lightbulb as he crawls through a tunnel and bunker network leading from pagoda grounds to an outside entrance in the Gia Dinh province on the outskirts of Saigon, March 3, 1968.
The NVA and VC had moved hundreds of tons of weapons, ammunition, and supplies through the Ho Chi Minh Trail into South Vietnam.
The trail started in North Vietnam, went through Laos and Cambodia, and had numerous entrances all along South Vietnam's border with Cambodia.
With dead U.S. soldiers in the foreground, U.S. military police take cover behind a wall at the entrance to the U.S. Consulate in Saigon on the first day of the Tet Offensive, January 31, 1968.
An attack on the capital city of Saigon was an extremely bold move that proved the VC and NVA were not "losing" the war.
The VC and NVA attacked General William Westmoreland's headquarters, the Presidential Palace, and the American Embassy.
Two U.S. military policemen aid a wounded fellow MP during fighting in the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon, January 31, 1968, at the beginning of the Tet Offensive.
A VC squad blew a hole in the wall around the embassy compound and poured inside.
The embassy attack was especially significant. It showed that the US, despite having hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the country, was not even able to defend one of the most important American buildings in the heart of the capital city of a allied nation.
American MPs lead a bloodied Viet Cong guerilla from American Embassy, in Saigon, Vietnam, January 31, 1968, after fighting had broken out shortly after dawn.
The attack at the embassy was controlled within six hours. But the images of VC guerrillas inside the American Embassy already had an affect on the American public.
A soldier, upper left, climbs from balcony to balcony while another, helmeted in center foreground, fires into a room during an effort to flush out Viet Cong fighters in a still-under construction hotel in Saigon, Vietnam, January 31, 1968, near the South Vietnamese presidential palace.
The Phu Tho racetrack in western Saigon serves as a fire support base in and around the city of Saigon on May 6, 1968. Vietnamese artillerymen prepare to reload a 105 mm gun after firing a round into a nearby area.
Marines drag casualty from street fighting for control of southern bridge, head across street to an ambulance in Hue, Vietnam, February 4, 1968.
Hue was an extremely important symbol in Vietnam. It was the ancient imperial capital, and a center for learning religion, and culture.
The VC and NVA set out to destroy the South Vietnamese elite in Hue. They rounded up as many as 5,000 people who disappeared. After the battle, at least 3,000 bodies were found in mass graves. The victims had been shot, beaten, and burned to death, and some were buried alive.
A South Vietnamese soldier takes a position on a Saigon street in early 1968, during the Tet Offensive.
Journalists photograph a body in the Saigon area in early 1968, during the Tet Offensive.
The press being on the frontlines of war was still a relatively new concept. Prior wars like WWII and Korea did not see journalists have as much access to the frontlines as they did in Vietnam.
South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the National Police, fires his pistol into the head of a Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem on a Saigon street, February 1, 1968.
This particular Pulitzer Prize-winning image stands out as one of the defining moments of the Tet Offensive. It became a driving force for the anti-war movement in the United States.
But the image itself was more complex. The prisoner, Nguyen Van Lem had led a VC death squad, and was captured near a mass grave with 34 civilian bodies in it. Lem himself had just murdered the entire family of a ARVN soldier.
South Vietnamese forces fire on enemy positions in the Saigon area in early 1968, during the Tet Offensive.
Bombs explode in the Cholon section of Saigon, during Mini-Tet offensive, May 1968
A South Vietnamese tank moves down an alley in the northeastern corner of Saigon after a Viet Cong squad moved into the area, harassing government troops in early May 1968.
Most people thought that the Cold War would see massive tank battles like those in WWII. Instead, a lot of tanks were used in urban environments.
A South Vietnamese marine, loaded with bandoleers and an M-79 grenade launcher, scurries for cover as a tank maneuvers for firing position in western Saigon, May 30, 1968.
A group of American soldiers sit heavily armed in a truck as a convoy moves through a part of Saigon during the second Tet Offensive, May 5, 1968.
American soldiers, who were trained to fight in fields and jungles, expected to fight in places like Khe Sanh and other parts of the countryside. Instead, they poured into South Vietnam's cities.
A trooper of the US 9th Infantry Division is loaded into a helicopter in the southern part of Saigon during the Second Tet Offensive, May 10, 1968.
Vietnamese Black Panthers fire from the second floor window of an abandoned house into entrenched Viet Cong positions, also in abandoned buildings, in northeast Saigon, June 16, 1968.
U.S. Marines raises the stars and stripes at Hue provincial government headquarters after retaking it from North Vietnamese in heavy fighting late in the day, Feb. 6, 1968.
A U.S. Marine F-8 Crusader bomber drops a napalm canister on a suspected enemy position within the walled Citadel of Hue, Vietnam, Feb. 16, 1968.
A unit of the 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment U.S. Marines, rests alongside a battered wall of Hue's imperial palace after a battle for the Citadel in February 1968, during the Tet Offensive.
The ornate gate to the inner imperial city of Hue on Jan. 31, 1969, still bears the marks of the bitter fighting last year during the Viet Cong’s Tet offensive.
Vietnamese soldiers pose in victory in the ornate throne room of the Imperial Palace in the Citadel of Hue, Feb. 26, 1968.
In single file people cross the Hue Bridge over a small pontoon type bridge on April 16, 1968.
A large section of rubble is all that remains in this one block square area of Saigon on Feb. 5, 1968, after fierce Tet Offensive fighting. Rockets and grenades, combined with fires, laid waste to the area. An Quang Pagoda, location of Viet Cong headquarters during the fighting, is at the top of the photo.
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