The NVA, led by General Vo Nguyen Giap and the North Vietnamese Defense Minister, began their offensive planning in early 1967. Their intentions were to inspire a mass uprising against the South Vietnamese government and humiliate the South Vietnamese military. Success would depend on masking the NVA’s true intentions from American Planners. The first goal was to draw US forces into large battles in the …show more content…
These locations included over 1,100,000 troops in South Vietnam and an estimated 492,000 Americans were engaged by an approximately 67,000 NVA and VC soldiers. The American Embassy in Saigon was breached by a eight man VC sapper team along with several NVA and VC Divisions totaling over 3,000 troops. A bitter 26-day battle in the city of Hue was swiftly defeated by South Vietnamese and US forces. Near the end of February 1968 marked a tactical defeat for the US and South Vietnam, but the NVA and VC seeds of change were sprouting. Figure 1 shows the extent of the NVA and VC attacks in South