The Tet Offensive: A Brief History with Documents (review)

The Tet Offensive appears intended mainly for use as an undergraduate text. William Allison avoids taking controversial stands, often presenting a range of viewpoints without stating his own opinions very firmly.

The historical overview is brief, as the subtitle indicates, and pretty mainstream in its interpretations. It is interrupted by "historiographic points" that summarize, with extended quotes, the views of other authors on questions such as "Did American intelligence fail in predicting the Tet Offensive?" (pp. 31-33) and "What was the role of the media in the Tet Offensive?" (pp. 65-68). More analysis of these questions written in Allison's own voice might have been desirable.

At one point he says that the Tet Offensive began on January 31, 1968, and lasted through the summer of that year (pp. 24-25). But for the most part he treats it as having lasted only through February. His most detailed coverage is devoted to the fighting at Khe Sanh, Saigon, and Hue. He relegates events from late February onward to a chapter titled "The aftermath of Tet." He also says a good bit about the decisionmaking process in Washington, and he gives Gallup Poll data on the shifts in American public opinion regarding the war.

The author does not give enough attention to the issue of Communist strength. The United States was conducting a war of attrition in Vietnam. Allison briefly describes the "Success Campaign," the effort of U.S. spokesmen during the months before Tet to persuade the public that the war of attrition was being won, that the Communist forces were weakening. But he says little about the question of whether those claims were accurate, and little about the extent to which the Communist forces were weakened in the actual Tet fighting. To write that the People's Liberation Armed Forces were "arguably shattered" (p. 40), without discussing the argument, seems inadequate.

There are occasional errors, of which the most important are probably Allison's exaggerations of the North Vietnamese role in the war in South Vietnam. He underestimates U.S. and Allied casualties.

The 41 documents that make up most of the volume (pp. 77-251) are more interesting than the main text. Few of them will look familiar even to the specialist. Most come from Foreign Relations of the United States. Most represent what people at the upper levels of the U.S. government were saying to one another, in Washington and in Saigon, especially about the question of what reinforcements the United States should sent to Vietnam.

There are a few documents detailing the actual fighting in Saigon (including reports from the interrogation of two Viet Cong captured in the fighting at the U.S. Embassy), and in Hue. There are some showing how the U.S. government described the situation to the American public, but only one item showing how the media dealt with it, a short excerpt from CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite's famous television special of February 27, 1968. The excerpt does not include crucial paragraphs in which Cronkite said that the Communists had failed to achieve their military goals.

Some annotation of the documents, clarifying points that may be obscure to non-specialist readers, might have been desirable. Sources are cited for the documents and for the quotes from other authors in the historiographic points, but not for the main text. The index covers both the main text and the documents.

The Tet Offensive can be recommended, with some caution, as an undergraduate text. Its documents should spark some interesting discussions in the classroom. The general reader, and the specialist, could also profit from reading the documents.