The Tet Offensive was the main reason the USA lost the Vietnam War

While I have more experience with the IB (where questions concerning the Tet Offensive or war of psychology are very common), I am given to understand that the Vietnam War is also a common topic in GCSE and A Level studies in the UK.

Without question, the Tet Offensive was the most dramatic episode of the war. In January 1968, Vietnam gambled everything on a grand offensive against the South and the Americans, and lost. An estimated 45,000 Vietnamese soldiers died to a mere 9000 Americans, while another 61,000 Viet Minh were wounded and 5000 more missing. Few of the offensive's targets were siezed, and none were held. Conventionally, the North Vietnamese ability to wage war, already failing, had been all but destroyed.

However, this death throe was taken by the United States and the American people as precisely the opposite. Casualty reports higher than at any other point in the Vietnam War began to roll in, and the 'credibility gap' that had begun to emerge over the past year seemed to have been validated. Beyond the political situation faced by LBJ, the US was dealing with one of the most severe monetary crises of the period, and saw no possibility of victory in Vietnam. Though the war of statistics had been lost, the Tet Offensive won the war of psychology for North Vietna. Inadvertently and at great cost, the North Vietnamese had succeeded in winning the war.

Hence, an essay response would ideally draw out this dichotomy between the two parallel "wars", reinforcing it in three parts:

• The war of statistics and the NVA point of view

• Ironically, the "shock and awe" inspired by the Tet Offensive and the American military situation

• Domestic politics within the US, with an emphasis on LBJ's thought processes