What was the highpoint of the Vietnam war?

Answer 1

The major troop build-up for the Vietnam War began in the fall of 1965. Although there were several significant campaigns in the years following, when North Vietnam launched an aggressive offensive throughout South Vietnam on the 30th of January, 1968, what was known as the "TET Offensive" became a watershed event in the course of the war.

Enemy forces gained entry to the American Embassy compound, and even entered the embassy itself. Much farther north in the old imperial city of Hue, an entire regiment of North Vietnamese troops entered and successfully occupied the large university town and boyhood home of North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh for over three weeks.

Shortly after the streets of Hue were cleared of the insurgents, highly respected CBS newsman Walter Cronkite did his CBS news broadcast from Hue, declaring that the offensive was a major defeat for the U.S. military.

That report galvanized public sentiment against the war, causing Congress to pull in the reins on financing the war effort.

The final contingent of U.S. forces departed South Vietnam in April, 1973 - and the country fell to North Vietnamese forces two years later.

The irony is that the North Vietnamese plan to generate a major anti-South Vietnamese government uprising in each province of the south with the TET offensive failed, and a very large number of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) combatants were killed in that offensive, causing significant damage to the north's military abilities.