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Why was 1968 a turning point in the Vietnam war?

20th Century battlefield 1968 Vietnam On  30th January 1968 the people in Saigon in South Vietnam were celebrating their holiday of Tete when fighting broke out from the communist assault. The Tete offensive had begun.  How did this happen Since 1965 the US had been fighting in Vietnam since 1965 as the Americans thought if Vietnam fell to communism then rest of south east Asia would fall which was known as the Domino effect. The US had many artillery bases just South of the boarder bombing the North with a demilitarised zone along the boarder. The South was an unstable republic while the North was backed up by China and the USSR and it's leader was the Communist was Ho Chi Minh. He had trained and equipped 500,000 North Vietnamese soldiers and had punished out the imperial French.  The Americans were led by William Westmoreland was in charge of 500,000 US troops and 800,000 South Vietnamese soldiers. The Americans were fighting the North and was fighting Com
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JFK approach to the Cold War, Cuba, Berlin and Vietnam

Overview of JFK In the 1960 election Kennedy proved himself as a strong anti- communist (so was Nixon)he wanted there to by a more flexable response to events rather than Eisenhower's policy of brinkmanship which led to all issues creating a nuclear issue. He was going to this by spending more money on the military he also unlike Nixon he stressed the idea of a so called 'missile gap' which lead to him winning the 1960 election only by a tiny marginal. When he came into power he increased military funding by 3.2 billion dollars in the summer 1961 as well as increasing the armed forces by 300,000 and sent 40,000 troops to Europe. Cuba Before the 1960's Cuba was seen as a playground for the Americas and controlled a lot of their wealth. They owned 40% of sugar, 80 percent of Cuban utilities and 90% of the mining wealth. This all changed when in January 1959 Castro took over of the country from the right wing dictator Fulgencio Barista.Castro introduced land reform
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Chapter 9: From Hungary and Suez to Cuba

The view is that during Eisenhower's end of his first term through to his second term between 1956 and 1961 as President that America foreign policy was failing. This was seen through the lack of aid towards Hungary rebels, the Sputnik in 1957 which was the world's first artificial satellite made by the USSR and the centuries old dream of the Russians established themselves in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. There was problems with trust between the US and the British and French after the Suez crisis and there were Communist guerrillas in South Vietnam and Laos which was pushing the balance towards the Communist favour. One of Eisenhower's biggest problem was that he and Dulles wanted 'rollback' this was to free the Communist slaves. The problem was that was at conflict with him trying to balance the budget and trying to avoid war and was struggling to even contain the Communist much less liberate Eastern Europe. One of Eisenhower's main achievement dur
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Chapter 8 Eisenhower, Dulles and the irreconcilable conflict

During the 1952 election Eisenhower tried to please both sides of the political spectrum by saying 'until the enslaved nations of the world have in the fullness of freedom the right to choose their own path, for then, and then only, can we say that there is a possible way of living peacefully and permanently with Communism. This statement was liked by the strong anti-communist feeling of the Republicans and of people that have eastern Europe descent in them as Eisenhower didn't want to abandon eastern Europe. The statement was also supported by people who were anti-war, they didn't fear communism to the same extent as some people and felt that they could live side by side with Communism. Eisenhower and his soon to be Dulles hated the idea of containment as they felt that it was immoral that countries that had already fell to communist were doomed to stay communist and that it was a treadmill policy. They liked the idea of roll back in eastern Europe and Asia as they felt th
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The firing of Douglas MacArthur

In April 1951 Harry Truman fired Douglas MacArthur as the commander of US forces in Korea and replaced him with general Matthew Ridgeway. This happened because of the opposing view that MacArthur had with dealing with the Korea war to Truman. From the start of the war turning in the UN forces side MacArthur in September and October 1950 argued that it was only right for the US not just to contain communism ( which was set out in the Truman doctrine) in Korea by pushing the North Korea's back to the 38th parallel but he thought that it was needed to invade Korea to unify the country under the capitalist leader Syngman Rhee. MacArthur had this view because he was more right wing than Truman and supported the Republicans more which view was that containment was not working like in China which fell to communism in 1949 and he thought that the communist states needed to become capitalist by force. Truman was not keen to give the order to do this because he feared that if the US forces
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