8th of November

Link to the story behind the song

The Tet Offensive

• What is Tet?

• Why did the attacks catch us by surprise?

• What was the Tet Offensive?

• After a month of fighting over _________ communist soldiers were dead and _______ Americans had been killed.

• How did this effect how Americans viewed the war?

Tet = a huge military victory for the U.S. but it is a political defeat

• 1) Attacks on cities showed no place was secure in S. Vietnam.

• 2) LBJ has been saying that the VC were about to surrender and the war was almost over. Tet proves this is wrong.

• 3) Americans watched tet unfold in the media. This makes people think the war is unwinnable.

• Tet marks the turning point in U.S. public opinion. People now think we can not win this war and want the U.S. to withdraw.

The War takes a physical toll on Johnson.

19681965

Walter Cronkite doubts we can win after Tet

• Johnson says “If I’ve lost Cronkite I’ve lost middle America”

Indicator Pre-Tet Post-Tet Change

Approves Johnson’s handling of job as president

48% 36% -12

Approves Johnson’s Handling of Vietnam

39% 26% -13

Regards war in Vietnam as a mistake

45% 49% +4

Proportion classifying themselves as hawks

60% 41% -19

Election of 1968:The Tet Offensive made the main issue

– how do we end this war?

• Democrats• Eugene McCarthy• Robert Kennedy• Lyndon Johnson• Hubert Humphrey

• Republicans• Richard Nixon

- RFK – Shot by Sirhan Sirhan

- Johnson Pulls out of the race

-At the Democratic National Convention protests and riots overshadow the candidates. Humphrey gets the nomination.

-Nixon wins the 1968 presidential election.

Nixon’s Strategy for the War.

• Nixon’s plan calls for “peace with honor”. He begins vietnimization – turning fighting over to South Vietnamese forces and begin pulling U.S. troops out.

• Nixon also expanded the war into Cambodia in secret to cut off the VC supply lines.

McCarthy

Kennedy was killed while walking through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in California after winning the primary election there. Sirhan Sirhan killed him because he supported Israel in a war against Egypt.

Bobby the Movie

The Kent State Shooting

• Cause – Students protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia burn Kent State’s ROTC builing

• National Guard Reaction – Troops sent to control the protestors fire into the crowd of students killing 4 and wounding 9.

• Public’s Reaction – Over 8 million students went on strike and hundreds of college campuses closed.

The girl in this picture is a 14 year old runaway named Mary Ann Vecchio standing over a student

was shot in the mouth and killed.

8 National Guardsmen were tried but none were found guilty of the shootings.

Neil Young: OHIO

Kent State Memorial: Surrounded by 58,175 Daffodils, the number of U.S. dead in Vietnam. The jagged border represents the tearing of the fabric of society.

Until 1999 the parking spaces in which the students died wre open to cars. In 1999 they were dedicated as memorials with the markers bearing

the students’ names.