Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hue 1968 is the story of the battle for the city of Hue during the Tet Offensive of 1968. The Tet Offensive began on the morning of January 31, 1968 with a series of attacks by the National Liberation Front across South Vietnam. The attack on Hue was main focus of the offensive, and within hours most of the city had fallen to the NLF. It would take nearly a month of hard fighting for the American and South Vietnamese forces to retake the city.
The author covers all sides of the battle, and it is a very interesting story. It is clear that the NLF expected to win a military victory, because they expected that the civilian population would rise up, not just in Hue but in South Vietnam. This did not happen. On the American side, senior commanders refused to believe that the NLF could appear in force and capture a major city like Hue. This disbelief lead to the commitment of the Marines to the battle for the city in a piecemeal fashion with tragic consequences for the Marines. Indeed it seems that until nearly the end of the battle, no American officer at the division level or above really had any idea of the size of the force their units were facing.
The author also covers the stories of the civilians who were trapped in the city during the fighting. Many civilians were killed during the fighting, some of whom were executed by the NLF because of their ties to the South Vietnamese government. It is difficult to estimate the number of civilian deaths.
Militarily speaking, Hue was a defeat for the NLF. But as Clausewitz reminds us, “War is merely the continuation of politics by other means.” For over a year, American officials in Saigon and Washington had been talking about how well the war had been going and how the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces were nearly spent. The Tet Offensive, and in particular the battle for Hue, showed that they were completely wrong. And once this became widely apparent, the American political will to continue the Vietnam War began to diminish. So Tet was in some sense a strategic victory of the NLF. And it truly was a turning point in the war.
It’s a long book and it’s not an easy read, but in my opinion it is the definitive book on the battle for Hue. Using primary and archival sources, the author is able to tell a compelling story of what happened in Hue in 1968, and why it mattered.