North Vietnam's 1972 Easter Offensive: Hanoi's Gamble

A history of the military campaign that set the stage for the end of the Vietnam War.

By the end of 1971, in what Hanoi called the American War and at the height of the Cold War, the fighting had dragged on for eight years with neither side gaining a decisive advantage on the battlefield and talks in Paris to the end the war were going nowhere. While the United States was steadily drawing down its ground forces in South Vietnam, Washington was also engaging in a grand effort to build up an...