Tet Offensive ISOT

[raharris1973]

I was wondering what would happen to local events and the impending Tet offensive if the territory of South Vietnam/RVN and its airspace and surrounding waters right up to the six mile nautical limit as they existed at one minute past midnight Saigon time on Jan 24, 1968 was shifted back in time to the same moment on January 24, 1940?

This is one week, seven days, before the Jan 31st launch of the country-wide Tet Offensive by the Communist side. Now both sides, the VC/NVA, and the ARVN/USA/Allied coalition, are orphaned in a world that isn't their own, that doesn't care about them and isn't helping them. This will become pretty clear during the week before the offensive starts.

The VC/NVA will see they have no Ho Chi Minh trail support network, no base camps across the border in Cambodia, Laos or northern Vietnam, no reinforcements or commands or radio signals or couriers coming from across the border, just Cambodian and Laotian wilderness, local peasants and populations who insist its 1940, the odd French administrator and flag, and if you search really hard, and know the right passwords, the odd Communist sympathizer, who also insists it is 1940.

The US forces will find they have no reinforcements/replacements coming in from the outside world, no external US authorities who recognize them, no air support from the South China Sea except from vessels within the six nautical mile limit, no air support from Thailand, no friendly operatives or agents or diplomats in Laos or Cambodia. They also have no ammunition deliveries, POL, or other supplies coming in from the USA or anywhere else they expect.

The ARVN and its ruling elite living in an artificially bloated economy have no continued flow of US funds of 1968 American and East Asian consumer goods.

Meanwhile, France will be disturbed to hear about the presence of a huge American Army and native army/armies in the southern part of its Indochina colony. It will be quite a distraction. However, France's, and the western world's, attention is largely riveted to the war with Germany, even though that war has been largely static since the end of the Polish campaign. Another global concern at this time will be the Sino-Japanese war, which reaches closest to Vietnam in Japanese occupied Hainan island, and the faltering Japanese campaign of invasion of Guangxi province.

The country team, consisting of Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, and the CIA Station Chief, and head of MACV and US Forces, Gen William Westmoreland, will likely try to make contact with Washington, DC. The Roosevelt Administration will be unable to give much practical advice and hardly any practical assistance. The presence of these US forces overseas creates an awkward issue not just for Franco-US relations but for US foreign policy and law generally, being outside the scope of accepted, hemispherically oriented US defense and security policy and neutrality law. The Administration, State, War and Navy Departments however will be intensely interested in any and all information and technology from the future they can gain. Diplomats of other countries in South Vietnam likewise have interest in sharing "news from the future" with their downtime home countries, warning of impending German, Italian, or Japanese invasions for instance.

Some South Vietnamese, and some VC/NVA, on becoming aware that northern Vietnam is still a French colony may each begin to develop plans to "liberate" the north from French colonialism to gain resources and political prestige.

However, besides all these distractions, the VC/NVA and US/ARVN forces are tangled up in a clinch with each other, fighting in close proximity, with the Communist side poised to spring a nationwide General Offensive/General Uprising it hopes can lead to decisive victory in the south. It's rather late to pull back from the brink.

How do things go on Jan 31st, and the days, weeks and months after, in South Vietnam, and around the wider world?

 

[raharris1973]

Who are the first Vietnamese politicians to try use “future history” as propaganda tool against the downtime French Indochina authorities and for political point scoring with the South Vietnamese population? Viet Cong radio? Or RVN President Thieu?

I could just imagine them telling the French. “Your time is up in Vietnam. You are doomed to be driven from here. You should give the country back to its people. You have much bigger problems at home. The Germans are going to kick your asses and run through Paris in a few months! Watch your back!”

Actually could news of the future get the French to try to peace out of WWII?

 

[raharris1973]

How will US forces’ morale react to the sudden end of chances for rotation? Since soldiers were not signed up “for the duration”, the calendar of the “tour” was the fundamental organizing principle of their lives, and now it has been thrown into the trash, along with all their families back in “the world” uptime.

Also how do MACV logisticians, planners, and command staff feel and adapt on figuring out there will be no troop replacements, ammo supplies from the outside, POL supplies, externally supplied rations, and no air support from Thailand or the South China Sea, or any air base outside South Vietnam? Similarly for ARVN forces.

For elites and other groups siding with the USA and Saigon regime, a lot of the upside attraction was material gain and access to 1960s consumer goods and culture. How is their morale when this flow is suddenly stopped?

How is the issue of money and pay dealt with, especially the snarl at South Vietnamese ports. Downtime ships will arrive but will not have buyers they know nor be willing to accept future funny money.