A larger Tet offensive

Suppose the NVA had thrown in almost completely in with a conventional attack from the North and turned it into an all or nothing gamble say by mobilizing an extra 300K NVA conventional troops and sending them South like the Easter offensive in 1972. What would the U.S. political and military response have been?
 
Troops in the open are much easier to kill in a stand up invasion than Guerrilla operations.

Flooding across the DMZ in those numbers would be just what LBJ would want, a decisive battle that the NVA could not win with US forces at the theater maximums
 
Yeah, a lot of US soldiers and Vietnamese civilians would die, but the US forces would win; Linebacker II probably gets moved upward four years...
 
it's not going to happen, North Vietnam was ruled by two factions in the Communist Party the north-first and south-first factions.

The south-first faction knew they would lose support in the party if they did something as idiotic as reinforce the Tet Offensive with their own troops, it already happened once. The Tet Offensive was basically suicide for the NLF, even with NVA troops sure they might make a few more territorial gains but their gonna find themselves thrown back hard.

The only reason NVA troops were even fighting in 1972 is because the NLF was basically wiped out from the Tet and mini Tet Offensives.

The only problem I can see with this is that General Westmoreland would still be in command and the US would still be on that body count strategy. That's basically why the US committed lots of atrocities in South Vietnam.
 
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