Ngo Dinh Diem

President of South Vietnam (1955-1963)

• Born: January 3, 1901
• Birthplace: Hue, Annam, French Indochina (now in Vietnam)
• Died: November 2, 1963
• Place of death: Cho Lon, South Vietnam (now in Vietnam)

Against great odds, Diem was instrumental in the survival of South Vietnam, yet his early success made him rely stubbornly on a very narrow political base when fighting his Communist enemies as well as suppressing internal opposition. When his fight against the Communist insurrection fanned by North Vietnam went badly, his U.S. allies permitted rebellious generals to depose him with a deadly coup.

Early Life

Ngo Dinh Diem (noh dihng dee-ehm) was born in the Vietnamese city of Hue. His father, Ngo Dinh Kha, married Diem’s mother after the death of his first wife. Diem was the third of six sons, in addition to three daughters, of his devoutly Roman Catholic parents. The boy, named for “burning jade” in Vietnamese, was baptized and also given the Christian name of Jean-Baptiste in the cathedral of Hue.

At the time of Diem’s birth, Vietnam was part of France’s colonial possession, Indochina, headed by figurehead emperor Thanh Thai. Diem’s father, a top-class mandarin, served as imperial grand chamberlain until the emperor’s deposition for anti-French sentiments in 1907. The elder Diem retired from politics and raised his family in a disciplined fashion, including work in the family’s fields. Diem attended a French Catholic school at Hue and then a school run by his father before briefly joining a monastery in 1916. Disillusioned, Diem left the monastery and graduated in 1917, winning a scholarship to Paris. Preferring to stay in Vietnam, Diem enrolled in the School for Law and Administration in Hanoi. He graduated top of his class of twenty in 1921, and he soon entered the colonial administration.

Life’s Work

Diem was appointed minister of the interior by Emperor Bao Dai in May, 1933. By July, Diem was demanding more political rights for the Vietnamese from the French, but he was rebuffed, and so resigned in response.

For the next several years Diem lived as a private citizen, but significant events would follow in the 1940’s. First, the Japanese occupied Vietnam in 1941, but Diem refused to collaborate. Second, Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Communist Viet Minh , proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1945, after Japan’s surrender to the Allies. Diem was captured by the Viet Minh and interviewed by Ho in Hanoi in March, 1946, but Diem refused to collaborate because the Communists murdered his brother, Khoi, and others. Ho released Diem. Third, Diem refused to work with the French against the Viet Minh unless France granted Vietnam its independence. After being sentenced to death in absentia by Ho, Diem left Vietnam in September, 1950.

From 1951 to 1953, Diem lived at two Catholic seminaries in the United States, meeting influential American Catholics such as then-senator John F. Kennedy and Francis Cardinal Spellman. In 1953, Diem left the United States for a monastery in Belgium.

After the French defeat in Vietnam in May, 1954, the Geneva Accords temporarily partitioned Vietnam into North and South . The North fell to the Viet Minh, and the South formed into the State of Vietnam after receiving its independence. South Vietnam needed a prime minister. One month after the defeat of France, Bao appointed Diem to that position, and he arrived in Saigon on June 26.

Diem drew on his stubborn will, trusted his immediate family, and remained suspicious. He had one important ally, United States colonel Edward Lansdale, and received U.S. aid. On August 5, Diem asked for U.S. support to ship North Vietnamese refugees to South Vietnam. With Operation Passage to Freedom, Diem gained a base of about 800,000 Vietnamese refugees, many Catholic and all anti-Communist, who were resettled in South Vietnamese cities and three hundred new villages.

In spring 1955, Diem paid the leaders of the opposition sects Cao Dai and Hoa Hao $3 million, provided by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The Hoa Hao members who chose to fight were defeated in the Mekong Delta. From March 28 to 30 in Saigon, Diem’s armed forces engaged the gangster sect Binh Xuyen, who controlled the Saigon police and organized crime. Diem ignored Bao’s summons to France, and he crushed the Binh Xuyen on April 30.

Diem held a referendum on October 23, 1955, to establish the Republic of Vietnam and himself as president. Assured of a win but still disregarding Lansdale’s advice not to cheat, Diem claimed 98.2 percent of the votes were in favor of the republic, which was created on October 26.

In early 1956, Diem appointed province chiefs, an action that ended village elections. He also moved against the Viet Minh who had remained in the south and relied heavily on the advice of his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, who founded the Can Lao Party. Nhu also was in charge of intelligence and security for the government. His flamboyant wife, Tran Le Xuan, known as Madame Nhu, acted as first lady.

In May, 1957, Diem embarked on a triumphant state visit to the United States, yet Hanoi, angered by Diem’s opposition and his cancellation of the planned reunification election in 1956, decided to challenge him in earnest by mid-1959.

Faced with a growing Communist insurrection, a group he called Viet Cong, in 1960, Diem reacted by tightening control over South Vietnamese society. This alienated former supporters. His controversial idea to move peasants into fortified Agrovilles, rural communities that were part of a rural development plan, was abandoned as a failure. On November 11, 1960, disgruntled officers attacked Diem’s palace. Diem talked with the mutineers until loyal soldiers arrived the next day and the coup leaders fled to Cambodia.

Diem’s problems increased after North Vietnam on December 20, 1960, announced the formation of a National Liberation Front in South Vietnam, to which they added a people’s liberation armed forces in February, 1961. While Diem won 88 percent of the votes in the 1961 presidential election, he sought to move peasants into strategic hamlets, which remained unpopular. Diem’s war went so badly that in October he accepted a U.S. request to raise the number of its military advisers in the country to three thousand, from seven hundred.

On February 27, 1962, two South Vietnamese pilots bombed Diem’s palace. Diem and his family were able to scramble to safety in the basement. Loyal troops shot down one plane, and the other escaped to Cambodia. Diem conducted a radio broadcast, and attributed his survival to divine providence.

On May 8, 1963, Diem’s police killed nine Buddhist demonstrators in Hue. After Diem refused conciliation with the Buddhists, monk Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death on June 11 at a busy Saigon intersection. Diem’s reaction to this horrific self-immolation was made worse by the words of Madame Nhu, who called the self-immolation a “monk barbecue.” Also, Buddhist monk Thich Tri Quang organized demonstrations and further self-immolations. Another raid on Buddhists on August 21 lost for Diem the support of most of the Kennedy administration. Emboldened and encouraged by supportive U.S. signals, General Duong Van Minh, on November 1, led a coup against Diem that isolated him and Nhu in their palace. Diem asked U.S. ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge for help, but Lodge remained noncommittal. Diem’s calls to the generals also led nowhere.

In the evening, Diem and Nhu secretly left the palace for a safe house. Around 6:30 a.m. on November 2, Diem surrendered by telephone. An armored personnel carrier picked up Diem and Nhu from Saint Francis Xavier Church. On the drive to the airport, two rebel officers executed them.

Significance

Without Diem’s stubborn tenacity in establishing his government in 1954, historians doubt that South Vietnam would have existed for any significant period of time. However, the very character traits that enabled Diem to triumph over his multiple internal enemies in 1954 and 1955 tended to fail him when engaging the larger Communist challenge. His narrow power base preempted wider support.

Diem was fiercely nationalistic and resented his dependency on U.S. aid for South Vietnam’s survival. He believed that the anti-Communist ideology of personalism developed by his brother would lead to success. He did not trust the Americans to understand the situation on the ground and was offended by what he perceived as U.S. interference in his government. At the same time, he incurred the frustration, if not overt hostility, from many Americans who blamed Diem for refusing to listen to what they believed was their expert advice.

Ultimately, the U.S. deluded itself into thinking things would improve once Diem was removed from power. In reality, the generals quickly disbanded. By spring 1965, the United States believed that only the introduction of U.S. combat troops could prevent a Communist victory. In the end, however, after U.S. troops left Vietnam in 1973, South Vietnam was to fall to Communist forces from North Vietnam on April 30, 1975.

Bibliography

Catton, Philip E. Diem’s Final Failure. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. Detailed, objective assessment of Diem as a nationalist figure. Considers both his strengths and weaknesses in the context of his time. Illustrated.

Hammer, Ellen. A Death in November. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1987. Perceptive, sympathetic account of Diem’s life, emphasizing his violent end. The author witnessed much of Diem’s rule in South Vietnam. Illustrated.

Haycraft, William. Unraveling Vietnam. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005. Chapters 2 and 3 analyze Diem’s rule as prime minister and president. Concludes that Americans were wrong in allowing him to be deposed and killed.

Jacobs, Seth. America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004. Hostile review of Diem’s rule. Critical of his battle against the Binh Xuyen gangsters. Interlaces discussion of Diem with reflections on U.S. popular culture and religious attitudes of the time. Illustrated.

Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. 2d ed. New York: Viking Press, 1997. Remains the most widely available source in English. Presents mainstream U.S. historical assessments of Diem in chapters 6-8. Illustrated.

Lam, Quang Thi. The Twenty-Five-Year Century. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2001. Autobiography of a South Vietnamese general that illustrates young nationalist and anti-Communist Vietnam’s disenchantment with Diem’s perceived lack of vigor fighting the Communists.