Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngô Đình Diệm was a South Vietnamese politician who was the final prime minister of the State of Vietnam and later the first president of South Vietnam from 1955 until his capture and assassination during the CIA-backed 1963 coup d'état.
Diệm was born into a prominent Catholic family with his father, Ngô Đình Khả, being a high-ranking mandarin for Emperor Thành Thái during the French colonial era. Diệm was educated at French-speaking schools and considered following his brother Ngô Đình Thục into the priesthood, but eventually chose to pursue a career in the civil service. He progressed rapidly in the court of Emperor Bảo Đại, becoming governor of Bình Thuận Province in 1929 and interior minister in 1933. However, he resigned from the latter position after three months and publicly denounced the emperor as a tool of France. Diệm came to support Vietnamese nationalism, promoting both anti-communism, in opposition to Ho Chi Minh, and decolonization, in opposition to Bảo Đại. He established the Cần Lao Party to support his political doctrine of Person Dignity Theory, which was a blend of the philosophies of Personalism, especially as understood by French philosopher Emmanuel Mounier, and of Confucianism, which Diệm and his father had greatly admired. Diệm supported the Confucian concept of "Mandate of Heaven", and wished to make it the basis of political theory that would emerge in Vietnam.
After several years in exile in Japan, the United States, and Europe, Diệm returned home in July 1954 and was appointed prime minister by Bảo Đại, against the French suggestion of Nguyen Ngoc Bich as an alternative. The 1954 Geneva Conference took place soon after he took office, formally partitioning Vietnam along the 17th parallel. Diệm, with the aid of his younger brother Ngô Đình Nhu, soon consolidated power in South Vietnam. After the 1955 State of Vietnam referendum, he proclaimed the creation of the Republic of Vietnam, with himself as president. His government was supported by other anti-communist countries, most notably the United States. Diệm pursued a series of nation-building projects, promoting industrial and rural development. From 1957 onward, as part of the Vietnam War, he faced a communist insurgency backed by North Vietnam, eventually formally organized under the banner of the Viet Cong. He was subject to several assassination and coup attempts, and in 1962 established the Strategic Hamlet Program as the cornerstone of his counterinsurgency effort.
In 1963, Diệm's favoritism towards Catholics and persecution of practitioners of Buddhism in Vietnam led to the Buddhist crisis. The event damaged relations with the United States and other previously sympathetic countries, and his organization lost favor with the leadership of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. On 1 November 1963, the country's leading generals launched a coup d'état with assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency. Diệm and his brother, Nhu, initially escaped, but were recaptured the following day and assassinated on the orders of Dương Văn Minh, who succeeded him as president.
Diệm has been a controversial historical figure. Some have considered him a tool of the United States, while others portrayed him as an avatar of Vietnamese tradition. At the time of his assassination, Western media widely considered him a dictator, though South Vietnamese offered a variety of views, generally acknowledging that he strongly opposed American interference.
Family and early life
Ngô Đình Diệm was born in 1901 in Quảng Bình province, in Central Vietnam. His family originated in Phú Cam, a Catholic village adjacent to Huế. His ancestors had been among Vietnam's earliest Catholic converts in the 17th century. Diệm was given a saint's name at birth, Gioan Baotixita, following the custom of the Catholic Church. The Ngô-Đình family suffered under the anti-Catholic persecutions of Emperors Minh Mạng and Tự Đức. In 1880, while Diệm's father, Ngô Đình Khả, was studying in British Malaya, an anti-Catholic riot led by Buddhist monks almost wiped out the Ngô-Đình clan. Over 100 of the Ngô clan were "burned alive in a church including Khả's father, brothers, and sisters."Ngô Đình Khả was educated in a Catholic school in British Malaya, where he learned English and studied the European-style curriculum. He was a devout Catholic and scrapped plans to become a Roman Catholic priest in the late 1870s. He worked for the commander of the French armed forces as an interpreter and took part in campaigns against anti-colonial rebels in the mountains of Tonkin during 1880. He rose to become a high-ranking mandarin, the first headmaster of the National Academy in Huế, and a counsellor to Emperor Thành Thái of French Indochina. He was appointed minister of the rites and chamberlain and keeper of the eunuchs. Despite his collaboration with the French colonizers, Khả was "motivated less by Francophilia than by certain reformist ambitions". Like Phan Châu Trinh, Khả believed that independence from France could be achieved only after changes in Vietnamese politics, society, and culture had occurred. In 1907, after the ouster of emperor Thành Thái, Khả resigned his appointments, withdrew from the imperial court, and became a farmer in the countryside.
Khả decided to abandon his studies for the priesthood and instead married. After his first wife died childless, Khả remarried and, in a period of twenty-three years, had twelve children with his second wife, Phạm Thị Thân, nine of whom survived infancy – six sons and three daughters. As a devout Roman Catholic, Khả took his entire family to daily morning Mass and encouraged his sons to study for the priesthood. Having learned both Latin and classical Chinese, Khả strove to make sure his children were well educated in both Christian scriptures and Confucian classics. During his childhood, Diệm laboured in the family's rice fields while studying at a French Catholic primary school in Huế, and later entered a private school started by his father, where he studied French, Latin, and classical Chinese. At the age of fifteen he briefly followed his elder brother, Ngô Đình Thục, who would become Vietnam's highest-ranking Catholic bishop, into seminary. Diệm swore himself to celibacy to prove his devotion to his faith, but found monastic life too rigorous and decided not to pursue a clerical career. According to Mark Moyar, Diệm's personality was too independent to adhere to the disciplines of the Church, while Jarvis recalls Ngô Đình Thục's ironic observation that the Church was "too worldly" for Diệm. Diệm also inherited his father's antagonism toward the French colonialists who occupied his country.
At the end of his secondary schooling at Lycée Quốc học, the French lycée in Huế, Diem's outstanding examination results elicited the offer of a scholarship to study in Paris. He declined and, in 1918, enrolled at the prestigious School of Public Administration and Law in Hanoi, a French school that prepared young Vietnamese to serve in the colonial administration. It was there that he had the only romantic relationship of his life when he fell in love with one of his teacher's daughters. After his love interest chose to persist with her religious vocation and entered a convent, he remained celibate for the rest of his life. Diệm's family, educational, and religious values greatly influenced his life and career. Historian Edward Miller stated that Diệm "displayed Christian piety in everything from his devotional practices to his habit of inserting references to the Bible into his speeches"; he also enjoyed showing off his knowledge of classical Chinese texts.
Early career
After graduating at the top of his class in 1921, Diệm followed in the footsteps of his eldest brother, Ngô Đình Khôi, joining the civil service in Thừa Thiên as a junior official. Starting from the lowest rank of mandarin, Diệm steadily rose over the next decade. He first served at the royal library in Huế, and within one year was the district chief in both Thừa Thiên and nearby Quảng Trị province, presiding over seventy villages. Diệm was promoted to be a provincial chief in Ninh Thuận at the age of 28, overseeing 300 villages.File:Baodai2.jpg|alt=emperor Bảo Đại|left|thumb|194x194px|Portrait of emperor Bảo Đại
During his career as a mandarin, Diệm was known for his industriousness and incorruptibility, and as a Catholic leader and nationalist. Catholic nationalism in Vietnam during the 1920s and 1930s facilitated Diệm's ascent in his bureaucratic career.
Diệm's rise was also facilitated through his brother Ngô Đình Khôi's marriage to the daughter of Nguyễn Hữu Bài, who was the Catholic head of the Council of Ministers at the Huế court. Bài also supported the indigenization of the Vietnamese Church and giving more administrative powers to the monarchy. Bài was highly regarded among the French administration. Diệm's religious and family ties impressed Bài and he became Diệm's patron. The French were impressed by his work ethic but were irritated by Diệm's frequent calls to grant more autonomy to Vietnam. Diệm contemplated resigning but encouragement from the populace convinced him to persist. In 1925, he first encountered communists distributing propaganda while riding horseback through the region near Quảng Trị. Revolted by calls for violent socialist revolution contained in the propaganda leaflets, Diệm involved himself in anti-communist activities for the first time, spreading his own anti-communist pamphlets.
In 1929, he was promoted to the governorship of Bình Thuận Province and was known for his work ethic. In 1930 and 1931, he helped the French suppress the first peasant revolts organized by the communists. According to historian Bernard B. Fall Diệm put the revolts down as he believed they would not lead to the removal of the French but might threaten the leadership of the mandarins. In 1933, with the ascension of Bảo Đại to the throne, Diệm accepted Bảo Đại's invitation to be his interior minister following lobbying by Nguyễn Hữu Bài. Soon after his appointment, Diệm headed a commission to advise on potential administration reforms. After calling for the French administration to introduce a Vietnamese legislature and many other political reforms, he resigned after three months in office when his proposals were rejected. Diệm denounced Emperor Bảo Đại as "nothing but an instrument in the hands of the French administration", and renounced his decorations and titles from Bảo Đại. The French administration then threatened him with arrest and exile.
For the next decade, Diệm lived as a private citizen with his family in Huế, although he was kept under surveillance. He spent his time reading, meditating, attending church, gardening, hunting, and in amateur photography. Diệm also conducted extensive nationalist activities during those 21 years, engaging in meetings and correspondence with various leading Vietnamese revolutionaries, such as his friend, Phan Bội Châu, a Vietnamese anti-colonial activist, whom Diệm respected for his knowledge of Confucianism and argued that Confucianism's teachings could be applied to a modern Vietnam. With the start of the World War II in the Pacific, seeing an opportunity for Vietnam to challenge French colonization, he attempted to persuade the Japanese forces to declare independence for Vietnam in 1942 but was ignored. Diệm also tried to establish relationships with Japanese diplomats, army officers, and intelligence operatives who supported Vietnam's independence. In 1943, Diệm's Japanese friends helped him to contact Prince Cường Để, an anti-colonial activist, who was in exile in Japan.
After contacting Cường Để, Diệm formed a secret political party, the Association for the Restoration of Great Vietnam, which was dominated by his Catholic allies in Hue. When its existence was discovered in the summer of 1944, the French declared Diệm to be subversive and ordered his arrest. He flew to Saigon under Japanese military protection, staying there until the end of WWII.
In 1945, after the coup against French colonial rule, the Japanese offered Diệm the post of prime minister in the Empire of Vietnam under Bảo Đại, which they organized on leaving the country. He declined initially, but reconsidered his decision and attempted to reverse the refusal. However, Bảo Đại had already given the post to Trần Trọng Kim. In September 1945, after the Japanese withdrawal, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and in the Northern half of Vietnam, his Viet Minh began fighting the French administration. Diệm attempted to travel to Huế to dissuade Bảo Đại from joining Hồ but was arrested by the Việt Minh along the way and exiled to a highland village near the border. He might have died of malaria, dysentery, and influenza had the local tribesmen not nursed him back to health. Six months later, he was taken to meet Hồ, who recognized Diệm's virtues and, wanting to extend the support for his new government, asked Diệm to be a minister of the interior. Diệm refused to join the Việt Minh, assailing Hồ for the murder of his brother Ngô Đình Khôi by Việt Minh cadres.File:5 vị Thượng thư từ trái qua phải Hồ Đắc Khải, Phạm Quỳnh, Thái Văn Toản, Ngô Đình Diệm, Bùi Bằng Đoàn.jpg|alt=The five high-ranking mandarins of the Nguyễn dynasty during the reign of the Bảo Đại Emperor: Hồ Đắc Khải, Phạm Quỳnh, Thái Văn Toản, Ngô Đình Diệm, and Bùi Bằng Đoàn.|left|thumb|The five high-ranking mandarins of the Nguyễn dynasty during the reign of Emperor Bảo Đại : Hồ Đắc Khải, Phạm Quỳnh, Thái Văn Toản, Ngô Đình Diệm, and Bùi Bằng Đoàn.During the Indochina War, Diệm and other non-communist nationalists had to face a dilemma: they did not want to restore colonial rule and did not want to support the Việt Minh. Diệm proclaimed his neutrality and attempted to establish a Third Force movement that was both anti-colonialist and anti-communist In 1947, he became the founder and chief of the National Union Bloc and then folded it into the Vietnam National Rally, which united non-communist Vietnamese nationalists. He also established relationships with some leading Vietnamese anti-communists like Nguyễn Tôn Hoàn, a fellow Catholic and political activist. His other allies and advisors were dominated by Catholics, especially his family members and their friends.
Diệm also secretly maintained contact with high-ranking leaders of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, attempting to convince them to leave Ho Chi Minh's government and join him. Meanwhile, Diệm lobbied French colonial officials for "true independence" for Vietnam, but was disappointed when Bảo Đại agreed to French demands for an "associate state" within the French Union, which allowed France to maintain its diplomatic, economic, and military policies in Vietnam. In the meantime, the French had created the State of Vietnam and Diệm refused Bảo Đại's offer to become the prime minister. On 16 June 1949, he published a new manifesto in newspapers proclaiming a third force different from the Việt Minh and Bảo Đại, but it raised little interest and provided further evidence to both the French and Việt Minh that Diệm was a dangerous rival.
In 1950, the Việt Minh lost patience and sentenced him to death in absentia, and the French refused to protect him. Ho Chi Minh's cadres tried to assassinate him while he was traveling to visit his elder brother Thục, bishop of the Vĩnh Long diocese in the Mekong Delta. Recognizing his political status, Diệm decided to leave Vietnam in 1950.
According to Miller, during his early career, there were at least three ideologies that influenced Diệm's social and political views in the 1920s and 1930s. The first of these were Catholic nationalism, which Diệm inherited from his family's tradition, especially from his brother Bishop Ngô Đình Thục and Nguyễn Hữu Bài, who advised him to "return the seal" in 1933 to oppose French policies. The second was Diệm's understanding of Confucianism, especially through his friendship with Phan Bội Châu who argued that Confucianism's teachings could be applied to modern Vietnam. Lastly, instructed by Ngô Đình Nhu, Diệm began to examine Personalism, which originated from French Catholicism's philosophy and then applied this doctrine as the main ideology of his regime.