Echoes of History

Ngo Dinh Diem

1901
Ngo Dinh Diem is born near Hue, which was the capital of Vietnam from 1802 until 1945, to a prominent Catholic family, tied to the colonial power in Vietnam at that time, namely France. His father was a high-ranking civil servant, and he was educated in a French-speaking school. Upon the completion of his education, he joined the Civil Service. He worked in puppet Emperor Bao Dai’s service. One of his older brothers became the Catholic Archbishop of Hue.

1929
Diem becomes the Governor of Binh Thuan Province on the south coast of Vietnam.

1933
Diem is promoted to the role of Minister of the Interior, but resigns soon afterwards in protest at Bao Dai’s failure to enact his legislative reforms. He lives quietly in Hue for 12 years.

1945
Ho Chi Minh’s nationalist army enter Hue and invite Diem to join the administration of the newly declared Democratic Republic of (North) Vietnam. Diem refuses to join a socialist administration, and moves to the USA, where he positioned himself as an anti-communist. Between 1945 and his return to Vietnam, Diem meets with Cardinal Spellman, the most senior Catholic in the USA, and through him he meets President Eisenhower, and his successor John F. Kennedy. He becomes involved with the Michigan University Group, who influenced his political thought. They were admirers of fascist Spain under Franco, and the Peron government of Argentina. His contacts in the USA promise to help him when he returns to Vietnam.

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1952
Diem’s younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu gives a speech at the Da Lat Military Academy outlining a philosophy he developed while living in France. It was based on the philosophy of Emmanuel Mounier, which characterised ‘personalism’ as a non-materialist, anti-communist and anti-capitalist idea placing the spiritual identity of the individual at the centre of the community. It was based on Catholic theology.

1954
French colonial forces are defeated by the Communist forces of Ho Chi Minh at Dien Bien Phu. The peace settlement agreed at Geneva in Switzerland breaks up the colony of French Indo-China and Bao Dai, at the USA’s request, invites Diem to return as Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam. The Geneva Conference calls for a referendum on union between the newly independent Democratic Republic of (North) Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, and the State of Vietnam, the French occupied south, no later than July 1956. Diem and the USA refuse to sign this agreement.

Diem and his younger brother Nhu create the Personalist Labour Revolutionary Party, to promote their version of family-centred community and faith-based ideas.

1955
In October a referendum is held to decide on the future leader of the State of (South) Vietnam. Diem is a Catholic politician in a predominantly Buddhist country. His opponent is Emperor Bao Dai, the Buddhist monarch. As Prime Minister, Diem uses the military and the police to suppress Buddhist political parties, banning them and forbidding any propaganda promoting the Emperor. Although there were only 5,335,668 registered voters, Diem won with 5,721,735 votes to Bao Dai’s 63,017. The US Government accepts the election result, and Democrat Senator Mike Mansfield, future Majority Leader, claimed that the result showed the Vietnamese people believed in Diem’s leadership. The New York Times wrote that the referendum was a “sound democratic procedure”. Diem’s election strategy was drawn up with the help of Colonel Edward Lansdale, who had used similar tactics to install Ramon Magsaysay as President of the Philippines in 1953. Lonsdale was a senior CIA operative, who went on to command the assassination campaign against Fidel Castro.

Diem renames the State of Vietnam the Republic of (South) Vietnam, and names himself President.

1956
Diem arrests or purges anyone in government who opposes his views. All political parties are banned outright, including regional parties that had supported him in the referendum. He refuses to conduct the Unification Referendum agreed at the Geneva Conference.

Diem institutes a land reform program that results in land ownership being restricted for poor farmers, who had to buy the land given to them by the shadow Viet Minh officials, from the Diem government using a mortgage system financed and controlled by banks from the United States, and paid for by the US Government. This resulted in large landowners increasing their landholdings and wealth. The scheme involved 10% of the food producing areas.

1957
On 8th May, Diem conducts a State visit to the USA, and is greeted by President Eisenhower at the airport. He addresses Congress, and receives praise from Republicans and Democrats, who hail him as a champion of freedom and democracy. Press coverage is universally positive. He has a ticker-tape parade through Manhattan, with a crowd estimated by the New York Times at 250,000. The New York Times called him “The Asian Liberator”, and mentioned that Diem wanted weapons and money from the United States. He was honoured by the City of New York. He met with business leaders, and promoted investment into South Vietnam. He received an honorary degree from Michigan State University, where he had been mentored.

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1959
North Vietnam launches its campaign to reunite Vietnam by all means necessary. Diem launches a violent campaign to destroy the Caodai, a monotheist Eastern Mystic religious sect, whose followers had shown opposition to his rule, the Hoa Hao, a Buddhist folk cult which saw urbanised modern life as inherently evil, and the Binh Xuyen, an ultra-nationalist paramilitary crime syndicate based in the army and in the Saigon underworld. Diem regarded these organisations as either potential allies of the Communists, or rivals to his power.

1960
Officers from the Airborne Division, without US knowledge, launch an unsuccessful coup.

1961
In preparation for an official visit to South Vietnam by the Vice-President, the US Director of Central Intelligence (CIA Director), Alan Dulles, reports that around half of the region south and south-west of Saigon, the capital, is under Communist control, with government officials unable to operate there without considerable military support. The report criticises Diem as autocratic, corrupt, and intolerant.

On 12th May Vice-President Lyndon Johnson visits Saigon to meet with Diem. He calls Diem the ‘Churchill’ of Asia. Johnson promises military aid, and upon his return to the USA, tells reporters that losing in Vietnam would mean the USA would have to fight Communism “on the beaches of Waikiki”, and eventually on the shores of the continental United States.

1963
Amidst the ongoing campaign against Buddhist protests sweeping the country, Diem enters into a secret negotiation with North Vietnam to exchange rice for coal, in order to relieve a famine in the north. The negotiations are conducted through the International Control Commission, set up by the French. Diem’s brother Nhu leaks the negotiation to the US journalist Joseph Alsop of The Washington Post. He is a close friend of President Kennedy, whose Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, orders the CIA to prepare a coup against Diem on the advice of Roger Hilsman, an intelligence chief with deep ties to the CIA.

On 2nd October, Duong Van Minh, a General in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, meets with Lucien Conein of the CIA, to ask how the USA might react to a coup by the military against Diem. Within days, the US Ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., replies that the US would not interfere.

On 2nd November, Conein gives Minh a bag containing around $400,000 in today’s money, and then informs the CIA station chiefs that the coup is starting. Once Diem and his brother Nhu are captured, they are assassinated in the back of an M113 armoured personnel carrier.

On 22nd November, President Kennedy is assassinated.

Pat X