Ngo Dinh Diem (1901-1963), first president of South Vietnam (1955-1963). He was born near the ancient imperial capital of Hue, Vietnam (then a French protectorate). Diem’s father was a prominent government official and adviser to the emperor, who had nominal rule under French control. The family was Catholic and Diem was educated in French schools, including the School for Law and Administration in Hanoi. He became a colonial civil servant, rising to the position of provincial governor in 1929. In 1933 Diem was appointed minister of the interior by the emperor Bao Dai. On familiar terms with the French, Diem came to despise their presence in Vietnam and to disapprove of collaboration with them. Breaking publicly with Bao Dai, Diem withdrew from the government, a move that found favor with the growing number of Vietnamese nationalists anxious to rid themselves of French rule.

From 1940 to 1945, during World War II, Vietnam was occupied by Japan. After the Communist-led Viet Minh seized power from the Japanese in August 1945, Diem was offered a position in the government of Viet Minh leader Ho Chi Minh. Diem refused, seeing the Communists as a threat to his Catholic values and to his vision of an independent Vietnam. In 1950 Diem left Vietnam for self-imposed exile. He eventually took up residence in the United States, where he came to the attention of the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Eisenhower administration feared a Communist takeover of Southeast Asia. They saw Diem as the sort of Vietnamese nationalist capable of countering the Communist Viet Minh, despite the fact that Diem was then largely unknown in his native land.

While Diem was living in exile, the Viet Minh were fighting the French, who sought to reclaim their Asian colonies after World War II. In 1954 the French conceded defeat, and the leaders of the Viet Minh believed that Vietnam would gain full independence. The agreements that ended the war between the French and the Viet Minh, however, gave the Viet Minh control only of the northern part of the country. Known as the Geneva Accords, these agreements temporarily split the country into a northern and a southern sector. The southern sector remained under the control of Bao Dai, whose government was heavily supported by the United States. Diem was installed at U.S. insistence as prime minister under Bao Dai.

The Geneva Accords called for reunifying elections to be held throughout Vietnam in 1956, a prospect the United States feared since Ho Chi Minh was certain to win. With the support of the United States, Diem violated the accords by refusing to hold national elections. Elections were staged only in the south and resulted in the establishment of the Republic of Vietnam (commonly referred to as South Vietnam) with Diem as its first president. Also in violation of the Geneva Accords, U.S. military advisers were brought in to create and train the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).

As president, Diem’s first actions included returning to wealthy landlords the land given to peasants by the Viet Minh, forcibly moving rural villagers from their ancestral homes and placing them in controlled settlements that were intended to suppress any Communist activity, and conscripting village males into the ARVN. These unpopular and repressive measures deepened general opposition to Diem’s rule. They fostered the growth of what would become the National Liberation Front (NLF), a group committed to the overthrow of Diem’s regime and the reunification of Vietnam.

Diem’s narrow political base consisted of landlords, businessmen, and French-trained army officers, as well as approximately 900,000 Catholic refugees from the north. As a Catholic, Diem was insensitive to the majority population of Buddhists, and he routinely denied government positions to non-Catholics. He also favored his immediate family. His brother Ngo Dinh Nhu was minister of the interior and head of the secret police; another brother, Ngo Dinh Can, effectively exercised one-man rule in central Vietnam; yet another brother, Ngo Dinh Thuc, was archbishop of Saigon. From his position of power, Nhu created a network of intrigue, corruption, and terror, which he used against those considered enemies of his brother’s regime.

Buddhist opposition to Diem’s rule resulted in large demonstrations in May 1963, during which South Vietnamese police killed nine people. This led a number of Buddhist monks to set themselves on fire in protest, which shocked the public in the United States. The Diem regime was revealed to the U.S. public as brutal and corrupt, although it had been portrayed as representing democracy and freedom in South Vietnam. The U.S. administration under President John F. Kennedy came to view Diem as an embarrassment. When a group of ARVN generals made known their wishes to stage a coup d’état against Diem, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge informed them the United States would not object. On November 2, 1963, in a suburb of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Diem and his brother Nhu were assassinated.