Ngo Dinh Diem (1901 – 1963) was the first President of South Vietnam (1955–1963). Prime Minister of Emperor Bao Dai, Diem became President after the 1955 referendum to determine the future form of government of the State of Vietnam, the nation that was to become the Republic of Vietnam, which was widely known as South Vietnam.
Ngo Dình Diem was born in Hue, the original capital of the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam. Diem came from the village of Phu Cam in central Vietnam. Portuguese missionaries had converted his family to Catholicism in the 17th century. Diem would often claim that he descended from a noble family of mandarins. He studied at a French Catholic school. Then, Diem moved to Hanoi to study at the School of Public Administration and Law, a French school that trained Vietnamese bureaucrats. Having graduated at the top of his class in 1921, he followed in the footsteps of his eldest brother Ngo Dinh Khoi, joining the civil service. Starting from the lowest rank of mandarin, Diem steadily rose.
Ngo Dinh Diem served in Emperor Bao Dai’s administration under French colonial rule until 1933. During and after World War II, he opposed both French colonial rule and the Viet Minh, which was the communist-led national independence movement. Already staunchly anticommunist, he rejected an offer to serve in Ho Chi Minh’s brief postwar government in 1945. As the Viet Minh forces fought against the French during the First Indochina War, he spent several years in exile, making political contacts and gaining crucial American support in hopes of leading a postwar government. Diem believed that Vietnam needed the benevolent, authoritarian rule of enlightened elites.
In 1954, after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Ngo Dinh Diem became prime minister of South Vietnam, just as the defeated French forces left. The peace accord called for elections in 1956 and unification of the divided country. With American support, Ngo cancelled the elections, knowing full well that Ho Chi Minh would have easily won the presidency. Over the next seven years, he presided over an increasingly corrupt, nepotistic and repressive regime. Communist guerrillas backed by North Vietnam launched a new rebellion, but a civil disobedience campaign led by the country’s Buddhist monks contributed more directly to his downfall. Brutal persecution of the dissident monks in 1963 damaged the regime’s already shaky international reputation.
On November 1, 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem was ousted from power by Vietnamese generals, who called the palace offering Diem exile if he surrendered. Nevertheless, that evening, Diem and his entourage escaped via an underground passage to Cholon, where they were captured the following morning, on November 2. Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were executed in the back of an armored personnel carrier by Captain Nguyen Van Nhung while en route to the Vietnamese Joint General Staff headquarters.
