Portuguese missionaries had converted his family to Roman Catholicism in the 17th century, so Diệm was given a saint's name at birth, following the custom of the Catholic Church.

Bảo had already given the post to another candidate and Diệm avoided the stigma of being a collaborationist.

In the meantime, the French had started the State of Vietnam and Diệm refused Bảo Đại's offer to become the Prime Minister.

The CIA's Edward Lansdale, who had been posted to help Diệm strengthen his rule, led a propaganda campaign to encourage as many refugees to move south as possible.

Diệm also used slogans such as " Christ has gone south " and " the Virgin Mary had departed from the North ", alleging anti-Catholic persecution under Hồ Chí Minh.

Diệm won a street war with the private army of the Bình Xuyên organised crime syndicate of the Cholon brothels and gambling houses who had enjoyed special favors under the French and Bảo Đại.

Diệm responded by appointing Minh to the post of Presidential Military Advisor, where he had no influence or troops to command in case the thought of coup ever crossed his mind.

The ARVN officers had reportedly originally intended merely to exile Diệm and Nhu, having promised them safe passage ".

Minh was reported to be mortified when he realised that Diệm and Nhu had escaped in the middle of the night leaving the rebels to fight for an empty building.

The Americans recognized Minh and immediately restored the aid programs and that had been cut to punish Diệm in the last days of his rule.

Khánh later claimed that he had built up intelligence infrastructure to weed out the Vietcong under Diệm, but that Minh's MRC had disbanded it and released communist prisoners.

Khánh also had Major Nhung, the bodyguard of Minh, shot, causing riots among parts of the population who feared that Khánh would wind back the clock to the Diệm era.

By this time, Khôi had been assassinated by the communists, so Diệm became the leading political figure in the family.

Diệm had little success in the late 1940s and went into exile in 1950 to campaign from abroad after the communists sentenced him to death in absentia.

Nhu's brother Diệm had been appointed Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam by Bảo Đại after the French had been defeated at Điện Biên Phủ.

Tung would then announce the formation of a " revolutionary government " consisting of opposition activists who had not consented to being named in the government, while Diệm and Nhu would pretend to be on the run and move to Vũng Tàu.

The encirclement would prevent Cao from storming the capital to save Diệm as he had done during the 1960 coup attempt.

Attempts by Diệm and Nhu to make contact with Đình were blocked by other generals, whose staff claimed that Đình was elsewhere, leading Nhu and Diệm to believe he had been captured.

Diệm had been promised exile by the generals, but after running away from the palace, was executed on the journey back to military headquarters after being captured.

In 1971, Minh claimed that Thiệu had caused the deaths by hesitating and delaying the attack on Gia Long Palace, implying that if Diệm was captured there, junior officers could not have killed him while in a small group.

After a series of short-lived juntas, their pairing put an end to a series of leadership changes that had occurred since the assassination of Diệm.

Diệm toured the East Coast, speaking at universities, arguing that Vietnam could only be saved for the " free world " if the US sponsored a government of nationalists who were opposed to both the Việt Minh and the French.

Diệm arrived at Tân Sơn Nhất airport in Saigon on 26 June where only a few hundred people turned out to greet him, mainly Catholics.

Diệm recorded 98. 2 % of the vote, including 605, 025 votes in Saigon, where only 450, 000 voters were registered.

On 1 November, with only the palace guard remaining to defend Diệm and his younger brother, Nhu, the generals called the palace offering Diệm exile if he surrendered.

Diệm recorded 98. 2 % of the vote, including 605, 025 votes in Saigon, where only 450, 000 voters were registered.

McGeorge Bundy thought her comments were so damaging that it would only be acceptable for Ngô Đình Diệm to remain in power if she were out of the picture.

In South Vietnam, after the Diệm regime enacted the 10 / 59 Decree in 1959, mobile special military courts dispatched to the countryside to intimidate the rural peoples used guillotines belonging to the former French colonial power to carry out death sentences on the spot.

At the end of Diệm ’ s rule, 10 % of the population owned 55 % of the land.

Diệm also contended with two religious sects, the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo, who wielded private armies in the Mekong Delta, with the Cao Đài estimated to have 25, 000 men.

Diệm initiated a program of internal migration where 210, 000 Vietnamese, mainly Catholics, were moved to Montagnard land in fortified settlements.

When high school students demonstrated, Diệm arrested them as well ; over 1, 000 students from Saigon's leading high school, most of them children of Saigon civil servants, were sent to re-education camps, including, reportedly, children as young as five, on charges of anti-government graffiti.

Conein provided a group of South Vietnamese generals with US $ 40, 000 to carry out the coup with the promise that U. S. forces would make no attempt to protect Diệm.

Diệm could not be allowed to live because he was too much respected among simple, gullible people in the countryside, especially the Catholics and the refugees.

Diệm could not be allowed to live because he was too much respected among simple, gullible people in the countryside, especially the Catholics and the refugees.

Amid religious protests that garnered worldwide attention, Diệm lost the backing of his U. S. patrons and was assassinated, along with his brother, Ngô Đình Nhu by Nguyễn Văn Nhung, the aide of ARVN General Dương Văn Minh on 2 November 1963, during a coup d ' état that deposed his government.

Diệm laboured in the family's rice fields while studying at a French Catholic school, and later entered a private school started by his father.

In 1933, with the return of Bảo Đại to ascend the throne, Diệm was appointed by the French to be his interior minister following lobbying by Bài.

A conservative by nature, Diệm confined his nationalist activities to occasional trips to Saigon to meet with Phan Bội Châu.

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.

The appointment was widely condemned by French officials, who felt that Diệm was incompetent, with the Prime Minister Mendes-France declaring Diệm to be a " fanatic ".

Its officers were installed by the French and the chief of staff General Nguyễn Văn Hinh was a French citizen ; Hinh loathed Diệm and frequently disobeyed him.

It was contested by Bảo Đại, the Emperor, advocating the restoration of the monarchy, while Diệm ran on a republican platform.

Ngô Đình Diệm, accompanied by U. S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, arrives at Washington National Airport in 1957.

Diệm was unmoved by the incident.

Believing the central highlands were of strategic importance to the Việt Cộng or subject to a potential invasion by North Vietnam, Diệm decided to construct a Maginot Line of settlements.

The Catholic Church was the largest landowner in the country, and the “ private ” status that was imposed on Buddhism by the French, which required official permission to conduct public Buddhist activities, was never repealed by Diệm.

This led to a protest led by Thích Trí Quang against the government, which was suppressed by Diệm ’ s forces, killing nine unarmed civilians.

During this time, Diệm's sister-in-law, Madame Nhu, a Catholic convert and former Buddhist, the de facto first lady because of Diệm ’ s unmarried status, inflamed the situation by mockingly applauding the suicides, referring to them as “ barbecues ”, stating, “ If the Buddhists want to have another barbecue, I will be glad to supply the gasoline .” The pagoda raids stoked widespread public disquiet in Saigon.

Everything that could be done in an attempt to crush the revolution was carried out by Diệm.

As Saigon's delegation did not sign the Geneva accords, it was not bound by it, Diệm said.

Ngô Đình Diệm, who was previously appointed Prime Minister of South Vietnam by Emperor Bảo Đại, eventually assumed control of South Vietnam.

Led by Ngô Đình Diệm, South Vietnam refused to sign the Geneva Accord.

Minh frequently railed against Diệm in his September meeting with Lodge, decrying the police state that was being created by the Cần Lao Party of the Ngô family.