the diem regime in south viet nam. the diem regime in south vietnam after the geneva conference...

The Diem Regime in

South Viet Nam

The Diem Regime in South Vietnam

•After the Geneva Conference Vietnam was split into two. South Viet Nam became an independent republic ruled by Ngo Dinh Diem

The Identity of the Diem Regime• Diem was an authentic

nationalist

• He believed that Viet Nam should be ruled by Vietnamese

• He had resigned as Minister of the Interior to Emperor Bao Dai as he resented French rule and the failure of France to let the Vietnamese make significant decisions

The Identity of the Diem Regime• He had fraternised with the

Japanese during WWII In 1945 they had invited him to be Prime Minister in Bao Dai’s puppet government

• In 1945 he was captured by the Viet Minh and was invited to join their government but refused.

• His brother and nephew had ben killed by the Viet Minh. Diem had become fervently anti-communist

The Identity of the Diem Regime

• In 1946 he tried to establish an anti-communist organisation

• In 1947, when the French had returned to Viet Nam, he set up an anti-French political party


• He was described as honest and a man of integrity

• He was a workaholic with an amazing stamina


Diem saw his nation as a Confusian society in which everyone knew their place and their was no 20th century nonsense about democracy


In Diem’s own words, "A sacred respect is due to the person of the sovereign. He is the mediator between the people and heaven as he celebrates the national cult."

The Identity of the Diem Regime• Diem arranged, with CIA support a vote of

98.2% for himself in the 1955 elections. • Bao Dai was removed as Emperor. Diem

became President.• Diem cancelled the 1956 elections under the

Geneva Accord. He knew he would not win the elections and that the people would vote for the Viet Minh if given a free choice.

Voting in 2005 with statue of Ho Chi Minh in forground – in trying to avoid a communist dictatorship Diem set up his own one party state


Diem saw democracy as a “western disease’

“ To him, his one man rule was not evil, but a

necessity imposed by war and history. If he

relaxed his dictatorship everything would fall

apart and then there would be chaos.” H. Dareff The Story Of Vietnam 1966


• No democracy meant that Diem was in reality a dictator


• The illusion that he was popular and had the support of the majority of people in South Viet Nam was just propaganda


• He was a devout Catholic

• He briefly trained for the priesthood

• He spent two years in a monastery in New Jersey in the USA

• Diem never married


• When he became South Viet Nam’s Prime Minister in 1954 and then later President he lacked popular support, gaining most of his support from the Catholic minority. Note the Catholic priest in

the crowd


• Catholics were given preference in jobs in his regime.

Diem greeting Catholic priests

• Diem set up an oligarchy

• This was a family dictatorship

• He surrounded himself with family and a few close aides – the only people he personally trusted. This meant he was a remote and aloof figure.



President Ngo Dinh Diem with the Ngo Dinh family at Phu Cam, Hue


• President Ngo Dinh Diem, brothers Ngo Dinh Nhu, Bishop Ngo Dinh Thuc. Mrs. Nhu, sister and Ngo Dinh Nhu's children.


• Ngo Dinh Diem = President

• Ngo Dinh Nhu = Head of Can Lao Political Party and Diem’s chief political advisor

• Madame Nhu = ‘First lady’ & Head of the Women's Solidarity Movement

• Monsignor Ngo Dinh Thuc = Catholic Archbishop of Hue• Ngo Dinh Can = Governor of Central Viet Nam• Ngo Dinh Luyen = Ambassador to Great Britain


• Ngo Dinh Nhu was the most important figure after Diem


• Diem was negatively described as a remote, inflexible and authoritarian figure.

Diem had many faults : remoteness, inflexibility, and an authoritarian belief that he alone knew what was best for his country and had no need to listen to any critical voices.

Arnold R Isaccs, The Guardian 2/8/87

• Diệm's rule was firm, puritanical and nepotistic.

• He had the goal of achieving social reform in South Viet Nam and undertook the pursuit of pro-Catholic policies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritanical

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism


• Can Lao members spied on people in schools, factories and villages

• Suspected Communists were reported and dismissed from their jobs

• Other members of non-communist opposition groups were rounded up and labelled communists

• Diem used Nhu to enforce his ideas

• Nhu set up the Revolutionary Labour Party or Can Lao in 1956

• South Viet Nam became a one-party state

• Its members were placed in key government jobs

The Identity of the Diem Regime• From 1955 to 1960 Diem,

… attempted to assert his authority over rural South Vietnam. His minions killed, tortured and imprisoned tens of thousands who resisted his unfair rule. It was vicious repression.

CIA director William Colby,writing in reflection although at the time the USA

was not so harsh in its views.

Above: Fear on a woman's face as her village gets searched by soldiers


• The Saigon based criminal syndicate called Binh Xuyen were crushed by force in street battles using the army

• In this way Diem consolidated his power

• All potential opposition groups were eliminated

• Diem used bribes to crush the Cao Dai and force to defeat the Hoa Hao. The Hoa Hao leader was guillotined.


• Under Law 10/59 military tribunals tried “infringements of national security with sentences of death or hard labour for life for being a Communist or working with Communists”

• By 1961 150,000 political prisoners were being held in a system of concentration camps

• The Denunciation Campaign

Diem set up a campaign for people to denounce communists, especially those Viet Minh cadres who had stayed at home.

• 12,000 had been killed between 1955 and 1957

• By 1958 40,000 political prisoners were in gaol

The Identity of the Diem Regime• Fortified Hamlets were set up.

This was called the Agroville Strategy

• In these strategic hamlets, rural people were made to live behind barbed wire

• In 1962 American advisers helped expand these to move 34 % of the population into villages protected by stockades so that they would not help the Viet Cong, the liberation group who had been set up to defeat Diem

The Identity of the Diem Regime• Madame Nhu, the ‘first lady’

played a leading role in the moral reform President Diem instituted in South Vietnam, closing down brothels, opium dens and gambling houses.

• She was at the front of imposing Catholic morality on South Vietnam, which included the abolition of divorce, contraceptives and abortion. Nightclubs and ball rooms were also often targets.

• This campaign of decency, while admirable, was met with a great deal of hostility by those who did not share Madame Nhu's view of ethics.


In October 1961 she introduced a resolution in the National Assembly to create a military training program for 1,500 young women who would, in turn, train more women to build a reserve force of some 360,000

Madame Nhu set up the Women’s Solidarity Movement to co-ordinate her morality campaigns.

The Identity of the Diem Regime She justified Diems the

repressive regime poetically:

• “ If we open the window not only sunlight but many bad things will fly in.”

By keeping the window shut, the Diem regime made sure that the bad things - such as democracy - were kept out.

H Dareff The Story of Vietnam 1966


• Diem was a difficult friend for the Americans.

• Diem himself did not always do what they wanted. He was a nationalist and did not accept the idea of being any other nations puppet.

Ambassador Fritz Nolting, was appointed ambassador to Vietnam in 1961 with orders to support the government of Ngo Dinh Diem.

The Identity of the Diem Regime• Diem visited the USA and was

lauded as a hero of the free world. Privately the US were less sure of him. The reality was that they had no alternative in South Vietnam to back.

The United States President Eisenhower greeted South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem in Washington, 05/08/1957

Right: With Vice President L.yndon B. Johnson

As a hero in a parade in the USA


• What Diem got from the USA was military support – advisors and equipment


Above: Viet Cong killed by the South Vietnam Army

Left:: A father holds the body of his child as South Vietnamese Army Rangers look down from their armoured vehicle. The child was killed as government forces pursued guerrillas.


Diem Inspecting troops, Dalat, South Vietnam, March 30, 1963

Above: Diem talking with supporters


• The Buddhist Crisis

• Favouritism was given to Catholics. Catholic families were given privileges or excused from obligations. This reflected the Catholic identity of the Diem regime.



• Diem’s brother, the Catholic Archbishop of Hue, banned the display of Buddhist flags and a Buddhist festival in Hue.



South Vietnamese troops, enforcing a ban on the Buddhist multicoloured flag, fire upon 20,000 Buddhists at Hue. The attack begins a series of intensifying protests by Buddhists against the government.



Buddhist monk Quang Duc sets himself on fire in protest against the Diem government's policies. Buddhist protest intensify daily


This was a crisis for the Diem Regime


• The Overthrow of DiemA group of discontented Army Generals began to plot a coup d’etat with tactic approval of the US Ambassador Cabot Lodge

The Identity of the Diem Regime• The Overthrow of Diem

• On 1 November 1963 the coup began.

The Identity of the Diem Regime• The Overthrow of Diem

• Diem and Nhu fled to a Catholic church but were captured and killed

Diem Nhu

• The Formation of the Identity of Ngo Dinh Diem and the Regime he presided over. The Expression of this Identity.

• - what factors influenced / contributed to this identity

• - what were the characteristics of this identity

• - what were the expressions of this identity (both positive and negative)

the diem regime in south viet nam. the diem regime in south vietnam after the geneva conference...

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