Ngo Dinh Diem

Who was Ngo Dinh Diem?

Ngô Đình Diệm was the first president of South Vietnam. In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords, Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam. Accruing considerable US support due to his staunch anti-communism, he achieved victory in a 1955 plebiscite.

A Roman Catholic, Diệm's policies toward the Republic's Montagnard natives and its Buddhist majority were met with protests, culminating in Malcolm Browne's Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of the self-immolation of Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức in 1963. Amid religious protests, Diệm lost the backing of his US 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.