LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ngo Dinh Diem
built 670 days ago
In his latest work, Seth Jacobs maintains that the American commitment to support Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam in 1954 was a fateful decision with far-reaching consequences. "The commitment to Diem," he argues, "was the most fundamental decision of America's lengthy involvement in Vietnam, the prerequisite to the subsequent incremental steps that culminated in defeat and disgrace" (p. 10). Although Jacobs portrays Diem as an ill-suited ally, he criticizes the policy decisions more than the man, and situates his discussion squarely within the context of the Cold War. For the United States, this context included the intense anticommunist sentiment that developed in the early post-World War II years, NSC 68, and the Korean War.
Source:
The division of the country into a communist North, led by Ho Chi Minh, and the non-communist South, led by Ngo Dinh Diem, created a new dynamic. Diem, a Catholic, disliked the communists and rejected Ho Chi Minh's vision of one socialist republic of Vietnam. Thus, the conflict turned into a civil war with Vietnamese fighting Vietnamese. Ho Chi Minh had the support of the USSR, and initially the Chinese, Ngo Dinh Diem received U.S. support because the U.S. wanted to control the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia.
Source:
Onder leiding van de katholieke Ngo Dinh Diem en zijn familie werden Opium-salons, echtscheiding, abortus en bordelen in Zuid-Vietnam verboden. De wetten tegen overspel werden aangescherpt. De gangstergroep rondom Le Van Vien en van een aantal anderen werden opgerold. Een en ander ging echter wel gepaard met openbare terechtstellingen. Ondanks deze maatregelen werd het niet veiliger in Zuid-Vietnam. De Noord-Vietnamese Vietminh werd steeds populairder, evenals haar in Zuid-Vietnam opererende tak, de Vietcong.
Source:
Ngo Dinh Diem was born into an aristocratic, Roman Catholic family with close ties to the Emperor. He 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 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 independence forces battled the French, he spent several years in exile, making political contacts and gaining crucial American support in hopes of leading a postwar government. One chronicler dubbed Ngo "the last Confucian," who believed that Vietnam needed the benevolent, authoritarian rule of enlightened elites.
Source:
Ngo Dinh Diem was born in Vietnam in 1901. His ancestors had been converted to Christianity by Catholic missionaries in the 17th Century. Diem, like previous generations of his family, was educated in French Catholic schools. After he graduated he was trained as an administrator for the French authorities in Vietnam. At the age of twenty-five he became a provincial governor.
Source:
Ngo Dinh Nhu, the so-called [E]minence grise, is regarded as the real power in the country. In his earlier days he worked as an expert on police dossiers in Paris. Later when he had to flee from Hue, former capital of the Annamite Emperors, and make his way by foot to Saigon, the main thing he insisted on taking with him was a case of dossiers the French police had compiled on his own compatriots. Those who have been intimate with him say that compilation of dossiers is one of the ruling passions of his life and accounts for much of his power in the land. Apart from running the two "political clubs," as the officers and many Western correspondents refer to the parties mentioned earlier, Nhu heads the Security Service of the Presidency and in fact the threads of all the country's security services come together in his hands.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Ngo Dinh Diem