Diem, Ngo No Dingh

Diem, Ngo No Dingh (1901–63) South Vietnamese president (1955–63), born into the Catholic social elite and minister of the interior under the emperor Bao Dai (1933). When the French were unwilling to approve of Diem's legislative reforms, he resigned in frustration, gave up his titles and decortations, and spent the next twelve years living quietly in Hue. In 1945 Communist forces captured him, and Ho Chi Minh, hoping to gain support among Catholics, asked Diem to join his government in the North. Diem declined the offer and, instead, lived abroad in self-imposed exile for most of the next ten years. He returned in 1954 at the request of Bao Dai to serve as the prime minister of a U.S.-backed government in South Vietnam. Diem accepted, then ousted the emperor and declared himself president of the newly created Republic of Vietnam. Refusing to carry out the Geneva Agreement on Indochina, which required that free elections be held throughout Vietnam in 1956, Diem set up an autocratic government, supported by U.S. money and military advisers, with his family members installed at the highest levels. The National Liberation Front (Vietcong) carried on an intense guerrilla war against Diem's dictatorship, and his inept militarism, heavy-handed as it was, only increased his government's isolation and lack of support among the South Vietnamese. When Diem claimed that Buddhists were helping the Vietcong and used that claim as a pretext for imprisoning and murdering hundreds of them, the United States withdrew its support from Diem's government. His generals assassinated him in 1963, during a coup d'état.