In 1963 South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem was dealing not only with the communist Viet Cong insurgency,

In 1963 South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem was dealing not only with the communist Viet Cong insurgency, but also with widespread protests and discontent among the country’s Buddhist majority, who objected to the country’s laws and policies that they said favored the Catholic minority. Diem, a fervent Catholic whose older brother was a bishop, believed the Buddhist uprising was part of the communist insurgency. The clashes between his forces (led by his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu) and the Buddhists made the news worldwide and generated widespread sympathy for the Buddhists—most dramatically after a protesting Buddhist monk set himself on fire on camera on a busy Saigon street.

These events deeply troubled the Kennedy administration. At the beginning of November 1963 there were 16,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam, ostensibly in the role of trainers and advisors, but increasingly finding themselves in combat roles. President Kennedy was a firm believer in the “domino theory” (the belief that when a country becomes communist surrounding countries will in turn topple like dominoes) and he was determined to prevent the communist insurgency there from succeeding. Their anti-Buddhist crackdown made it appear that the Diem and Nhu were hindering that cause.

In October 1963 the CIA and the White House became aware that some South Vietnamese generals were plotting a coup that involved assassinating Diem and Nhu. U.S. officials agreed that they would not interfere with the coup, but urged that the brothers be exiled rather than assassinated. 

On the morning of November 1, 1963 forces loyal to the generals seized control of key locations in Saigon and launched an attack on the Presidential palace. Diem and Nhu escaped via a secret tunnel and made their way to a Catholic church in the Chinese district of Saigon. Evidently someone reported their location to the rebels (the details are still unknown) and the two men were arrested and placed inside an armored personnel carrier. There they were killed. Nhu was stabbed with a bayonet 21 times and shot five times. Diem was shot twice in the chest. 

When President Kennedy learned of the murders (discounting quickly the initial claim that the brothers had committed suicide) he was distressed, realizing that his policies had enabled the killings. Twenty days later, Kennedy was himself assassinated.

In the disastrous years to follow there were a series of blundering military dictatorships in South Vietnam while Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, escalated American involvement in the war. Eventually there would be over 500,000 American troops in Vietnam and the war would cost over 50,000 American lives.

South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were assassinated on November 2, 1963, sixty years ago today.

The photos are of Diem on the left and Nhu on the right.