Lê Văn Tỵ

Lê Văn Tỵ (* 1904 in Cap Saint-Jacques , French Indochina , † October 20, 1964 in Saigon , Republic of Vietnam ) was a South Vietnamese general.

At a young age he joined the French colonial army and was trained as an officer. He served here for over 30 years and fought on the French side in the Indochina War . In 1949, the pro-French state of Vietnam was created under Bảo Đại , and the Vietnamese colonial troops including Capitaine Tỵ were absorbed into the Vietnamese National Army .

After the end of the war, a power struggle broke out in South Vietnam from October 1954 between the pro- French army chief Nguyễn Văn Hinh and the pro-American Ngô Đình Diệm . Diệm prevailed a few weeks later with US support, Hinh was politically sidelined and left the country. Lê Văn Tỵ was appointed as the new chief of staff on November 9, 1954. Like all leading officers, he was considered extremely Francophile , but as a “good-natured fatherly figure” had no political ambitions and therefore posed no threat to Diệm. With that, France finally lost its influence on Vietnamese politics. Already in the spring of 1955, Tỵ led the smashing of the semi-military Bình Xuyên in the so-called Battle of Saigon .

With the proclamation of the Republic of Vietnam in October 1955, the national army became the ARVN . Tỵ became Chairman of the United General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam and thus formally the highest-ranking military in the country. On November 11, 1960, there was a military coup against the Diệm regime , in which Tỵ was placed under house arrest by the putschists. He managed to convince those involved not to use artillery in the capital and thus to avoid many civilian deaths. The coup plotters around Nguyễn Chánh Thi proposed that Tỵ be appointed defense minister, which Diệm agreed to do; But Tỵ himself refused. The coup failed.

In 1963 Tỵ fell ill with cancer and traveled to the USA for treatment. He gave his post to his much more determined deputy Trần Văn Đôn . While he was in the United States , Đôn, Lê Văn Kim and Dương Văn Minh successfully carried out a coup d'état against Diệm with American support and had him killed.

Lê Văn Tỵ returned to Vietnam as a dying man. Shortly before his death, he was promoted to Marshal (five-star army general, Thống tướng ); he was the only person who ever received that title. He was buried in a magnificent tomb in the Saigon Mạc-Đĩnh-Chi cemetery.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hoài Việt Blog, Cựu Thiếu Sinh Quân VNCH: Tiểu sử CTSQ Thống Tướng Lê Văn Tỵ (1903–1964)
2. ↑ Công Luan Nguyen, Nguyen Cong Luan: Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars: Memoirs of a Victim Turned Soldier , Indiana University Press, 2012, pp 139/140;
   and Ha Mai Viet: Steel and Blood: South Vietnamese Armor and the War for Southeast Asia , Naval Institute Press, 2013, Chapter 6, Joint General Staff ;
   and Ronald H. Spector: Advice and Support: The Early Years; 1941-1960 , Government Printing Office, 1983, p. 280;
   and Quang Thi Lâm: The Twenty-five Year Century: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the Indochina War to the Fall of Saigon , University of North Texas Press, 2001, p. 85
3. ^ Edward Lansdale : In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia , Fordham University Press, 1991, p. 306
4. ↑ Arthur J. Dommen : The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam , Indiana University Press, 2001, p. 419;
   and: Quang Thi Lâm: The Twenty-five Year Century: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the Indochina War to the Fall of Saigon , University of North Texas Press, 2001, p. 98
5. ↑ Quang Thi Lâm: The Twenty-five Year Century: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the Indochina War to the Fall of Saigon , University of North Texas Press, 2001, p. 109
6. ↑ picture of the tomb