Madame Nhu

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Madame Nhu , b. Trần Lệ Xuân , (born April 15, 1924 in Hanoi , † April 24, 2011 in Rome ) was a sister-in-law of the first President of the Republic of Vietnam , Ngô Đình Diệm . Since the president was unmarried, she acted as the unofficial first lady . Together with her husband Ngô Đình Nhu , she exerted great influence on politics in Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s.

biography

Youth and Political Beginnings

Trần Lệ Xuân (Beautiful Spring) came from a wealthy aristocratic and Buddhist family. Through her mother, she was a great-granddaughter of Emperor Đồng Khánh . The mother was 14 years old when the daughter was born and had given birth to a daughter two years earlier. Her father Trần Văn Chương was the first Vietnamese to take a French bar exam and later served as ambassador to the United States . The family owed their wealth to their proximity to the French colonial government.

Tran was a mediocre student and dropped out of school before graduation. She spoke French as her first language and later learned English but never how to write Vietnamese. She lived in isolation in her parents' home in Hanoi, surrounded by 20 servants. In 1943 she married Ngo Dinh Nhu, 14 years her senior, a literary scholar and librarian whom she had met in her mother Vesak's (Madame Chuong) salon , where Hanoi high society met. Nhu's father, or Nhu himself, is said to have been one of her mother's numerous lovers. His family had converted to Catholicism in the 17th century ; On the occasion of the marriage, Tran also accepted the Catholic faith and its strict anti-communism . In the following years she was known as Madame Nhu . The couple had four children, two girls and two boys.

Three years after the marriage, the Indochina War began between the French colonial power and the Việt Minh independence movement . One of Madame Nhu's sisters-in-law was briefly captured by the Viet Minh, and another was killed by being buried alive. She and her young daughter were abducted in December 1946 and held captive in a remote village for four months until the area was recaptured by French troops.

The couple moved to Đà Lạt in South Vietnam, a residential area of ​​the Vietnamese upper class, and promoted Nhu's brother Ngô Đình Diệm, a fighter for Vietnam's independence and anti-communist nationalist, who had lived in the USA since 1950 and then in France, where he had contacts to the Vietnamese colony there. In 1953 the Nhu couple moved to Saigon , where they organized demonstrations against the French and the Communists, also with the aim of weakening the power of Emperor Bảo Đại . They also founded the Cần Lao party at this time .

After the Viet Minh defeated the French in the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ in March 1954 , the country was divided into a non-communist south and a communist north at the Indochina Conference - initially planned for two years . The Emperor, who grew up in France and was a Francophile, appointed Diệm, who had already been Minister of the Interior under him in 1933, as Prime Minister of South Vietnam in June 1954, under pressure from the USA . However, a power struggle developed between the emperor and the prime minister, which culminated in a referendum in which the population should decide between the two. In this vote on October 23, 1955, Diệm received 98.2 percent approval with the support of Nhu, who now controlled the secret police. The emperor left Vietnam and went to Paris, where he died in 1997.

At the center of power

Status and political goals

Ngô Đình Diệm (1957)
Madame Nhu in 1961 speaking to US Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson

Diệm proclaimed the republic and appointed himself president with dictatorial powers. Four of his brothers were given official positions, and Nhu became the official adviser to the president. Madame Nhu became president of several women's associations, initiated the establishment of women's fighting groups and was responsible for women's issues. She was also one of nine women in the National Assembly. She received great support from the up to one million Catholics from North Vietnam who were resettled to South Vietnam in 1954/55 as part of Operation Passage to Freedom at the request of the Americans and with the support of the US Navy . With slogans like “Christ has gone to South” the North Vietnamese Catholics were induced to move south. The Americans funded the operation with around $ 282 million.

The Nhu couple moved into the presidential palace and soon enjoyed immense power; Nhu was considered the government's " gray eminence ". "In short, the Ngos ruled like a royal family, and they ruled South Vietnam like their personal property." The American journalist and diplomat John Mecklin , who frequented the presidential palace, described the family as "clinically mad" ("pathologically insane") . In 1962 Madame Nhu is said to have driven her sister to suicide by imprisoning her lover. In 1963, she renounced her Buddhist parents.

Madame Nhu, a "sharp-tongued defender of the regime," took on the functions of first lady because the president was unmarried. She saw herself in the tradition of the Trưng sisters , Vietnamese national heroines who had led a revolt against China in the 1st century .

First, the petite, approximately 1.55 meter tall woman was celebrated by the US press for her elegant appearance. During this time, her photo graced the covers of Life and Time several times . In October 1962 she was shown aiming a pistol surrounded by her soldiers; the photo of Larry Burrows appeared in Life magazine . So she did not fit into the ideological vision of the Americans, who tried in vain to understand the contradictions of this woman.

The media later gave her the nickname Dragon Lady , the New York Times called her Asia's “modern Lucrezia Borgia ”, and President John F. Kennedy is said to have dubbed her “goddamn bitch”. President Diệm, a “notorious misogynist,” feared his sister-in-law's interventions. He practically barricaded himself in his office, which women were not allowed to enter. Der Spiegel wrote about her in September 1963:

“ A faint clink terrifies the world. Whenever it sounds in the presidential suite of the Gia Long Palace in Saigon, it is the harbinger of unpredictable events, friend and foe. It frightens guardsmen and generals in the yellow stucco palace as well as the host, South Vietnam's Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem, who starts out of his mystical meditations as soon as the clank approaches his desk. It paralyzes the Buddhist enemies of the Diem regime, electrifies the women of Vietnam and irritates American President Kennedy. The soft clink comes from the clash of two green jade rings on a woman's arm and betrays the passion of a 160 centimeter (with high heels) Vietnamese woman who threatens to undo the policy of the United States in the Far East. "

- Der Spiegel, September 11, 1963, p. 66f.

While Diệm and the Nhus were Catholic, the majority of Vietnamese (around 90 percent) professed Buddhism . More and more key political positions were filled with Catholics; numerous Vietnamese converted to Catholicism because they believed it would benefit them. Madame Nhu is said to have been convinced that she had been chosen by God to “instill hardness and the right, that is, Catholic faith in the enjoyable and sedate South Vietnam”, as the Spiegel put it. In 1956, she began a legal campaign that gave women the same rights as men in many areas. In addition, polygamy , divorce and marital infidelity were criminalized. Life then hailed her as "the most determined feminist since Emmeline Pankhurst ". In 1962 she introduced further laws, according to which birth control , beauty contests , gambling , dancing, boxing and cockfighting were punishable, which made her unpopular with the population.

Her husband created "SS-like" (according to Der Spiegel ) special troops whose 10,000 members had to be Catholic and were better paid than members of the regular army. The Italian ambassador at the time, Giovanni D'Orlandi , himself a Catholic, followed this social development in South Vietnam with concern and, according to his own statements, later tried to counteract it on various levels. Archbishop Francis Spellman of New York , a staunch anti-communist, on the other hand, had promoted the appointment of Diệm in advance and now expressly supported the course of Diệm and the Nhus.

Relationship with the USA

Since Diệm was strictly anti-communist, he had the support of the Eisenhower administration, which sent several hundred million dollars and instructors for the military and police. It is estimated that 150,000 people were imprisoned among Diệm and around 12,000 members of the opposition were murdered between 1955 and 1957. His rigid regiment, however, increased popular support for the communist Viet Cong .

As a result, the unrest in the country grew. In 1959 the US ambassador Elbridge Durbrow tried in vain to convince the Vietnamese president to part with the "seemingly toxic family members", the Nhu couple. In November 1960, there was a coup by South Vietnamese paratroopers who called for the government to be reorganized, in particular for the Nhu spouses to be released. Diệm was ready to accept it, but his sister-in-law categorically refused to give in. Loyal troops put an end to the rebellion and Madame Nhu's influence grew. During this rebellion, Durbrow offered Madame Nhu safe escort to the American embassy , which convinced her that the US would have supported it. In 1962 there was another attempted coup: two Vietnamese military pilots trained by the Americans bombed the presidential palace. Madame Nhu fell through a hole made by bombs and suffered bruises and cuts, otherwise no one was significantly injured.

President Diệm was dependent on American military and financial support, but tried to minimize the influence of the Americans on his politics and ignored any criticism from them. So he began to station the army, enlarged with American help, in such a way that it was less effective in fighting the communists, but could be prevented from another coup. This led to conflicts with the generals, who were also annoyed that Madame Nhu was ordering them around like servants. Madame Nhu, in turn, ordered the police to arrest any Vietnamese woman accompanied by an American. In order not to anger the Diệm government, General Paul Harkins forbade the GIs from kissing their Vietnamese friends when they parted at the airport. Since the Vietnam War had far-reaching consequences for Vietnamese women who were forced to work as prostitutes or night club dancers in the years after Diệm's presidency, author Heather Marie Stur called Madame Nhu's 2011 measures “forward-looking”.

The expulsion of the renowned French journalist François Sully from Vietnam caused further resentment between the South Vietnamese and the US government : Sully had worked for various magazines in Vietnam, such as Newsweek , since 1947 . He insulted Madame Nhu, so the reason for the deportation, and would spread lies. The Americans protested, initially believing there was a misunderstanding. Sully's expulsion was also seen as a warning to other journalists.

The "Buddhist Crisis"

Self-immolation of the monk Thích Quảng Đức on June 11, 1963 in Saigon

Since no opposition parties were allowed, Buddhism became a vehicle for resistance against the government, and the so-called " Buddhist crisis " ensued : the Catholic archbishop of Huế , a center of Buddhism in Vietnam, was Ngo Dinh Thuc , a brother of Nhu. As head of the Vietnamese Catholic Church , he controlled large parts of the country that was owned by the Church. When his silver jubilee as bishop was celebrated in 1963, the Vietnamese and a Vatican flags were hoisted ; Under a 1958 Vietnamese law, public display of religious flags was only permitted with the approval of the authorities.

When the 2587th birthday ( Vesakh ) of Buddha was solemnly celebrated in Huế a few days later, however, the raising of the Buddhist flag was not permitted. Around 3,000 people protested against this. Nine people (women and children) were killed when soldiers fired into the crowd. The American ambassador William Trueheart tried in vain to persuade Diệm to make concessions to the Buddhists and to make an apology. Instead, the government accused the Viet Cong of initiating the demonstrations and banned others. As a result there were several self-immolations by Buddhist monks ; Images of it caused horror all over the world. Buddhist nuns went on hunger strike. Violent protests broke out across the country. Der Spiegel summarized: "Through a crusade against the Buddhists, she [Madame Nhu] is about to ruin a decade of anti-communist building work."

The Americans tried to calm the situation and get Diệm to negotiate. However, Madame Nhu and her husband made the situation worse. In a letter to the New York Times , Madame Nhu wrote, "I would clap hands at seeing another monk barbecue shows," and she offered to bring gasoline, matches or mustard to the next self-immolation. She later accused the monks of a lack of patriotism for using imported gasoline. In protest against the daughter's behavior, her father resigned from his post as ambassador to the United States, as did her mother, who was a permanent observer for South Vietnam at the UN .

When Diệm agreed to meet with Buddhist leaders, Madame Nhu called him a "coward". Finally there were rumors that the Nhus were planning to overthrow Diệm, whom they had already gradually sealed off from information. In August 1963, Ngo Din Nhu ordered an attack by his special forces on the Xá Lợi Pagoda in Saigon. The monks barricaded themselves, and after taking the pagoda, 100 were arrested. The journalist David Halberstam reported that afterwards Madame Nhu found herself in a state of euphoria and “babbled like a schoolgirl after a prom”: this was her happiest day since the victory against the Bình Xuyên in 1955. At the same time Nhu's soldiers stormed 2000 pagodas across the country, some burned down and 30 Buddhists killed. The Americans, concerned about the fact that special forces funded by them were being used to attack religious buildings and feared a religious war, now considered tolerating a coup by dissident Vietnamese officers.

On September 10, 1963, Madame Nhu went on a trip to Europe and the United States to solicit support from Diệm's government. The Kennedy administration's announcement that it would cut funding for the regime was called "treason". When she arrived in Washington in October there was no official government official to speak to her; even her father refused to see her. Her mother told the CIA that she had asked Vietnamese compatriots to run over this "monster of a child" in a car, but at least to throw eggs and tomatoes at her daughter.

Overthrow of the Diệms government

On November 1, there was another coup in Saigon , led by General Dương Văn Minh , whom the Americans had assured not to intervene and who was supported by the CIA. Diệm and Nhu fled the presidential palace to the church of Saint-François-Xavier (Nha Tho Cha Tam) in Cholon . After a promise of safe conduct, the two men gave up, but were shot by soldiers. Nhu's body was also dismembered with 20 bayonet stabs.

In the port of Saigon, residents of Saigon demolished figures of the Trưng sisters on a memorial that they had erected the year before in protest against Madame Nhu. Apparently the faces were modeled after that of Madame Nhu.

In exile

Madame Nhu was in Beverly Hills at the time of the coup , but declined to seek political asylum in the United States because her government had been betrayed by the Americans. She traveled to Paris with her children, leaving behind unpaid bills of several thousand dollars ; When the new South Vietnamese government demanded their extradition from France, they traveled on to Rome . The government revoked their diplomatic status and a month later reversed their unpopular laws.

On January 13, 1964, Madame Nhu called the United Nations and requested an investigation into the coup. She also voiced the suspicion that her husband and Diệm were not dead. The following month, the Saigon government pronounced her “ostracized” and issued an arrest warrant for her. In March 1964 she published a statement with attacks on President Kennedy, who had been killed in an assassination attempt in November 1963. In June 1964, she applied for a US visa , but was denied it. In Rome she lived with her brother-in-law, Bishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, in a 15-room villa. Although she said she loathed the American press, she offered to be photographed and interviewed for a fee. When the Vietnam War ended with the surrender of South Vietnam in 1975 , she announced that this would not have happened if her family had stayed in power.

In the last years of her life, Madame Nhu's fortune dwindled. It was rumored to have been worth billions of dollars, but in fact it was just precious jewelry and furs in a few suitcases. Little by little she had to sell her jewelry, and in 1971 she was also the victim of a robbery in which her treasures worth $ 32,000 were stolen. In 1967 their daughter Ngo Dinh Le Thuy was killed in a car accident. In July 1986, her brother Tran Van Khiem, marked by years of imprisonment in Vietnam, was charged in the United States with murdering their parents after he had been disinherited by his father. The couple had been suffocated and found dead in their bedroom. The son was classified as not sane and placed in a psychiatric hospital. In 1993 he was released but had to leave the USA.

In 1978 Madame Nhu announced that she would write a book on the history of South Vietnam , but it never appeared. In the following years she lived withdrawn from the public and refused interviews. From 2005 the American author Monique Demery Brinson successfully sought contact with her and wrote the book Finding the Dragon Lady , which is based on Madame Nhu's notes and conversations. Madame Nhu died in Rome in 2011 at the age of 87 after a long illness. Her remains were cremated; the ashes were given to her family.

museum

Former villa of the Nhu family in Da L (t (built 1958)
Wooden panels from the Nguyen Dynasty in the IV National Archives Center

The summer residence of Madame Nhu in ạà Lạt, the Tran Le Xuan Palace , was built in 1958 by the renowned Vietnamese architect Ngô Viết Thụ and is considered a remarkable example of modern architecture. The complex consists of three buildings on 13,000 square meters, with a Japanese garden, a heated swimming pool and a lake. In one of the buildings there is an escape tunnel to a steel-clad " safe room " with numerous bookshelves for ten people.

Since 2008, one of the buildings has housed a museum on the history of Central Vietnam and the highlands. In addition, the palace serves as the National Archives Center IV , in which the valuable wooden tablets of the Nguyễn dynasty , which were used to print books, are kept. The 34,555 panels are part of the UNESCO World Document Heritage .

The exhibits also include a statue of Hồ Chí Minh , who, as a communist leader, was one of the greatest political opponents of Ngô Đình Diệm and his family.

literature

  • Monique Brinson Demery: Finding the Dragon Lady. The Mystery of Vietnam's Madame Nhu . PublicAffairs, New York NY 2014, ISBN 978-1-61039-467-3 (English).
  • Jessica M. Chapman: Cauldron of Resistance. Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietna . Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London 2013, ISBN 978-0-8014-5061-7 .
  • Marc Frey: History of the Vietnam War. The tragedy in Asia and the end of the American dream . CH Beck, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-69912-2 .
  • Jürgen Horlemann / Peter Gäng: Vietnam. Genesis of a conflict . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-41986-1 .
  • Heather Marie Stur: Beyond Combat. Women and Gender in the Vietnam War Era . Cambridge University Press, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-521-12741-7 .
  • Howard Jones: Death of a Generation. How the assasinations of Diem and JFK prolonged the Vietnam War . Oxford University Press, New York 2003, ISBN 978-0-19-505286-2 .
  • Ngô Đình Nhu, Madame (1924-) . In Ronald B. Frankum Jr .: Historical Dictionary of the War in Vietnam . Scarecrow Press, Plymouth 2011, ISBN 978-0-8108-7956-0 , pp. 320, 321 (English).

Web links

Commons : Madame Nhu  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ^ Demery, Finding the Dragon Lady , p. 18.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu: Feared and outspoken politician who wielded. In: independent.co.uk. June 16, 2011, accessed February 23, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Peter Brush: Rise and Fall of the Dragon Lady. In: HistoryNet. April 14, 2016, accessed February 23, 2018 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e Katie Baker: Finding The Dragon Lady: In Search of Vietnam's Infamous Madame Nhu. In: Daily Beast. September 24, 2013, accessed February 24, 2018 .
  5. ^ A b Joseph R. Gregory: Madame Nhu, Vietnam War Figure, Dies. In: nytimes.com. April 26, 2011, accessed February 24, 2018 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g South Vietnam / Madam Nhu: Dangerous Spring . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1963 ( online ).
  7. ↑ Spencer C. Tucker: The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History, 2nd Edition [4 volumes]. ABC-CLIO, 2011, ISBN 978-1-851-09961-0 , p. 166 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  8. ↑ Stur, Beyond Combat , p. 27.
  9. ↑ Hearden, Tragedy of Vietnam , pp. 74f.
  10. ↑ a b The Lost Paths to Peace (by Roberto Rotondo). In: 30giorni.it. Retrieved February 24, 2018 (Italian).
  11. ↑ Frey, History of the Vietnam War , p. 59.
  12. ↑ Stephen Künzer: Coup! On the history of American imperialism . Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-8218-4587-6 , p. 235 .
  13. ↑ Stur, Beyond Combat , pp. 25f.
  14. ↑ a b Stur, Beyond Combat , p. 27.
  15. ↑ Colby Itkowitz: 'The Dragon Lady': How Madame Nhu helped escalate the Vietnam War. In: washingtonpost.com. September 26, 2017, accessed February 23, 2018 .
  16. ↑ David L. Anderson: The Human Tradition in the Vietnam Era. Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, ISBN 978-0-842-02763-2 , p. 3 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  17. ↑ Horlemann / Gäng, Vietnam , p. 87
  18. ↑ South Vietnam: The Bloody End of the Diem Regime. In: diepresse.com. October 30, 2013, accessed February 24, 2018 .
  19. ↑ a b Sturbridge, Beyond Combat . P. 36.
  20. ^ Institut d'Asie Orientale, Lyon, Isabelle Durand: François Sully - Virtual Saigon. In: virtual-saigon.net. September 17, 1962, accessed February 24, 2018 .
  21. ^ After the murder of Diem in November 1963, François Sully returned to Vietnam. He died in 1971 when a helicopter crashed near the Cambodian border.
  22. ^ Jones, Death of a Generation , p. 247.
  23. ↑ Vietnam War: The Man Who Photographed the Burning Monk. In: welt.de . August 30, 2012, accessed February 24, 2018 .
  24. ^ Robert Templer: Madame Nhu obituary. In: theguardian.com. July 15, 2017, accessed February 25, 2018 .
  25. ↑ Neil Sheehan: A Bright Shining Lie. Random House, 2010, ISBN 978-1-407-06390-4 , p. 335 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  26. ^ "Dragon Lady" Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu dies in Rome. In: CBS News. April 30, 1975, accessed February 23, 2018 .
  27. ^ David Halberstam: The Making of a Quagmire. America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era . Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7425-6008-6 , pp. 31 .
  28. ↑ Stur, Beyond Combat , p. 38.
  29. ^ Justin Corfield: Historical Dictionary of Ho Chi Minh City. Anthem Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-857-28235-4 , p. 189 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  30. ↑ Saigon's Famous Streets and Squares - Me Linh Square. In: Historic Vietnam. January 10, 2016, accessed February 23, 2018 .
  31. ↑ In 1967 the figures on the monument were replaced by new ones, which also depict the Trưng sisters.
  32. ↑ "Memoirs of 'Dragon Lady' Incomplete." States News Service. States News Service. 2011. Accessed March 18, 2018. HighBeam Research: Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 19, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.highbeam.com
  33. ↑ Brinson, Dragon Lady , p. 10.
  34. ^ Change in Will Linked To Saigon Aide's Death. In: nytimes.com. August 8, 1986, accessed February 24, 2018 .
  35. ↑ Judge Frees Son Held in Parents' Deaths. In: pqasb.pqarchiver.com. October 22, 1993. Retrieved February 23, 2018 .
  36. ↑ Madame Nhu (1924-2011). In: - Find A Grave Memorial. Retrieved February 23, 2018 .
  37. ↑ a b Khám phá biệt điện Trần Lệ Xuân. In: news.zing.vn. April 28, 2011, Retrieved March 14, 2018 (Vietnamese).
  38. ↑ Royal documents of the Nguyen dynasty receive a certificate from UNESCO. July 30, 2014, accessed March 14, 2018 .
  39. ↑ Woodblocks of Nguyen Dynasty. International Register for the memory of the world, accessed March 15, 2018 . (pdf)
personal data
SURNAME Nhu, madame
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Trần Lệ Xuân (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Vietnamese first lady
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanoi
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 2011
Place of death Rome