Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ

Note: The surname of this Vietnamese name is Nguyễn , in Western texts the spelling is often simplified Nguyen . According to Vietnamese custom, the person should be referred to by their first name Th - even in formal situations .

Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ (born May 26, 1908 in Mỹ Phước , Long Xuyên Province , An Giang ; † 1976 in Saigon ) was the first Prime Minister of South Vietnam between November 1963 and January 1964. He was head of a civilian government by the military junta of General Dương Văn Minh , who came to power after the overthrow and assassination of South Vietnam's first president, Ngô Đình Diệm . Thơ's tenure was marked by chaos and weakness as the military and civilian government battled for power. Thơ was deposed in the 1964 coup d'état by General Nguyễn Khánh and retired from politics.

As the son of a wealthy estate, Thơ began his political career in the French colonial administration as a provincial governor. After the Second World War he became Minister of the Interior in the French-backed Vietnamese state. After the founding of the Republic of Vietnam as a result of the division of the country, Thơ was involved in the dissolution of the quasi-autonomous Hòa Hảo sect. For these services, and also to make the Diệm regime more popular, he got the post of Vice-President. Thơ was not given any political powers, however, because the Diệm brothers ruled arbitrarily with the help of their private troops and the secret police. Thơ was responsible for the land reform in South Vietnam, and he is held responsible for the failure of the reform because of his status as a large landowner. He supported Diệm during the Buddhist crisis, and although he was a Buddhist himself, he supported Diệm's pro-Catholic policies and his violence against the Buddhist majority.

Early career

Thơ was born the son of a wealthy landowner in Long Xuyên Province in the Mekong Delta. He began his career in the provincial administration of the French colonial power in 1930. After the Second World War, he was appointed Minister of the Interior of the French-backed Vietnamese puppet state under Emperor Bảo Đại . After the battle of Điện Biên Phủ and the withdrawal of France from Indochina, Vietnam was divided into a communist north and an anti-communist platoon. After the Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed under Diệm, Thơ was appointed the country's first ambassador to Japan. Although he spent most of his time in Tokyo in bed with a broken hip, he managed to obtain reparations from Japan for occupying his country during World War II .

In May 1956 he was called back to Saigon to help dissolve the Hòa Hảo sect. The Hòa Hảo had practically built their own state in the Mekong Delta, had private armies, their own administration and opposed the government in Saigon. The government used the Army of the Republic of Vietnam under General Dương Văn Minh against the Hòa Hảo, while Thơ weakened the sect by bribing their warlords. During this time he held the post of State Secretary for Economic Affairs. In November, Thơ was named vice president to popularize the Diệm regime. This appointment was confirmed by the National Assembly in December 1956 under the Constitution. It is generally seen as an attempt by Diệm to use Thơ's roots in the Mekong Delta to gain more influence over the farmers of South Vietnam, while the regime was dominated by Diệm's family members, Catholics from Central Vietnam.

Era of Diệm

Ngô Đình Diệm, President of South Vietnam

Despite his high position, Thơ rarely appeared in public and was a puppet of little influence. The real power was in their hands with the brothers Ngô Đình Cẩn and Ngô Đình Nhu , who had private armies and the secret police and who gave direct orders to the army generals. Nhu even ordered a bodyguard to beat Thơ because he said the vice president showed him too little respect. Diệm limited the power of Thơ and did not allow him to participate in political decisions, although he held the second highest office in the country. Thơ had good contacts with the military, especially with Minh , whom he had helped to get out of French captivity a few years earlier.

Thơ was entrusted with land reform in South Vietnam because the Minister for Agricultural Reform, Nguyen Van Thoi , was subordinate to him. However, both men were wealthy landowners and had little incentive to make the reform a success. The American embassy received numerous criticisms of the hesitant implementation of the policy on the part of Thơ, who was obviously not interested in the land distribution as it would lose much of his property.

Role in the Buddhist crisis

Although Thơ was a Buddhist, he supported the Catholic government of Diệms as best he could. On Diệm's 62nd birthday, Thơ thanked the Almighty for having given the country a leader whose genius is only surpassed by his virtue - although Buddhism knows no supernatural beings in the deistic sense. He later accompanied Diệm to the Redemptorist Church to pray for the president. He had few supporters, as the American Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , General Maxwell D. Taylor , described him as unimpressive , while the eminent State Department official Paul Kattenberg ridiculed him as a nobody .

The project for the cathedral in La Vang also reveals his weaknesses: in the village of La Vang in the province of Quảng Trị , near the border with North Vietnam , there was a female apparition in the late 19th century. The Buddhists claim that the miracle was due to the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (also Guanyin ). Diệm's brother, Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục , was the archbishop of Huế and thus the leading religious figure in the South Vietnamese regime. Thục declared that the apparition was the Virgin Mary and ordered that a Roman Catholic cathedral be built in place of the Buddhist pagoda that had been built on the site of the apparition. For political reasons, Thơ donated considerable sums of money for this project.

In June the Buddhist crisis broke out and Diệm appointed Thơ chairman of a government committee to deal with the Buddhist insurgent crisis sparked by the Hue Vesak shooting , in which eight Buddhists were killed by government forces when they violated the hoist ban Buddhist flags protested to quit. The committee found that the Viet Cong were responsible for the death shots, although all eyewitness reports and an amateur video showed that government forces shot directly at the protesters. The committee's cover-up escalated Buddhist protests. When the de facto First Lady of Vietnam, Madame Ngô Đình Nhu , made fun of the self-immolation of the Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức as a barbecue , Thơ refused to condemn her statements by calling them personal opinions .

At the farewell reception for the American ambassador Frederick Nolting in July, Thơ called for the crackdown on the Buddhists without mercy. He said that Buddhism was not a religion and went on to claim that anyone could become a Buddhist monk, but that it would take years of training to become a Catholic priest. When the Thai ambassador disagreed and referred to his personal experience as a monk, Thơ insulted him in front of all other diplomats.

After pressure on the regime increased during the Buddhist Crisis, tension arose between Diệm, Nhu and government ministers because they held opinions that were incompatible with those of the Ngo clan. When many ministers wanted to resign, Thơ persuaded them to remain in their offices. After the situation became more and more uncomfortable for himself, Thơ himself considered resigning, but renegade generals advised him not to do anything. They were concerned that mass resignations would raise suspicions of a coup.

prime minister

Diệm's body after his murder

As a private citizen, Thơ expressed his dissatisfaction with the Diệm government to American officials. He complained that Diệm was relying on Nhu in his government office, and that Nhu was trying to establish a police state through his secret Can Lao party, and about the failure to fight the Viet Cong . During the McNamara-Taylor mission , Thơ expressed his opinion to the American delegation that the country was being steered in the wrong direction and asked for pressure on Diệm to rethink his policies. He also said behind the scenes that he believed that of the thousands of fortified settlements built by Nhu as part of the Strategic Hamlet Program , fewer than thirty were actually functioning.

Joseph Mendenhall , senior Vietnam adviser to the American government, advocated the overthrow of Diệm in a military strike and his replacement by Thơ. Thơ knew he was the generals' first choice of governance after the planned overthrow of Diệm. After the coup d'état of November 1, 1963 , in which Diệm and Nhu were killed , he was appointed prime minister by the Minh military junta . He was the highest-ranking civil servant in the Provisional Government, led by the Military Revolutionary Council (MRC), and was Minister of Finance and Economy.

Relations with the military

The civil government of Thơ was shaped by power struggles. According to reports from Thơ's assistant, Nguyen Ngoc Huy, the presence of Generals Trần Văn Đôn and Tôn Thất Đính in both the civilian government and the MRC paralyzed government activity: Đôn and Đính were subordinate to Thơ in the civilian government but as members of the MRC they were in front of him. All instructions from Thơ to the civilian government could be reversed by the generals in their capacity as members of the MRC.

The Saigon press, which was relatively free again after the end of censorship by the Di konntem government, reported that the government was paralyzed because all 12 generals of the MRC had equalized. Every member of the MRC had a right of veto, which allowed them to block decisions. The press vehemently attacked Thơ, accusing him of being a tool of the MRC . Thơs behavior during the Diệm presidency has also been questioned, and accusations have been circulating in the media that he supported Diệm and Nhu's suppression of Buddhists. Thơ claimed that he had disapproved of the attacks on Xa Loi Pagoda and tried to prove that he had not resigned from his post only at Minh's request. The media continued to attack Thơ for the personal benefits he had derived from the Diệm government's land distribution policy. Minh defended Thơ, stating that Thơ had planned the coup from the start and that he had the full confidence of the military.

On January 1, 1964, the Wise Men’s Council , one of 60 leading citizens chosen by Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo , met for the first time. His mission was to advise the military and civilian wings of the government on reforms to human rights, constitution, and the legal system. Thơ publicly stated that he expected a rational mindset coupled with objective and realistic assessments, and he said that the aim of the Provisional Government was to pave the way for the permanent government that the people long for. This council consisted almost entirely of academics, while representatives of the peasant and labor movement were not represented. He quickly got caught up in endless discussions and never achieved his first goal of drafting a new constitution. Thơ later admitted that this council did not represent South Vietnamese society and that it was a failure. He saw the reason for the failure in the desire of the council to abandon the status of a purely approving body.

politics

After the fall of Diệm, several American sanctions that had been imposed by Nhu's special forces in the wake of the suppression of the Buddhist crisis and the attack on the Xa Loi Pagoda were lifted. The suspended economic aid and the Commercial Import Program were resumed. The American government swiftly recognized the government of Thơ and Minh.

The Thơ government stopped the Strategic Hamlet Program . Nhu had heralded this program as the solution to the problem of the infiltration of Viet Cong fighters, believing that the mass settlement of peasants in fortified villages would deprive the Viet Cong of their support among farmers. Thơ contradicted reports by Nhu that the program was a success, claiming that only about 20 percent of the approximately 8,600 defensive villages in existence were under government control, and that the remainder had been infiltrated by the communists. The fortified villages, which were considered to be tenable, were strengthened while the rest were dismantled and their residents returned to their original land.

Thơs approach to dismissing supporters of the Diệm government met with criticism from both supporters and opponents of the ousted president. While opponents complained that Thơ was not brave enough to remove pro-Diệm elements, his supporters criticized that the officials were changed too quickly, that the scope of the activities was extensive and bordered on revenge. Many officials suspected of being corrupt or involved in reprisals were arrested, but most of them were later released. General Tôn Thất Đính and the new Police General Mai Hữu Xuân were given control of the Ministry of the Interior. These two were later charged with arresting large numbers of people and releasing them in exchange for bribes or promises of loyalty. Even if not all officials of the Diệm government could be called supporters of Diệm, there were numerous calls for the removal of the old guard. The government has been criticized for removing large numbers of district and provincial governors appointed directly by Diệm, thereby bringing the administration to collapse through sudden changes of power. An important and heavily criticized example of an unsuccessful transfer was General Đỗ Cao Trí , the commander of the 1st Corps of the ARVN , who had become known for his exceptional brutality in suppressing the Buddhist protests in Central Vietnam. Trí was simply transferred to the II Corps.

Fall

The transitional government had no strategy in politics and planning, which led to its rapid collapse. The number of attacks by the Viet Cong shortly before the deposition of Diệm rose sharply after troops were deployed from rural areas to the cities in preparation for the coup. New and correct information about the state of the army was made public and it proved that the situation was much worse than Diệm reported; the loss of weapons increased and the number of defectors from the Viet Cong decreased. The units detached from the land were quickly sent back to their original locations in order to prevent possible offensives by the Viet Cong. The falsification of military statistics under Diệm led to numerous miscalculations and, as a result, to military setbacks.

On January 29, 1964, the MRC was overthrown in a bloodless coup led by General Nguyễn Khánh . The civil arm of the transitional government was dissolved. Thơ retired from politics after enriching himself during his tenure.

literature

• Joseph Buttinger: Vietnam. A Dragon Embattled. Praeger, London 1967 (2 vols .; the German translation The battle-ready dragon. Vietnam according to Dien Bien Phu has been greatly shortened).
• Ellen J. Hammer: A Death in November. America in Vietnam, 1963. EP Dutton, New York 1987, ISBN 0-525-24210-4 .
• Seth Jacobs: Cold War Mandarin. Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America's War in Vietnam, 1950–1963. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md. 2006, ISBN 0-7425-4447-8 .
• Howard Jones: Death of a Generation. How the assassinations of Diem and JFK prolonged the Vietnam War. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2003, ISBN 0-19-505286-2 .
• Harris M. Lentz: Heads of states and governments. A worldwide encyclopedia of over 2,300 leaders, 1945 through 1992. McFarland, Jefferson, NC 1992, ISBN 0-89950-926-6 .
• Robert Shaplen: The lost revolution. Vietnam 1945–1965. Andre Deutsch, London 1965.
• Denis Warner: The Last Confucian. Macmillan, New York 1963.

Web links

• Literature by and about Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ in the catalog of the German National Library
• Nguyen Ngoc Tho in The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History , 2011

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Policy of the Military Revolutionary Council and the Provisional Government , Ed .: Republic Vietnam, Ministry of Information, 1963
2. ↑ Lentz, p. 831.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Jones, p. 99 f, p. 258.
4. ^ Buttinger, p. 944.
5. ↑ Buttinger, p. 954.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Jacobs, p. 95.
7. ↑ ^{a b c d} Hammer, pp. 20–21.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Jones, p. 276.
9. ↑ Hammer, p. 103.
10. ↑ Hammer, p. 104.
11. ↑ ^{a b} Hammer, p. 136.
12. ^ Jones, p. 264.
13. ^ Jacobs, p. 152.
14. ↑ ^{a b} Jones, p. 294.
15. ↑ ^{a b} Warner, p. 230 ff.
16. ^ Shaplen, p. 190.
17. ↑ Hammer, p. 219.
18. ↑ Hammer, p. 373.
19. ↑ Hammer, p. 193.
20. ^ Jones, p. 325.
21. ↑ Hammer, p. 300 ff.
22. ↑ ^{a b} Jones, p. 437.
23. ↑ ^{a b c d} Shaplen, p. 221.
24. ↑ ^{a b} Shaplen, p. 223.
25. ↑ ^{a b} Shaplen, p. 225.
26. ^ ^{A b} The Pentagon Papers: The Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem. May-November, 1963, pp. 266-276. on-line
27. ^ Shaplen, p. 220.
28. ^ Shaplen, p. 213.
29. ^ Shaplen, p. 145.