Ngo Dinh Diem - Exile

Exile

Diệm applied for permission to travel to Rome for the Holy Year celebrations at the Vatican. After gaining French permission he left in August with Thục, apparently destined to become a politically irrelevant figure. Before going to Europe, Diệm went to Japan, where he intended to meet Cường Để to enlist support to seize power. Neither this nor an attempt to woo help from General Douglas MacArthur, the American supreme commander in occupied Japan, yielded meetings. A friend managed to organise a meeting with Wesley Fishel, an American academic who had done consultancy work for the United States government. Fishel was a proponent of the anti-colonial, anti-communist third force doctrine in Asia and was impressed with Diệm and helped him organise contacts and meetings in the United States to enlist support. It was an opportune time for Diệm, with the outbreak of the Korean War and McCarthyism helping to make Vietnamese anti-communists a sought after commodity in America. Diệm was given a reception at the State Department with the Acting Secretary of State James E. Webb. He reportedly gave a weak performance, in which Thục did most of the talking. As a result, no further audiences with notable officials were afforded to him. However, he did meet Francis Cardinal Spellman, regarded as the most politically powerful cleric of his time. Spellman had studied with Thục in Rome in the 1930s and was to become one of Diệm's most powerful advocates.

Diệm obtained an audience with Pope Pius XII in Rome before further lobbying across Europe. He attempted to convince Bảo Đại to make him the Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam but was turned down. Diệm returned to the United States to continue lobbying. In 1951 he secured an audience with Secretary of State Dean Acheson. During the next three years he lived at Spellman's Maryknoll seminary in Lakewood Township, New Jersey and occasionally at another seminary in Ossining, New York.

Spellman helped Diệm to garner support among right-wing and Catholic circles. Diệm toured the East Coast, speaking at universities, arguing that Vietnam could only be saved for the "free world" if the US sponsored a government of nationalists who were opposed to both the Việt Minh and the French. He was appointed as a consultant to Michigan State University's Government Research Bureau, where Fishel worked. MSU was administering government-sponsored assistance programs for cold war allies, and Diệm helped Fishel to lay the foundation for a program later implemented in South Vietnam, the Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group. As French power in Vietnam declined, Diệm's support in the U.S. increased.

With the fall of Điện Biên Phủ in 1954 to the Viet Minh, French control of Vietnam collapsed and Bảo Đại needed foreign help to sustain his State of Vietnam. Realising Diệm's popularity among American policymakers, he chose Diệm's youngest brother Ngô Đình Luyện, who was studying in Europe at the time, to be part of his delegation at the 1954 Geneva Conference to determine the future of Indochina. Luyen represented Bảo Đại in his dealings with the Americans, who understood this to be an expression of interest in Diệm. With the backing of the Eisenhower administration, Bảo Đại named Diệm as the Prime Minister. The appointment was widely condemned by French officials, who felt that Diệm was incompetent, with the Prime Minister Mendes-France declaring Diệm to be a "fanatic".

The Geneva accords resulted in Vietnam being partitioned temporarily at the 17th parallel, pending elections in 1956 to reunify the country. The Vietminh controlled the north, while the French backed State of Vietnam controlled the south with Diệm as the Prime Minister. French Indochina was to be dissolved at the start of 1955. Diệm's South Vietnamese delegation chose not to sign the accords, refusing to have half the country under communist rule, but the agreement went into effect regardless. Diệm arrived at Tân Sơn Nhất airport in Saigon on 26 June where only a few hundred people turned out to greet him, mainly Catholics. He managed only one wave after getting into his vehicle and did not smile.