Editing Ngo Dinh Diem (section)

== Early career ==
After graduating at the top of his class in 1921, Diệm followed in the footsteps of his eldest brother,{{Tone inline|date=August 2023}} Ngô Đình Khôi, joining the civil service in [[Thừa Thiên Huế province|Thừa Thiên]] as a junior official. Starting from the lowest rank of mandarin, Diệm steadily rose over the next decade. He first served at the royal library in Huế, and within one year was the district chief in both Thừa Thiên and nearby [[Quảng Trị province]],<ref name="early k">{{harvnb|Fall|1967|p= 239}}</ref> presiding over seventy villages. Diệm was promoted to be a provincial chief ([[Tuần phủ]]) in Ninh Thuận at the age of 28, overseeing 300 villages.{{sfn|Moyar|2006|p=12}}
[[File:Baodai2.jpg|alt=emperor Bảo Đại|left|thumb|194x194px|Portrait of [[Empire of Vietnam|emperor]] [[Bảo Đại]]]]
During his career as a mandarin, Diệm was known for his industriousness and incorruptibility, and as a Catholic leader and nationalist. Catholic nationalism in Vietnam during the 1920s and 1930s facilitated Diệm's ascent in his bureaucratic career.<ref name="early k" />
 
Diệm's rise was also facilitated through his brother Ngô Đình Khôi's marriage to the daughter of [[Nguyễn Hữu Bài]], who was the Catholic head of the Council of Ministers at the Huế court. Bài also supported the indigenization of the Vietnamese Church and giving more administrative powers to the monarchy.{{sfn|Miller|2013|p=25}} Bài was highly regarded among the French administration. Diệm's religious and family ties impressed Bài and he became Diệm's patron.<ref name=":0" /> The French were impressed by his work ethic but were irritated by Diệm's frequent calls to grant more autonomy to Vietnam. Diệm contemplated resigning but encouragement from the populace convinced him to persist. In 1925, he first encountered communists distributing propaganda while riding horseback through the region near Quảng Trị. Revolted by calls for violent socialist revolution contained in the propaganda leaflets, Diệm involved himself in anti-communist activities for the first time, spreading his own anti-communist pamphlets.<ref name=":2">{{harvnb|Jacobs|2006|p=20}}</ref>
 
In 1929, he was promoted to the governorship of [[Bình Thuận Province]] and was known for his work ethic. In 1930 and 1931, he helped the French suppress the first peasant revolts organized by the communists.<ref name=":2" /> According to historian [[Bernard B. Fall]] Diệm put the revolts down as he believed they would not lead to the removal of the French but might threaten the leadership of the mandarins.<ref name="early k" /> In 1933, with the ascension of [[Bảo Đại]] to the throne, Diệm accepted Bảo Đại's invitation to be his interior minister following lobbying by Nguyễn Hữu Bài. Soon after his appointment, Diệm headed a commission to advise on potential administration reforms. After calling for the French administration to introduce a Vietnamese legislature and many other political reforms, he resigned after three months in office when his proposals were rejected.<ref>{{cite book|title= The end of the Vietnamese monarchy|last= Lockhart|first= Bruce McFarland|publisher= Council on Southeast Asia Studies, Yale Center for International and Area Studies.|year= 1993|pages= 68–86|isbn=093869250X}}</ref> Diệm denounced Emperor Bảo Đại as "nothing but an instrument in the hands of the French administration", and renounced his decorations and titles from Bảo Đại. The French administration then threatened him with arrest and exile.<ref name="early k" />
 
For the next decade, Diệm lived as a private citizen with his family in Huế, although he was kept under surveillance. He spent his time reading, meditating, attending church, gardening, hunting, and in amateur photography.<ref name="Moyar, p.13">{{harvnb|Moyar|2006|p=13}}</ref> Diệm also conducted extensive nationalist activities during those 21 years, engaging in meetings and correspondence with various leading Vietnamese revolutionaries, such as his friend, [[Phan Bội Châu]], a Vietnamese anti-colonial activist, whom Diệm respected for his knowledge of Confucianism and argued that Confucianism's teachings could be applied to a modern Vietnam.<ref name="Moyar, p.13" />  With the start of the [[Second World War|World War II]] in the Pacific, seeing an opportunity for Vietnam to challenge French colonization, he attempted to persuade the Japanese forces to declare independence for Vietnam in 1942 but was ignored. Diệm also tried to establish relationships with Japanese diplomats, army officers, and intelligence operatives who supported Vietnam's independence.{{sfn|Miller|2013|p=30}} In 1943, Diệm's Japanese friends helped him to contact Prince [[Cường Để]], an anti-colonial activist, who was in exile in Japan.{{sfn|Trần Mỹ-Vân|2005|pp = 32-67}}
 
After contacting Cường Để, Diệm formed a secret political party, the [[Việt Nam Quang Phục Hội|Association for the Restoration of Great Vietnam]] (Việt Nam Đại Việt Phục Hưng Hội), which was dominated by his Catholic allies in Hue.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Keith |first=Charles |title=Catholic Vietnam: a church from empire to nation |date=2012 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-27247-7 |series=From Indochina to Vietnam |location=Berkeley |pages=212}}</ref> When its existence was discovered in the summer of 1944, the French declared Diệm to be subversive and ordered his arrest. He flew to Saigon under Japanese military protection, staying there until the end of WWII.{{sfn|Miller|2013|p=30}}
 
In 1945, after the [[Japanese coup d'état in French Indochina|coup against French colonial rule]], the Japanese offered Diệm the post of prime minister in the [[Empire of Vietnam]] under Bảo Đại, which they organized on leaving the country. He declined initially, but reconsidered his decision and attempted to reverse the refusal. However, Bảo Đại had already given the post to [[Trần Trọng Kim]]. In September 1945, after the Japanese withdrawal, [[Ho Chi Minh|Hồ Chí Minh]] proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and in the Northern half of Vietnam, his [[Viet Minh|Việt Minh]] began fighting the French administration. Diệm attempted to travel to Huế to dissuade Bảo Đại from joining Hồ but was arrested by the Việt Minh along the way and exiled to a highland village near the border. He might have died of malaria, dysentery, and influenza had the local tribesmen not nursed him back to health. Six months later, he was taken to meet Hồ, who recognized Diệm's virtues and, wanting to extend the support for his new government,{{sfn|Jacobs|2006|p=22}} asked Diệm to be a minister of the interior. Diệm refused to join the Việt Minh, assailing Hồ for the murder of his brother Ngô Đình Khôi by Việt Minh cadres.<ref name="early k" /><ref name="mid j">{{harvnb|Jacobs|2006|pp=20-25}}</ref>[[File:5 vị Thượng thư từ trái qua phải Hồ Đắc Khải, Phạm Quỳnh, Thái Văn Toản, Ngô Đình Diệm, Bùi Bằng Đoàn.jpg|alt=The five high-ranking mandarins (Thượng thư) of the Nguyễn dynasty during the reign of the Bảo Đại Emperor: Hồ Đắc Khải, Phạm Quỳnh, Thái Văn Toản, Ngô Đình Diệm, and Bùi Bằng Đoàn.|left|thumb|The five high-ranking [[Mandarin (bureaucrat)|mandarins]] (''Thượng thư'') of the Nguyễn dynasty during the reign of Emperor [[Bảo Đại]] (from left to right): [[Hồ Đắc Khải]], [[Phạm Quỳnh]], [[Thái Văn Toản]], Ngô Đình Diệm, and [[Bùi Bằng Đoàn]].]]During the [[First Indochina War|Indochina War]], Diệm and other non-communist nationalists had to face a dilemma: they did not want to restore colonial rule and did not want to support the Việt Minh. Diệm proclaimed his neutrality and attempted to establish a Third Force movement that was both anti-colonialist and anti-communist{{sfn|Miller|2013|p=32}} In 1947, he became the founder and chief of the National Union Bloc (Khối Quốc Gia Liên Hiệp) and then folded it into the Vietnam National Rally (Việt Nam Quốc Gia Liên Hiệp), which united non-communist Vietnamese nationalists. He also established relationships with some leading Vietnamese anti-communists like [[Nguyễn Tôn Hoàn]] (1917–2001), a fellow Catholic and political activist. His other allies and advisors were dominated by Catholics, especially his family members and their friends.{{sfn|Miller|2013|pp=32-33}}
 
Diệm also secretly maintained contact with high-ranking leaders of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, attempting to convince them to leave Hồ Chí Minh's government and join him. Meanwhile, Diệm lobbied French colonial officials for “true independence” for Vietnam, but was disappointed when Bảo Đại agreed to French demands for an “associate state” within the French Union, which allowed France to maintain its diplomatic, economic, and military policies in Vietnam.{{sfn|Miller|2013|p=35}} In the meantime, the French had created the [[State of Vietnam]] and Diệm refused Bảo Đại's offer to become the Prime Minister. On 16 June 1949, he published a new manifesto in newspapers proclaiming a third force different from the Việt Minh and Bảo Đại, but it raised little interest and provided further evidence to both the French and Việt Minh that Diệm was a dangerous rival.{{sfn|Miller|2013|p=36}}
 
In 1950, the Việt Minh lost patience and sentenced him to death in absentia, and the French refused to protect him. Hồ Chí Minh's cadres tried to assassinate him while he was traveling to visit his elder brother Thục, bishop of the Vĩnh Long diocese in the Mekong Delta. Recognizing his political status, Diệm decided to leave Vietnam in 1950.<ref name="early k" /><ref name="mid j" />
 
According to Miller, during his early career, there were at least three ideologies that influenced Diệm's social and political views in the 1920s and 1930s. The first of these were Catholic nationalism, which Diệm inherited from his family's tradition, especially from his brother Bishop Ngô Đình Thục and Nguyễn Hữu Bài, who advised him to "return the seal" in 1933 to oppose French policies. The second was Diệm's understanding of Confucianism, especially through his friendship with Phan Bội Châu who argued that Confucianism's teachings could be applied to modern Vietnam. Lastly, instructed by Ngô Đình Nhu, Diệm began to examine [[Personalist Labor Revolutionary Party|Personalism]], which originated from [[Roman Catholicism in France|French Catholicism]]'s philosophy and then applied this doctrine as the main ideology of his regime.{{sfn|Miller|2013|pp=20-30}}