Word: diem
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...PART OF THAT struggle, it is helpful to see Vietnam's fight in its proper perspective. In 1958, anti-Diem terrorists in the South started to avenge the man-hunts launched against Diem's opponents and the indiscriminate imprisonment of people alleged to be members of anti-government political and religious groups which Diem began in 1957. Hanoi still hoped to reunify Vietnam according to the 1954 Geneva agreements, and, with Moscow's advice, Hanoi protested with diplomatic notes while anti-Diem forces in the South were mobilizing...
...National Liberation Front was able to crystallize together with the Northern activist elements only in 1959 as U.S. aid to Diem made "peaceful coexistence" look untenable to Northern leadership. Guerilla warfare intensified until 1965, when Hanoi escalated--probably not fully appreciating U.S. willingness to pulverize North Vietnam mercilessly as in the carpet-bombing raids last December...
Thumbing through 59 TIME cover stories is another way to review the twists, shocks, hopes and frustrations of the strangest war in U.S. history. Through the 1950s, it was still a foreign conflict, and the cover subjects included Emperor Bao Dai, Ho Chi Minh (top two) and Ngo Dinh Diem. When a military coup felled Diem in 1963, Murray Gart, now chief of correspondents, watched some of the action from a Saigon rooftop. There was only one central cable office in Saigon then, and to avoid delay and censorship, Gart flew to Bangkok to file material for a cover story...
...streets of Saigon were filled with joy and vengeance on Nov. 1, 1963-the day that South Vietnamese generals stormed Ngo Dinh Diem's presidential palace and sent him to his grave. First came the long night of siege and the thunder of tanks in battle at the palace walls. Then came the final rush through the grounds by Diem's once faithful soldiers. As the battle subsided, I caught the first glimpse of a white flag waving tentatively from a first-floor palace window. In a minute or so the air was filled with silence-and with...
Other mobs formed and swirled through the city. One of them, about 5,000 strong, tore off the head of a huge statue they thought to be a likeness of Madame Nhu, Diem's sister-in-law. They wheeled it through the streets, then joyously rolled it up and down the steps of the National Assembly over and over again. Up the street, another group heaved rocks into the bookstore owned by one of Diem's brothers, tossed the books and religious objects into the gutter and put the torch to the pile of rubble. The people danced...