Dương Văn Minh ( or ; 16 February 19166 August 2001), popularly known as Big Minh, was a South Vietnamese politician and a senior general in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and a politician during the presidency of Ngô Đình Diệm. In 1963, he became chief of a military junta after leading a coup in which Diệm was assassinated. Minh lasted only three months before being toppled by Nguyễn Khánh, but assumed power again as the fourth and last President of South Vietnam in April 1975, two days before surrendering to North Vietnamese forces. He earned his nickname "Big Minh", because he was approximately 1.83 m (6 ft) tall and weighed 90 kg (198 lb).
Born in Tiền Giang province in the Mekong Delta region of southern Vietnam, Minh joined the French Army at the start of World War II, and was captured and tortured by the Imperial Japanese, who invaded and seized French Indochina. After his release, he joined the French-backed Vietnamese National Army (VNA) and was imprisoned by the communist-dominated Viet Minh before breaking out. In 1955, after Vietnam was partitioned and the State of Vietnam controlled the southern half under Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm, Minh led the VNA in decisively defeating the Bình Xuyên paramilitary crime syndicate in street combat and dismantling the Hòa Hảo religious tradition's private army. This made him popular with the people and Diệm, but the latter later put him in a powerless position, regarding him as a threat.
In 1963, the authoritarian Diệm became increasingly unpopular due to the Buddhist crisis and the ARVN generals decided to launch a coup, which Minh eventually led. Diệm was assassinated on 2 November 1963 shortly after being deposed. Minh was accused of ordering an aide, Nguyễn Văn Nhung, to kill Diệm. Minh then led a junta for three months, but he was an unsuccessful leader and was heavily criticized for being lethargic and uninterested. During his three months of rule, many civilian problems intensified and the communist Viet Cong made significant gains. Angered at not receiving his desired post, General Nguyễn Khánh led a group of similarly motivated officers in a January 1964 coup. Khánh allowed Minh to stay on as a token head of state in order to capitalize on Minh's public standing, but retained real power. After a power struggle, Khanh had Minh exiled. Minh stayed away before deciding to return and challenge General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu in the presidential election of 1971. When it became obvious that Thieu would rig the poll, Minh withdrew and did not return until 1972, keeping a low profile.
Minh then advocated a "third force", maintaining that Vietnam could be reunified without a military victory to a hardline communist or anti-communist government. However, this was not something that Thiệu agreed with. In April 1975, as South Vietnam was on the verge of being overrun, Thieu resigned. A week later, Minh was chosen by the legislature and became president on 28 April. On 30 April, Minh ordered a surrender to avoid devastation to the remaining territories held by the South, and the northern army seized Saigon. Minh was spared the lengthy incarceration meted out to South Vietnamese military personnel and civil servants, and lived quietly until being allowed to emigrate to France in 1983. He later moved to California, in the US, where he died.
Early years
Minh was born on 16 February 1916 in Mỹ Tho Province in the Mekong Delta, to a wealthy landowner who served in a prominent position in the Finance Ministry of the French colonial administration. Unlike many of his classmates, Minh declined French citizenship and joined the Corps Indigène, the local component of the French colonial army.
He began his military career in 1940, and was one of only 50 Vietnamese officers to be commissioned when he graduated from the École Militaire in France. During the 1940s, Imperial Japan invaded Indochina and seized control from France. Minh was captured and later had only a single tooth that remained from the torture he had suffered at the hands of the Kempeitai (Japanese military police). He always smiled displaying the single tooth, which he regarded as a symbol of his toughness.
In May 1955, he led VNA forces in the Battle of Saigon, when they dismantled the private army of the Bình Xuyên crime syndicate in urban warfare in the district of Chợ Lớn. With the Bình Xuyên vanquished, Diệm turned his attention to conquering the Hòa Hảo. As a result, a battle between Minh's VNA troops and Ba Cụt's men commenced in Cần Thơ on 5 June. Five Hòa Hảo battalions surrendered immediately; Ba Cụt and three remaining leaders had fled to the Cambodian border by the end of the month. Understanding that they could not defeat Minh's men in open conventional warfare, Ba Cụt's forces destroyed their own bases so that the VNA could not use their abandoned resources, and retreated into the jungle. Ba Cụt's 3,000 men spent the rest of 1955 evading the 20,000 VNA troops commanded by Minh.
thumb|President Ngô Đình Diệm congratulating Minh
The victories over the Hòa Hảo and the Bình Xuyên were the zenith of Minh's battlefield career. When Minh arrived at a military parade in his jeep before the reviewing stand after the victories, Diệm embraced him and kissed both cheeks. According to historian Howard Jones, Minh was "in charge of three telephones", and remained in the post until Diệm's overthrow. went to observe the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO)'s military exercises in Thailand, where they were informed about the regional disquiet over Diệm's policies toward Buddhists.
Minh frequently railed against Diệm in his September meeting with Lodge, decrying the police state that was being created by the Cần Lao Party of the Ngô family. Harkins reported that Minh "has done nothing but complain to me about the government and the way it is handled since I have been here". Harkins was skeptical about Minh's claims of widespread public disenchantment.
During late-September, President Kennedy dispatched the McNamara Taylor mission to investigate the political and military situation in South Vietnam. This included investigating an ARVN coup. Minh expressed an interest in meeting McNamara and Taylor, so a game of doubles tennis was organized. McNamara watched on as Taylor played with Minh, giving "broad hints of our interest in other subjects which we gave him during breaks in the game". Diệm became very unpopular during the Buddhist crisis of 1963; the US informed the Vietnamese generals (through the CIA) that it would not object if Diệm were to be overthrown. Minh was the second highest ranking general at the time, and he led the coup to overthrow Diệm on 1 November 1963.
In the afternoon, Minh ordered his bodyguard, Nguyễn Văn Nhung, to arrest, and later execute, Colonel Lê Quang Tung, one of Diệm's closest and most faithful associates. The generals hated Tung, because, at Ngô Đình Nhu's instructions, he had disguised his men in regular army uniforms and framed the army for the Xá Lợi Pagoda raids several months earlier, in August. At nightfall, Nhung took Tung and Major Lê Quảng Trịeu, his brother and deputy and drove them to the edge of Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Forced to kneel over two freshly dug holes, the brothers were shot into their graves and buried. In the early morning of 2 November, Diệm agreed to surrender. The ARVN officers had reportedly originally intended merely to exile Diệm and Nhu, having promised them safe passage".
Minh and Đôn asked Colonel Lucien Conein to secure an American aircraft to take the brothers out of the country. Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman recommended that if the generals decide to exile Diệm, he should also be sent outside Southeast Asia. He went on to anticipate what he termed a "Götterdämmerung in the palace".
Minh then went to Gia Long Palace, and Minh sent an armored personnel carrier to transport Diệm and Nhu, while the others prepared for the ceremonial and televised handover of power to the junta.
Nhung and Nghĩa sat with the brothers in the APC as the convoy headed off after the arrest. Before the convoy had departed for the church, Minh was reported to have gestured to Nhung, who was a contract killer and Minh's bodyguard, When the corpses arrived at military headquarters, the generals were shocked. Đôn ordered another general to tell reporters that the brothers had died in an accident and went to confront Minh in his office. Conein soon realized that the generals' story was false. Soon after, photos of the bloodied corpses of the brothers appeared in the media, discrediting the generals' lies. Đôn's assertion that the assassinations were unplanned proved sufficient for Lodge, who told the State Department that "I am sure assassination was not at their direction." Minh and Đôn reiterated their position in a meeting with Conein and Lodge a few days after the coup. Lodge believed Xuân was at least partly culpable, asserting: "Diệm and Nhu had been assassinated, if not by Xuan personally, at least at his direction." Thiệu denied responsibility and issued a statement: "Dương Văn Minh has to assume entire responsibility for the death of Ngô Đình Diệm."
Conein asserted that Minh's humiliation by Diệm and Nhu was a major motivation for ordering their executions. Conein reasoned that the brothers were doomed to death once they escaped from the palace, instead of surrendering and accepting the offer of safe exile. Having successfully stormed the palace, Minh had arrived at the presidential residence in full ceremonial military uniform "with a sedan and everything else". Conein described Minh as a "very proud man" who had lost face by turning up at the palace, ready to claim victory, only to find an empty building. He claimed that Diệm and Nhu would not have been killed if they were in the palace, because there were too many people present. Despite his nominally being the second most important person in the Diệm regime, Thơ was a figurehead with little influence, which lay with Diệm's brothers. Diệm held Thơ in contempt and did not allow him to take part in policy decisions. Tho entered into intensive bargaining with Minh on 2 November on the composition of the interim government. Thơ knew that the generals wanted to have him head a new government to provide continuity, and he used this as leverage in bargaining with them about the makeup of the cabinet. The Americans recognized Minh and immediately restored the aid programs and that had been cut to punish Diệm in the last days of his rule. Stanley Karnow said "He was a model of lethargy, lacking both the skill and the inclination to govern". According to Karnow, Minh lamented to him that because of his role as the junta head, he "didn't have enough time to grow his orchids or play tennis". Thơ's civilian government was plagued by infighting. According to Thơ's assistant, Nguyễn Ngọc Huy, the presence of Generals Đôn and Đính in both the civilian cabinet and the MRC paralysed the governance process. Đính and Đôn were subordinate to Tho in the civilian government, but as members of the MRC they were superior to him. Whenever Thơ gave an order in the civilian hierarchy with which the generals disagreed, they would go to the MRC and make a counter-order.
The press strongly attacked Thơ, accusing his civilian government of being "tools" of the MRC.
On 1 January 1964, a 'Council of Notables' comprising sixty leading citizens met for the first time, having been selected by Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo for Minh's junta. Its job was to advise the military and civilian wings of the government with a view towards reforming human rights, the constitution and the legal system.
Minh and Thơ halted Nhu's Strategic Hamlet Program. Nhu had trumpeted the program as the solution to South Vietnam's difficulties with VC insurgents, believing that the mass relocation of peasants into fortified villages would isolate the VC from their peasant support base. According to the junta, only 20% of the 8,600 existing strategic hamlets were under Saigon's control, with the rest having been taken over by the VC, contradicting Nhu's claims of widespread success. Those hamlets that were deemed to be tenable were consolidated, while the remainder were dismantled and their inhabitants returned to their ancestral land.
Under Minh's rule, there was a large turnover of officials aligned with Diệm. Many were indiscriminately arrested without charge, most of whom were later released. Đính and the new national police chief General Mai Hữu Xuân were given control of the interior ministry and were accused of arresting people en masse, before releasing them in return for bribes and pledges of loyalty. The government was criticised for firing large numbers of district and provincial chiefs directly appointed by Diệm, causing a breakdown in law and order during the abrupt transition of power. The number of rural attacks instigated by the VC surged in the wake of Diệm's deposal, due to the displacement of troops into urban areas for the coup. The increasingly free discussion generated from the surfacing of new and accurate data following the coup revealed that the military situation was far worse than what was reported by Diệm. The incidence of VC attacks continued to increase as it had done during the summer of 1963, the weapons loss ratio worsened and the rate of VC defections fell. The units that participated in the coup were returned to the field to guard against a possible major VC offensive in the countryside. The falsification of military statistics by Diệm's officials had led to miscalculations, which manifested themselves in military setbacks after Diệm's death.
Overthrow by Nguyễn Khánh
General Nguyễn Khánh began to plot against the MRC after it was created. Khánh expected a large reward for his part in the coup, but the other generals regarded him as untrustworthy and excluded him from the MRC. They further moved him to the command of the I Corps in the far north to keep him far away from Saigon. Khánh later claimed that he had built up intelligence infrastructure to weed out the VC under Diệm, but that Minh's MRC had disbanded it and released VC prisoners. Khánh was assisted by Generals Trần Thiện Khiêm, who controlled the forces around Saigon, Đỗ Mậu and Nguyễn Chánh Thi. Khánh and his colleagues spread rumours to American officials that Minh and his colleagues were about to declare South Vietnam's neutrality and sign a peace deal to end the war with the North.
Khánh overthrew Minh and his colleagues on 30 January 1964, in a bloodless coup, completely catching the MRC off guard. Minh, Đôn and Lê Văn Kim woke up to find hostile forces surrounding their houses and thought it to be a quixotic stunt by some disgruntled young officers.
Khánh used the coup to enact retribution against Minh, Đôn, Kim, Đính and Xuân. He had them arrested, claiming that they were part of a neutralist plot with the French. Khánh cited their service in the Vietnamese National Army in the early 1950s, under the French colonial administration as evidence, although he did as well. Khánh later persuaded Minh to remain as a figurehead head of state. This was partly due to pressure from American officials, who felt that the popular Minh would be a unifying and stabilising factor in the new regime. However, Khánh soon sidelined Minh.
Minh reportedly resented the fact that he had been deposed by a younger officer whom he viewed as an unscrupulous upstart. He was also upset with the detention of his fellow generals and around 30 of his junior officers. The junior officers were set free when Minh demanded that Khánh release them in return for his service. In the meantime, Khánh could not substantiate his claims against the generals.
Khánh presided over the trial, The tribunal then "congratulated" the generals, but found that they were of "lax morality", unqualified to command due to a "lack of a clear political concept" and confined to desk jobs. Robert Shaplen said that "the case … continued to be one of Khánh's biggest embarrassments". In response to claims that he was harking back to the Diệm era of Roman Catholic domination, Khánh made concessions to the Buddhists, sparking opposition from Khiêm and Thiệu, both Catholics. They then tried to remove him in favour of Minh, and they recruited many officers. Khiêm and Thiệu sought out Taylor and sought a private endorsement to install Minh by staging a coup against Khánh, but the US ambassador did not want any more changes in leadership, fearing a corrosive effect on the government. This deterred Khiêm's group from staging a coup.
The division among the generals came to a head at a meeting of the MRC on 26–27 August. Khánh and Khiêm blamed one another for the increasing unrest across the nation. Thiệu and another Catholic, General Nguyễn Hữu Có, called for the replacement of Khánh with Minh, but the latter refused. Minh reportedly claimed that Khánh was the only one who would get financial assistance from Washington, so they supported him, prompting Khiêm to angrily say, "Obviously, Khánh is a puppet of the U.S. government, and we are tired of being told by the Americans how we should run our internal affairs". During the coup, Minh had remained aloof from the proceedings, angering Khánh and keeping their long-running rivalry going. By the end of October, the Johnson administration became more supportive of Taylor's negative opinion of Minh and concluded that US interests would be optimized if Khánh prevailed in the power struggle. As a result, the Americans eventually paid for Minh to go on a "good will tour" so that he could be pushed off the political scene without embarrassment, while Khiêm was exiled to Washington as an ambassador after being implicated in the coup.
A short while earlier in September, before Minh was sent overseas, the junta decided to create a semblance of civilian rule by creating the High National Council (HNC), an appointed advisory body that was to begin the transitional to constitutional rule. Khánh put Minh in charge of picking the 17 members of the group, and he filled it with figures sympathetic to him. They then made a resolution to recommend a model with a powerful head of state, which would likely be Minh. Khánh did not want his rival taking power, so he and the Americans convinced the HNC to dilute the power inherent in the position to make it unappealing to Minh. The HNC then selected Phan Khắc Sửu as chief of state, and Sửu selected Trần Văn Hương as prime minister, although the junta remained the real power. By the end of the year, Minh was back in Vietnam after his tour.
Khánh prevails
Khánh and a group of younger officers decided to forcibly retire officers with more than 25 years of service, such as Minh and the other generals deposed in Khánh's January coup; nominally this was because they thought them to be lethargic and ineffective, but tacitly, and far more importantly, because they were potential rivals for power. According to Khánh and the Young Turks, this older group was led by Minh and had been crafting plots with the Buddhists to regain power. which turned down the request. On 19 December, the generals dissolved the HNC; several of its members, other politicians and student leaders were arrested, while Minh and the other older generals were arrested and flown to Pleiku, and later removed from the military. As the main attack on Saigon developed on 27 April 1975, in a joint sitting of the bicameral National Assembly, the presidency was unanimously handed over to Minh, who was sworn in the following day. The French government thought that Minh could broker a cease-fire and had advocated his ascension to power. had long-standing contacts with the communists, This expectation was totally unrealistic, as the North Vietnamese were in an overwhelmingly dominant position on the battlefield and final victory was within reach, so they saw no need for power-sharing, regardless of any political changes in Saigon.
On 28 April 1975, PAVN forces fought their way into the outskirts of the capital. Later that afternoon, as Minh finished his acceptance speech, in which he called for an immediate cease-fire and peace talks, As Biên Hòa fell, General Nguyễn Văn Toàn, the III Corps commander, fled to Saigon, saying that most of the top ARVN leadership had virtually resigned themselves to defeat. The inauguration of Minh had served as a signal to South Vietnamese officers who would not compromise with the communists. They began to pack up and leave, or commit suicide to avoid capture. On 29 April, as an act of reconciliation with the North, Minh sent a letter to US Ambassador Graham Martin, requesting that all staff of the American Defense Attaché Office leave the country within 24 hours.
PAVN columns advanced into the city center encountering very little resistance. Except in the Mekong Delta, where South Vietnamese military forces were still intact and aggressive, the South Vietnamese military had virtually ceased to exist. Just before 05:00 on 30 April, At 10:24,
Around noon on 30 April, a PAVN tank crashed through the gates of the Independence Palace. When the PAVN troops entered the Independence Palace they found Minh and his cabinet sitting around the big oval table in the cabinet room, waiting for them. As they entered, Minh said "The revolution is here. You are here." He lived there in seclusion for eight years, where he continued to raise birds and grow exotic orchids.