The arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm

Ngo Dinh Diem

Ngô Đình Diệm was the first president of South Vietnam . In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords, Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam. Accruing considerable U.S. support due to his staunch anti-Communism, he achieved victory in a...

, then president of South Vietnam

South Vietnam

South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...

, marked the culmination of a successful CIA-backed coup d’état

Coup d'état

A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

led by General Dương Văn Minh

Duong Van Minh

Minh was born on 16 February 1916 in Mỹ Tho Province in the Mekong Delta, the son of a wealthy landowner who served in a prominent position in the Finance Ministry of the French colonial administration...

 in November 1963. On the morning of November 2, 1963, Diệm and his adviser, younger brother Ngô Đình Nhu

Ngo Dinh Nhu

Ngô Ðình Nhu was the younger brother and chief political advisor of South Vietnam's first president, Ngô Ðình Diệm. Nhu was widely regarded as the architect of the Ngô family's nepotistic and autocratic rule over South Vietnam from 1955 to 1963...

, were arrested after the Army of the Republic of Vietnam

Army of the Republic of Vietnam

The Army of the Republic of Viet Nam , sometimes parsimoniously referred to as the South Vietnamese Army , was the land-based military forces of the Republic of Vietnam , which existed from October 26, 1955 until the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975...

 (ARVN) had been successful in a bloody overnight siege on Gia Long Palace

Ho Chi Minh City Museum

Ho Chi Minh City Museum is an historical site in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The museum is situated at the corner of Lý Tự Trọng street and Nam Kỳ khởi nghĩa street, near Reunification Palace, originally Independence Palace.-History:The building now occupied by the museum was built during the...

 in Saigon

Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City , formerly named Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam...

. The coup was the culmination of nine years of autocratic and nepotistic family rule in South Vietnam.