On November 1, 1963, a South Vietnamese military coup overthrew the government of Ngo Dinh Diem. The next day, November 2, the president and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu fled from the palace to Cholon via an underground passage, where they were captured by a group of South Vietnamese soldiers. While being escorted to the Joint Forces Headquarters of the South Vietnamese Army, they were assassinated together with their hands tied and shot in the head. Jem's body was buried in an unmarked grave in the cemetery next to the U.S. ambassador's house. on October 26, 1955, Diem declared the independence of the Republic of Vietnam as its first president.
Although Diem's assassination caused celebration among many in South Vietnam, it also led to political turmoil in South Vietnam. The U.S. became more involved in Vietnam in an effort to stabilize the South Vietnamese government and defeat the communist North Vietnamese government, which posed a powerful threat. By October 1863, there were about 16,000 American troops in the country. Former General Douglas MacArthur warned President Kennedy that the U.S. Army would be stalled in the land war in Vietnam.
The U.S. publicly disavowed any involvement in planning the coup that assassinated Jem. It was later revealed that U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials paid about $42,000 to South Vietnamese military commander Duong Van Minh, who organized the coup, to help carry it out. Diem became increasingly autocratic and dominated the people of South Vietnam. The Diem regime waged a fierce struggle against the Buddhists: on August 20, 1963, Nhu security forces stormed Sa Loi Temple in Saigon. They arrested some 400 or more monks who were sitting cross-legged in front of a Buddha statue, and thousands of other Buddhists were arrested across the country. protest burning by Buddhist monks broke out in the summer of 1963. The brutal suppression of Jem and others convinced the US authorities that the time had come to overthrow the regime.
Only three weeks later, in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, an assassin shot and killed President Kennedy. By that time, the United States was more deeply involved in the South Vietnamese quagmire than ever before. Its support for the overthrow of the Jem regime showed its growing impatience to manage South Vietnam in the war. The U.S. stepped in to become more directly and deeply involved in the war against the communist insurgents. President Lynd B. Johnson eventually sent about 500,000 American troops to carry out his Vietnam policy.
After Jem's assassination, South Vietnam was unable to establish a stable government and several coups took place. In a military coup, Nguyen Van Thieu came to power from June 5, 1965, to April 21, 1975, at a time when the Vietnam War was raging; he resigned as president on April 17, 1975, after President Nixon refused to provide military support, and Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, fell on April 30. On April 30, Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, fell.
