(b. 1924), sister-in-law of President Ngo Dinh Diem. Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu, a notorious and feared member of South Vietnam's presidential family (1955–1963), was born Tran Le Xuan in 1924 to a wealthy family that served the French colonial administration. She married Ngo Dinh Nhu (1910–1963), brother of Ngo Dinh Diem (1901–1963), in 1943 and, upon the latter's ascension to the presidency of South Vietnam (RVN) in 1955, moved into the presidential palace in Saigon with her husband. Because Diem was unmarried, Madame Nhu effectively became the RVN's First Lady and acted as official hostess of the presidential palace. With Diem's office came benefits for the family: Madame Nhu's father served as ambassador to the United States, her mother became an observer at the United Nations, and two of her uncles served as cabinet members. She was criticized for herarrogance, caustic remarks, insensitivity, and intolerance. Lashing out at anyone critical of the Diem regime, Madame Nhu was nicknamed "Dragon Lady." For example, when she found out that U.S. Ambassador General J. Lawton Collins (1896–1987) encouraged Diem to oust her, she blamed the United States for assisting factions that sought to topple the Diem government. When Buddhist monks, whom she once called "hooligans in robes" (Karnow 1991: 312), protested the Diem regime through self-immolation, she referred to the protests as "barbecues" and offered to supply gasoline for future demonstrations. While in power, the Catholic Nhu called herself a feminist and formed the Women's Solidarity Movement, yet she issued decrees banning dance, divorce, contraceptives, beauty contests, fortune-telling, gambling, adultery, prostitution, and certain hairdos and music. Her outspokenness against protestors in 1963 helped turn the Kennedy administration against the Diem regime, which in turn led to the coup that toppled the government, resulting in the deaths of her brother-in-law and husband in November of that year.
Madame Nhu in Washington, D.C., in October 1963. (BETTMANN/CORBIS)
Further Reading
Boettcher, Thomas D. (1985) Vietnam: The Valor and the Sorrow. Boston: Little, Brown.
Karnow, Stanley. (1991) Vietnam: A History. New York: Viking.
Tucker, Spencer C. (1999) Vietnam. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
——, ed. (1998) Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
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