Madame Nhu (1924-2011)
President Ngo Dinh Diem entrusted close family members, most notably his shrewd and secretive brother Ngo Dinh Nhu and Nhu's beautiful and outspoken wife Madame Nhu, to run the most important parts of the government. The unofficial "First Lady" of South Vietnam, Madame Nhu was a beautiful woman, very elegant and imperious in her behavior. Tran Le Xuan, better known as Madame Nhu, was one of the most recognized and certainly one of the most controversial figures in the history of the short-lived Republic of Viet Nam. Her mother was Than Trong Nam Tran who was a daughter of Princess Nhu Phien who was the youngest daughter of H.I.M. Dong Khanh, the ninth Emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty.
Former National Security Council (NSC) staff officer Chester L. Cooper characterized the situation in 1962-63 as having been one where the administration was confronted with "two undeclared wars, one with the Viet Cong, the other with the American press, while in Saigon [Diem's controversial sister-in-law] Madame Nhu was calling American newsmen there 'worse than Communists.'"
The continuing Viet Cong activity in South Vietnam, the anti-Diem sentiment generated by the press, and the euphoria manifested by some Washington officials culminated in a situation that soon led the Kennedy administration along a dangerous path. A number of those surrounding the President became disillusioned with what they considered to be too slow progress in pacifying South Vietnam. Initially, President Diem's brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, and his wife, Madame Nhu, became the focal points of blame. Their removal, it was believed, would greatly alleviate the country's problems.
"The Dragon Lady" as she came to be called, was also a passionate anti-communist and was determined that women should play a leading role in defending their country from Communist infiltration. She formed a corps of women warriors and there is a famous photograph of her at their training ground, firing a .38 pistol for the first time.
In a report submitted to President Kennedy by Roger Hilsman and Michael Forrestal in early 1963, Diem was described as an individual who "wants only adulation and is completely insensitive to the desires of the foreign press for factual information." The report also noted that the South Vietnamese president was not only "insensitive to his own image" but was likewise unaffected by "the political consequences of the activities of Madame Nhu and other members of his family and his own tendencies of arbitrariness, failure to delegate and general failure."
Diem was distant, difficult for his American contacts to read, afraid of his own military, insensitive to Vietnam's Buddhist majority, and handicapped by the heavy-handed advice and machinations of his brother and his femme fatale sister-in-law, the infamous Madame Nhu. Buddhists made up 70 percent of the population and Catholics only 10 percent, yet under Diem, Catholics held almost all of the government jobs. Beginning in 1963, the self-immolation of the venerable 66-year old monk, Tich Quang Duc, became an iconic image of the war, repeated soon after by numerous other Buddhist monks. President Diem's sister-in-law, Madame Nhu, the self-styled First Lady of Vietnam, shocked the world by referring to the deaths as "barbecues" and offering to supply the matches.
After being removed from power, Diem was assassinated along with his brother Nhu. Madame Nhu was, at that time, on a tour of the United States giving speeches in support of Vietnam's war against Communism.When asked if she might seek political asylum in the US, Madame Nhu replied, "Never! I cannot stay in a country with people who have stabbed my Government." Upon hearing of the rumored involvement of the United States she said, "Whoever has the Americans as allies does not need enemies".
As of 2008 Madame Nhu was living in Rome. Madame Nhu died on 24 April 2011, aged 87, in Rome.
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