Ngô Ðình Nhu (help·info), (October 7, 1910 - November 2, 1963), was the younger brother and chief political advisor of South Vietnam's first President, Ngô Ðình Diệm. He was widely regarded as the brains behind Diem's autocratic regime.

Biography

Nhu's family originated from the village of Phu Cam in central Vietnam. His family had served as mandarins in the imperial court in Hue, and his father Ngo Dinh Kha was a counselor to Emperor Thanh Thai during the French colonisation. When the French deposed the emperor on the pretext of insanity, Kha retired in protest and became a farmer. Nhu was the fourth of six sons, born in 1910.^[1]

He graduated from the École Nationale des Chartes, a French archivists’ school, and returned to Vietnam from France at the outbreak of World War II. He was influenced by personalism, a concept he had acquired in the Latin Quarter. It had been conceived in the 1930s by Catholic progressives such as Emmanuel Mounier. Mounier’s heirs in Paris, who edited the left wing Catholic review ’’Esprit’’ denounced Nhu as a fraud. He worked at Hanoi’s National Library and in 1943, he married Tran Le Xuan, making her known as "Madame Nhu". Prior to this, he was strongly rumoured to have been having an affair with his wife's mother, six years his senior. The French dismissed Nhu due to Diem’s nationalist activities, and he moved to Da Lat and lived comfortably, editing a newspaper. ^[2]