Tôn Thất Đính
Lieutenant General Tôn Thất Đính was an officer who served in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. He is best known as one of the key figures in the November 1963 coup that led to the arrest and assassination of the first president of South Vietnam. At the age of 32, he became the youngest ever ARVN general and the commander of the II Corps. After the coup, he worked in the media and was elected to the Senate in 1967. He was sentenced to life in prison, but was released after serving less than a year. He died in prison in 1998, aged 80, and is buried in a military cemetery in Hanoi.
About Tôn Thất Đính in brief
Lieutenant General Tôn Thất Đính was an officer who served in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. He is best known as one of the key figures in the November 1963 coup that led to the arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm, the first president of South Vietnam. A favorite of the ruling Ngô family, he received rapid promotions ahead of officers who were regarded as more capable. At the age of 32, he became the youngest ever ARVN general and the commander of the II Corps. He was regarded as a dangerous, egotistical, and impetuous figure with a weakness for alcohol and partying. After the coup, he worked in the media and was elected to the Senate in 1967. In April 1975, when he fled Vietnam, he was sentenced to life in prison, but was released after serving less than a year. He died in prison in 1998, aged 80, and is buried in a military cemetery in Hanoi, Hành Nguyet, Hỳnh Province, in northern Vietnam. He is buried next to his wife, who was killed in a car crash during the Vietnam War, in a plot to steal her body from a car in which he was a passenger. He was buried in the same cemetery as his wife and two children, who were also killed in the car crash. His grave is now in the National Museum of Vietnam, which is open to the public and has a collection of his military memorabilia, including a photo of him as a young officer.
The museum is now closed, but a replica of it is on display in a museum in the city of Ho Chi Minh City, where he served as a general in the French Army in the Second World War. In the 1970s, the museum was restored to its former glory and is now the site of a memorial to the late General Nguyễn Khánh, the former leader of the South Vietnamese Army. It is also known as the place where he was wounded in a gun battle with the North Vietnamese Army in 1968. After his release from prison, he went on to serve in the Senate until the fall of Saigon in April 1975. He served as the Deputy Commander of Operations for Colonel Paul Vuxem when the French withdrew from the Far East Expeditionary Corps and withdrew from South Vietnam following Operation Auvergna on the Central Coast of Vietnam following the partition of Vietnam in 1972. He became a protege of Ngô Ngô Côn, the Prime Minister of South Vietnam and later the President of the Republic of Nam. He converted to Roman Catholicism and headed the military wing of the Cần Lao party, a secret Catholic organization that maintained the Ngôs’ grip on power. In late 1963, his colleagues recruited him into a coup plot by playing on his ego and pitting him against Di�o. The Ngô brothers were deposed and executed.
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