Early Years
Cẩn was the fifth of six sons born to Ngô Đình Khả, who was a mandarin in the imperial court of Emperor Thanh Thai, who was ruling under French control.
Khả retired from the court in protest at French interference, taking up farming. Cẩn's first and third brothers—Ngô Ðình Khôi and Diệm — rose to become provincial governors under French rule. Diệm, like his father, resigned in protest in 1933, while Khôi was assassinated in 1945 by Hồ Chí Minh's cadres. The second brother, Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục, was appointed as the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Huế. A fourth brother Ngô Đình Nhu became the family's chief political strategist, while the youngest, Ngô Đình Luyện was a diplomat when the family held power in South Vietnam. Of the Ngô brothers, only Thục and Luyện avoided being executed or assassinated during Vietnam's political upheavals.
Details about Cẩn's early life are scarce. In his youth, he had studied the writings and opinions of the renowned anti-French Vietnamese nationalist Phan Bội Châu, who spent his last years in Huế. Regarded as the leading revolutionary of his time, Châu had been captured and sentenced to death, before having his sentence reduced to house arrest. Cẩn regularly traveled to Châu's sampan on the Perfume River with gifts of food and listened to Châu's political lectures. Regarded as the least educated of his family, Cẩn had never traveled outside Vietnam and was the only Ngô brother not to have studied at a European-run institution.
Vietnam was in chaos after the Japanese invaded the country during World War II and displaced the French colonial administration. At the end of the war, the Japanese left the country and France, severely weakened by political turmoil within the Vichy regime, was unable to exert control. Hồ Chí Minh's Vietminh declared independence as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and battled other Vietnamese nationalist groups as well as French forces for control of the nation. During this time, Cẩn organised a clandestine support base for Diệm in central Vietnam. At the time, Diệm was one of many nationalists who were attempting to stake a claim to national leadership, having spent a decade in self-imposed exile from public affairs. Cẩn helped weaken other anti-communist nationalist groups, such as the Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng (Vietnamese Nationalist Party) and the Đại Việt Quốc Dân Đảng (Nationalist Party of Greater Vietnam), which competed with Diệm for support. On 23 October 1955, Diệm toppled Bảo Đại in a fraud-ridden referendum orchestrated by Nhu. Diệm declared himself President of the newly proclaimed Republic of Vietnam three days later.
Cẩn's men helped to cow the populace into voting for his brother. Those who disobeyed were often chased down and beaten, with pepper sauce and water often forced down their nostrils. The violations were particularly flagrant in Cẩn's area, which was the home of the Nguyễn Dynasty and a source of sympathy towards Bảo Đại. Cẩn ordered the police to arrest 1,200 people for political reasons in the week leading up to the vote. In Hội An, some people were killed in election day violence.
Read more about this topic: Ngo Dinh Can
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