36 Facts About Madame Nhu

Madame Nhu's father served as the first foreign secretary for Indochina under Japanese occupation.

Madame Nhu gained a reputation in her youth as a tomboy who loved ballet and piano, once dancing solo at Hanoi's National Theatre.

Madame Nhu had an elder sister named Tran Le Chi and a younger brother, Tran Van Khiem.

When Le Xuan came of age, her mother introduced her to a series of eligible young men, but she insisted on Madame Nhu, who was fourteen years her senior and referred to her as a "little niece" in accordance with Vietnamese custom.

In May 1943, aged 18, she married Madame Nhu, and converted from Mahayana Buddhism to Roman Catholicism, her husband's religion.

Madame Nhu never forgave the Emperor and the French for this plot to ruin Diem.

Madame Nhu attempted to syncretize Roman Catholicism with a cult around herself as a modern reincarnation of Vietnam's fabled Trung Sisters, who raised a revolt against China and temporarily defeated the Han dynasty in AD 40.

Madame Nhu frequently talked to the Vietnamese, French and other foreign press quite candidly.

Madame Nhu devoted her time to politics, championing a new Family Code she presented to parliament in October 1957 and passed in June 1958 to replace the old French code that banned concubinage and polygamy; allowed women to open bank accounts and own property; and required that daughters be given greater inheritance rights.

Madame Nhu pressured the wives of ARVN officers and public servants into joining her "movement".

Madame Nhu's father became the ambassador to the United States while her mother was South Vietnam's observer at the United Nations.

Madame Nhu's parents resigned from their posts in 1963, in protest over the treatment of Buddhists under the regime of President Diem and disowned their daughter.

Madame Nhu's family received further scorn as her sister Tran Le Chi, who was married to Nguyen Huu Chau, had a French lover named Etienne Oggeri, and critics alleged that Madame Nhu introduced the "morality laws" so that her sister's husband could not get a divorce.

Madame Nhu exerted influence with her fiery attitude, often abusing Diem and Nhu, who bowed to her angry tirades.

Madame Nhu claimed that she and her husband were responsible for Diem's triumph over the Binh Xuyen in the Battle for Saigon in 1954.

Madame Nhu claimed it was the family's destiny to save South Vietnam.

Madame Nhu often exerted her influence through bouts of shouting.

The family escaped to the cellar unhurt, except for Madame Nhu, who sustained an arm fracture while running for cover.

On 8 June 1963, Madame Nhu released a statement through the Women's Solidarity Movement accusing the Buddhists of neutralism, effectively accusing them of being communist collaborators.

Madame Nhu predicted that if Diem, Nhu, and Madame Nhu did not leave Vietnam, then they would inevitably be killed.

Madame Nhu gave a media interview in which she called on government troops to invade the American embassy and capture Thich Tri Quang and some other monks who were staying there, saying that the government must arrest "all key Buddhists".

Madame Nhu departed South Vietnam on 9 September 1963 in an expedition that brought widespread international scorn to her family's regime.

Madame Nhu's comments were such that President John F Kennedy became personally concerned.

Madame Nhu asked his advisers to find means of having Diem gag her.

In Madame Nhu's first destination, Belgrade, she said in an interview that "President Kennedy is a politician, and when he hears a loud opinion speaking in a certain way, he tries to appease it somehow", referring to the opposition to her family's rule.

On 29 September 1963 meeting with Diem, McNamara bemoaned "the ill-advised and unfortunate declarations of Madame Nhu", who had described US military advisors as "acting like little soldiers of fortune".

Madame Nhu denounced American liberals as "worse than communists" and Buddhists as "hooligans in robes".

The Oram Group, the Madison Avenue PR firm that had been hired to promote Diem's image in the US for $3,000 per month ended its relationship with Diem during Madame Nhu's visit under the grounds she had so badly damaged the image of the Diem government in America that there was nothing that could be done to improve his image and a continued association was going to cost the Oram Group other clients.

American journalists had discovered Madame Nhu was "unfortunately too beautiful to ignore" as a Kennedy administration staffer complained, and that it was easy to provoke her into saying something outrageous, causing a media circus to develop around her as she traveled across America.

On 2 November 1963, Diem and Madame Nhu were assassinated in a coup d'etat led by General Duong Van Minh with the understanding that the United States would not intervene.

Madame Nhu went on to predict a bleak future for Vietnam and said that, by being involved in the coup, the troubles of the United States in Vietnam were just beginning.

Madame Nhu called the deaths an "indelible stigma" against the US and said "My family has been treacherously killed with either official or unofficial blessing of the American government, I can predict to you now that the story is only at its beginning".

Madame Nhu went to Rome briefly before moving to France and later Italy, with her children.

In November 1982 Madame Nhu accorded a first significant interview on the historic events in Vietnam to Judith Vecchione in Rome.

The interview, one of at least two hundred and fifty-nine for the series, lasts a recorded fifty-two minutes but Madame Nhu's subjectivity was far from the hard facts demanded of the producers' intended content and barely two minutes of her observations found use.

On 2 November 1986, Madame Nhu charged the United States with hounding her family during the arrest of her younger brother, Tran Van Khiem, who was charged in the strangling-deaths of their parents in their Washington, DC, home after being cut out of their will.