Timeline of the Vietnam War (1955)

In 1955, the Prime Minister of South Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem faced a severe challenge to his rule over South Vietnam from the Binh Xuyen criminal gang and the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao religious sects. In the Battle of Saigon in April, Diem's army eliminated the Binh Xuyen as a rival and soon also reduced the power of the sects. The United States, which had been wavering in its support of Diem before the battle, strongly supported him afterwards. Diem declined to enter into talks with North Vietnam concerning an election in 1956 to unify the country. Diem called a national election in October and easily defeated Head of State Bao Dai, thus becoming President of South Vietnam. In communist North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh initiated a land reform program that was accomplished with many executions and imprisonments of "landlords." Ho was unable to get the support of China and the Soviet Union to press for preliminary talks that would lead to the 1956 elections called for in the Geneva Accord.

January

 * 1 January

Ho Chi Minh at a triumphal parade in Hanoi announced his government's policy to restore and develop the economy of North Vietnam. One of his priorities was a land reform program to give "land to the tillers."

South Vietnam became independent from the French Union's franc zone and South Vietnam's army became eligible to receive U.S. military aid directly rather than through the French military establishment still present in South Vietnam. The change increased Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem's control of the army.

Viet Minh leader Le Duc Tho departed from southernmost Vietnam for North Vietnam in accordance with the Geneva Accords which permitted free movement for 300 days between the provisional states of North and South Vietnam. His commander, Le Duan, remained clandestinely in the Mekong Delta and Saigon. Le Duan was charged with maintaining a communist infrastructure in southern region. He remained in the south until 1957.
 * 22 January

Colonel Edward Lansdale head of the CIA's Saigon Military Mission (SMM) reported to Washington that his team had smuggled 300 rifles, 50 pistols, 100,000 rounds of ammunition and 300 pounds of explosives into North Vietnam. The arms were distributed to anti-communist organizations in North Vietnam created by the SMM or cached for future use.
 * 31 January

February
General Paul Ely, French military commander in South Vietnam, informed Diem that by July 1, 1955 all units of the South Vietnamese army would be commanded by Vietnamese officers. France was turning over all control and responsibility for the army to the government of South Vietnam.
 * 1 February


 * 8 February

Ho Chi Minh's land reform program was underway and thousands of "landlords" were being executed or imprisoned. Ho said "Some cadres are using the same methods to crush the masses as the imperialists, capitalists, and feudalists did. These methods are barbaric...It is absolutely forbidden to use physical punishment." Ho's admonishment had little apparent impact as the repression continued.

In South Vietnam, France halted subsidies to the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao religious sects, both of whom had armed forces raised and financed by France to fight the communist Viet Minh. The sects demanded that the subsidies continue to be paid to them by the Diem government. Diem refused and with several million dollars supplied by Colonel Edward Lansdale, head of the CIA's Saigon Military Mission (SMM), bribed sect leaders to gain their support and integrate their forces into the Vietnamese National Army.


 * 22 February

Representatives of the Binh Xuyen, a well-armed mafia controlling gambling, narcotics, and the Saigon police force, and the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao religious sects agreed to form a United Front against the Diem government. The Binh Xuyen, under Bay Vien, set up defenses around their headquarters in Saigon.

March
U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced at a press conference in Saigon that "I do not know of any responsible quarter which has any doubt about backing Diem as the head of this government." In fact, General Lawton Collins, the senior U.S. official in South Vietnam, and many French officials had expressed strong reservations about the ability of Diem to rule the country.
 * 1 March

Viet Minh forces evacuated the Ca Mau peninsula at the southernmost tip of South Vietnam to journey to North Vietnam in accordance with the Geneva Accords. Anticipating the evacuation, Col. Lansdale and his group had implemented an accelerated program (Occupation Liberty) to prepare the South Vietnamese army to occupy the area as the Viet Minh withdrew. The occupation proceeded smoothly with propaganda leaflets dropped by air, medical dispensaries established, rice distributed, and roads improved. However, "the political and social conditions which had long generated support for the Viet Minh remained virtually unchanged.
 * 8 March

The National Front of Binh Xuyen, Cao Dai, and Hoa Hao demanded that Diem form a government of "national union" and gave him 5 days to comply. Diem ignored the demand.
 * 21 March

Diem made a counter demand that the Binh Xuyen evacuate the areas and buildings they had occupied in Saigon and vicinity. The French were tacitly helping the Binh Xuyen. Collins wanted the French to persuade Diem to compromise; Lansdale wanted the French out of South Vietnam.
 * 28 March

Diem's replacement of the police chief caused a brief battle between the South Vietnam army and Bin Xuyen police and militia. The French brokered a cease fire but the Binh Xuyen, army, and French military each fortified the areas they controlled in Saigon. Due to resignations, Diem's government now consisted mostly of members of his family.
 * 30 March

From Saigon, General Collins informed Washington that Diem lacked "the ability to head a government." Several journalists published similar reports as Saigon descended into chaos during April
 * 31 March

April
Collins had been called back to Washington for consultations and at a lunch with Dulles "reiterated...his view...that Diem must be replaced.
 * 23 April

The State Department sent top-secret cables to the U.S. Embassies in Saigon and Paris ordering the embassies to initiate a process of removing Diem from power and replacing him with a leader chosen by General Collins and French General Ely in Saigon. The Embassies were instructed to tell Diem that the U.S. and France were "no longer in a position to prevent his removal from office."
 * 27 April


 * 27 April

Six hours after Dulles' cables calling for Diem's ouster Lansdale, at Diem's side in Saigon, reported to Washington that fighting had broken out in the streets of Saigon between the Binh Xuyen and the South Vietnamese army. These were the opening shots in the Battle of Saigon which would continue for about one month. On hearing of the news of the fighting, Dulles canceled the cables, awaiting developments in Saigon before proceeding.

Neither the Cao Dai nor the Hoa Hao joined the Binh Xuyen in the battle. Bribes paid by Diem and Lansdale to their leaders caused them to remain neutral or to unite their armed forces with the South Vietnamese army. Lansdale cabled Washington asserting that Diem was still the best alternative as the leader of South Vietnam.
 * 28 April


 * 30 April

Diem's army had largely defeated the Binh Xuyen and its 40,000 armed soldiers. Casualties on both sides plus civilians amounted to about 500 dead, 1000 wounded, and 20,000 homeless due to widespread destruction over a square mile of Saigon. Many of the surviving Binh Xuyen fled to the countryside, taking refuge in the swamps of the Mekong River delta. The Binh Xuyen leader, Bay Vien, escaped to Paris with French assistance. A few members of the Binh Xuyen would wage guerrilla war against the Diem government for the next two or three years and would eventually be absorbed into the Viet Cong guerrillas.

May
During three days of talks in Paris among Dulles, French Prime Minister Edgar Faure, and the British, Faure proposed that both the U.S. and France withdraw from Vietnam because "Diem is leading to a catastrophe." Dulles did not agree and indicated that the U.S. would continue to support Diem—even if that support caused the French to withdraw from South Vietnam. At this conference, in the words of historian Seth Jacobs, Vietnam became "America's war" rather than France's.
 * 8–11 May


 * 14 May

General Collins left Vietnam and his position as the senior U.S. official in South Vietnam to return to the United States. He had failed to persuade Dulles and the Eisenhower Administration that Diem was not a viable leader of South Vietnam.

In the wake of Diem's victory over the Binh Xuyen, he was lionized in the American media, notably by publisher Henry Luce in Life Magazine: "Every son, daughter, and even distant admirer of the American Revolution should be overjoyed and learn to shout...'Hurrah for Ngo Dinh Diem!'...Diem's political assets...are just what his country needs...He is a Roman Catholic and a simon-pure Vietnamese nationalist, thus doubly proof against communist force....back Diem to the hilt."
 * 16 May


 * 20 May

French military forces withdrew from Saigon to a coastal enclave. From there they would be slowly withdrawn from Vietnam.


 * 28 May

G. Frederick Reinhardt, a career diplomat, presented his credentials to Diem as the U.S.'s new Ambassador to Vietnam. Dulles's instruction to Reinhardt was "to give complete, loyal, and sincere support to the government of President Diem."

June

 * 2 June

General Paul Ely, French commander in South Vietnam, left the country signalling the pullout of all French military forces from Vietnam.


 * 5 June

With the Bình Xuyên vanquished, Diệm turned his attention to conquering the Hòa Hảo. The battle between government troops began in Cần Thơ on 5 June. Five Hòa Hảo battalions surrendered immediately; Commander Ba Cụt and three remaining leaders fled to the Cambodian border. The other leaders soon surrendered but Ba Cut and his 3,000 armed men continued to resist the army until 1956.

Ho Chi Minh made an official visit to China and the Soviet Union. He received pledges of $200 million in aid from China and $100 million from the Soviet Union, but neither China nor the Soviet Union agreed to attempt to pressure the United States and other Western countries to hold 1956 national elections in Vietnam. Zhou Enlai, the premier of China, said the United States was violating the Geneva Accords and that the national elections scheduled for July 20, 1956 might not be held due to U.S. and South Vietnamese opposition.
 * 25 June—8 July
 * 30 June

July

 * 16 July

Diem in a speech said that South Vietnam was not bound by the Geneva Accords and that conditions necessary for free elections did not exist in the North.

The Geneva Accords called for consultations to begin on this date regarding national elections to select a government for a united Vietnam on July 20, 1956. Diem refused to enter into talks with North Vietnam. He said that South Vietnam had not been a signatory of the Geneva Accords and that the "fundamental freedoms" for free and open elections did not exist under the communist government of North Vietnam. The United States declined to pressure Diem into talks with the North Vietnamese.
 * 20 July

August

 * 12 August

The State Department stated that, "to avoid...accusations...of trying to sabotage the Geneva Settlement...the number of U.S. military personnel at present in Indochina at any given time should not exceed 342 persons, the number called for...at the time the Geneva Accord was signed.


 * 30 August

Dulles publicly supported Diem's position that conditions were not right in the North for free elections.

October
Ngô Đình Diệm ordered the army to march on the Cao Đài political center in Tây Ninh under the shadow of the Black Virgin Mountain. He forced the Cao Đài pope, Pham Cong Tac, to flee to Cambodia where he died in 1959. Diem absorbed the Cao Dai army into the fledgling Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

The State of Vietnam referendum of 1955 determined the future form of government of the State of Vietnam, the nation that was to become the Republic of Vietnam (widely known as South Vietnam). It was contested by Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm, who proposed a republic, and former emperor Bảo Đại. Bảo Đại had abdicated as emperor in 1945 and at the time of the referendum held the title of head of state. Diệm won the election, which was widely marred by electoral fraud, with 98.2% of the vote. In the capital Saigon, Diệm was credited with over 600,000 votes, even though only 450,000 people were on the electoral roll. He accumulated tallies in excess of 90% of the registered voters, even in rural regions where opposition groups prevented voting.
 * 23 October


 * 26 October

Diem is declared the winner of the election and President of the new Republic of Vietnam, more commonly called South Vietnam.

The government of South Vietnam reported that 676,348 Catholics, 209,132 Buddhists, and 1,041 Protestants had migrated to South Vietnam from the North since the conclusion of the Geneva Accords on July 20, 1954. The American Navy's participation in the exodus from North Vietnam was called Operation Passage to Freedom.
 * 31 October

Between 14,000 - 45,000 civilians and approximately 100,000 Viet Minh fighters moved from South Vietnam to the north. North Vietnam left behind in South Vietnam 8,000 to 10,000 covert civilian and military personnel, most of them members of the communist party

The American media portrayed the migration as a spontaneous flight from communism, but French scholar Bernard Fall accused the U.S. of stimulating the exodus in a "very successful psychological warfare operation" managed by Col. Edward Lansdale of the CIA.

November
The American Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) for South Vietnam was created. The MAAG was reorganized from covering all of Indochina into MAAGs for each of the countries (Cambodia, Laos, South Vietnam). General Samuel Tankersley Williams was the chief of the newly created MAAG. Due to the creation of the MAAG for Vietnam on this date, in 1998 after a high level review by the Department of Defense (DoD) and through the efforts of Richard B. Fitzgibbon's family, November 1, 1955 became the earliest qualifying date for inclusion of American combat deaths on the wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
 * November 1

December
Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American was published in England and later in the U.S. It portrayed American policy in South Vietnam in a negative light. In the words of one reviewer, “American readers were incensed, perhaps not so much because of the biased portrait of obtuse and destructive American innocence and idealism but because...it was drawn with such acid pleasure by a middle-class English snob..." The principal American character in the novel is often erroneously believed to be modeled on CIA operative Edward Lansdale, but Greene began writing the novel before Lansdale's arrival in Vietnam.


 * 8 December

The executive committee of the American Friends of Vietnam met for the first time. The AFVN was founded in the United States to encourage U.S. support for the Diem government. The members included many prominent politicians, both Democrat and Republican, including John F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and Mike Mansfield. The committee invited General John W. O'Daniel ("Iron Mike") to serve as Chairman of the Board of AFV. O'Daniel was a fervent supporter of Ngo Dinh Diem.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Department of Defense requested that the ceiling of 342 U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam be raised. With the ongoing withdrawal of the French, the manpower ceiling had become a "serious handicap." Dulles turned down the request to avoid violating the Geneva Accords which prohibited any increases in foreign military personnel in Vietnam.
 * 9 December

South Vietnam withdrew from the French Union Assembly and terminated many financial and economic agreements with France, thus severing nearly all its former colonial ties to France.