The August Revolution had just occurred and Hồ had declared independence from France in the aftermath of World War II in September under the newly proclaimed Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

[33] At the time, there was innuendo that the MRC would become neutralist and stop fighting the communists, and that they were plotting with French President Charles de Gaulle, who supported such a solution in order to remove the US presence.

[35] Khánh sometimes plotted while in Saigon on military affairs, and told various American officials that Đôn, Kim and General Mai Hữu Xuân, along with Minh, were "pro-French and pro-neutralist" and part of de Gaulle's plan.

[36] The American ambassador in Saigon, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., believed in the rumors that Kim and Đôn favored neutrality for South Vietnam in the Cold War.

Nhung had executed Diệm and his brother Ngô Đình Nhu in the 1963 coup, as well as the loyalist Special Forces head Colonel Lê Quang Tung, and claimed it to be suicide.

[41] Tri Quang, the Buddhist monk who had organized protests against Diệm in 1963, was planning to go on a pilgrimage to "bury my life" in India, Japan and Ceylon when he heard of Nhung's execution, and instead decided to stay in South Vietnam to challenge the new government.

A week after coming to power, Khánh summoned Nguyễn Tôn Hoàn, a Roman Catholic who was one of the former leaders of the southern branch of the Catholic-aligned Đại Việt Quốc Dân Dảng (Greater Vietnam Nationalist Party).

[48] In late February 1964, the government suffered a humiliating debacle when an outnumbered Viet Cong battalion in the Mekong delta were surrounded by 3, 000 of the "best" South Vietnamese troops.

[48] Lyman Kirkpatrick, the inspector-general of the CIA, visited the American embassy in Saigon that same month, and reported to Washington that he was "...shocked by the number of our people and of the military, even those whose job is always to say that we are winning, who feel the tide is against us".

Many Vietnamese and American observers considered this rash and premature, as promises of elections had been frequently broken and the council had at least been an effective forum for dissent in the absence of parliamentary representation.

Khánh promised McNamara during his visit that he would put South Vietnam on a "war footing" by mobilizing the entire male population of military age to fight against the Vietcong.

[58] Khánh passed a national service law which in theory would have conscripted all South Vietnamese men of military age, but he never fully implemented it, blaming "complicated bureaucratic procedures" left over from French rule.

[57] Lodge agreed and privately said that the war effort had to come first, and thus a police state, curtailment of civil rights and crackdowns on opposition politicians were reasonable in order to effectively counter the communists.

[62] Khánh made plans with conservative Laotian General Phoumi Nosovan for anti-communist incursions into eastern Laos, but the Americans stopped him and leaked false reports to the media that he was reluctant to attack.

[63] When Taylor arrived, the US tried to publicly distance itself from Khánh's demands to invade North Vietnam and to downplay it, as it wanted to portray the communists as the only aggressors and that they had no intentions of going on the attack in any form,[63] but they were sympathetic to his sentiment.

[63] In August, the Vietnam War expanded with the Gulf of Tonkin incident, a disputed encounter between North Vietnamese and American naval vessels in which Washington accused the communists of attacking their boats in international waters.

[68] Seeing the tense situation as an opportunity to concentrate more power in his hands, Khánh declared a state of emergency on 7 August, empowering the police to ban protests, search properties under any circumstances and arbitrarily jail "elements considered as dangerous to national security".

[75] Needing support to stay afloat, Khánh released a communiqué after the meeting, promising to revise the constitution, liberalise the press, permit protests and start special courts to look into past grievances.

Khánh claimed that the government instability was due to troublemaking by Đại Việt members, whom he accused of putting partisan plotting ahead of the national interest and the struggle against the communists.

The indigenous paramilitaries took control of four military camps in Darlac Province, killing 70 ARVN troops of Vietnamese ethnicity, and then taking a number of others and their US advisers hostage.

[97] They arrested around 100 members of the National Salvation Council of Lê Khắc Quyến, a new party active in central Vietnam with an anti-war ideology, aligned with Thi and Thích Trí Quang.

[99] The infighting exasperated Maxwell Taylor, the US ambassador to South Vietnam and former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff,[42] who felt that the disputes between the junta's senior officers were derailing the war effort.

[99] He claimed that some HNC members were disseminating coup rumors and creating doubt among the population and that "both military and civilian leaders regard the presence of these people in the High National Council as divisive of the Armed Forces due to their influence".

[98] Taylor warned that the US did not agree with military rule as a principle, and might reduce aid, but Hương was unmoved and said that the Vietnamese people "take a more sentimental than legalistic approach" and that the existence of civilian procedure and the HNC was much less pressing than the "moral prestige of the leaders".

[99] Later, the quartet called a media conference, where they maintained that the HNC had been dissolved in the nation's interest and vowed to stand firm and not renege on their decision, although they proclaimed their ongoing confidence for Sửu and Hương.

[40] Two days later, went public in support of the coup against the HNC, condemning the advisory body and asserting the army's right to step into government matters if "disputes and differences create a situation favorable to the common enemies: Communism and colonialism.

[105] This resulted in an official announcement by Hương and Khánh three days later, in which the military again reiterated their commitment to civilian rule through an elected legislature and a new constitution, and that "all genuine patriots" would be "earnestly assembled" to collaborate in making a plan to defeat the communists.

[113] The South Vietnamese won in large part because the Americans had spent so much on the country, and could not afford to abandon it and lose to the communists over the matter of military rule, as it would be a big public relations coup for the Soviet bloc.

[118] Shortly before noon on 19 February, Thảo used tanks and infantry to seize control of the military headquarters at Tân Sơn Nhứt, the post office and the radio station of Saigon.

Kỳ assumed control of a junta that continued with Suu and Quat as a civilian front, although General Trần Văn Minh was the nominal head as Commander in Chief of the armed forces.