The reaction to the 1963 South Vietnamese coup that saw the arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm was mixed.
Communist reaction
The coup was immediately denounced by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, asserting that the coup had brought a United States "puppet" government. The remainders of the world expressed the general hope that the junta would end persecution against Buddhists and focus on defeating the communist insurgency.
Both North Vietnam and the Viet Cong were caught off guard by the events in Saigon. Radio Hanoi reported the events without communist comment, as they had not prepared a reaction to it. On one hand, the communist leaders were disheartened that they could no longer exploit Diệm's unpopularity. On the other hand, they were confident that Diệm's successors would be weak and fall apart easily, which would facilitate a communist revolution. The official newspaper, Nhan Dan, wrote "By throwing off Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother Ngô Đình Nhu, the US imperialists have themselves destroyed the political bases they had built up for years. The deaths of Diệm and Nhu were followed by the disintegration of big fragments of the ... [government] machine."
On the night of 1 November as Gia Long Palace was besieged, Vietcong radio in South Vietnam had urged the Vietnamese people, the National Liberation Front and ARVN loyalists to resist the coup. However, the generals' successful coup prevented any joint action. Within a week of the coup, the Viet Cong had regained its direction and launched more than one thousand attacks. A communist spokesperson expressed shock that the Americans had appeared to support the removal of Diệm, believing him to have been one of their strongest opponents. The leader of the Viet Cong, Nguyen Huu Tho, termed the coup as a "gift from Heaven for us." Some Viet Cong officials were so surprised the Americans would support Diệm's removal that they initially thought it was a trick. They felt that Diệm's removal was a blunder on the part of the Americans. Thơ said "Our enemy has been seriously weakened from all points of view, military, political and administrative. The special shock troops which were an essential support for the Diệm regime have been eliminated. The military command has been turned upside down and weakened by purges." He added: For the same reasons, the coercive apparatus, set up over the years with great care by Diệm, is utterly shattered, specially at the base. The principle chiefs of security and the secret police, on which mainly depended the protection of the regime and the repression of the revolutionary movement, have been eliminated, purges.
Troops, officers, and officials of the army and administration are completely lost; they have no more confidence in their chiefs and have no idea to whom they should be loyal.
From the political point of view the weakening of our adversary is still clear. Reactionary political organizations like the Labor and Personalism Party, the National Revolutionary Movement, the Republican Youth, the Women's Solidarity Movement etc ... which constituted an appreciable support for the Regime have been dissolved, eliminated.
Military reaction
Even before the start of the coup, the coup committee through General Lê Văn Kim had been in contact with civilian opposition figures and to some extent with members of Diệm's regime. Once the success of the coup was confirmed, negotiations by the generals' committee with the dissidents began in earnest. On the night of 1 November and the following day, all of Diệm's ministers were told to submit their resignations and did so. No reprisals were taken against them. Vice President Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ entered into intensive bargaining with Minh on 2 November on the composition of the interim government. Tho was aware of the desire of the generals to have him head a new government to provide continuity, and he used this knowledge to bargain with them about the makeup of the cabinet. He had no intention of being their puppet.