Additionally, French Indochina ended up in Communist hands because after the war we let the French take it back as a colony, where they resumed their abuses of the populace, only writ larger. At which point, the Vietnamese, fresh off evicting the Japanese and still armed, strongly objected.
No less a person than Ho Chih Minh went to Washington to ask that the French be removed or at least the aid with which he’d fought the Japanese to be continued. Washington, in their stupid “Hey, let’s appease the French” mindset, told him no. “Uncle Ho” said “screw that” and turned to people that *would* support his people. We all know what happened next.
We should have told the French, “No, you don’t get any of your colonies or territories that we had to liberate or support back” but nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.......
Read “Hell in a Very Small Place” by Bernard Fall, the author of “Street Without Joy”; it was clear the US wanted the French to suppress the communists in Indochina (as part of “containment”), and we armed them to the teeth to do so. American advisors worked with the French, and we even lent them an aircraft carrier.
France had enough of war; they couldn’t fight another, and told us so. We prodded them into it, and then let them lose when it went south.
To give you an idea as to how excited France was about keeping Indochina, by law they couldn’t even draft French troops to send there - so they ended up with a lot of colonials, locals, and Foreign Legion troops instead. They had no intention of spending French blood to keep it.