I understood that he did approach the US first about arms and support for fighting the French colonial forces after WW2 ,,, when we turned him down due to treaties he approached the USSR.
“I understood that he did approach the US first about arms and support for fighting the French colonial forces after WW2”
He shouldn’t have been surprised that we wouldn’t go along with that, after pretending the French were allied with us in WWII. After WWI he really expected a nonviolent dissolution of Europe’s empires to give independence to Vietnam.