Why did the US stop supporting Ho Chi Minh after World War 2?

Answer 1

He refused to reform his government

Answer 2

Because the French were smarting from being so severely boned during WWII. The French believed they should still have all the prestige of Napoleon, even though since Napoleon the only victory they had managed was in WWI, and that only with all the help Britain, Italy and the US could give. Vietnam was a French colony called Indochina. While the Germans were parading down Paris streets, the Japanese took over Indochina in 1941. The French wanted to re-establish their colony in Indochina, and were very testy about anything that would get in the way of this little piece of French glory. The US was on record as being against a re-established French colony, but things became muddled after FDR died. In those days few had ever heard of Indochina in the US, and even less cared much about it.

So the French blackmailed the US. Basically the French government informed the US that if the US did not support their effort to once more become the colonial overlords of Indochina, then the French could not guarantee that France would not turn communist. The great bugaboo in Washington after the war was communism, seen as a monolithic menace directed from Moscow. So whatever the US principles of non-colonialism might be, the threat of a communist France outweighed them.

This of course forced Ho and the Vietnamese nationalists and anti-colonialists into the arms of the Russians, who were glad to help, for the chance to gall the west.

Answer 3

Ho Chi Minh was the leader of North Vietnam. The United States was fighting the country of North Vietnam.