“I have always wanted to find a source that spoke about what level of dissatisfaction there was among Americans leading up to V-J day (if anyone knows any, please suggest them!)”
However, if it would have been a situation where it looked like the Russians tried to “Pearl Harbor” us, I’m thinking that the reaction would have been something like “well, let’s finish off that Stalin bastard, too, and then be done with war.”
I read a pretty good history of WWII, and by the time our ground troops crossed into Germany no ground pounder wanted to the last man to spend the rest of his days with no legs. Supposedly, the army was having trouble getting the troops to engage the Germans. The infantry was at the end very prone to call for artillery and/or tactical aircraft to take of the Germans. There was also a steady stream of guys bugging out to Paris to make a pile of money in the black market.