Truman said that proof of communist infiltration of the government was a "fairy story."
Thus, mistakes are made in history, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Especially if you're the opposition political party, having had none of the responsibility for making these decisions.
The opposition had a plan at the time. It was called "rollback." Thank the Lord we have a Republican President today and did't listen to the Democrats' defeatist "containment" nonsense with regards to Iraq.
General George S. Patton - Liberty’s Steamroller
"It is not an exaggeration to state that Patton fought two wars in the ETO: one against the enemy and one against higher authorities for the opportunity to fight the enemy," notes Colonel Allen. After Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, Patton realized that our Soviet "allies" — who had begun the war as co-aggressors with National Socialist Germany — were in fact our enemy, and he urged his superiors to evict the Soviets from central and eastern Europe.In a conversation with then-Undersecretary of War Robert P. Patterson that took place in Austria shortly after the Nazi surrender, Patton complained that the "point system" being used to de-mobilize Third Army troops was destroying the Third Army, and creating a vacuum that the Soviets would exploit. "Mr. Secretary, for God’s sake, when you go home, stop this point system; stop breaking up these armies," pleaded the general. "Let’s keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to these people [the Soviets]. This is the only language they understand." Asked by Patterson — who would become Secretary of War a few months later — what he would do, Patton replied: "I would have you tell the [Red Army] where their border is, and give them a limited time to get back across. Warn them that if they fail to do so, we will push them back across it."
Patton knew that the Red Army was weak, under-supplied, and vulnerable, and that if Europe were to be freed from totalitarian despotism, the West would have to act before the Soviets consolidated their position. "Oh George," came the condescending reply from Patterson, "you … have lost sight of the big picture."
That "big picture," as leftist historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. explained in the July/August 1995 issue of Foreign Affairs, "was to commit the United States to postwar international structures before [victory] … could return the nation to its old habits." In order to keep our nation entangled in the growing network of international bodies, a credible foreign menace was needed, and the Soviets were perfectly cast in the part. "It is to Joseph Stalin that Americans owe the 40-year suppression of the isolationist impulse," wrote Schlesinger with approval.
Had Patton been permitted to drive the Soviets from Europe, millions of people would have been spared decades of abject oppression, and the criminal elite that continues to dominate most of eastern and central Europe might never have come to power. Patton understood, and warned his superiors, that if the Soviets were allowed to consolidate their grip, "we have failed the liberation of Europe; we have lost the war!" Patton, an honorable and patriotic man, was apparently unable to accept the fact that while he and his soldiers fought to liberate their fellow men from tyranny, those above him in policy-making positions were seeking to control the world, not to emancipate it. Thus Patton was traduced in the servile press as a covert "Nazi sympathizer" and stripped of his command shortly before his fatal automobile accident on December 9, 1945.