When the Germans surrendered, the Japanese army was virtually untouched, fresh, and formidable. In conventional terms we were looking at a horrendous and maybe even unwinable battle with the Japanese. In that context I think it is understandable that Roosevelt chose not to start a whole new war with the Russians.
I think the Russians were vulnerable after the fall of Berlin. We had the bomb. Patton could have pushed them back or even the threat to do so would have succeeded.
We're paying the price for the Yalta sell out and Jimmy Carter's sell out of the Shah.
"When the Germans surrendered, the Japanese army was virtually untouched, fresh, and formidable."
Huh? The 20,000+ dead Japs at Iwo Jima beg to differ, as do the thousands of dead Japs in China, Burma, the Phillippines, etc, the crews of the sunken carrier fleet at the bottom of the Pacific off Midway and in the Coral Sea, the thousands of dead Jap pilots at Guadalcanal, the Marianas Turkey Shoot, and elsewhere, the sunken Jap fleets at Leyte Gulf and elsewhere, etc. The only hurdle left in the Pacific at VE day was Okinawa. The Japanese had long resorted to the panic-button tactic of the kamikaze, due to an extreme shortage of skilled pilots, which itself was due to skilled Americans shooting them out of the skies all over the Pacific. During all this, the Jap citizenry got to experience the horrors of nightly incindiary (sp?) bombing raids by the American Army Air command, which killed more people than the combined death toll of the atomic weapons. In short, the Japanese military and citizenry were close to capitulation by the time VE day arrived. Only their arrogance and ignorance prolonged the war.
" In conventional terms we were looking at a horrendous and maybe even unwinable battle with the Japanese."
Horrendous? Absolutely. Unwinnable? No. It was only a matter of time and bodies before the inevitable occurred.
I do agree with your point that it's probably not fair to criticize FDR 60 years later.
What's next - will some future President start apologizing for us having to drop 2 atomic bombs on them? Apologize for slavery? Apologize to Southerners for Sherman's March to the Sea? Bad precedent being set here, IMO.
You're watching too much History propaganda Channel.