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We had made a deal with the Soviets which might have looked good in retrospect if the atom bomb had been a dud. FDR was desperate to get Stalin to go to war with Japan. It wasn't until July that Truman knew that the bomb would work. As it turned out, Stalin kept his promise to declare war on Japan within 2-3 months of the end of the war in Europe (declaring war exactly 3 months after VE-Day).

If the war against Japan had dragged on into 1946, Americans would have been happy that Russians were dying in the war and not as many Americans. I don't think many Americans in May 1945 would have welcomed Truman saying, "Germany has surrendered but now we're going to push the Russians out of Germany. We'll finish off the war with Japan eventually."

Japan was the enemy, while the Soviets had been our allies for the past several years. The US had about 400,000 killed in the war up to the time Germany surrendered--what American President would ask the country for a few hundred thousand more Americans dead to improve the postwar situation in Europe, when few people had any inkling of what was about to emerge in the countries occupied by the Red Army?

We had made a deal with the Soviets which might have looked good in retrospect if the atom bomb had been a dud. FDR was desperate to get Stalin to go to war with Japan. It wasn’t until July that Truman knew that the bomb would work. As it turned out, Stalin kept his promise to declare war on Japan within 2-3 months of the end of the war in Europe (declaring war exactly 3 months after VE-Day).

If the war against Japan had dragged on into 1946, Americans would have been happy that Russians were dying in the war and not as many Americans. I don’t think many Americans in May 1945 would have welcomed Truman saying, “Germany has surrendered but now we’re going to push the Russians out of Germany. We’ll finish off the war with Japan eventually.”

Japan was the enemy, while the Soviets had been our allies for the past several years. The US had about 400,000 killed in the war up to the time Germany surrendered—what American President would ask the country for a few hundred thousand more Americans dead to improve the postwar situation in Europe, when few people had any inkling of what was about to emerge in the countries occupied by the Red Army?

Those are all compelling arguments and I have only retrospect and raw emotion on my side. Stalin was going to kill 20 million of his own citizens/soldiers in the next few years, plus enslave a dozen European nations. The remainder of own my family that had not come to the USA in 1910-1920 were killed off in the period, as far as we can tell. I’d like to think had I been around I would have had the “long” view of Patton and seen around some of the corners.

Anyway, good post, Verginius.