Sherman Logan: "And they lost over 100,000 men killed doing so.
As compared to 400,000 US troops dead in the entire war."
Extremely important point. Let's see if I can make it even stronger:
Your 400,000 includes ALL US personnel who died in Europe, the Pacific, accidents, disease, etc.
US Army & Air Force battle deaths were fewer than 300,000 of which around half were in Europe.
Point is, the Soviets lost almost as many just taking Berlin as the US lost in the WHOLE WAR AGAINST HITLER.
Indeed, where the US lost fewer than 200,000 in Europe, the Soviets lost over 20 million!
So anyone who says that Roosevelt, or Eisenhower (or whoever) "gave away Eastern Europe" to Stalin, has NO concept of the scales of warfare going on there.
Certainly taking Berlin cost the Soviet Union many lives. But at least part of that was due to Stalin’s way of waging war. The Americans had good equipment and good planning, for the most part, and valued the lives of their troops. So they softened up the enemy, did flanking maneuvers, and so on, to preserve lives. Stalin sent his forces bulling forward as fast as possible, to capture territory and avenge himself on the Germans.
Stalin was completely indifferent to how many Russians died. In fact he killed millions of them himself in the great purges. And Soviet military leaders could be overruled by NKVD or party members who accompanied military units in the field and saw to it that they did what the Communist leadership wanted. The last word did not belong to the commanding officers, but to party members who knew little or nothing about fighting a war. Some were smart enough not to interfere, but some were not.
So, yes, more Americans would have died if we had gone further East, but probably not comparable to Russian losses. In fact, many Germans were anxious to surrender to the western allies rather than be overrun by Stalin.
Thank you. If I remember correctly, about 90% of German battle deaths were inflicted by the Red Army. The Western Front, for all its importance, was a secondary theater of the real war in Europe.