Re: “Do you have any idea how many more GIs would have died to defeat a Red Army that had just defeated the Nazis. OR to defeat a Nazi army that had prevailed in conquering the USSR?”
The Nazi army that had conquered the USSR (and Hitler couldn’t have used his whole army with, for example, the U.S. and British Armies on his borders in France) would have been thinned out by a couple of million men, thus making it easy to defeat. The same for a Red Army that, without U.S. and British aid, succeeded in invading Germany.
What I meant was that, after liberating France, we should have let the Nazis and Communists do most of the dying at each others’ hands, and then finished off the winner—which we would have had the means to do in August 1945. 20 kilotons on either Berlin or Moscow would probably have done the job.
This would have prevented the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and thus saved something like 80,000 American lives.
At the beginning of the war, something similar in reverse may have been Stalin’s motivation, to let Hitler, the French and the Brits wipe each other out, and then scoop up the pieces. It didn’t quite work out as planned, but he did manage to scoop up half of Europe anyway.
>20 kilotons on either Berlin or Moscow would probably have >done the job.
Pure speculative nonsense. We didn’t have the weapons to spare on what was the successfully concluded European War.
>This would have prevented the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and >thus saved something like 80,000 American lives.
More nonsense. Starting a war with Soviet Russia would have
been cvriminally insane with an active invasion of Japan
imminent.
The Western world was close to the end of the tether. Britain in terms of treasure, US in terms of the resources
and manpower devoted to war, munitions and other activities
that weren’t making our economy greater.
Honestly, some of the revisonism in this forum is breathtaking. May some people need to discuss with some
WWII vets who were up close and personal with the whole thing.
Another topic is about why it was good that we nuked Japan is that it avoided us having to fight in Japan twice.
By that, I mean had we not dropped the bomb, and instead had to invade Japan, most likely the Soviets would have also been part of the invasion. And most likely there would have been an agreement to divide Japan, ala Germany, Korea, and Vietnam. Then there would have been a Japanese Civil War, between Communist North Japan, and US-backed South Japan, just as in Korea.