I had not thought of the wanting the Soviets in the Pacific, if need be.
But, WOULD they have helped us? I don't know what kind of aid they provided when the war was going on.
So after V-E, were the Soviets "war weary" too?
I trust Stalin less than zero, and my guess is that the would have done nothing.
The problem I have is the total capitulation to the Soviets.
Roosevelt and Churchill could have said no to Soviet expansion of the Iron Curtain at Yalta.
I'll grant the sickness of FDR. The man was on his deathbed at the time.
Wish he'd included Truman. Why didn't he?
He HAD to know he wasn't long for this world.
Why not pass the knowledge to your successor?
Hell, FDR kept the A-bomb a "secret" from his own veep.
Again, why?
“But, WOULD they have helped us? I don’t know what kind of aid they provided when the war was going on.”
The Russians provided soldiers and a lot them. Many Americans are not aware that the largest battles that the German Army fought were against Russia. Without the Eastern Front there is no way that the Allies could have landed on the European mainland. Germany was far too strong until they bled themselves fighting the USSR.
“So after V-E, were the Soviets “war weary” too?”
Probably, but they found the energy to gobble up two northern Japanese islands before Japan surrendered. If the war had gone on longer they would have taken even more.
“The problem I have is the total capitulation to the Soviets.”
There wasn’t total capitulation. America and England needed Russia to keep fighting on the Eastern Front. Stalin had the option of stopping at the Russian frontier which would have freed up German divisions to be sent west to fight us. That’s the last thing that we wanted. Fighting was tough enough without giving Germany the chance to double its forces in the west.
Again, the idea that we should have risked alienating the Soviets is a luxury afforded only to those living long after the war. A Germany free to turn all of its firepower to the west is a far different animal than the one that we defeated.