Bad idea.
Truman gutted the armed forces, especially the Army, after 1945, to the extent that we had a major problem handling one third world country’s invasion of another in Korea. Britain was in worse shape, and we hadn’t even started building NATO yet. I think it’s ludicrous to think we could have handled the Red Army rolling westward.
The only way such a sneak attack could have worked is if it had decapitated the Soviet system and USSR had disintegrated into chaos. That’s possible, but I think any such attack in 1947 would have been a very bad idea.
General Patton had it right in 1945.
“.....and I’ll make it look like they started it”.
I am reading the book “Downfall” which details the last six months of W.W. II and the fight in the Pacific.
It gets into great detail the planning for the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands.
The U.S. was war weary at that point and while there was a great deal of planning to move a large number of European forces to the Pacific for the planned invasion there was also a plan to demobilize as many as 2 Million serviceman per the demands of the citizens and congress.
So don’t blame Truman for gutting the armed services after the war that was going to be demanded by the people.
At the end of the war the U.S. had some 8 to 12 million people in the various branches and that number was going to be severely cut no matter what.