(11-04-2016 07:58 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(11-04-2016 07:29 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  

(11-04-2016 07:12 PM)firmbizzle Wrote:  

(11-04-2016 05:40 PM)HarmonOliphantOberlanderDevine Wrote:  

(11-04-2016 03:00 PM)firmbizzle Wrote:  Oh, go from fighting the Germans to fighting the Red Army that had way more men than we had while preparing for the Invasion of Japan? No.

We had nukes and they didn't.

Few and no air superiority over the Soviet Union unlike Japan. Wouldn't have mattered because there was no way to deliver those nukes.

The United States gave to the Soviet Union from October 1, 1941 to May 31, 1945 the following: 427,284 trucks, 13,303 combat vehicles, 35,170 motorcycles, 2,328 ordnance service vehicles, 2,670,371 tons of petroleum products (gasoline and oil) or 57.8 percent of the High-octane aviation fuel,[24] 4,478,116 tons of foodstuffs (canned meats, sugar, flour, salt, etc.), 1,911 steam locomotives, 66 Diesel locomotives, 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35 heavy machinery cars. Provided ordnance goods (ammunition, artillery shells, mines, assorted explosives) amounted to 53 percent of total domestic production.

UK provided to the USSR between 1941 and 1945:
3,000+ Hurricanes
4,000+ other aircraft
27 naval vessels
5,218 tanks
5,000+ anti-tank guns
4,020 ambulances and trucks
323 machinery trucks
2,560 Universal Carriers
1,721 motorcycles
£1.15bn worth of aircraft engines
600 radar and sonar sets
Hundreds of naval guns
15 million pairs of boots

If the western allies and the USSR had gone to war after the defeat of Germany the Russians would not have had such a lifeline in that conflict and would have had to go on their own, relying only on their depleted economic base.

I think it would have been a real challenge for the USSR to go it alone against a western alliance supplied by US industrial might.

But who wanted more war? Nobody. Even if US leadership had had the "guts" its hard to see the western public being real keen on it.

Stalin is purported to have said, the USA supplied the weapons, the USSR supplied the men and the UK supplied the time.

Well, more dead Communists the better.

Stalin also wanted to kill John Wayne. A fascinating historical story. Also, Johnny Cash was one of the first people in the West to learn about Stalin's demise.