There are several other critical factors to consider:
“1. A vast majority of Americans considered Japan - not Nazi Germany - to be the main enemy.
2. Perhaps in official Washington and among elites the Soviet Union was considered an ally; but for most Americans the alliance with the USSR was a war time union of convenience.
3. Agreed, the American public would never have consented to a continuation of WWII against the Soviet Union, but Americans would never consent to Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.”
1. I doubt that you can support that. My parents’ generation fought WWII, my grandparents’ WWI, and I grew up with that history to build on, when I served in Germany during the Cold War.
Americans very much believed Germany was our enemy, and the USSR our ally because it was so.
2. Your commentary about “elites” seems to follow the contemporary fad of using that word, but you’ll need to support your written opinion with something to convince me.
3. Americans consented to the Cold War, which meant Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. We didn’t fire a shot. Our forces in Germany were meant ONLY to slow down the Soviet tanks rolling across Poland and Germany, until we could fire the nukes.
The Cold War did NOT start immediately at the end of WWII. It was gradual.
Recall Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex near the end of his term, which begs the question about what role our businesses-military establishment sought to keep tensions high?
I had ancestors fighting on both sides during the Civil War. One grandfather served in the Spanish-American War and the other in WWI. My parents’ generation fought in WWII; growing up I listened to endless stories from uncles about “the big one.” I served in Vietnam during the hot war.
Several books have been written about the feelings of Americans during WWII. Any good public library will have them.
Generally speaking, Americans knew Germany was the enemy, but the main focus of their animus was Japan; of course, Jewish Americans and Polish Americans had different feelings but they were a minority. The feeling of most Americans toward Germany did not change until the concentration camps were liberated. Please investigate this.
Every one of my parents’ generation that I've talked with - and that's a lot - had no illusions about the USSR and most considered communism a greater threat than Nazism, which they knew was specific to Germany; but communism had world wide ambitions. We were fighting on the same side but we weren't allies.
There were media elites in the 1930’s and 40’s just as there are now. Don't kid yourself.
Americans consented to the Cold War because they realized they had no choice. They realized that a medium sized state such as Japan or Nazi Germany did not have the population or industrial base to dominate the world but an empire such as the USSR did.
We didn't fire a shot. I think we did. I consider the Korean War to be an integral part of the Cold War, as it could not have been started or maintained without Stalin's consent. The war in Vietnam was a offshoot of the Cold War.
Please read all of Eisenhower's speech.