The allies gave nothing away. Stalin had the whip hand and was not going to release it.
> The allies gave nothing away. Stalin had the whip hand and was not going to release it. <
True, FDR was not very assertive at Yalta. But you’re right! When it came to Eastern Europe, Stalin held every last card.
How could have FDR and Churchill played it differently? They could have threatened to cut off lend-lease supplies. But Stalin would have just laughed at that.
I guess FDR could have threatened Stalin with the atomic bomb. But that would have been a bluff. And Stalin was no dummy. He would have called that bluff.
The Soviets were exhausted and the USSR on the brink of collapse by the end of WWII
On the other hand, the American war machine was really just hitting its stride when the war ended, with many new, revolutionary weapons systems and well trained troops coming on line for 1946
America had no territorial ambitions or desire for empires. The American people just wanted to end the war and go home so we were content to cede Eastern Europe and half of Germany to the Russians
During by the war, our leaders were more than happy to let Russia do the heavy lifting and take massive casualties in the invasion of Germany while we executed a strategy of using overwhelming air and artillery superiority to minimize allied casualties
Looking back over the last 70 years we made the right choice because the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of the Cold War .
However, if there had been a real WWIII with a nuclear exchange, the costs of dealing with Stalin in the immediate post war time frame would have been peanuts compared to the devastation caused by WWIII