It’s irrelevant if we think the Soviets started the war and they may have if things moved a certain way. We wouldn’t have a choice but to fight. Soviet soldiers had a hard life in the military but they couldn’t surrender to the Germans. They could surrender to us.
Air power alone would have crushed the Soviets in a few weeks as they were not used to dealing with Supply Interdiction.
I don’t know about a few weeks. I do agree that our air power would have been the decisive factor.
The bottom line is that every war is entered into with how easy it will be, and how quickly the enemy will collapse. This would have been a long bloody brutal two or three years. And for what? To save Germans, from Russians?
Too many people still believe just like Hitler, kick in the door and the whole rotten house will cave in. The Japanese thought a decisive blow at Pearl Harbor might actually make us sue for peace. Both sides in the Civil War thought one good bloody nose and the other side would fold. The North Koreans thought if they could blow us off the peninsula we would accept defeat in South Korea. Osama thought 911 would make America leave the Middle East. For us to start a war and be allies to Nazis in 1945 is the same kind of hubris. The Red Army of 1945 was not the Red Army of 1941. It was tough, hard well equipped, and very angry.
And what would Stalin have done to the families of the soldiers who surrendered?