My uncle's words constantly echo from the past... After VE day, we should have neutered Russia; defensive capabilities only, same as Japan.

That was certainly Patton’s perspective.

Sympathetic as I am to that perspective, however, the Soviet army was a behemoth at that point. And it stood halfway across Germany.

Remember. On VE Day, the battle for Okinawa was still underway, and Saipan still lay in the future, as did the expected invasion of the Japanese home island. And the Manhattan Project, though showing promise, had not yet successfully tested an atomic bomb.

Large units of the Wehrmacht had just surrendered to Allied forces and some of their generals had begged the allies to join them in pushing back the “Soviet/Asian hordes”. Their entreaties were rejected.

Given what Roosevelt/Churchill/Eisenhower faced at the time, putting an end to the war in Europe to focus on defeating Japan was a wise choice.

It’s only the last 80 years of history that suggests they should have rolled the dice- a perspective that was unavailable to them at the time.

And it would have been a roll of the dice. There’s no guarantee we would have won that battle.