What's holding America back from confronting Communist Russia after World War 2?

Answer 1

I assume you meant, what held America (and Britain) back from confronting Soviet Russia immediately after the military defeat of Hitler. The short and simple answer is, Stalin had an army in place, occupying Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, eastern Germany, etc., that was quite a bit larger and more formidable than the ones the Anglo allies had facing it.

In fact, German tactics in the last months of the war was to throw everything against Stalin, while scarcely resisting the Americans and British at all, because the Germans were terrified of what the Russians were doing to German civilians and prisoners of war in the territory they had conquered, and they viewed the Americans and British as 'civilized,' in fact as largely Aryan cultures. (When Berlin finally fell, to the Russians as agreed at Yalta, while the Anglos waited nearby, it appears that nearly every woman in the city between 12 and 60 was raped by the triumphant Russian troops, an episode that is still kept mostly quiet in Germany today.)

The German effort to have Germany occupied by the Anglo allies rather than Russia was frustrated because Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed at Yalta where they would divide Germany, as well as the rest of Europe. Indeed, the whole point of Yalta, to the Anglo allies, was to get Stalin to agree to stop advancing at some point, because there was a real danger that he'd keep moving West, expanding the Communist sphere of influence, whether or not it meant war with his erstwhile allies.

So when the American army reached the limit of its planned advance it simply stopped, even if unopposed, while the Russians fought up to the same spot. If Eisenhower and Patton and Bradley, not to mention Montgomery, had attacked the much more powerful Red Army at that point, they would have been destroyed in short order.

(Of course, much of the fighting power of the Red Army was dependent on American supplies, such as the 600,000 heavy trucks we sent, without which Stalin could hardly have fed his troops, much less sustained an advance. The famous 'Stalin Organ' battery of Katyusha artillery rockets was normally mounted on a Studebaker two and a half ton diesel truck.)

Stalin might indeed have taken advantage of this military imbalance to occupy all of Germany, and probably Austria and Greece too, and possibly Iran and parts of the Arab world too, despite his promises at Yalta, and dare the Anglos to do anything about it, if not for the demonstrated threat of the atomic bomb, but that's highly debated even today. I'd argue it's true, though, and that the only reason this conclusion is resisted is because people want to claim that dropping the atomic bomb, twice, was an unjustifiable war crime. There's no doubt that that was part of Truman's reasoning when he chose to use the Bomb, though.

The Soviets had stronger ground forces in Europe, numerically at least, than NATO right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. That's why the Americans always tried to have qualitatively superior weapons, such as jet fighters that could beat their Russian opposite numbers, and why we were so worried when Russian equipment sometimes proved superior, even temporarily, as with the MIGs in Korea.

Answer 2

The USSR was MUCH stronger than the US in WWII. Despite being handicapped by totally incompetent leadership ( all of Stalin's yes men), no concept of tatics and having 2/3 of their productive land occupied they still prevailed. They learned the hard way-trial and error with millions of lives sacrificed to Stalin's ignorance. The fact the Germans considered the Russian front to be the "real war" and the western front a sideshow is another give away. The Russians could have reached Berlin much earlier, but they were busy consilidating their Eastern European empire-for example waiting outside Warsaw for weeks while the Germans crushed the uprisings so that an anti-communist Polish state would not be recognised at the peace talks; diverting massive armies into Hungary and Rumania for similar reasons. A concentrated drive on Berlin through the north German plain would have very likely finnished off the Germans by autumn 1944. This is not to diminish the US effort in Europe in WWII. Their strategic bombing campaign was vital to the war effort, as was Lend Lease supplies of material to the UK and Russia.

Answer 3

The Cold War can be said to start with the US/UK intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1919. From the outset, the US and the UK were opposed to the very existence of a socialist republic. The problem is that Russia is a difficult enemy to attack and the US realized early on that any attack on the Soviet Union could cost the US its position of strength. Any victory against the Soviets would be a Pyhrric one.
The US then set out on a strategy of protracted conflict as early on as WWII. (relations were warm in the 30's when the US boasted a lively labor movement). The Soviets termed the strategy, with accurate paranoia, Capitalist Encirclement. Meaning that from the begging, the Soviets understood that direct attack would be preceded by a cordoning off and choking of the Tartar giant.
Stalin took the prudent measure of speeding production in his five year plans, thereby industrializing and militarizing the USSR on par with the growing threat of anti-communist Germany. The US strategy is surmised by Truman's advice, given when he was a senator, that the US should allow the Nazis and Soviets to kill each other off and the US should side against a weakened winner. Opposition to Nazism did not enter the mainstream in the US until well into the war. After all, a large proportion of Americans are of German ancestry.
After the Soviets defeated Nazi Germany, the US followed the strategy of protracted conflict by intervening in Greece to depose the anti-nazi guerrillas that had occupied the government and to reinstate the Nazi government. This is the core of the Truman Doctrine.
At the time, Geroge Kennan in the Security Council, set down the diplomatic strategy to defeat Russia. It was containment. The Idea was that Russia was much too strong to defeat militarily and that the possession of the bomb itself would give the US the international weight to effectively cordon off the USSR.
Later, Paul Nitze would put it down as National Policy in NSC-68 that Russia was not to be attacked directly but that any perception of growing Russian power outside of the USSR was to be considered dangerous. NSC-68 puts the world as a battlefield in which any event or tendency which the US considered would weaken its standing against Russia was to be considered a threat.

Kennan's containment and Nitze's NSC-68 are the policies setting out to contain Russia and use the threat of its growing power to enforce US influence world wide. Attacking the Soviets would have simply not made sense with or without the bomb. Just ask Napoleon.

Answer 4

Because we didn't take Patton's advice.

He saw the Soviets as the biggest threat (even bigger than Germany) and wanted to continue the fight. He argued that a war was coming eventually and better it be fought sooner than later, while we had our nation mobilized and an army in the field, plus we were the only ones with the bomb. He also (rightly) argued that what was left of the German army would gladly join us in a war against the Soviets. Unfortunately, wedid not heed his advice and our opportunity to end Communism passed and we settled into a Cold War.

Answer 5

Okay, your use of the historical present caught me off guard for a moment, but I know what you mean.

Even though the USA was at that point the only country with an atom bomb, the USSR was fast developing one, so there was a risk of an atomic war. Plus, the USA didn't have all that many atom bombs, so they'd have to go in with troops, which would have been suicide.

Answer 6

The only two atomic bombs in existence at the time was already used on Japan, and Stalin's sixteen divisions sitting in Western Europe tilted the balance of power in Stalin's favor. What kept Stalin in check was that he did not know the West had no more atomic bombs to use against him.

Answer 7

What do you mean by "confronting" because there were several confrontations between the US and USSR after WWII. Are you asking why the US didn’t go to war with the Soviets?

Answer 8

First of all, we had just left a long and deadly war, then we jumped into Korea, then it was Vietnam.
The Soviet Union ha dthe same capabilities we had as far as atomic bombs were concerned, had them pointed at us and would have used them in a heart beat!
Besides, things softened and The Soviet Union dissolved any way and no one died, be happy about that.

Answer 9

Everyone else said it before me: they had bombs and they were pointed at us.

It's like a hostage standoff; you don't want to tick off the guy holding a gun to somebody (or himself) so you have to be tactical.

Not doing anything meant that no one got killed in a nuke war.

Answer 10

nuclear war. A very real threat. It wasn't any fun growing up under the shadow of the bomb.