People have HOI4 brain. nukes or not, Stalin going past Berlin wasn't gonna happen. Stalin was right to not suicidally march millions of Soviet people into WW2.5 against much richer and better-armed Western powers. Especially since the head of those Western powers, the USA, lied across the atlantic Ocean and had plentiful resources gotten through the primitive accumulation phase of slavery with which to arm their Capitalist European allies. Also, it wasn't Stalin's call. Believe it or not, there was a Soviet government outside of Stalin whose opinions mattered.
Even if the USA had zero nukes after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they still had the technology and resources to rapidly produce more. If Stalin wasted his time attacking everyone between Germany and Ireland, and annexing these regions into some kind of Socialist super state, it would only be a matter of time until the top dog across the ocean got their nukes together and started dropping them everywhere socialism was ascendant.
I think the situation is more nuanced than to say that the US would just start another war in Western Europe just after the Nazis had been defeated
replace US with soviet in this sentence and you're making the exact same point I was making. However, the US had way more surplus resources to go on waging war since they started out with so much more and sacrificed so much less than everyone else in WW2.
Surely a bunch of people in the Soviet government were also saying to march past Berlin (without a time machine) but after barely surviving a genocidal war I could imagine a lot of troops just wanted to go home
People have HOI4 brain. nukes or not, Stalin going past Berlin wasn't gonna happen. Stalin was right to not suicidally march millions of Soviet people into WW2.5 against much richer and better-armed Western powers. Especially since the head of those Western powers, the USA, lied across the atlantic Ocean and had plentiful resources gotten through the primitive accumulation phase of slavery with which to arm their Capitalist European allies. Also, it wasn't Stalin's call. Believe it or not, there was a Soviet government outside of Stalin whose opinions mattered.
Vijay Prashad has the right take on this in Washington Bullets
also
Even if the USA had zero nukes after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they still had the technology and resources to rapidly produce more. If Stalin wasted his time attacking everyone between Germany and Ireland, and annexing these regions into some kind of Socialist super state, it would only be a matter of time until the top dog across the ocean got their nukes together and started dropping them everywhere socialism was ascendant.
Sucks but it's true. I think I agree more with the people pointing to the German Revolution as the last possible inflection point.
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replace US with soviet in this sentence and you're making the exact same point I was making. However, the US had way more surplus resources to go on waging war since they started out with so much more and sacrificed so much less than everyone else in WW2.
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:ohnoes: I should have brought Stalin some Star Trek weaponry then.
The Red Army outnumbered the West by ~50%. I thought it was more.
Surely a bunch of people in the Soviet government were also saying to march past Berlin (without a time machine) but after barely surviving a genocidal war I could imagine a lot of troops just wanted to go home
yes
I know, but it's still funny to say Stalin shouldn't have stopped at Berlin.
We can resolve this contradiction by giving Stalin a Gundam and letting him take the West on all by himself. He can do it. I believe in him.