If Stalin didn’t stop at Berlin America would have eaten shit for like a year until they built more nukes which they had a monopoly on at the time.
They would have used them.
I don’t see a path to victory there unless it’s acceptable to be losing like two entire cities a year (I honestly have no idea how many nukes could be built a year at that time, I say two because that’s how many were built for Japan) to a nuclear and bloodthirsty empire in its prime.
I know it’s a meme. But I see it said enough I wanted to hear what people actually thought on the matter memes aside.
Edit: lots of good takes and I’ve learned some stuff, thanks for all the responses.
Shit that popped into my head as soon as I hit post: possible path to victory is the nuke happy response might turn everyone against America because the nuke happiness would drop the flesh mask and reveal the face of death drive incarnate?
Seems unlikely. The entire West was on board with Death Drive Incarnate and deeply indebted to the USians, while the Soviets were in an awkward spot having endured massive losses and deprivation that as far as I know was much worse than what the western allies faced. The last Soviet famine was in '46 directly due to the massive destruction wrought by the war.
I didn’t know about that famine, I’d been told the last proper famine was the one banderites soy face at.
My understanding is that the destruction of farmland and industrial capacity, plus the mass mobilization, lead to shortages across the USSR. I'm not sure if it was bad enough that anyone died from it directly, but I've heard it described as the last famine.
Gotcha, probably an error of unquestioned priors on my part (famine = starvation deaths).
o7