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That's such a s*** crock that America was allied with the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union invaded Poland as well, the polish people were fighting a war on two fronts! Russia had an Alliance with Germany!
America and the Allis should have held the Soviet Union accountable for their alliance with Hitler, and invasion of Poland. America had the Atomic Bomb and Russia didn't. I don't think Russia would have stood much of a chance.
We let Russia oppress and conquer Eastern Europe. They were just as ugly as the Nazis.
So, would it have accomplished the greater good, if the Allis just went all the way to Moscow and dealt with the Soviets the same way they dealt with the Nazis?
You're glossing over quite a bit of history here.
There was quite a bit that led up to the events you're recounting here, and the Allies' biggest mistakes in this regard occurred during and just after WW1. If they had not been so bull-headed and greedy, they could have easily prevented the rise of both the Bolsheviks
and the Nazis. A simple statement of "peace without annexations or indemnities" would have gone a long way. The Allied refusal to do so, compounded by their feeding frenzy at Versailles, built up a huge resentment against the Western Allies - not just in Germany and Russia, but also in former Allied nations such as Italy and Japan.
Of course, the problem with feeding frenzies is that some end up biting off more than they can chew. The British and French Empires were starting to teeter and weaken, and they were also facing labor strife and economic troubles at home. They were also starting to soften up somewhat after the harsh terms of Versailles, as a further treaty was negotiated at Locarno in 1925 - which some see as an early precursor to Appeasement. While it confirmed French territorial gains and made Germany's western borders official, they left the question of Germany's eastern frontiers somewhat open-ended. This was a loophole and a loose end which would figure prominently later on.
Meanwhile, Germany was in political chaos, Russia was still going through revolutionary fervor, and the U.S. was having one big party and didn't want to be bothered with the world's troubles. Russia and Germany were still seen as rather weak and not much of a threat.
Another mistake made by the Allies just after the war was their ill-conceived, misguided intervention in the Russian Civil War, where they took the side of the Whites against the Reds. Big mistake, which made it appear that the Whites were being controlled by foreign imperialists, while the Reds were seen as the true patriots fighting for Mother Russia. But if the Allies had any thoughts in the direction of stopping the Bolsheviks, that would have been the time to do it. But the results and consequences of what they did caused the Russians to feel more alienated, isolated, cornered, and surrounded by enemies who wanted to destroy them. Under such conditions, more extreme and radical regimes are likely to arise.
Keep in mind that all of this had been occurring years before Stalin or Hitler even came to power.
The Western European powers had also grown somewhat weaker, as they had forces scattered around their empires, which were starting to show increased resistance. They were enforcing peace terms on the rest of Europe and the world, but it was slowly becoming apparent that they no longer had the military might to do so. The U.S. had also downsized the size of its military forces.
But Stalin was making a heavy push towards industrialization, which would eventually allow him to start cranking out T-34s. Once Hitler came to power, he also pushed towards arms production - and the arms race was on. Britain and France had gotten caught behind, and the U.S. didn't even care that much.
Despite misgivings about the Stalinist regime, it was clear that Britain and France still saw Hitler's Germany as the greater threat to their own security. France signed a mutual defense agreement with the Soviets in 1935, and Britain was also attempting to forge an alliance with Stalin - all mainly due to mutual fears about Hitler and Germany. I don't know if there was anything Machiavellian to it, such as some might suggest that the West was using the enmity between Germany and Russia to play them off against each other.
The West was also distracted by Japan, whose forays into China were worrisome to the West which still had valuable holdings in the Far East. Then there was Italy, which could have threatened Allied holdings in Africa and the Middle East. And their forces were still spread too thin all across the world, while the Germans were rearming at breakneck speed.
Appeasement was merely the Western Allies' way of buying time, since they were not prepared to go to war with Germany in 1938. They weren't really all that better off in September 1939 either, but they were stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Soviets saw Appeasement as a betrayal and the West's admission that they were too weak to handle Germany. So, they had to do what they felt was necessary for their own defensive position. By making a (temporary) agreement with Germany, they would have time to continue building up their war industries and create a buffer zone between German territory and Soviet territory.
Probably the main reason Britain and France didn't declare war on the USSR was because it would have been too much to bite off at the time - to go to war with both Russia and Germany at the same time. Then Russia and Germany really would be allies. But I think they still held out hope that Russia and Germany would fall out and start fighting each other (which is what eventually happened anyway).
For his part, FDR likely recognized the threat to the global balance of power, although public opinion in America was still very much against going to war under the circumstances. Germany and Russia were primarily land powers and weren't considered a match for Western naval power. Our two-ocean buffer was like a security blanket, but there was a need to build up our naval defenses just the same. Japan had a powerful navy which could threaten us.
There's a question of whether the U.S. would have entered the war at all if not for the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines in December 1941. Germany and Italy declared war on us and invited us to the war in Europe, too. The Soviet Union didn't declare war on us, nor did they attack us - so we had no real reason to go to war with them. We shared a common enemy, so it made sense that we would be allied with each other - at least enough to be able to cooperate, communicate, and coordinate our efforts for a common goal.
Of course, you're not the only critical of the US-Soviet alliance during WW2. FDR was roundly criticized by many - not so much for being allies of convenience, but that it seemed his administration was getting "too friendly" with the Soviets. This would be later used as ammunition by McCarthy and other anti-communists during the Second Red Scare.
Military leaders, such as Patton and MacArthur, were also critical of such policies. Patton wanted to attack and invade the Soviet Union, and there are still those who believe Patton was right. As for whether or not we could have won, that's a tricky point. While it's true that we had the atomic bomb, we didn't have that many. But we would have needed every single one of them to defeat the Red Army - and even that might not have been enough. By just conventional forces, we would have been badly outnumbered.
At the time, and even to this day, many question our usage of the atomic bomb against Japan, even despite numerous justifications and arguments for doing so - mainly because it saved the lives of Americans who would have been used in an amphibious assault on the Japanese home islands which would have been a bloody and gruesome affair. Plus, there was still great anger over Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, among many other things. Japan was seen as an intractable, treacherous enemy, so American public opinion generally accepted the justifications and explanations as to why we used such a devastating weapon on the Japanese.
But if we had done the same to Russia, which had been our ally for the past several years, and with whom we had agreements signed in good faith - that would have been extremely difficult to explain to the American people, not to mention the ramifications it would have on world opinion. The American population was already getting war-weary.
Even in peacetime, after the war had ended, it was clear that US servicemen and their families were getting noticeably impatient for their discharges and permission to return home. The war was over, and they wanted to go home, but the wheels were moving too slowly. Imagine how upset they'd be if they were told they had to stay and fight another war.
