- I always thought that the US stepped in to save Europe.
- I thought bombing Japan was absolutely necessary to save millions of lives, both US and Japanese
- I thought that Chinese expansion in the South China Sea was confrontational and aggressive.
The US lost 400,000 soldiers in WW2, the Russians lost 11 million and faced a much larger part of the German army.
This is not to say that Stalin and the Russians aren't as bad as we thought, but we were not the saviors our history books tell us we were.
Japan was likely to surrender in August of 1945. The Russians had declared war on them and they much preferred to surrender to the US as opposed to Russia . Historical documents show that this is almost certainly true. The atom bombs may have been more of a signal to the Russians than a way to press Japan to surrender.
