I would've supported Patton going in and Inksing up the Soviets as well. However, I also like the strategy of nuclear deterence. Whatever, I'd likely just find a way to oppose her since she's a teacher and I always oppose whoever tries to teach me anything.
If this is about feeling for other people, then let's talk about the millions killed under Stalinism, something that we had every moral right to oppose, whether through nuclear deterrence of physical military force. One costly war could have saved us several thousand costly missiles later. Or maybe you like to think of the money diverted to the arms race from the welfare state. Maybe with the Soviets vanquished much earlier, you get that money going to the "right" people. Hindsight is 20/20 but if I'm in 1945, we didn't just vanquish fascism in order to let communism take its place.
There is just a few problems with your supposition about Communism.
The first is that back in 1945 people didn't know how twisted Stalin Communism really was. You have to remember that back in the Ukrainian Famine (which I would call "the Irish Famine if it was on steroids") the news being given back to the US was that Stalin's government was *gasp* successful in dealing with the famine among other things. While Ukrainians fell down left and right, BY THE THOUSANDS DAILY, our own journalists were coming back home and saying that the Soviet Government, who arguably went out of their way to make the Ukrainian Famine as horrible as possible (9 million people, dead in a year. Again, this would've ate the Irish Famine for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week) were in fact taking drastic steps that helped alleviate the poverty. In fact, many western liberals assumed that Soviet Communism was just a really extreme version of liberalism where the state provides everything and everybody gives each other hugs. Even conservatives of the time didn't really see Soviet Communism as a great evil force that would kill untold millions, but as a system of far left statist radicalism.
With the rise of Hitler and his open dickweed ideology, people probably paid even less attention to Stalin Communism. Especially after the Allies allied with Moscow to defeat Hitler. It certainly didn't help things that Stalin had the tendency to delete people from existence. Hitler might've killed people, but Stalin made them "disappeared." Even after World War II many of Stalin's atrocities were in the dark. Sure, there was German propaganda about Soviet war crimes (that were probably true) and incidents like Soviet soldiers raping and pillaging all the way to Berlin, but it's not like the Allies had a punchbypunch update of what was happening. All the Allies knew was that it was April 1945 and they were close to victory. It wasn't like the Allies were sitting around in lawn chairs having some smokes waiting for the Russians to get to Berlin.
The American people in 1945 didn't have the information we have now on Stalin. Sure, they knew he wasn't a 100% cool wholesome guy, but they didn't know he was Absolut Vodka evil until like the late 1950's. Hell, most Americans probably didn't truly understand the ramifications of the Holocaust until the 1960's or whenever Holocaust Studies really got off the ground.
If you were alive back in 1945 you wouldn't stop if you knew that Communism would replace Fascism, but a lot of westerners of the time would. Soviet Russia wasn't popular back then, hell Henry Wallace wasn't popular back then! However, Stalin Russia was perceived as merely that: unpopular. Many people didn't perceive it as being "Great Evil" until about the Korean War. The most seeming point of difference between the western Capitalist nations and Communist nations was ideology. I'm not saying America was ignorant back then, but merely that Stalin's whitewashing campaign was just that damn good.
By the time that many people became aware of how evil Stalin really was, USSR probably had enough nuclear weapons to erase whatever explosive advantage we had before.
Also, there is the possibility that RUSSIA IS READY FOR AN ATTACK. GI Joe doesn't go on his unobstructed march into the Russian wilderness, instead Uncle Joe manages to turn back the incoming yankee tank brigades and manages a successful tank division counterattack into parts of West Germany, Southeastern Europe (including Greece), and maybe even a portion of Italy. This is Joseph Stalin's army, you think the populations of those places will be in peace after the Soviet Army takes over? Joe Stalin killed 10 million of his own countrymen, imagine what he would do to Greeks, Italians, Austrians, Germans.......FRENCH OR BELGIANS?!
Millions did die due to Stalinism, MILLIONS MORE would die in an all out war between the Allies and the Soviets after World War II. And due to the amount of money that would be required to fund a defense army in a defeated Soviet Russia.............more money would still be spent on tank shells than social programs.
