Dan 57 you know the events but you simply fail to seethat the interpretation from the other side can reasonably be different.

“after the Nagasaki bomb, the US had no others, and USSR had already lost 9 million combat dead and approximately 20 million civilian. What political sense would it have made for …with the Soviet Union”

Mone, but within a dew years we were ready for that. What political sense would it have made for the USSR, who had lost that 9 million to go to war. Less than none. Which is why I say that without the Bomb there need have been no cold war.

“If I look at a politically color-coded map, suddenly, within 2 years, the Eurasian landmass goes from approximately 30% Red to approximately 50%”

- By that same definition the map of Wurope has gone from 0% American to 50% – moreover they get the wealthy 50% & the Russians got Bulgaria.

“America’s interest was always to Go Home”

Of course it was – so was Russia’s – we have already agreed the overstretch caused by maintaining a large army in eastern Europe was a/the reason for the fall of the USSR.

“do you believe Stalin really thought – that the Allied armies intended to attack the USSR, and that was really the reason the Red Army remained in all those countries”

Yes, or at least that there was a sufficient risk that they would do so that it would be gross dereliction not to take adequate precautions. The US did have the Bomb & was quite evidently using it as a threat. Truman afreed with the “great & prescient” Churchill, who had originally been the greatest proponent of invading Russia. We know that within a few years they WERE prepared to go to war & we know that only a few years before the USSR had been attacked without warning by a country which had sworn peace towards them.

We now also hnow that trusting to NATO’s promises, peaceful intentions & treaty guarantees allowed NATO, in flagrent violation of all international law, to arm openly genocidal ex-Nazis promote a war that killed half a million Yugoslaves. That action alone proves that Stalin was right not to trust western promises.