That's what I thought, too...until I began to find out just what we would have faced.
1. During WWII on the European side, air power was not nearly as decisive as you seem to think -
it was most effective against stationary infrastructure targets within range of the bombers. The thing is, except for rail hubs, the Soviets didn't depend on much in the way of infrastructure within range of the bombers. If they had been able to reach some of the major cities in the western USSR, then maybe they could have helped...but against mobile armies on the ground, WWII bombers were not that effective - the targeting technology and skill simply weren't there yet. If you'll remember, even our bombing of ground troops in Vietnam when we had total air supremacy and much bigger and better bombers and bombs, we still couldn't shut down the Ho Chi Minh trail.
2. The atomic bombs wouldn't have made any difference at all - for instance, in August of 1945 (four months after Berlin fell),
we only had enough enriched uranium for two bombs, and it would have taken several months to make enough for a third bomb. The threat that we could continue bombing Japan with more atomic bombs was essentially a grand bluff. Not only that, but the Soviets had spies at Alamogordo - Stalin apparently indicated that to FDR at the Yalta conference. They knew what we were doing and likely knew what we did and did not have. What's more, our bombers did not have the range to reach, say, Smolensk or Minsk or Kiev, much less Moscow.
3. Look at
what the Soviets had just for the Battle of Berlin:
"The Battle of the Seelow Heights, fought over four days from 16 April until 19 April, was one of the last pitched battles of World War II: almost one million Red Army soldiers and more than 20,000 tanks and artillery pieces were deployed to break through the "Gates to Berlin" which were defended by about 100,000 German soldiers and 1,200 tanks and guns."
4. Soviet armor was significantly superior to our own - the T-34 medium tank was arguably the best tank of the war. We had the Shermans which - though they were greatly improved by then - were still crappy.
5.
We had about 1.3 million men in the U.S. Army in Europe when Germany surrendered, and there were a few hundred thousanfd more Brits and French and a few Poles to boot.
The Soviets had:
The three Soviet fronts had altogether some 2.5 million men (including 78,556 soldiers of the 1st Polish Army); 6,250 tanks; 7,500 aircraft; 41,600 artillery pieces and mortars; 3,255 truck-mounted Katyusha rocket launchers, (nicknamed "Stalin Organs"); and 95,383 motor vehicles, many of which were manufactured in the USA.
Most of their air power was fighters - and though the armored IL-2 would have been outmatched by the P-51, they still would have prevented Western air power from being a decisive factor.
6. Most importantly, the Soviet lines of communication - their supply lines - were MUCH shorter and more easily traveled. We would still have had to onload and ship our men and materiel across the Atlantic, then offload them in French ports...whereas the Soviets had made great strides not only in repairing the rails all the way from the Urals to Poland, but had probably begun changing the rails in Poland and Germany to the narrower Soviet guage...which meant that all they had to worry about was one long train ride, most of which was out of range of Allied air power.
And no matter how good you think he was, Patton commanded only one army...and even if he'd been in control of the whole American army, it had already been demonstrated that it was difficult for him to work with the Brits (Montgomery). That was one of Eisenhower's great strengths - he was able to master and coordinate the different nations' armies. I doubt Patton could have done this. Patton was a great tactician and a great motivator...but it takes more than those to be a truly great general.
