ABSTRACT
When the war ended in Europe, vast Soviet armies met almost equally vast Anglo-American armies in prostrate Germany. The fighting spirit of both was excellent. In equipment the Anglo-American armies were certainly superior to the Soviet, and were backed by much wealthier economies, whose resources were by this time no less efficiently harnessed to the needs of war than was the collectivist economy of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had been subjected to far greater strains and sufferings, to death, hunger and devastation, than had Britain, let alone the United States. At this time, if armed conflict had come between the two Allied groups, there can be no doubt that the Western group would have won. But such conflict was inconceivable, for the Western nations regarded the Soviet Union as a heroic ally and friend. This view was shared by the Western governments, even if Soviet action in Poland and the Danubian countries had already aroused alarm. It was different in kind from the attitude of the Soviet government, which had always considered the Western Powers to be no less its enemies than Hitler’s Germany, though, of course, the immediate task was to fight the latter. Western soldiers were also anxious to return to their families; their return was desired no less by their relatives and families than by the political leaders who needed to win parliamentary elections, which they would certainly have lost had they proposed to keep the armies in being in order to fight or to threaten the Soviet Union. The Anglo-American armies were therefore rapidly demobilized.
