Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post
Maybe, but not necessarily. For example, it's possible that without the "distraction" created by the Americans, Hitler would have done a much better job of carrying out the invasion of the USSR (and he would've had more troops available for that front). While this would not necessarily have resulted in a Soviet loss, it would have left the USSR even more exhausted at the end of the war, and less able to project power into Europe. Although on the other hand, the Western European allies would also have been more exhausted (assuming the Nazis were eventually defeated), and less able to resist Soviet influence.

There are other possibilities, too. Might German scientists have developed the atomic bomb first if the US hadn't gotten involved in Europe? Or alternatively, a far larger number of ex-Nazi scientists may have ended up getting "invitations" to the USSR after the war (with comparatively fewer getting snatched up by us Yanks), which obviously could've drastically changed the course of the nuclear race and the space race.

Then again, the war in the Pacific theater could've gone quite differently if the US had only been fighting on that front and stayed out of Europe. I don't know if that aspect would have made much difference for the USSR, though, since they were virtually uninvolved in the war against Japan.
I said clearly: "If they had never come to Europe", not "If they had never entered the war". By the time American troops appeared in Europe, it had become obvious that the Soviet Union would win. That's why they appeared. It would have been more difficult of course for the Soviet Union to defeat Germany, but Germany had no chances even with a nuclear bomb. Even after the opening of the second front, the eastern front held most German troops and was more important, except for a small period during the Ardennes offense.
Other countries were either occupied or very weak that time, they wouldn't have resisted the Soviet Union and communists and prosoviet moods were very strong in Europe after the war.