There did not need to be any deal that the Anglo-Americans will stay out of the Soviets’ way because the former did not have the means or the will to fight the latter in Eastern Europe. The Soviets had the more powerful land army and a better geographic starting point from which to dominate the eastern half of the continent than the Western Allies. The only way in which Soviet gains could have been substantially limited was to work with the Germans.

Numerous of Hitler’s underlings were desperate for an outcome where they surrendered to the Western Allies and to them alone. Some kind of a scenario where the Germans opened the door for the Anglo-Americans which then poured in and quickly occupied the vast majority of areas under German control was in the realm of possibility, at least in the sense that Germans (minus Hitler) would have been open to it.

Nonetheless it is difficult to see how this would have been any more desirable than what had indeed taken place since it would have truly devastating and potentially even explosive consequences for the Anglo-American relationship with the Soviets. It may have been a good move from the point of view of American nationalistic chest-thumping (which Patton excelled at), but it’s doubtful it would have been in the interest of peace, which we as libertarians are most concerned about. Also it is extremely doubtful too many Eastern Europeans would have welcomed such a rehabilitation of Germany and considered this outcome better for them than what had indeed happened.

This is really the gist of it. It is strange to see libertarians over and over again add their voice to those of bitter Cold Warriors to complain that the US did not have done more to try to limit Soviet gains in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of WWII when it is clear the only tangible effect such action could have had was to bring about the Cold War sooner and make it even more intense. Rethinking of the US role in WWII is welcome, but not at the expense of forsaking Cold War revisionism and seemingly going along with American nationalists lamenting missing the phantom option of Rollback in 1945.

It is true the Cold War did not erupt immediately after the end of WWII, but instead developed gradually as Western Allies continued to accommodate the Soviets to a degree even after Germany and Japan were already defeated. However the opposite is also the case, the Soviets continued to accommodate the Western Allies. A prominent example is the Soviet toleration of Anglo-American military intervention in Greece.

Excluding external factors it was inevitable that Greek Communists which had organized the largest, most active anti-German partisan movement in the country would have taken power there. That was precluded by the landing of British forces which ended up engaging and fighting the Greek Communist partisans. This was taking place in late ’44. Even before the Germans had been defeated the Anglo-Americans were already waging war on their nominal Communist allies. The Soviets stood by and tolerated this. Unlike the Anglo-Americans they continued not to interfere throughout the subsequent Greek Civil War that the Western military intervention had prepared the ground for, and looked on as Greek Communists eventually lost out to Greek anti-Communists (some of whom were rehabilitated collaborators with the Germans) bolstered by the Americans. How is that for appeasement? And how is that for hypocrisy? What is with the shedding of crocodile tears on the account of Moscow determining who, the Communists or the non-Communists, ruled in Czechoslovakia or Poland, when the Anglo-Americans had done the exact same thing in Greece, and in an intervention which was probably even more forceful and impatient than Soviet interference in Eastern Europe?

Instead of complaining that Washington should have intervened in some way to raise tension with the Soviets in order to make an empty gesture of sympathy for Poland (and of its own moral superiority over Moscow), how about instead complaining that Washington risked its relations with the Soviet Union (or alternatively bought off Stalin) to intervene in Greece in order to ally with former Greek collaborators with the Germans in order to fight the largest Greek resistance movement? Doesn’t it make more sense for libertarians to be up in arms about an instance of intervention, rather than an instance of non-intervention?

The Soviets promised to enter the war against Japan as requested by the Western Allies, however where the Anglo-Americans indicated they wanted them to enter the war as soon as possible the Soviets made it a point to insist they could only do it after three months had passed from the German defeat. Thus it is not plausible that Soviets could be convinced to forsake the prizes they could have in Europe in order to pull chestnuts out of the fire for the Americans in the Far East.

You make the point Lend-Lease was needed to bring about a total German defeat as opposed to a negotiated end to the Soviet-German war. I suppose that is in the realm of possibility, but to be able to make a competent judgement on this one would need to have a truly extensive knowledge of the Eastern Front and the Soviet Union in war, which I do not think you do. David Glantz, the most prominent Western scholar of the WWII Red Army and the Soviet Union at war, reckons that it was the Battle of Kursk which settled this. He reckons that in retrospect after Kursk (summer ’43) there is no other possibility left, but for the Soviet-German war to end in a total defeat of Germany. So to pronounce a judgement of the likelihood of total German defeat without Lend-Lease we would need to examine how important Lend-Lease was to the Soviets at Kursk, and in the timeframe up until Kursk. That is before the majority of Lend-Lease material had been delivered.