Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25626-20151023184552/@comment-21519-20151025173040

The marshals might sue for peace in the short term, but only to buy time to rebuild so they can wage WWIV on more equal terms. Not a very attractive prospect for the US. I don't see any way the CIA could approach the Soviet high command, or that the marshals would give it a fair hearing if it did. That doesn't mean the marshals won't act on their own.

To clarify, I wasn't suggesting that Truman should look up Stalin's date of death on Wikipedia and say "We can wait that long." I was thinking in terms of all the efforts by the CIA, the Red Army, Beria, and God knows who else could all turn out to be much ado about nothing if Stalin dies on his own.

As far as bombing polling places, that's one of the reasons that making the world safe for democracy was deemed compatible with "Let's just delay the next election indefinitely." For Attlee to call a snap election under those circumstances would be seen as really reckless. On top of that, you'd have a backlash against a PM taking those kinds of chances in an effort to buy his own party an advantage at a time when the other parties were (presumably) supporting his premiership for the duration of the war. It's going to be a pretty sticky situation, I think. However, it's going to be a situation that must be tolerated for the time being, because any attempt to alter it will surely backfire.