Let us, for a brief moment, return to the not-too-distant world of 1945 - when Britain gloriously triumphed over the evil forces of fascism.
Admittedly, Britain didn't win alone - as the saying goes, the Second World War was won with Soviet blood, American steel and British intelligence.
But among the three victors, it is without a doubt the USA that came out on top.
As the only major country unravaged by the war, America represented a staggering 50% of the world's GDP in the summer of 1945.
It was in sole possession of by far the strongest navy and air force on Earth, but perhaps even more importantly - It held an absolute monopoly on nuclear weapons, having just demonstrated their potency in Japan (twice).
So, with such hegemonic power, why didn't America stomp its future arch-rival, the USSR, out of existence right there and then?
And even if not immediately, the Soviets didn't get their own nukes until 1949, leaving the US with plenty of time to defeat not just them, But perhaps all enemies of capitalism across the globe, finally uniting the Earth under the one true economic system!
Megalomanic daydreaming aside, let us indulge this hypothetical: what would a US-Soviet war have looked like in 1945?
Well, for a start, it wouldn't have been nuclear, for while America had the knowledge of how to produce atomic bombs, actually making them was a painfully tedious process.
Even towards the end of 1945, the US had 0 nuclear bombs ready for deployment, And was only producing around one and a half nuclear cores per month (which ignores all the additional assembly time required).
