Sorry, I shouldn't have answered for you.

As you say, Americans tend not to consider that, when the Soviets pushed all the way to the Elbe at the end of WW2, after suffering 24 million dead (compared to 418,000 for the US), they thought it wise to keep that western buffer. It eventually contributed to their downfall, because the resulting military and internal security demands were just huge, but it made sense at the time.