Why Russia didn't invade the rest of Europe

Everyone seems to have forgotten some stuff that I am sure Stalin considered:

Five million German POW's who would probably fight on the allied side if
Germany was being overrun by Russia. With captured German equipment being used
to supply them, company and battalion size units could be in use in one to two
weeks and brigade and Division size units in 30 to 60 days.

About 5 million French ex POW's would probably fight on the allied side. These
units had already started to form and could start to be added to the front in
days. With a continuous supply of replacement units being added on a regular
basis.

If the allies go over to the defensive against Japan at least half of all
forces in the Pacific could be released to fight Russia. If terms were reached

with Japan this would go up to about 80% of the Pacific forces. When the B29s
are released then goodby the Caucus Oil fields and the relocated armament
factories on the other side of the Ural mountains (little to no flak
protection and not enough high altitiude fighters).

Using only the escort carriers (CVE) in the Atlantic at least 20 (approx. 600
aircraft) could be operating in the Baltic sea in 15 days. Up to 300
carriers of all types (10,000+ aircraft) could be operating in the
Baltic Sea in 120 days. It might be a bit hard to get supplies through (or
exist within) 150 miles of the coast.

The battlefield (Germany) which has been twice baked (once by the air
offensive and once by a bunch of armies overrunning it) would not give the
Russians many supplies and so everything would have to come from Russia (which
isn't in much better shape).

My guess is that Stalin would be hanging in red square far short of the
Russian army even getting to the French boarder much less Paris.

Well, there's a much more basic reason involved here than this: the Soviet
Union was very simply exhausted from the drawn-out fight against
Germany.
25 _million_ Soviets were killed during that fight.  Granted, this had a
lot to do with the fact that the main Soviet strategy in using their manpower
was to confront superior-quality German units with as many lower-quality
troops with lower-quality equipment as possible, but there it is.  To
continue to fight over the rest of the European continent would have required
them to keep throwing lives away when they didn't really need to.

Stalin, ultimately, was probably not treated very fairly by Western
politicians in describing his motives for his actions after World War II.
It _is_ true that he didn't really trust the West, after having seen
Russia invaded about three times in the last fourty years by various Western
powers. However, after World War II he had about what he really needed to
prevent that from happening again. He had his tendrils throughout the United
States' atomic bomb projects, to a degree that he would need more than four
years to take away the American nuclear advantage. And against conventional
invasion, he had all of Eastern Europe to serve as a giant buffer zone. As
such, there was no real strategic need on his part to continue a war effort
after the Soviet Union had already paid so dearly for providing the brunt of
the ground action against the Germans.

E