# How Did the American Soldier Stack Up Against the Enemy in WWII? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 16, 2001, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677 "2001-11-16T04:44:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![solosam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@solosam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solosam)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/41 "2013-01-16T23:43:31Z")
> [@aksiram](#): > > " > Sam Stone, I do not understand your rhetoric. Umm… My screen is showing the last post was in 2001. Is that correct? Are you really calling out an individual to disagree on a post written eleven years ago? If I am not reading this correctly, please let me know, because this seems kind of bizarre. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/42 "2013-01-16T23:48:59Z")
> [@aksiram](#): > > I don’t believe there is evidence that Hitler had a disdain for freedom. The fact that he ran a totalitarian dictatorship is something of a clue. ---
**Author:** ![aksiram](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/848f3c/32.png) [@aksiram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aksiram)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/43 "2013-01-16T23:49:25Z")
Part 2 To answer the original question: Since Germans, Russians, British and Americans are mostly similar to one another, the soldiers were probably all equal in terms of what they could accomplish physically. The Germans fought for something big, like the Greeks did under Alexander. They wanted what the British and the French and the Americans and the Spanish had. They wanted to escape the fate of forever being a tiny and meaningless little country. The Russians fought for their existence, at least for the continued existence of some of their kind, as the German goal was to, of course, make western Russia its own territory and cleanse the land of natives. Thus the Germans and Russians fought with zeal and under the most extreme duress. The Americans soldiers did not have this zeal. They also had the luxury of never having to fight under the same level of duress. If the American troops didn’t have the immense material support they enjoyed; if the American troops in the Ardennes did not have the comfort of knowing that they just needed to hold out a little longer until a tsunami of steel would wash away the Germans assaulting them, they would have folded. It’s quite simple, the Germans and Russians were driven by something much more intense, a sort of knowledge that the war was everything or nothing, and were the better soldiers because of it. As Sofa King said, America did not know and probably still does not know why it was fighting in Europe. I would place British soldiers under the Germans and Russians but above the Americans. ---
**Author:** ![aksiram](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/848f3c/32.png) [@aksiram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aksiram)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/44 "2013-01-16T23:55:44Z")
“The fact that he ran a totalitarian dictatorship is something of a clue.” What I was saying is that the totalitarian nature of the regime was probably necessary in order to wage a succesful war of conquest of that magnitude. I really do not endorse what Hitler did, but I doubt that he wanted his own people (Germans) to be forever subjected to the despotic measures of National Socialism. PS I didn’t even realise the thread is this old, This is quite a frequently discussed topic, so I just jumped in and answered. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/45 "2013-01-17T00:12:03Z")
> [@aksiram](#): > > What I was saying is that the totalitarian nature of the regime was probably necessary in order to wage a succesful war of conquest of that magnitude. I really do not endorse what Hitler did, but I doubt that he wanted his own people (Germans) to be forever subjected to the despotic measures of National Socialism. Why would you think that? He was a murderous control freak who regarded his fellow Germans as expendable. And I see no evidence that totalitarianism is necessary for large scale conquest. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/46 "2013-01-17T00:18:07Z")
> [@aksiram](#): > > “The fact that he ran a totalitarian dictatorship is something of a clue.” > > What I was saying is that the totalitarian nature of the regime was probably necessary in order to wage a succesful war of conquest of that magnitude. I really do not endorse what Hitler did, but I doubt that he wanted his own people (Germans) to be forever subjected to the despotic measures of National Socialism. “The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism which without it would not be thinkable. It provides this world plague with the culture in which its germs can spread. In its most extreme form, parliamentarianism created a ‘monstrosity of excrement and fire,’ in which, however, sad to say, the ‘fire’ seems to me at the moment to be burned out.” - Adolf Hitler, _Mein Kampf_ Hitler was no friend of democracy. He also [claimed](http://www.history.co.uk/explore-history/ww2/nazi-germany.html) to a British journalist that “At the risk of appearing to talk nonsense, I tell you that the Nazi movement will go on for 1,000 years!” ---
**Author:** ![buckgully](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb9ed0/32.png) [@buckgully](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buckgully)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/47 "2013-01-17T00:36:52Z")
For some reason I feel like playing the zombie level in Call of Duty: World at War. Can’t quite figure out why… ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/48 "2013-01-17T00:43:24Z")
> [@buckgully](#): > > For some reason I feel like playing the zombie level in Call of Duty: World at War. > > Can’t quite figure out why… With the sub-zero temperatures outside the topic reminds me more of [Dead Snow](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mTj9dUJDl80/TpZ3PpDw2fI/AAAAAAAAAzw/L4pcnAZNXX4/s1600/Dead%2BSnow.jpg)… ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/49 "2013-01-17T01:40:13Z")
> [@aksiram](#): > > The Germans fought for something big, like the Greeks did under Alexander. They wanted what the British and the French and the Americans and the Spanish had. They wanted to escape the fate of forever being a tiny and meaningless little country. This might have been true in the early part of the 19th Century, but after the Franco-Prussian War, Germany was anything but a “tiny and meaningless little country”. They were far and away the most powerful country in Europe going into World War I. And while the Treaty of Versailles temporarily weakened Germany, the rapidity with which they defeated France at the start of the 2nd World War shows how easy it was for them to bounce back. No, weak, little Germany didn’t need land in the east to bring them up to parity with the other European powers. They took it because as the strongest of the European powers they thought no one could stop them. And they were almost right. With either a drier winter or a less ruthless leader in Russia, Hitler would have won. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/50 "2013-01-17T02:13:57Z")
> [@Gary\_Kumquat](#): > > Erhm, nope, you didn’t win. The allies did. > > Here’s one estimate of the [cost of victory](http://www.skalman.nu/worldwar2/stupade.htm). You don’t win wars by dying. You win wars by killing. ---
**Author:** ![Atakapa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@Atakapa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atakapa)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/51 "2013-01-17T02:23:08Z")
My interpretation is that the Germans weren’t as personally scared of fighting Americans as they were when fighting Soviets. If you were a German and fighting to keep the Soviets out of East Prussia, your family was facing mass gang rapes, crucifixions, fields being burned, and mutilation if you were unable to prevail. Surrender, and assuming you weren’t executed on the spot you faced life in a hellish gulag. The Red Army seemed intent on paying back everything the Germans had done to their homeland right back to them. With the Americans, on the other hand, it wasn’t as personal. You had a decent chance of surviving surrender, and the retaliation against the civilian population wouldn’t be anywhere as severe as what the Soviets would dish out. ---
**Author:** ![SeldomSeen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@SeldomSeen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeldomSeen)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/52 "2013-01-17T02:41:11Z")
According to my 87-year old stepdad - an infantry veteran of the Phillipine campaign, the thing that gave American soldiers the advantage over the japanese was the American proclevity, both instinctive and by training, for individual initiative. The Japanese foot soldiers (so he says) were fierce and able fighters, but they were essentially trained to be cannon fodder. Taught to throw themselves at the enemy in waves and kamakazi actions they could be effective in groups, almost like fighting programmed automatons. But theyseemed largely incapable of individual planning or unilateral action. (This of course is a generalization, I’m sure there were plenty of exceptions.) The American soldier has a long history of guerilla fighting…in fact, it’s how they won the revolutionary war over the more powerful British forces. And they learned it from the American Indians, who were among the best guerilla fighters the world has known. This tradition stood them in good stead against the more regimented Japanese army. ---
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/53 "2013-01-17T02:42:08Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > . With either a drier winter or a less ruthless leader in Russia, Hitler would have won. Only to be vaporized in a nuclear fireball, a few months later. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/54 "2013-01-17T03:57:17Z")
> [@SeldomSeen](#): > > According to my 87-year old stepdad - an infantry veteran of the Phillipine campaign, the thing that gave American soldiers the advantage over the japanese was the American proclevity, both instinctive and by training, for individual initiative. The Japanese foot soldiers (so he says) were fierce and able fighters, but they were essentially trained to be cannon fodder. Taught to throw themselves at the enemy in waves and kamakazi actions they could be effective in groups, almost like fighting programmed automatons. But theyseemed largely incapable of individual planning or unilateral action. (This of course is a generalization, I’m sure there were plenty of exceptions.) This is, however, precisely the opposite of the dynamic that would have existed in Europe, and so does not explain American success there. German soldiers absolutely WERE more capable of initiative and individual decision, on the tatical and operational level, than their American counterparts. They were quite noted for it, as it was a central part of German military doctrine. > [@](#): > > The American soldier has a long history of guerilla fighting…in fact, it’s how they won the revolutionary war over the more powerful British forces. And they learned it from the American Indians, who were among the best guerilla fighters the world has known. This tradition stood them in good stead against the more regimented Japanese army. This is complete fantasy. American soldiers have essentially no history of guerrilla fighting. The battles of the Revolution were largely conventional in nature, and if Americans were at all good at guerrilla fighting in 1776, what on earth gives you the idea that in any way has anything to do with what happened in 1944? It’s rather evident, in any case, that what limited “guerrilla warfare” skill American soldiers might have picked up in the Revolution, it was sure as hell gone by 1812, when such army as the U.S. could muster acquitted itself with appalling ineptitude and rigidity against Indian and British troops. And the USA regularly dismantled its standing army between wars back then; leading up the the Civil War, when all hell broke loose, almost the entire army had to be built from next to nothing. Americans had no interest in having much of a standing army back then. So what “guerrilla war” tradition could possibly have survived? Where was it in Vietnam? The U.S. in World War II did not fight a guerrilla war, unless we’re talking about OSS agents or something. They fought a war of industrial mass and power against enemies who were simply not up to the task of matching it. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/55 "2013-01-17T04:18:50Z")
> [@solosam](#): > > Umm… My screen is showing the last post was in 2001. Is that correct? Are you really calling out an individual to disagree on a post written eleven years ago? New here, eh? Trust me, **Sam Stone** has never changed his mind on anything and will soon arrive to continue the discussion with no difference between his beliefs then or now. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![stui\_magpie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stui_magpie/32/11010_2.png) [@stui\_magpie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stui_magpie)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/56 "2013-01-17T04:56:14Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > While I’d like to spit in the face of the old Kraut who dismissed the U.S. Army, he wasn’t entirely wrong. > > During WW2, the U.S. lost most major battles in which it didn’t have **overwhelming superioriy of numbers.** > > In the end, we won, so that doesn’t matter. But the old German probably believes, with some justie,tahe and his comrades could have beaten the U.S., given anything remotely like even odds. For mine that pretty much sums up everything I got from my dad who spent a fair bit of time with ex servicemen. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/57 "2013-01-17T06:14:03Z")
Since someone brought up the Philippine–American War and I’m honestly curious: did we use many guerrilla tactics there? Or was it a mass-army push? I don’t know much about it and it doesn’t get the love WWII or even Nam & Korea do. On topic, I’d say that when the US entered WWII the Germans were certainly better than us. We were soft, unready and not really sure why we were fighting, besides Pearl Harbor. That changed and our huge material advantage certainly swung the balance to a great extent, but it took a lot of blood and stupid mistakes to get us up to the German or Russian level. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/58 "2013-01-17T14:37:02Z")
I’d say the main difference-makers were artillery and air support-Americans could call on either at a moment’s notice and rain death on a position or advance. Germans didn’t fear the American soldier per se, but they were scared to death of arty and air. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/59 "2013-01-17T15:31:06Z")
I think you have to really look at this in context. At the beginning of the war, the Germans and Japanese were the best prepared (since they pretty much initiated the war in the first place), with most of the allies being mentally unprepared at the highest levels, and their soldiers being more poorly equipped, trained and lead (with the possible exception of France, and there I think it was the mental preparation that was the problem…they just weren’t prepared for another balls to the wall conflict). The Russians were pretty inept, and the Germans had a lot of contempt for them and very little respect…which was proved out time and again in the early stages of the war when a much smaller German arm repeatedly pounded large Russian formations into dog meat time and again. America and the American soldier were pretty much on par (or even a bit below) the rest of the allies, since not only were we unprepared mentally or materially, we also stayed out of the conflict for a longer period of time. Our intention was to basically let the Europeans slaughter each other in yet another seemingly pointless blood bath early on. Even by the late 30’s and early 40’s public opinion had only started to shift, and we had only started to marginally up our military budget and training (we had started manufacturing more and more of the tools of war, but these were going to the Russians and Brits at this point mainly). Then we were attacked and suddenly in the war (ok, we had been fighting a covert war with Germany at sea for a while by this time, but the OP is asking about US soldiers). So, no…early on there wasn’t a lot of respect for the US soldier. Nor should there have been. Our army was basically built over night, it was poorly trained and equipped, especially in armor, and didn’t have much combat experience to make up for the lack of training. By this time most of the other combatants had been fighting hard for years (btw, even by this time there still wasn’t a hell of a lot of respect for the Russians by the Germans…that wasn’t to really come I don’t think until the battles of '43 when things started to turn around). By the time the US managed to get our logistics going, build an army and really dig into the fighting (and get our asses kicked several times in North Africa), the war had already started to turn around. Oh, we had done a lot of damage in the air with our strategic bombers and attack fighters, but we are talking US soldiers here, and it wasn’t until the Normandy invasion that we really started to dig into the fighting such that it made an impression on the Germans (I suppose of you asked Germans who were fighting in Sicily or Italy they might have a different impression). The Japanese impression was probably markedly different, as they would have had much closer experience with the US military, at sea, air and on land, where there wasn’t as much differentiation between those things. I’d guess that most Japanese soldiers, especially by the end of the war, respected (and hated) Americans at least as much as the Germans did the Russians by the end…probably more so, since it was mainly the US who was wiping out whole cities in Japan (BEFORE the atomic bombs) and had pretty much driven the Japanese back relentlessly towards their home islands. ---
**Author:** ![sidecar\_jon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@sidecar\_jon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sidecar_jon)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2013, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677/60 "2013-01-17T16:05:18Z")
In the words of a real German (EX pow stayed behind in UK) who was captured in France… If British troops came along the road and we had a a go at them , we knew that in half an hour they would be back with fixed bayonets and we were in for a real fight. If the yanks arrived they would with draw a distance, and we knew they would throw everything at us, air strikes, artillery and mortars would come over before they reappeared. Now despite dammed silly ideas of heroism who was the sensible one, fight hand to hand or stand back and paste em… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-american-soldier-stack-up-against-the-enemy-in-wwii/93677.md?page=4)