Originally Posted by Mutt

The Russians won most of WWII, the Americans landed at Normandy late in the war and their opposition was Hitler's junior varsity squad. The Russians faced the best Germany had in the most epic confrontation in the history of war, it was inevitable that Russia would eventually roll over the Nazis fairly early in the war, took the lives of 26-27 million Russians to do it though.

The war in the Pacific, the Americans did defeat the Japanese hopping island to island but would have never taken them down on their home turf, the Americans didn't have the manpower - hence the decision to drop the nukes. The estimates for deaths for a war on Japanese soil were astronomical from an American perspective.

Korea was a draw and Vietnam just unwinnable. The more I read about the Vietnam War the more I see it as a just war but a waste of 58,000 young lives. Very sad the media and the ignorant hippies turned against their own boys. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong slaughtered and caused the deaths of millions of their own people, they dragged Cambodia and Laos into the war and helped the Khmer Rouge get into power to commit one of the worst genocides in human history. In the end the Americans were right, North Vietnam was intent on becoming a communist empire and without the US making a stand the Vietnamese with their Soviet backers may have moved on to invade Thailand, the Phillipines, Singapore. All the US wanted in that war was to defend South Vietnam who had become their own independent country after the French were defeated, never had the goal of defeating North Vietnam for any other purpose than to keep them out of South Vietnam.

Today, Vietnam is a beautiful country with a fast growing economy, still communist but fairly progressive. Pitiful that millions had to die.