America was not the decisive factor in the war against Germany in WW2 - unlike WW1. Stalingrad - and no other event - broke the Wehrmacht. And don´t underestimate the fights that were bought from 1939-1944... even in the last months the German army was quite "successful" in killing the enemy (I could remind you of the battle of Hürtgenwald: 55,000 dead GI´s compared to 15,000 Germans). But we shouldn´t go into details, my point is, that the performance of the individual matters, and nothing else.
.Today in America we celebrate the holiday of Veteran's Day. I am sure that I am not only American who might find your opinion offensive. But having some experience with you I now recognize it for what it is: ignorance. Ignorance that springs from allowing emotion to confront an irrefutable truth. Case in point: "America no longer produces the most dominant athletes in the world because, while the still dominate the Olympics, they most recently dominated them slightly less than they had in the past.
The Normandy Invasion was what put the Germans on the defensive in WWII. Period. Confirm this information in any history book. And the German soldiers were effective at killing in the same sense that the Iraqis are effective today: They were fighting a retreating guerilla war. It is much easier to kill the enemy when he has to come looking for you. That fact alone was the reason German casualties were so high at Stalingrad. Russian weapons technology was a joke. I always thought that the idea that German history books on WWII were heavily censored was a myth.
America is certainly made up of individuals, but since America consistenly produces the finest examples of humanity, it is logical to extrapolate that America is the best at producing the best.
"America was not the decisive factor in the war against Germany in WW2 - unlike WW1. Stalingrad - and no other event - broke the Wehrmacht. And don´t underestimate the fights that were bought from 1939-1944... even in the last months the German army was quite "successful" in killing the enemy (I could remind you of the battle of Hürtgenwald: 55,000 dead GI´s compared to 15,000 Germans). But we shouldn´t go into details, my point is, that the performance of the individual matters, and nothing else."
FIRST, those casualty numbers are disputed. Some say 33,000 American KIA vs. 28,000 Germans. Probably, given the nature of the terrain (heavily forested hills) and how dug-in the Germans were, it's closer to your estimate, but...
SECOND, the attacking army always loses more men than the defenders, which is why conventional military wisdom throughout the world says that to attack a fortified position you must outnumber the defenders by 2 to 1 at an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM. Moreoever, Germany, with the exception of the Bulge, was almost always fighting the Americans as dug-in defenders, not attackers.
Germany had a great army that could fight like demons but so did America.
As for the "performance of the individual" that's true as far as it goes, but individual performance is worthless, and even destructive if the individual is performing AS an individual and not part of a team.