Reading the statistics of the casualties during WWII is mind-blowing.

America did play a significant role in helping win WWII, no question. But we always have those that downplay our role or sacrifice during that war and it upsets me, obviously because I'm a proud American.

I'm not writing this to brag about how great America is, I don't have to, history speaks for itself.

As we entered the war as complete green-horns, the casualty rate is surprisingly low considering our enemies had at least a 4 year head start in combat experience.

Considering the Axis had far more enemies than the allies, it's hard to separate those killed by Americans alone, directly or indirectly. Germany faced many more adversaries than the Japanese did. Probably the closest performance numbers between either Axis power and the U.S. would be in the Pacific theater as it was almost solely fought between U.S. and Japanese forces, not discounting the other allied contributors such as the Filipino's, Chinese, Brits, Aussies, New Zealanders, Canadians, Dutch, Russians, etc., etc. Not to downplay the significance of the contributions of the allies, which were as valuable if not more valuable than the material advantage the U.S. had, such as guerrilla tactics and information gathering and general harassment of the enemy.

Then there are the deaths caused by indirect action, such as the cutting off of supply lines which starved many of the Japanese forces, the malnutrition also contributed to disease claiming many more. Then there is the psychological affect which caused yet many more deaths due to suicide, the idea of being captured by inferior humans was more than some could fathom.

Regarding the European theater, the Germans had many more allying forces than the Japanese did, but they also faced many more adversaries on more fronts. So it is hard to compare solely German-U.S. only combat ratios. The most significant contributor to German casualties was by far the eastern front with the Soviets. But what I believe brought a swifter end to it all was the U.S. contribution not only in material but in leadership. The American strategy was not very complicated in the beginning, it wasn't until we started to suffer immense losses did we start to realize how to conduct combat more effectively, we learned how the enemy fought and we found work-arounds.
We learned from mistakes quickly and adapted, we also gave our NCO's more latitude in conducting their actions, allowing them to adapt to the circumstances to accomplish the missions, they were told the mission and the importance of it and let them loose.

This concept was completely foreign and unheard of in the European conscript military tradition, they didn't believe their troops trustworthy, imaginative or wily enough to devise their own tactics.

This, in my opinion, is a testament to the societal advantage we hold in the United States of all men being created equal, that all life is valuable, that the playing field is relatively level. Each man held his destiny in his own hands not in the hands of some self-aggrandized noblemen.

This is what I believe separated American contributions from how the rest of the world operated. We came to the fight with a completely different mentality, much of which contained an innate desire for competition, to be the best, to do the most with what was at hand. The allies, especially the Soviets, before they caught up industrially, used 19th century tactics against the Germans, charging into machine guns on foot, or horseback if they were so fortunate waving their swords around. Futile, but it is all they had at the time, the European allies did not have the industrial capacity to take on the German war machine, horses lose to tanks every time.

The American contribution to WWII cannot be ignored, the relatively light casualties should not be considered an insignificant sacrifice by any means. It should be regarded as a monumental achievement considering the price paid by the allies, especially the Russians. I believe our casualties were kept low because of our tactics, our overwhelming material advantage and exceptional leadership and training and overall strategy.

The material advantage cannot be ignored, not only were we supplying our military with an overwhelming number of armor, planes and ships, arms and munitions, we were also supplying our allies with these things as well, some of which found their way to the bottom of the Atlantic en-route to our European allies, the industrial capacity alone is completely astonishing to try to comprehend.

Total American casualties were from 407,000 to 413,000, approximately 185,924 deaths occurred in the European/Atlantic theater of operations and 106,207 deaths occurred in Asia/Pacific theater of operations. 14,059 American POWs died in enemy captivity throughout the war, 12,935 held by Japan and 1,124 held by Germany.

Considering the Japanese lost an approximate 2 million, the Germans approximately 5 million, 25,000 to suicide and 11,000 by courts martial and the Russians approximately 10 million.

Mind-blowing

The Soviet-German War, 1941-1945: Myths and Realities

This is in interesting video and lecture about losses in WW2.

Incomprehensible