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Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos
Yeah, that would be pretty cruel, but that's not what happened.
Every major city in two countries wasn't leveled and the Yanks weren't exactly sleeping soundly while the whole "World War II" thing was going on. A few seconds on Google tells me that more than 10% of the population was directly involved and (while the I haven't researched this extensively) my guess is that the whole lot of them 'mericans had something to do with the effort.
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In WWII, 25% of American GDP was involved in the war effort. One-quarter of the USA economy was dedicated to the fight in a direct way.
When Eisenhower warned of a military industrial complex, American defence spending was about 15% of GDP.
For the Vietnam conflict, about nine percent of American GDP was devoted to the war effort.
Reagan's defence buildup in the 1980's occupied about 6.5% of American GDP.
Through the last decade, American defence spending, in spite of Iraq and Afghanistan, bottomed at about 3.2% of GDP and is currently a little over 4% of GDP. Defence spending under GW Bush II, as a percent of the USA economy, was far less than you saw under Jimmy Carter's administration.
In the first instance, it's called "total war" where entire populations are devoted to the war effort. Pretty much all Americans were subject to rationing of basics like sugar or tires as examples.
The size of the American economy and its consequent ability to service a conflict is so vast these days that even concurrent efforts like Afghanistan and Iraq are virtually invisible economically in the lives of the average American compared to the individual citizen in WWII . . . . . although moral questions might be hotly debated with interest.
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Sure the atom bombs saved lives, and of course there was a thin line between civilians and bleigerents, but who gave America the right to decide who's who? How many American civilians died in WW2?
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WTF?
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They did start it. You can't pish-posh that fact away with quotation marks
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It was a different time for sure.
Given the interlinking, inter-dependent nature of the global economy, plus the MAD principle, I would doubt you would ever see its like again.
Wars will continue to be fought indirectly via proxies or directly against proxies but not directly between major powers.
Cowperson