One-on-one, they were pretty tough opponents. We won mainly because there were more of us and we out-produced them. Today, we don't produce material goods, we buy, and our prosperity relies on the charity - or at least, the willingness to trade - of strangers.
This may or may not be a fatal weakness but it certainly is not the position of strength we formerly enjoyed. If they cut off our oil and we cut off their new software, who do you think's going to cry "uncle" first?
Second, there is simply no need to build stuff if it is uneconomical to do so just so you can say, "we can build that, too." We have never done ceramic tiles, for example. Did you know that one single PROVINCE in Italy accounts for 90% of the WORLD'S tile industry? We don't do much with ore, mining technology, or drills (aside from Hughes corp). That's the Swedes---they do it better than anyone on earth.
A good perspective on this, if slightly dated, is Michael POrter's, "The Competitive Advantage of Nations," where he shows manufacturing/productive "clusters," and we lead in total numbers of clusters, as well as in most of the growth clusters.
german defeat can be placed squarely on the shoulders of it "superior" leadership, and i think that is exactly the point -- an inclusive democracy fosters a practical outlook, and a large middle class creates a great pool from which first rate leaders can appear (Truman perhaps the best example).
*every* elitist society selects its leaders based on rigid, preconceived notions colored more by ideology than practical effect.
a United States that listens more to an Eric Hoffer rather than to a Hegel is in very good shape indeed...
"Later the Nazis bragged that...poorly-disciplined American "cowboys" wouldn't stand a chance against Panzers. The Japanese militarists claimed that their ultra-nationalists Bushido code would give them an edge over the "decadent" GIs."
The fighting quality of our fighting troops have always been denigrated by our enemies and we still kick the shiite out of them.
America has the scientific and industrial capability to survive without oil if this eventually becomes necessary. The oil-producing Gulf nations have nothing else than their oil, which they can not even pump out of the ground without the help of Western engineering.
I think that the US Army's and Navy and Air Corp) defeat of the Wehrmacht was the greatest achievment in it's history, as the German Army was THE outstanding tactical fighting force of the war, even with the dead strategic hand of Adolph Hitler at it's controls. Never has any army in history fought so well for so monstrous a cause.
In assesing our victory, we must acknowledge that we were tasked with confronting only 20% of that formidable German enemy in NW Europe. 8 of every 10 German soldiers who died in WWII were killed by that other monstrous regime, Stalin's Soviet Russia. Just think of our casualty lists had we had to face just another 25% of the German Army in the West. While we would not have been has inhumanly profligate as the Soviets were in expending human capital, it is safe to say that ten of thousands of baby boomers alive today would have perished with their fathers in the mud of European battlefields.
I am just trying to keep our victory in perspective and to make the case that even though I think that we would have ultimately prevailed, it would have been at the price of the greatest death toll in our history without the contributions of the Reds. I think our fight was nearly as much to prevent the westward Soviet advance as to defeat the Germans.