French Inventions Quizz (slightly OT)

"Gary" wrote:

Mxsmanic wrote:
The United States wasn't a player until fairly recently (slightly over
a century), but it was unaffected by the world wars...

What?! I think it's time you step away from the simulator, and learn
a little bit about the real world...

We were quite fortunate that the wars weren't, for the most part,
fought on our soil, but the US had about 16 million men and women in
the various branches of the armed forces during WWII alone. Over
400,000 were killed during the war. That's about twice the number of
military fatalities suffered by France, to chose one random example...


"Unaffected" my ass.

In rereading his post, I think he's talking about the effect on
scientific development, not the impact on the military. Much of Europe's
infrastructure was destroyed in the wars, so they tended to concentrate
on rebuilding the infrastructure economy, rather than putting money into
R&D.

As far as your number of fatalities, there certainly are differences
between sources, but most suggest that the number of military fatalities
was similar when comparing the US and France. US fatalities were about
295,000, and French about 340,000. Of course the population of the US was
about three times that of France in 1939.

Considering the effect on the country, you also have to include civilian
fatalities. Depending on the source, there were anywhere between 500,000
and 700,000 civilian fatalities in France. The US had perhaps 10,000
civilian fatalities.

James Robinson writes:

In rereading his post, I think he's talking about the effect on
scientific development, not the impact on the military. Much of Europe's
infrastructure was destroyed in the wars, so they tended to concentrate
on rebuilding the infrastructure economy, rather than putting money into
R&D.

A lot of infrastructure was destroyed. Additionally, any non-military
research came to a halt, and never really got started again after the
war. There was also a brain drain from Europe, aggravated by Nazi
persecution of Jews, because many of the leading scientists in Europe
were Jewish (and thus were inclined to leave, or were prevented from
doing anything useful by the Nazis).

All in all, the Europeans blew it. They had their playground fights,
and the price they paid--beyond the hundred million people dead--was a
permanent window seat in the developed world.

The US had perhaps 10,000 civilian fatalities.

In the CONUS and Hawaii? Where?

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