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Groucho said:Sorry...I'm a huge fan of the US Army and Marine Corp...definitely some of the most togther indiviuals I trained with when I was in (various joint US/Canada exercises)
Likewise, I've always had respect for the professionalism of Canadians (at least the ones I've worked with) BUT....
There were other countries involved in this, don't believe every movie Hollywood puts out...in fact we carried half the load that you guys did on DDay, with a tenth of your population
The American order of battle for the Normandy invasion included three infantry divisions, two Airborne divisions and a couple Ranger battalions. The Canadian order of battle included an infantry division and an armored brigade.
Not discount any of the participant's contributions and acknowledging that Juno beach was also heavily defended, Omaha beach (one of the two US landing sites) was the seen as the beachhead that would be most difficult to secure. There was a reason why there were two full divisions there instead of one plus armor like everywhere else. The Canadians also didn't have to deal with the nightmare scenario of having to scale 100-foot cliffs while under enemy fire at Point-du-Hoc.
Elsewhere in Europe, there were roughly six or seven times as many Americans fighting or having just finished fighting their way up the Italian peninsula.
Of course, this is all moot when you want to talk about raw number comparisons and sheer scale of fighting because if you want to think of it that way, the people who really defeated the Germans were the Soviets.
Modern democracy/republicanism as we think about it today? Don't think so.uh, that would be Athens...couple thousand years before the US...