indifan101 said:
In the 1980s, General Ngo Nguyen Giap of the North Vietnamese Army met the American general Westmoreland. Westmoreland and Giap had a discussion about the war, and the two began a (polite) debate about their waging of the war.
General Westmoreland commented that Giap's troops had consistently been beaten in the field by American soldiers. There were few outright decisive victories by the PAVN, and even then, those had generally been reversed by counter-offensives. "So basically," said Westmoreland, "regardless of the verdict of history, we won every battle..."
"Yes, you did," said Giap, "And we still won the war."
Anyway,
I never said that Americans didn't win WW2 or beat the Germans in their wars against them. I was responding to the idea that the Germans were "totally ineffective" against the Americans, which also presupposes (probably unintentionally) that the US won WW2 for the Allies singlehandedly (which is blatantly false).
Of course, the Germans won most of the significant battles of WW1, but ultimately lost the war.
As for records of wars won and lost, the US and German records are very interesting. Germany (or rather, what would become a united Germany beginning in the 1850s)won four major declared wars (the Second Schleiswig-Holstein War, the Austro-Prussian War, the German Civil War, and the Franco-Prussian War. One could also make an argument for the war against Russia in WW1, since the Germans considered it a separate conflict).
The Germans have lost two major declared wars (the First and Second World Wars).
The U.S. has won four major declared wars (The Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, the First World War, and the Second World War), drawn two declared wars and a single undeclared war (the Barbary Coast War and the War of 1812, along with Korea), and lost (at least) two major undeclared wars (the Seminole War and Vietnam).
It would take a while to calculate "police actions" (ie: minor conflicts), but I would guess that the two are about even in that category, with a slight edge to Germany which generally decisively defeated its colonial opponents (ie: the Wahehe War).
Anyway, pretty interesting from an historical perspective.
-Fed-