I think people also forget how must during and post WW2 a huge chunk of world talent moved to US and how that contributed to the technological superiority. If you take top 0.01% talent of the world in STEM, what percentage of them would be living/working in US right now?

And now the US is now excluding and even ejecting top researchers due to their nationalities, sending them elsewhere so some other country can grow instead.

I think a big reason America dominates is having a country with hundreds of millions of people speaking the same language on a massive, resource-rich continent.

If a competitor to Facebook started at the same time in Switzerland, Facebook would have spread dozens of times faster in the states, then given that the internet is global, the network effect would see it defeat competitors one by one.

(You could argue, also, that the immigration situation leads to the US' success, a big chunk of the world's best and brightest migrate to the US. From CNBC: Apple founder Steve Jobs is the son of a Syrian immigrant, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is a second generation Cuban immigrant, Google founder Sergey Brin was born in Russia, and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin is a Brazilian native.)

I think the VC situation is the other big reason American tech dominates. I don't know enough about how that all works too know why the US succeeds there, but I understand other countries don't have anywhere near the same amount of VC money

I agree that’s why the USA was dominant in the late 20th century, but how long until that reason expires? Are we going to be in 2070 still blaming WW2 for holding Europe back?

At some point it becomes less and less about WW2 and more about the USA’s relentless optimization for economic growth at all costs, often over other things that would make this country more civilized and humane.

I think as well there's a snowball effect when you're the world's only superpower - a rich get richer equivalent for countries.

For example, a brain drain to the states because it's seen as wealthy and powerful would only compound that wealth.

But also if you're starting with the best technology and a lot of money, you get ahead of others faster.

Which complements nicely with operation paperclip

Why did they win the war?

Because of the Russians?

I mean, it's not 100% true but the actions of Russia during WW2 make this pretty true, and the fact that it seems the US intentionally stayed out of the way to inflict as much damage on Soviet Russia as it could before we got involved. There is no situation where you look at the number of deaths in the war and judge their massive suffering of the Soviet people as anything other than key in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

I'm not about to say that the non aggression pact wasn't a problem, but WW2 finds lots of organizations in the same boat that we can attack in the same way. It was an old system where bodies and land meant power, a system that is really dying.

The Americans chose a master of logistics (Eisenhower) as the supreme commander in Europe, and indeed delayed invasion by a year to minimize casualties and retain control of territory once conquered. That it caused more privation for the Russians was considered a convenient side effect, not a primary aspect.

The US was hardly hurt by the war at all, suffering comparatively few casualties; as their states were never actually attacked their primary contribution in Europe was to ship material from their factories to Russia and the other allies. Factories which after the war switched back to making commercial goods.

The war in the Pacific was a different matter, but again, only some US colonies were attacked and civilian suffering even in those territories was nothing compared to what other countries had to deal with.

I'm not a history expert at all but I think this is a massive over simplification, that ignore context of the time. My understanding is that the US was woefully unprepared (particularly the Army) for WW2 due to its non interventionist stance in the years prior, and had to be reconstituted first. Moreover the U-boats were sinking large numbers of ships in the Atlantic that had to be dealt with.

In very large part thanks to geography

America supported Hitler until 1941.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworl...

Wall Street also supported hitler until 1941. Hitler wanted to invade America mostly so that he would have to repay wall street.

How about taking over an entire continent from the natives, sharing a language and federal government that led to only ONE (count em) war on the continent in 300 years, and so on. Read Stratfor’s “inevitable empire” series on USA:

https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-united-st...

One war? Am I miscounting? There is the Spanish American war, the Mexican war, the war of 1812, the US Civil war (slave war), there were numerous Indian wars during the manifest destiny. Several wars in the Caribbean and Central America.

I’m sorry if this seems pedantic since it doesn’t affect your point, but I feel like it deserves some clarification.

I should have been clear - I meant a war between the states, analogous to the myriad wars between European countries in the meantime.

Empires and Federations are cool that way - the member states don’t waste resources fighting each other endlessly.

I see. You don’t even need a federation, a customs union usually suffice. E.g. there have been zero wars within the European Union for example. Although I’ll admit, looking at the internal struggle is an unfair simplification as European parties (as with the United States) have plenty of that external violence going on.

I agree with your comment and also recommend the linked pages, but I think you have to count the American revolutionary war as a war, too.

Though like so many it was not resolved on the battlefield but through lobbying and bribery in parliament. Unlike, say, the Viet Nam war in the USA, the American skirmishes had a negligible impact on the British purse.

America had the largest economy in the world after our civil war in 1860s.

WW2 left us as one of two superpowers, but we have been highly productive for a while, and a lot of that is due to our 'protestant work ethic' that keeps us wealthy but also overworked.