They were, Sgt. Schultz was right to be afraid! USSR lost north of 8 million soldiers KIA. United States by contrast lost just under a third of a million. Ultimately USSR (in my opinion anyway) did the real heavy lifting combat wise. Part of USSR's ability to ultimately conquer was inseparably tied to the food and materials we sent them.
In Vietnam we had rioting in the streets with under 70,000 KIA. Even back in the 40's had 3 or 4 million sons of American mothers been snuffed out in the mountains of North Africa, Italy or the beaches and hedgerows of France, US might have tucked tail and left Europe's problems for the Europeans to deal with. I still think the US would have continued fighting Japan but may have slowed down the pace there to build naval forces to simply starve out islands one at a time, then bombed Japan back to the stone age from afar and starved it out the main island too.
In Vietnam we had rioting in the streets with under 70,000 KIA. Even back in the 40's had 3 or 4 million sons of American mothers been snuffed out in the mountains of North Africa, Italy or the beaches and hedgerows of France, US might have tucked tail and left Europe's problems for the Europeans to deal with. I still think the US would have continued fighting Japan but may have slowed down the pace there to build naval forces to simply starve out islands one at a time, then bombed Japan back to the stone age from afar and starved it out the main island too.