Americans have been dying for their country for over two and a half centuries. Some were in “official” wars which means the President proposed the action, and Congress approved it. Among the most famous of these is when Franklin Roosevelt said to Congress, just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was “a date which will live in world history.” The subsequent war in the Pacific was among the deadliest in U.S. history.
Other wars are not declared but killed large numbers of Americans nonetheless. Harry Truman never asked Congress to allow troops to go to Korea. Over 40,000 U.S. military members died there.
Wars are, for the most part, made up of many individual battles, and have killed thousands of Americans. To determine the deadliest battle in U.S. history, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the article The 18 Deadliest Battles in American Military History from History Collection. U.S. military engagements were ranked based on the number of troops killed in action.
Many of the deadliest battles in U.S. history took place on foreign soil. Though the Civil War featured fierce fighting, the war’s battles were generally a few days long, and the deadliest single day of fighting, at Antietam, claimed roughly 3,600 lives. Yet in foreign conflicts, such as the World Wars and Korea, battles often stretched for weeks and even months, with thousands of troops killed.
Most Americans will likely be familiar with many of these conflicts. Names like Iwo Jima, the Battle of the Bulge, and Guadalcanal are taught in school as essential moments in American and world history. Many of these battles, and the heroic figures who fought in them, have been immortalized in classic films.
The deadliest battle in U.S. history was Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Here are the details:
> Est. U.S. deaths: 26,277
> War: World War I
> Location: France
> When: September – November 1918
Click here to read Deadliest Battles in US History
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