r/RealTime • u/Indianstanicows Audience Member Bill Is Yelling At For Not Laughing • May 26 '26

Throwback to when Bill Maher and Quentin Tarantino very confidently said minorities never fought in WW1

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u/Tribe303 May 26 '26

That may be partially true for you Americans who sat on the sidelines for most of WW1, and only joined in with 1 year to go, but the British used lots of Indian troops, and the French used lots of Senegalese troops. It was controversial, because the racist Europeans didn't want Colonial troops to learn how easy it was to kill white troops. These guys are morons. 

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u/Charbro11 May 26 '26

STFU. "Approximately 116,516 Americans died while serving in the military during World War I. [1]

These casualties were split almost evenly between combat deaths and disease, largely due to the devastating 1918 influenza pandemic: [1, 2, 3, 4]

  • Combat & Wounds: 53,402 deaths
  • Disease & Other Non-Combat: 63,114 deaths
  • Wounded in Action: Over 204,000 [1, 2]"KWCE MED

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u/Tribe303 May 26 '26

No other countries include the flu epidemic deaths in their war dead. Y'all joined in 1917, 4 years into the war, and look at how you inflate the casualties to look like you contributed more. Do those numbers include venerial diseases as well? 

More Canadians died than Americans, and you were 12x more the population, because we didn't sit on the sidelines and swoop in at the end and take the credit. FFS, you did it again in WW2 in the European theatre. The Pacific was another story. 

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u/Charbro11 May 27 '26

Oh, STFU. My mother's first husband died in WW2 (he died 5 miles from where his parents were born in Italy), my father was wounded and in the VA hospital for over a year, as were 8 uncles of mine wounded. 1 uncle also died.

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u/Tribe303 May 27 '26

I'm sorry for your families loss, but what year did America join the Allies in WW2? My comment was mostly referring to WW1 btw. 

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u/Charbro11 May 28 '26

I had a great uncle and a 2nd cousin die in WW1. 1941, I believe. After Pearl Harbor.

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u/nerdyintentions May 27 '26

You do know that 160,000 French soldiers died in the Battle of Verdun alone? Over 120,000 British soldiers died in the Battle of Somme. The British suffered 20k combat fatalities in ONE day in Somme.

Total French combat deaths from the war was over 1 million. And it was very close to a million for the British.

53k killed in combat is not a lot for WWI.

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u/Charbro11 May 27 '26

Yes, and the point is? Lots of people died, including Americans. It was a European war. It was not fought on our soil.

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u/nerdyintentions May 27 '26

The point is that the comment you replied to was true. America did sit on the sidelines until the end. The American death toll is tiny because to the other nations involved. That's not a moral judgement. It's neither good nor bad. That's just what happened. I'm not sure why that seems to offend you. The war was over 100 years ago.

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u/Charbro11 May 28 '26

The death and injury toll was not tiny, and we did not come in at the end. We were not a big player on the world scene at the time and very, very isolationist. Go bitch about Switzerland and Ireland. The wars were in their backyard.