The average age of American soldiers in WWII was 26, as compared to 19 in Vietnam. It is hard to believe still that U.S. ground troops landed in Europe only as late as June 6, 1944 when the war essentially began in 1936 and began in official earnest in 1939. (Obviously we entered the war directly only at the end of 1941, so it took 2 and a half years to land in Europe--obviously we fought the Japanese and Germans elsewhere prior to 1944).
Andersson and Haag's rivalry really amounts to another history often forgotten and had the war not taken place, would surely have produced the first sub-4 in the early 1940s. There is a great children's book set in WWII about taking Swedish (Norwegian?) gold bricks on sleds past Nazi soldiers to aid the Allied war effort and prevent them from funding the Germans. Does anyone remember that?