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A good description of the horror of war and D-Day that ends on just enough of a high note in the Atlantic by SLA Marshall from 1960:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1960/11/first-wave-at-omaha-beach/303365/

The Japanese knew they couldn't win a protracted war with the U.S. in the Pacific. Pearl Harbor was a long shot that succeeded tactically, but failed strategically. That count of dive-bombers built presents a stark contrast that highlights both why the Japanese couldn't win in the long run, and why they wanted to expand their area of control in the Pacific: to increase their industrial might.

But as that piece by Marshall vividly shows, all the material might in the world can't remove the suffering war causes--even to the victors. My great grandfather was a Captain in the Navy in the Pacific during WWII and at least by '44 was commanding a Transport Group, part of the amphibious commands. Under his command were the attack transports that brought landing craft full of Army and Marine infantry to the beaches (and themselves would bring heavier equipment once the beachhead was established). His was a long and difficult war, but from the bridge of ships, not on the ground (though my grandfather, in the Army in the Pacific Theater, implied his father-in-law was often in close enough to be involved in a lot of action, more than my grandfather was). In something of a coincidence, he participated in the Marshall Islands campaign, including Eniwetok. Eniwetok is perhaps most famous for the photo of a Marine depicting the thousand yard stare, one of the iconic shots of WWII. Operationally, it was a relatively easy victory, but on the ground it was brutal. Here's the coincidence. SFIrish's great uncle Teddy was killed at Eniwetok. It's possible, likely even, that a ship under my great grandfather's command took Teddy to shore. No matter how easy the victory, SFIrish's grandmother, who I knew well, lost her older brother--the family's only son--there.

That's something that has always touched me because I knew two of my great uncles well. They also both fought during the war, one as a junior naval officer mostly in the Atlantic, I think, and one as a tanker in Europe. The latter didn't land at D-Day, but was involved in the Bulge (which was where he saw most of the action that he was in). He didn't like talking about it, and he didn't like talking about seeing the aftermath of bombed German cities that he came through, but sometimes he would. It's all very, very ugly--even when your side wins, and even when it's a necessity.

Last stand of the Tin Can Sailors is a great book about that.  I read it a few years ago.  The bravery necessary to take your ~2,000 ton "tin can" destroyer or an even smaller Destroyer Escort and go charging straight at a 70k ton Battleship (surrounded by other enemy Battleships and Cruisers) is hard to fathom.  Those guys deserve our eternal respect and admiration. 

It's harder to personalize ship-to-ship combat than it is to capture the desperation of a bayonet charge, but no doubt that was one of the U.S. military's great exploits--similar in the scope of bravery to the Frozen Chosin and Bastogne.

I'll mention again "With the Old Breed" for anyone who hasn't read it.

You almost get a 100 yard stare just reading it.

Yeah, I think the Leyte Gulf thing would make a good movie, and perhaps educate a few in so doing.  The night battle at Surigao could be touched on along with Halsey's charge north, which still is debated.  Had he left some BBs back covering the straits, we might have had some surface battles between Iowa and other class BBs and the Yamato and associated.  People of course debate the Yamato-v-Iowa thing endlessly.

I would focus on the battle of the small boys against Kurita.

Yep.

There's an excellent book of that fight: Last Stand of the Tin-Can Sailors, by Hornfischer, I believe.
That's an example of when all our production advantages didn't matter.  It was those few CE, DDs, DE', and the sacrificially brave sailors manning them and their airplanes, that kept a mighty Japanese task force from attacking the landing beaches left uncovered by Halsey's pursuit of Ozawa.
Our industrial supremacy was necessary but not sufficient.
We could have lost the war, or at least failed to win it.  We could have botched it strategically.  American combat leaders and fighting men could have failed--as they did at Savo Island and Kasserine Pass--over and over again.  The American people could have given up, as they did with Vietnam.
The British had overwhelming industrial and military supremacy over their rebellious colonies in 1776.  They botched it and lost.

Yep.

There's an excellent book of that fight: Last Stand of the Tin-Can Sailors, by Hornfischer, I believe.

Always wanted to read that read a review 10-15 years ago.Onto the Bucket List it goes

I have the tin can book around here somewhere.  The wife told me if I had no plans to reread a book I had to get rid of it before we moved.  That was tough.

Half Priced Books restocked their shelves off me.  At least here there is a nice library 4 blocks away.

Getting even further off topic, but all of these "what if's" involving WWII have me thinking that I need to read more about WWI. 

I do find the second-guessing of WWII to be interesting but at the end of the day I just come back to the economic realities and generally conclude that no matter what changes you made to this or that battle the massive allied industrial advantage would eventually put the allies on top.  Part of that is because there was never any chance whatsoever that the US would join on the Axis side and after the 1940 Presidential election the question wasn't really "if" the US would join the UK but rather "when" the US would join the UK. 

For example, the US occupied Iceland while still technically a "neutral" country and began escorting convoys bound for Britain to Iceland (half way across the Atlantic) even before that.  The US Navy was actively fighting (and sinking and being sunk by) the U-boats well before war was declared. 

One more example:  After the Bismark suck the Hood in 1940 the British temporarily lost contact with the German ship.  It was an American patrol plane that found it and the information was promptly given to the British who proceeded to catch and sink the Bismark. 

Given US industrial capacity and the fact that the absolute best the Nazi's could hope for was for the US to be technically neutral while still strongly supporting the UK/USSR, you really have to stretch credibility to come up with hypothetical Axis paths to victory. 

This is why I find WWI so fascinating.  At the time of WWI the productive capacity of Russia and the USA was substantially lower than it was 25 years later while Germany's Austro-Hungarian ally was a major industrial nation themselves.  Furthermore, at the outset of WWI there was no guarantee that the US would get involved nor even on which side they would join if they did.  At the time there were literally millions of people in the US not removed by more than a few generations from their German, Austro-Hungarian, and Irish roots.  Many of these people had a natural ethnic sympathy for their European cousins and/or had an antipathy to the British.  If the Germans had played their diplomatic cards right they probably could have AT LEAST kept the US out of the war. 

Even without getting that deep into the war, at the very outset the Germans almost succeeded.  The elder von Moltke is rumored to have died muttering "Keep the right wing strong".  This refers to his plan to invade France via Belgium and Luxembourg and to "Let the last man on the right brush the channel with his sleeve" thus to keep the British from being able to interfere. 

The German plan worked nearly to perfection but they were shocked by a Russian invasion of the ancient ancestral homelands of the Prussian elite.  That the Russians could organize and launch an offensive so quickly was not expected.  Consequently, an entire army was pulled out of the German right wing on the French front to help repel the "Russian hordes" in the East.  When the French, to their credit, managed to form a cohesive line and launch a counter-attack their point of aim was exactly at the area of the German line that had been weakened in order to strengthen the Eastern Front. 

The ironic thing is that all those German troops pulled out of the line in the West to shore up the line in the East ended up accomplishing nothing.  While they were still being transported all the way across Germany, the Eastern commanders crushed the Russians and sent them fleeing back East.  Then, the severely overtaxed German logistical section was tasked with turning all those troops pulled out of the Western Front back around again and shipping them back to the Western Front as it was apparent that they were not yet needed in the East. 

It is reasonably likely that if the Germans had left their plan alone instead of panicking when the Russians launched what turned out to be a very ill-conceived and unprepared invasion that the German advance into France in the fall of 1914 would have been a total success on the order of the one they conducted 26 years later in 1940. 

Had that happened it is almost certain that the Central Powers would have won WWI at least on the Continent. 

The other thing that absolutely fascinates me about WWI is that I feel that the cultural and technological changes were even larger than they were in WWII. 

If you think about it, the powers destroyed in WWII were mostly fairly new.  Hitler's Nazi's only controlled Germany for a little over a decade and Mussolini's Fascists only controlled Italy for about two decades.  The powers destroyed in WWI were much older.  The Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs ruled all or part of what became Germany and Austria-Hungary respectively for centuries prior to WWI. 

The technological changes were fantastic as well.  When WWI started many of Europe's generals still hadn't learned the lessons of the American Civil War.  Aerial warfare was in it's infancy.  The planes of 1914 look like bedsheets lashed over sticks because that is basically what they were.  There were no tanks or even armored cars and for nearly all soldiers if you had to go somewhere you were going to get there either by walking or on a horse. 

At the end of WWI warfare looked pretty modern.  There were metal-skinned mono-wing fighters and bombers flying over fields where tanks duked it out with one another, etc. 

An early WWI battlefield would appear reasonably familiar to a Napoleonic or American Revolutionary soldier.  Meanwhile, a late WWI battlefield would appear reasonably familiar to a modern soldier. 

Axis and Allies is a pretty good board game to get a sense for the Axis path to victory. There, speed is the key: knock Russia out, and reduce the U.K. to just the islands north of the European mainland, and maintain the strength of the Japanese navy. The longer Russia is involved, and the more the U.S. can build, the harder it is for the Axis to prevail. Of course it's a board game, but it's a good one (if you have the patience for it).

I played that game a lot in college and loved it. 

One of my roommates at Ohio State was the son of a high ranking official for Proctor and Gamble.  When he was in Junior High and High School his dad got transferred to Caracas Venezula to manage a P&G plant down there.  While he was living in Caracas, my eventual roommate attended an International High School that was essentially a school for children of Embassy staff and corporate big-wigs living in Caracas.  He played Axis and Allies with us a lot but said he enjoyed it more in High School in Caracas because at that time he would literally play where:
 - He played the US
 - A child of a UK embassy staffer played the UK
 - A child of a German embassy staffer played Germany
 - A child of a USSR embassy staffer played the USSR
 - A child of a Japanese embassy staffer played Japan