Americans are capable of the same kind of suicidal behavior. The highest casualty rates for military-age men in any war in modern history were registered for Southerners during America’s Civil War, which claimed the lives of nearly 30 percent of adult males. (A qualified exception is the loss of Serbian life during the First World War, estimated at close to 50 percent. Otherwise no combatant population fought to the death with the utter abandon of the American Confederacy.)
