North Americans tend to mistake the Atlantic Ocean for military prowess.
Try living between Britain and Germany (and Spain in her golden years) and see how it works out militarily for you.
I seem to remember a statistic from WW2. That during the fall of France the French lost in those few weeks well over a quarter million men, and all those casualties were squeezed into that short time period. More than the US lost in that war.
They didn't "surrender". They fought, and lost. That's not the same thing, is it?