It astounds me how many American's don't realize this, and instead attribue global dominance to "the American dream" or some crap.

They "don't realize" it because its un-economic. If free trade is Pareto efficient (it makes everyone better off), it makes no sense that America would prosper more from Europe being a burned out husk than from it being a well developed trading partner. At least that's what free-traders tell us: we benefit from China becoming rich.

The U.S. was very prosperous long before World War I and II.

And also, I see that argument and my take away is that the solution to our economic woes is to sabotage the industrial sector of places like China.

Sure, so was Germany, and they still are. Though we can probably attribute a lot of that pre-war dynamism to the abundance of untapped resources: land, water, minerals, etc. - which is about as arbitrary as being the last man standing industrially.

Liberal immigration policy and real opportunity (because of the previous) lead to an influx of people probably above average in their motivation / skills which probably helped a lot too. I wish we'd remember this lesson today...

I'm not trying to discount American culture / ideals. I love living in San Francisco because of this - most of the good of American culture without many of the downsides.