How large was the United States military in terms of manpower at its zenith/peak in World War II?

Question

Any ideas? I'm sure it was larger than 2 million or so..

Answer 1

The United States armed forces at their peak strength during WW II consisted of over 12 million (12,300,000). Over 16 million served altogether.

The only country that had more people in the armed services was the Soviet Union and their casualty numbers were astoundingly high.

Answer 2

You can get the FACTS at: http://www.angelfire.com/ct/ww2europe/stats.html
and http://www.angelfire.com/ct/ww2pacific/stats.html
and adding the two sets of numbers together.

At the peak the US had 95 active Divisions with an maximum of 12,288 men each, for a potential total 1,167,360 soldiers but military records never show more than 1,098,317 being paid at any one time.


The real answer though is the US military manpower in the US was closer to 130 million because most able bodied people helped in the war effort. For the most part only the very young, the very old, the crippled and the objectors did not do something to help even if it was only collecting for a scrap drive.

Answer 3

Off the top of my head I don't know about troops but the Navy had over 1600 combat vessels. Today, the Navy has somewhere between 250 and 300 vessels and that includes non-combatants.

Answer 4

About 8 million men. I'm not sure if they were all soldiers or if that also included cooks, drivers, etc.

Shouldnt be too difficult for america to deploy 30 million soldiers if it becomes absolutely neccesary, but dont expect everyone of them to belong to the delta force...

BTW, the average grunt in Iraq has spent more time in combat than WW2 veterans.

Answer 5

Actually it was between 2 and 4 million men strong.

Answer 6

actually, there were about 5 million in all the services combined. don't forget we had less than 200 million in this country at that time. it would surprise me,if we could raise that amount of good men at preasent.