How did America manage to raise a large army for WW2?

Question

I understand America had a meagre standing army during the initial stage of World War 2.

How did it manage to train so many divisions of soldiers in relatively short period of time and make them operational?

How did it manage to come up with modern artillery and howitzers, tanks and planes etc and fighting doctrine too?

I am assuming that the Germans were the most advance in terms of fighting doctrine at the onslaught while France still remain in WW1.

Answer 1

Conscription, plus the millions of volunteers, of all ages 17 up to 38.

Every industry was converted to defense.
The last auto was 1941, the next 1946, began in 1945 production.
No new refrigerators, no new furnaces, no new stoves, no new street cars, no new buses, no parts were manufactured until late 1945.

Military training was 6 weeks, and ship out. No pansy training back then. Tough, hard, grind.

That was the greatest, fastest, and largest military machine ever built.
Lots of great minds went to work on new military designs.

Don't ever forget the contribution by the women of this country. They not only served in the military, filled the need for nurses, but they filled the jobs needed in our industry. Helped build those planes, ships, tanks, and all the weapons and machinery needed.

Civilians sacrificed. Gas rationing, 5 gal per week. Meat cheese, sugar, shoes (3 pair per year), nylon, among many items either rationed or in very short supply.

I guess you can tell, I was around then. Sorry, didn't serve.

Answer 2

Your assumptions are a bit off. Germany had the most advanced doctrine, but the famous blitzkrieg was more myth than reality, since most of the Wehrmacht remained horse-drawn throughout the war.
British doctrine was different, but just as advanced, and many aspects of the German tactics were gleaned from British theorists.
The French were not stuck in WW I. If anything, their problem was that their technology was not as advanced as their doctrine. It relied heavily on central command and control, more than their technology could supply, especially against the Panzer thrusts designed to disrupt them. French tanks, for instance, were both more numerous and more advanced than German ones at the time of the invasion.
The US Army expanded mostly through the draft. They had more than two years' runup, so training wasn't that big an issue once the process was figured out, and that just took great staff work. The M4 tank was too tall because it used an engine originally designed for aircraft use. It was all that was available, so they went with it. Artillery was upgraded, but I lost an uncle in Italy who commanded an obsolete 37 mm gun battery, so that's a relative thing. The Army had been tiny and underequipped but very professional. They knew what it took. The planes were largely in development from the thirties, as small investments, and the salvation was in quick time from conception to production.
US doctrine was also close and professional, but it took some smoothing out, and a lot of errors paid in blood for lessons learned.

Answer 3

the two posts above handled it well...let me add:



proper prior planning: FDR and his boys had no illusions about Hitler and Tojo. Quietly quietly quietly, so not to spook the isolationists and the peacniks, the military industrial complex started designing and engineering the ships planes and systems that would be mass produced. There was little money till France fell in 1940.....but the blueprints were drawn and the battleships and cruisers and planes and tanks were ready to be built.........

we had a huge population base compared to our other Allies or our Axis enemies.....off the top of my head, more people than Japan and Germany combined.

As was mentioned it was total war.EVERYTHING was converted to war production......compared to Vietnam Korea and Gulf 1 and 2 where DoD spending is less than 10% of the budget......

an example: there is a shipyard 10 miles from the sea, up the Kennebec River in Maine. There are huge swarths of land around it that are little changed from when the French and the Indians were fighting the British and the Colonists for control of America. The nearest big city is Boston, 200 miles southwest, and the nearest major industrial base is Pittsburgh, some 600 miles away. There was, at the time, one two lane road and one two track railroad that ran to Bath Maine.

Bath Iron Works, in 3 and a half years built more destroyers than the entire Empire of Japan.

Answer 4

After Pearl Harbor there was a burst of patriotism and swelled the ranks. Roosevelt also had the draft to 35 and under.
There were almost a base in every state. People were trained to shoot and get into physical shape along with taking orders. They shipped out within 90 days of the physical.
The modern artillery came with tinkering with the old WW I equipment to make it better. Think how much we came along on artillery, in WW I we could shoot a round 5-6 miles with a certianty of where it would land. We now can fire a round 22 miles and hit accurately within 2 yards of the target and have a kill range diameter of a 1/4 mile.

Answer 5

Patriotism and Propaganda!

No such thing as "Politically Correct" back then.

Let's get them "Japs" and Krauts" No offense intended.

The government used propaganda to get the nation fired up to rally behind the war effort.

To get men (and now women) to volunteer to fight against tyranny and dictatorship.

This has worked for centuries because leaders know that without the support of your nation you cannot win a war.

Sound familiar? (Vietnam,Iraq).

Also some actors in Hollywood actually volunteered for service (and went to fight),unlike the Un-American, un-patriotic,pampered Hollwood a**holes who protest the war today.

It's easy for actors and musicians to protest war after all, it gains them popularity with the kids, especially teens, who are liberal by nature,with their I'm all grown up and you're not the boss of me,I can do whatever I want juvenile attitudes.



We can thank the "Me Generation" "Flower Children" drug addict "Make Love Not War" hippies who protested the war and burned their draft cards so they could get stoned and go to "Woodstock" instead of Vietnam.

The same people who spit on our soldiers and called them "Baby Killers" after they fought in horrific conditions in a war that they did not ask to be in yet did their duty and fought for their country,yeah I know that the Nam soldiers were getting stoned too,but hey,who had a better reason than they did to try and escape reality.

The very same people who are in control of the liberal media and left wing government.

The colledge proffessors who won't accept anything less than the liberal mindset that they infect young colledge students with.

"Tune In,Turn On, and Drop Out"...
...And ruin the nation.

Hey, protest the war if you must, but support the troops who had the guts to go off to fight in a war that they did ask for!

As far as weapons and equipment,the nations top engineers put all their effort into designing the "War Machines" and all of the industry turned their efforts into manufacturing said inventions.

As far as training soldiers, like someone mentioned in a previous post,there were military bases in practically every state and patriotic volunteers along with conscripts who trained hard to become fighting soldiers and sailors.

Why you ask? PATRIOTISM BROTHERS and SISTERS!

Hey this is just the brutal truth! No offense intended to any of the above mentioned parties.

Answer 6

Immediately after Pearl Harbor many men volunteered for the military.
We then went to the draft - had to - we had to win. And even those here were all focused on the war effort. We weren't deprived of practically everything like the English, or bombed to hell and back on a daily basis, but we knew we had to win.
When someone crosses an ocean to bomb the **** out of you when you are not at war - or even if you are - it provides a lot of incentive to get up to speed very quickly.
America is different, Jason. Not everybody likes us - that's their prerogative - but we don't give up in a situation like WWII.

Answer 7

We were actually ahead of the game when it came to arms production since via our "Lend-Lease" program we were already supplying vast amounts of arms to the British and the Russians. We may have been behind Germany in 1939,but by the time we entered the war over two years later,we were industrially in full movement. As to manpower,we simply drafted all able bodies males ages 18-55,period. Community services were taken over by men in their 60's who came out of retirement to maintain our domestic infrastructure.

Answer 8

Back then people actually fought for their country instead of bitching about it!

Watch Band of Brothers it is awesome. It takes you from basic training to D-day to the coming home. It has interviews with the real soldiers portrayed in the show.