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Wars and Rumors of Wars: Mobilizing the United States Army and National Guard, 1939-1941

The United States Army of the Second World War faced a shortage of manpower after two decades of budgetary and organizational neglect following the post-First World. According to the Chief of Staff, George C. Marshall, this period of mobilization, between 1939 and 1941, was the most crucial of the entire war. In this period, the United States Army pursued large-scale peacetime mobilization, breaking from eighty years of traditional policy. As such, the effort to increase allocations for armaments, industrial expansion, tactical reorganization of the ground forces, mobilizing the National Guard, and the implementation of a peacetime draft all faced an uphill political battle to accomplish, reflecting the complicated political factionalism of the late New-Deal United States. Between the outbreak of hostilities in Europe in 1939 and December 1941, the United States Army grew from less than 150,000 men to more than 1 million personnel, incorporating the National Guard and inductees while also adopting many of the weapon systems it would use throughout the conflict. By mobilizing a usable core for a wartime army and vetting its general tactics and doctrine in peacetime, the Army leadership provided a cadre capable of responding to some of the Allied powers' strategic requirements during the critical year of 1942.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc2332594
Date05 1900
CreatorsEmmert, John
ContributorsMendoza, Alexander, 1970-, Chet, Guy, Tanner, Harold, Majstorovic, Vojin, Davis, Michael
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
FormatText
RightsPublic, Emmert, John, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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