1.1 million was Canada's total at about 11 million, so that's about on par with the US.
Larger American Army in WW2
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1.1 million was Canada's total at about 11 million, so that's about on par with the US.
The US also had the USMC divisions and there are the 1 or 2 division equivalents lost in the Philippines and Dutch East Indies. How much manpower went into driving and maintaining the trucks and other vehicles of the Army and other services? There were also the large number of independent battalions and regiments/brigades (tank, anti-tank, cavalry regiments, artillery regiments, etc). The divisions were also larger than Axis divisions, I think.
The US Navy took a lot of manpower as well.
All those men back in the States that weren't in uniform, weren't they contributing to the USA's industrial output?
The US Navy took a lot of manpower as well.
All those men back in the States that weren't in uniform, weren't they contributing to the USA's industrial output?
Re: US Army Infantry Replacements
The replacement problem had to do with training allocation decisions made in 1942-43. & was based on bad estimate of loss rates, over estimates of other types of units needed, expansion of number of other types of units badly needed. It is easy to try to second guess HQ Army Ground Forces when they planned out the training programs for 1943-44, but I seriously doubt anyone here would have done any better. One of the wild cards that turned up was the unexpected loss to disease in the Pacific in 1943-45, roughly triple the combat losses. The men were present but trained and allocated to formations where they were not eventually needed. Reversing that took Army Ground Forces longer than needed to reassign and retrain the people.
The replacement problem had to do with training allocation decisions made in 1942-43. & was based on bad estimate of loss rates, over estimates of other types of units needed, expansion of number of other types of units badly needed. It is easy to try to second guess HQ Army Ground Forces when they planned out the training programs for 1943-44, but I seriously doubt anyone here would have done any better. One of the wild cards that turned up was the unexpected loss to disease in the Pacific in 1943-45, roughly triple the combat losses. The men were present but trained and allocated to formations where they were not eventually needed. Reversing that took Army Ground Forces longer than needed to reassign and retrain the people.
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That would have been the 100th Infantry Battalion Separate. The overall Nisei population would have provided enough young males to field a full division & then some. Prewar the Hawaiian population allone provided young nisei males for a couple National Guard battalions
If you have data for that I'd like to have the source to compare with others. The US Army Green Book concerning the mobilization of the Ground Forces identifies the manpower problem as one of internal allocation and not of intake into the military, or the population at large.
I was of course referring to a post about how life was hard for the GI in ETO and comparing living conditions for the US and German soldiers, not comparing numbers. By the time the GI were complaining about limited rotations and undertrained replacements they were facing units of Boy Scouts and senior citizens along with what remained of the original Wehrmacht units.
The one really hard infantry action for the US that comes to mind was Hurtgen forest, and compare conditions for US and German units in that fight.
And veteran German Divisions were often bleed white while fresh divisions were created and resources were assigned to SS or LW divisions.
Compare that with German conditions in Russia. Or Russian conditions in Russia.
On a Brazilian army presentation I recently attended about the Brazilians in WW2, they mentioned that veterans from the Italian front were very impressed with how well organised and supported the US Army was.
The US Army was probably the best managed army of WW2.
I did not know that. Thx.Carl Schwamberger said:
Regrettably, no, only a vague recollection.Carl Schwamberger said:
A vague connection to allocation of women as labor comes to mind, as does a vague connection to an official history, but other than that... (It would have been quite a few years ago, now.)Quote:
Originally Posted by
Add the Vosges campaign of the US 7th Army, the 10th Armys campaign on Okinawa, and several smaller corps size battles here & there. & of course the seven weeks of the Normandy campaign were principally a infantry battle for the US.
Originally Posted by
AdA said:
Add the Vosges campaign of the US 7th Army, the 10th Armys campaign on Okinawa, and several smaller corps size battles here & there. & of course the seven weeks of the Normandy campaign were principally a infantry battle for the US.
Well the US could have mobilised more women. The total US workforce in WW2 was at most 37% women. The German industrial workforce (not counting forced labour) were up to 51% women (14,8 million). Though to be fair the percentage has more to do with the withdrawl of German men than with a rise of the female workforce. But that statistic does not include the many German women which managed their husbands farm/store while he was away (6 million plus). Nor the 400 000 in nursing. Nor the 500 000+ women in German uniform. Add about the same number serving in home defense AA units. Of course the US would never need to raise a female infantry batallion as Germany did in 45, but despite the Rosie the riveter myth of all the major powers in the war only Japan (I have no numbers for Italy, but they are hardly a major power) made less use of its women. I´d call that luxury hardly hitting the limits of manpower.
Wasn't really possible without radically altering the way things were being done (and still are). The U.S. was near the end of its tether as far as replacements. A significant number of American men had to be deferred to work in critical industries (II-A/B)and in agriculture (II-C) the automation that allows a couple men to plant/harvest vast tracts of land didn't exist). As was the U.S. lowered standards several times, to the point that they were re-classifying men with corrected club feet from IV-F to I-A.
The only way to alter the numbers would have been to draft women in large numbers and have them perform most administrative and logistical tasks save those where you needed pure brute strength (stevedores, loaders), even then you would be scraping against the very edge of what an industrialized state can put under the colors. At its peak the U.S. military counted 18,000,000 ration strength out of a population of ~130,000,000. The rule of thumb is that an industrialized state can't exceed 15-20% of its total population under arms without economic collapse setting in. This can be exceeded for a short period of time, especially if the economy is not heavily industrialized or if the Wolf is at the door (a good example of this is the USSR during the Great Patriotic War, although even in this case it was only possible thanks to the amount of goods provided via Lend-Lease which freed more people from work to serve in combat roles), but only for the short term.
You could also increase Army strength by reducing naval strength (just the shifting of all troops from the USMC to USA would have added something just short of four divisions, USA divisions being quite a bit larger than the USMC versions). Given the nature of the War, the reduction of naval forces was simply impossible both from a practical as well as political perspective.
The only way to alter the numbers would have been to draft women in large numbers and have them perform most administrative and logistical tasks save those where you needed pure brute strength (stevedores, loaders), even then you would be scraping against the very edge of what an industrialized state can put under the colors. At its peak the U.S. military counted 18,000,000 ration strength out of a population of ~130,000,000. The rule of thumb is that an industrialized state can't exceed 15-20% of its total population under arms without economic collapse setting in. This can be exceeded for a short period of time, especially if the economy is not heavily industrialized or if the Wolf is at the door (a good example of this is the USSR during the Great Patriotic War, although even in this case it was only possible thanks to the amount of goods provided via Lend-Lease which freed more people from work to serve in combat roles), but only for the short term.
You could also increase Army strength by reducing naval strength (just the shifting of all troops from the USMC to USA would have added something just short of four divisions, USA divisions being quite a bit larger than the USMC versions). Given the nature of the War, the reduction of naval forces was simply impossible both from a practical as well as political perspective.
One way I've seen suggested is to use the large amount of troops in the Tank Destroyer battalions, which could yield several additional divisions. That, however, would take a shift in doctrine a number of years beforehand.
I am not sure where you get your numbers. I guess ration strength includes foreign auxiliaries and POWs. According to the US bureau of census at its WW2 peak the US armed forces had a strength of 11 430 000 (less than 10% of population). At its peak the total workforce was 66 040 000, 29.2% of them women. Moreover the unemployment rate remained constantly over 1%. I realise that some things the Germans did, like relying almost entirely on women and 19th century methods for food production, would work less well under different conditions. But the fact remains that the US was by any standard incredibly wasteful with the use of its resources. There were a number of methods how they could have mobilised considerably more men without economic collapse. For instance the German armed forces rose to more than 10% women even before the collapse in 45 (exact numbers are a bit difficult, as the distinction between various classifications of occupations in statistics overlap), the USA did not even reach 5%. And the German female auxiliaries did have considerably more responsibilities. Some rear echelon staffs were close to 90% female and most of the 39 EK IIs given to women went to "nurses" which at least in that instance acted as combat medics. In the US there was neither the political will nor more important the need to do so, which overrode in Germany ideological preconceptions. Tighter rations is another field where the US had room to save resources and with it work. According to German Pows the combat rations they got from US forces were better than peacetime meals for a German middle class family pre-war. Saying the US had mobilised to the maximum extent practical is simply not true. Why should they do more though?
Okinawa is about the size of the chancellery area in Berlin. There where about as much Germans there as Japanese in that island. The Russians did it in one day. How long did the US Army took?
In Normandy the US soldiers were being properly fed, could rely on an excellent medevac system and had the greatest amount of firepower in direct support in history. Compare that to what the Germans had to endure in the built up to operation Cobra.
Precisely. There was enough US infantry to win all the battles with a margin of superiority that allowed risk management. Bombs are cheaper than lives. The US did what other nations would do if they could afford to, and used superior firepower to fight a less infantry intensive war.
Overlay a map of Okinawa with the relevant area of Berlim, than compare numbers and duration. The island is about the size of the greater urban area of Berlin. If you take Iwo Jima, its about the size of the chancellery neighbourhood in Berlin. But the numbers involved, accelerated tempo of operations, and all the constraints of urban warfare, mean that the conditions the Russians faced in Berlin were way more "brutal" than those on the US island assaults. And remember that a wounded US soldier was rapidly transported to a properly equipped hospital ship. Yes Okinawa was brutal, for the Japanese. For the US it was about the level of action of any WW1 battle, with much better care and support.
The point is that if we had to choose an Army of WW2 to be an infantry man in, the US would be the smart choice, since the average GI was better taken care off and less likely to be asked to face impossible odds than any other army.
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