WW2 USA maxing out?

By about 1942 the British had fully mobilised, there were no more people to get into service or employment and if priorities changed something would have to be reduced to make efforts elsewhere.

If for whatever reason the war was prolonged at what point would the US max out like Britain?
 
By about 1942 the British had fully mobilised, there were no more people to get into service or employment and if priorities changed something would have to be reduced to make efforts elsewhere.

If for whatever reason the war was prolonged at what point would the US max out like Britain?

Depends on the cirucmstances and the war economy plan.

The US went with the 90 division gamble to keep more men at home in industry, but if they needed to go all Total War like the Europeans and put all men on the front they could have raised 213 divisions.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/70-7_15.htm
 
'A Call to Arms' by Klein touches on this slightly in its 800 pages. No clear answer, but it does suggest where the slack was in US manpower, and one can try from that to infer what it would take to use that up. I've only plowed through the book once, & wont point to any specific chapters. That the military ceased expansion in 1943 & the industrial output ceased in 1944, short of the original goals suggest how far the expansion might have gone in terms of the original plan, and that there seems to be unused manpower & industrial capacity in 1944.

The US went with the 90 division gamble to keep more men at home in industry, but if they needed to go all Total War like the Europeans and put all men on the front they could have raised 213 divisions.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/70-7_15.htm

One of the points in that text is part of the trade off against 213 divisions was a large increase in aircraft over the early plans. Ground formations were reduced to add more air forces. A second point not clear is the number of divisions the US directly equipped and sustained which were manned by foreign armies, at least 14. And, there were the six USMC divisions seldom included in the count of US ground forces. Ditto for aircraft formations. Add in the ground division or air wing equivalents in general material assistance to Alles & the US supported 120 'divisions' or more.
 
I would bet that if the US came close to maxing out, they'd 'borrow' men.

Import Mexicans as agricultural workers and for low-skilled factory positions.

Tell any Latin American that if they enroll in the US Army they get US citizenship at the end of the war.

That kind of thing.

OTL there was a scandal when it was realized just how many poor Americans (mostly southerns, iirc, but both white and black) didn't meet Army standards because they grew up malnourished. iTTL, you'd probably get lowered standards - but also a move to improve social equality.

Better utilize blacks.

Britain managed to run a really significant industrial effort despite putting as many men on the front lines as the US did. Which makes me suspect that the US fears of military vs industry were quite overstated.

Maquilladoras might also start sooner. Build factories for some stuff in Mexico, Chile, Brazil, wherever, and off load some production there.


The end result could be a rather more developed Latin America.
 
The circumstances are fairly important. Another big reason OTL had 90 divisions was because of the sheer number of support staff required to keep the supplies moving from North America, across the Atlantic, into Britain, across the Channel, and into France. There were far more people involved in logistical and support positions than involved in actual combat. So if you add another 15,000 men or something you end up needing another even more than that on the logistics end.
 

jahenders

Banned
Two points:
1) Unless the war really shifts such that the existence of the US is at stake, it's unlikely the US would ever mobilize to the extent of the UK, whose existence was at stake (at least in terms of being able to extend influence beyond the one island).

2) In terms of "men on the battlefield" the US would likely always be at a lower percentage than the UK simply due to the logistics involved. Many of the key battlefields for the UK were within 50-1000 miles of their coast, while those same battlefields were 4K-5K from the US coast. That means the US would always need more men involved in transporting the other men to the front. Additionally, the US needed lots transportation infrastructure to move men around the US to training camps and key ports -- a much larger scale than the UK). Finally, the distances involved also mean that the US is always going to have a larger percentage of men "in transit" than the UK.
 
If they max out the men they need to bring every woman they can into the factories. With women in the factories and the men in uniform, who will be teachers in the schools or take care of the children and the elderly?

With all men in uniform 42-45 there will be very few babies born in those years.
 
The USA had enough population that was underutilized to fill both war industry jobs and other jobs (teachers, elderly care, etc etc) even with massively enlarged military. The US population was larger than that of Germany and Japan combined, and more efficient overall as well as in industrial practices in any given industry or factory. Assuming the US does not have to provide equipment to the UK, or Free French (at least on scale as OTL) that frees up more for the US. Lend Lease to the USSR in a situation like this can't be more than OTL because of how to get it there, again more slack for the USA.

The question is also, how many divisions of ground forces will the US need & when. In this sort of scenario, maybe even more emphasis on air and naval forces to keep enemies away from USA, any land attacks across Atlantic will either be later and/or Atlantic Islands, Africa where numbers needed are not large.
 
Depends on the cirucmstances and the war economy plan.

The US went with the 90 division gamble to keep more men at home in industry, but if they needed to go all Total War like the Europeans and put all men on the front they could have raised 213 divisions.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/70-7_15.htm

AIUI, Marshall and FDR were together (Stimson and King may have been in the room as well) when they first realized how devestating the Ardennes Offensive was turning out to be. Marshall remarked that the gamble made over a larger air force with only a 90 division army was a strategic error.

Between an air force that overmatched its enemies to an outrageous degree to an army crippled by shortages of rifle ammunition and individual replacements to an army that was simply too small in unit numbers to answer all the demands being made of it all over the world.... Marshall was stuck with the realization that any new forces raised in December 1944 would not be in the combat lines until October 1945.

In some ways, US policies regarding mobilization running from 1943 to VJ-Day was not unlike Hitler's demob following the Fall of France. The USA was "planning" the end of WWII two years before it actually did.

Import Mexicans as agricultural workers and for low-skilled factory positions.

Plenty of PoWs for that, though Congress' unilateral action of barring anymore coming to the USA was stupidly political.

Tell any Latin American that if they enroll in the US Army they get US citizenship at the end of the war.

That kind of thing.

Pretty sure that that has always been the case.

OTL there was a scandal when it was realized just how many poor Americans (mostly southerns, iirc, but both white and black) didn't meet Army standards because they grew up malnourished. iTTL, you'd probably get lowered standards - but also a move to improve social equality.

I doubt this. More sent to the factories, but you don't want to see 4F personnel in the ranks. Maybe "limited service" types who were barred from serving overseas. But there was already a lot of that.

Better utilize blacks.

Nope. In 1941 75% of the US Army Officer Corps was comprised of White Southerners. And the Navy was worse than that, and the Marines worse yet. The 1941 US Marines, of ALL ranks, were 100% White.

Maquilladoras might also start sooner. Build factories for some stuff in Mexico, Chile, Brazil, wherever, and off load some production there.


The end result could be a rather more developed Latin America.

This was done. Mexico's economy exploded in WWII. Too bad they didn't bother to improve the QC along with volume:(

With all men in uniform 42-45 there will be very few babies born in those years.

There weren't anyway. My parents were both War Babies, a rare breed.
 
To be fair, the real question is under what circumstances would the US max out in? The Axis, barring Nazi Mexico or something crazy like that, was an ocean away, and even if the US lost territories such as Hawaii, the threat of a successful land invasion of the mainland, or even a land invasion of the mainland period that lasted more than like two months, was negligible.
 
To be fair, the real question is under what circumstances would the US max out in? The Axis, barring Nazi Mexico or something crazy like that, was an ocean away, and even if the US lost territories such as Hawaii, the threat of a successful land invasion of the mainland, or even a land invasion of the mainland period that lasted more than like two months, was negligible.

I agree, though an ASB taking of Hawaii WOULD put the US war economy on steroids, for at least awhile.
 
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