American Troop numbers

I've always wondered about this because America's population during the war was almost 140 million; the USSR's was about 200 million plus or minus during the same time and Germany's was about 70 million.

I've seen numerous cited sources that claimed 16.1 million men and women served in the WWII-period U.S. Military from the fall of 1940 to December 1946 with approximately 10 million drafted and approximately 6 million volunteers, with the Army (including the Air Force) getting the bulk of the numbers. Another report I read based on documents held by Marshall and his staff stated that America had 25 million able-bodied men of military age ready for service in the manpower pool. Their reports stated that it was also imperative to keep at least 10 million of those men out of service for war manufacturing industry, agriculture, and other civilian services as U.S. production was considered just as potent as an offensive weapon as an army. We also didn't mobilize the entire African-American male population nor let the ones we did mobilize serve in many active units. Marshall and his staff had the aim to keep the Army at 90 divisions. They also had many non-divisional combat units, so sometimes the division number could be deceiving. We also had about 15.000 men per division and kept them operating at full-strength, where Russia had only 10.000 per division and sometimes held them understrength.

With such a vast manpower pool, why did they feel the need to keep the divisional number so low? Especially when Marshall had reports and documents saying that after OVERLORD and the advance on Continental Europe, the U.S. would barely have any reserves left in Europe or the states which worried them strategically, Also, since they were drafting since the Fall of 1940 and seemed to have large numbers already in the military, why did it take so long to build up units and divisions and get them over to Europe? as that was another concern to Marshall.

We had double the population of Germany, yet their army had way more of a build up, faster, with bigger numbers total (they had 3 million soldiers alone for Barbarossa) and The USSR with a population was scraping the bottom of the barrel with the elderly, teenagers, and criminal prisoners by the time they were reaching their peak at around 34 million.

I also know our Navy and men in the Navy was over 4 million total, where the other countries weren't even close to that, and that our air power and Army Air Force was going to be relied up for superiority, and the the Air Force was part of the Army at that time. The manufacturing also played a role in that decision-making as well.

 

The first chapter of Russel Weigley's Eisenhower's Lieutenants address this problem. FDR wanted industrial production first and direct US combat power second; his thinking is, to not put too fine a point on it, that US allies should do as much direct combat as possible using American weapons and equipment. Marshal in fact believed he should be given 200 US divisions to guarantee decisive advantage; FDR overruled him and cut the number down to 89 divisions. The later option probably had the benefit of guaranteeing a larger sphere of US influence in Europe, if logistics proved possible to support it. Indubitably the human cost for the US would be higher.

 

With the total amount that served during the War, you'd think it would have been higher, but there were a lot of non-divisional combat units, the Navy was huge in regards to manpower, the Air Force was part of the Army, so the division number can sometimes be deceiving. It makes sense from both sides...FDR wanting industry to be the major weapon with less ground forces, and Marshall wanting overwhelming ground forces to make victory decisive and have more influence over there after we steamrolled to victory with vast numbers of troops.

 

Number of divisions can be deceiving. The American division was larger, especially considering the "divisional slice" of attached and supporting units, and despite the shortcomings of our replacement system, it was usually maintained at close to full strength. There were also considerable forces at corps, army, and higher levels which contributed to combat power and sustainability. The Germans on the other hand suffered from their leaders' bias towards maintaining large numbers of divisions. Most of their divisions had only six line battalions, as did the Luftwaffe field divisions Goring insisted on creating; the personnel would have been better used keeping the regular army up to strength. The Soviets followed a similar policy, constantly creating new units while the existing ones were being worn down.

Geography made it inevitable that substantial American resources would be tied up in transportation and logistics. The continental United States was larger than the entire European theater, just moving troops and material to the coasts was a bigger job than Germany supplying her fighting fronts, and then we had to ship them overseas. We had to build most of the logistic infrastructure on the receiving end as well, especially in the Pacific. If our war had been in Canada and Mexico our field forces might have been more comparable to Germany's.

 

Plus In the AGF, over a million men were in non-divisional combat units, so that's another thing that throws it off. I believe the peak strength of just the Army (including the Air Force) was 8.2 million men, with 2.7 million being Army Ground Forces, and only about half of that being in divisions. The rest were in non-division combat units.

 

The US was also never placed in the postition, that due to casualties, they had to go much outside of what is considerd the standard military age male population, and could still reject a percentage of that did not meet their physical or mental standards, the (4F's).. Germany and the Soviet Union did.not have that luxury. Germany and the Soviets had to utilize the very young, the infirm and older, less capable individuals to supplement their able bodied, military male numbers, in order to field the numbers they did.

 

Too many men went to rear services. it wasn't until 1944 that most AA units were disbanded to supply men. The biggest mistake was under estimating the casualty rate of combat units. JC Lee in command of supply convinced Marshall that he needed the equal about three divisions of men for rear supply dump guards. Ike was ticked but what could he do.

 

US divisions were much bigger than Germany, Japanese and Soviet counterparts. However, the Germans raised 250 divisions, Japanese 200, and Soviet 500. Even though many of those were half the size of the US counterpart, it remains true that the US did not mobilize a proportionally equal number of men for its military. There was indeed a huge misstep in estimating riflemen/infantrymen losses. IIRC the Army was at least 20% too low in their expected infantry casualties. The much-maligned replacement system, I think, need to be understood in context of the small number of divisions. Because there were not enough combat divisions up front, units could not be rotated to the rear to replenish its combat power. Instead, replacements were sent to the front as individuals to keep the divisions in fighting shape. It was a bad policy, but perhaps there was necessity in it.

 

I'm not sure this was indeed the case. The US had the longest supply lines of any of the major combatants in the war. Furhtermore they were also supplying significant quantities of equipment to allies. When you look at the availability rates of US equipment and realize that this was in part due to the massive logistical effort to make sure spares and consumables got where they were needed I don't think it's clear at all.

 

I've read that low number of divisions in the US Army in WW2 was affected by several reasons, many mentioned here already. Unforseen amount of casualties, huge rear echelon units, un-attached armored and AT battalions, homefront labor, etc. I've read in the past of the number of draft exemptions to protect homefront manpower jobs too, and there were a lot of them. Another drain on manpower was the rapidly expanding B-29 program. That alone caused the cancellation of several infantry divisions. The rapid expansion of the bomber forces ciphoned off manpower as well. I believe that the bomber crews had the highest casualty rates of any of the other services too, but I can't put my hands on that claim now.

 

I've seen it written several times that 8th Air Force had more fatalities than the USMC on the other hand I believe the USMC had more casualties. Probablly more 8th AF POW's as well. So it may come down to wether you are talking about KIAs, casualties, or losses.

The "Silent Service" had a pretty high KIA rate as well. I suspect higher than the bomber crews but haven't looked at the actual numbers.

 

To illustrate the point, losing a man or a crew as POWs are still casualties. They are removed from the duty roster and are no longer of any use to the team so to speak. A big bomber (B-17, B-24 etc) goes down and 10 men are gone. The Schweinfurt Raid cost the 8th AF 60 B-17s. That's 600 men gone right there, not counting the KIAs and WIAs in the other bombers involved in the mission. It's all a drain on the manpower reserves, regardless what service they are in when they get a crappy deal.

Here's a few numbers I found in Wiki.

U.S.
1.Battle deaths were 292,131: Army 234,874 (including Army Air Forces 52,173); Navy 36,950; Marine Corps 19,733; and Coast Guard 574. (185,924 deaths occurred in the European/Atlantic theater of operations and 106,207 deaths occurred in Asia/Pacific theater of operations.)[171][172]
2.The United States Merchant Marine war dead of 9,521 are included with military losses. U.S. Merchant Mariners in "ocean-going service" during World War II have Veteran Status.[173]

 

The problem with an army of 200 divisions is where to deploy it. There were three potential spots. 1) NW Europe. 2) China 3) The Russian Front. Politics and logistics eliminates options 2 & 3 leaving Europe. Until the U Boat war had been won and amphibious shipping to deploy to Europe a 200 division army was pointless. I think the US only deployed 72 divisions to Europe and 21 Army and 6 Marine Divisions to the Pacific Theatre. .

Had the war continued, or., say D Day failed, more of the US Army could have been deployed in combat forces. This is one of the reasons why Marshall was much happier to accept risks over invading Europe than Alanbrooke. .

 

Compare the Kriegsmarine to the US Navy. Peak manpower strengths of about 800,000 vs. 3,000,000. The difference of 2.2M could be counted as about the equivalent of 70 or 80 divisions.

 

Its also deceiving that many of the statistics that are shown go until December of 1946, a full year and a half of drafting and such after the war had ended. And like others have mentioned, the US had larger divisions than Russia or Germany (actually I think at the beginning of the War Germany had similar numbers for division strength). We had over 4 million serve in just the Navy throughout WWII that wasn't arranged in the divisional format, which if you take that total of 4.2 million men its still more than 300 Russian divisions at that time.

 

It's also hazardous comparing forces (manpower) between countries, as not every state has such clear cut distinctions between military forces, and civilian forces (Police).

It also effects the totals, when you have to dedicate "troops" to mass arrests, deportations, shooting deserters, "partisans" & "collaborators", with an outspoken "aim to increase morale via brutality and coercion." As was done by both totalitarian systems.