US Troops

The American population was over 150 million during WWII. Germany's population was roughly 70 million. We had over twice the population, but from everything I read manpower was always the issue with the US military. Germany somehow produced over 350 divisions and around 20 million men in their military. Our population was immensely larger, why was there such an issue of man power for US land forces?

 

Thanks. I did read that non-divisional combat units made up almost half of our ground forces (tank units, TD units, independent regiments, battalions, etc.), and our Navy had over 4 million throughout the whole war. Also, the Air Force required a lot of manpower, as did manufacturing ( It wasn't all Rosie the Riveter). I read somewhere that out of a man-pool of 25 million available men, at least 10 million were going to be kept out for manufacturing.

 

Sorry, but no. US population as of 1 July 1939 was 130.88 million. By 1 July 1945 it was 139.93 million.

Peak size of the US Armed Forces as of 1 July 1945 was 12,209,238 or about 8.7% of the population.

The Grossreich (Germany, Austria, and the Sudentenland) population was 69.62 million in 1939. It peaked at 72.62 million in 1942. However, the Reich also made use of what it considered ethnic "Germanic" populations of conquered territories, including Alsace, Lorraine, Poland, and the USSR. The peak number of divisions existing at the same time was about 191, but many of those were divisions in name only.

The Wehrmacht was 4.69 million in 1939 and peaked at 12.24 million in 1944, just slightly more than the US...after forces about 7 million of so foreigners into their labor pool.

Other differences:

The peak size of the US Navy was 3.4 million. The Kriegsmarine was 810,000. The Peak size of US Army Ground Forces was about 7.7 million. The German, including the Heer, Waffen-SS and foreign "volunteers" was about 7.46 million. So the average "manpower" per division for the US Army was 86,517. For the Germans it was 25,636.

 

I think we are also missing the number op personnel that made up the semi-independent Air Corps.

 

You were doing great 'til you hit that part, Rich.

That number comes closer to the entire US Army (Ground, Air, and Service). AGF was around 40% of that.

 

Didn't the US have mucho more transport personel also? trucks, mechanics, etc?is that what Slip meant?

 

Ooops, sorry, posting from memory and should have double checked. Army Ground Forces combat strength peaked as of 31 December 1943, with an enlisted strength of [SIZE=12pt]2,282,000. Service troops were 1,221,000, the Air Forces were 2,126,000, and the remaining overhead was 1,375,000, for a peak strength of 7,004,000. Anyway, by "Army Ground Forces" I actually meant non-Air Force personnel, since it is difficult to compare the German and American army given there was no separate US Air Force comparable to the Luftwaffe...but even worse, the bulk of German AA troops were under Luftwaffe command, but all American AAA was under Army Ground Forces. Never mind, just the 12 million to 12 million comparison probably suffices. Then again, never mind again, because total US Army manpower excludes officers, who were counted separately.[/SIZE]

 

Knew I'd find it if I remembered where to look. US Army strength, including officers, as of 31 May 1945, was 8,291,336, of which 2,310,246 were Army Air Forces. 7,700,000 was the enlisted troop strength ceiling determined in the round of talks in October 1942, which established the 1943 Troop Basis, and which then remained effective until the end of the war.

 

The US had a much higher proportion of support to combat troops than in the Wehrmacht. The plentiful non divisional troops were predominantly engineer, artillery and supply troops. There were few non divisional infantry units in the US Army.

This is often seen as a bad thing as the PBI did all the suffering. It is not obvious how a superiority in chauffeurs, ordnance depots and PXs translates into fighting pwoer.

However, the American (and British ) way of war relied on machines rather than manpower. Better to expend 1000 tones of ammunition than 1000 lives.

 

very interesting ..thank you...yes, the long 'tail'.....I would think transport of logistics very important.....how did the Germans do it without 'mucho trucks', etc? or did they have just enough... ? ...their organization, order, etc were good....
80% of their transport were horses ?...I knew it was a lot....

http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=2486 horses and the German army from Flames of War

would you say the above article is more or less true to the facts? does it mean more fighting troops and less of a 'tail'?

''a major problem encountered is that a [ German ] horse-drawn infantry division took up much more road space than a motorised one.'' true?

 

I can see how they'd take up a lot more road space. Draft horse that are working hard like that will need at least one 50 pound bale of hay per day, probably more and should be getting some grain too if they are going to keep going. That all has to be hauled on the road along with them. No time to graze, They'll be drinking a lot of water as well so if there aren't regular stream crossings that's got to be brought along too.

 

No understanding of US forces is complete without a thorough familiarity with The Organization of Ground Combat Troops. Since it is available on the web, there's really no reason to miss it. It not only provides mucho data, but interprets that data as well.

An advancing army always needs more support than a withdrawing one. Takes a couple of engineers to blow a bridge in retreat; takes a much larger team to replace it. Think of all the accounts of German school forces being sent into combat. For the US, those forces were an ocean away.

I haven't looked into the details of how they were distributed, but for the USAAF in 1945, close to the same size force stateside as overseas (over 1 million in each category). And another million plus for the balance of the Army. USN had 1.3 million stateside on V-J Day. I would be surprised in Germany had much more than 10% of that total unavailable for immediate combat or service support (though they must have had a pile of hospital patients by the end).

I was doing some research recently. On V-E Day, the ETO had 54 Engineer General Service Regiments and this doesn't count the non-divisional Engineer Combat Battalions. A good guess without looking up the numbers would be that the GS regiments would require about 90k officers and men. There were a myriad of other engineer units from depot companies to forestry battalions (logging and sawmill operations).

Two tidbits impressed me early on in my ETO studies, both from the Green Books. In '42 as US forces began to arrive in the UK, they were assigned to existing British camps which were available because of the Brits' overseas deployments. Nice to have existing buildings and infrastructure, but they soon learned they had to install larger grease traps because American troops' diet was much richer in fat. So, the good news is, we have facilities waiting for you; the bad news is, you've got to devote manpower and material to renovation.

The other is much larger in scale: the camps in the UK which held Neptune assault and follow up forces during the buildup to D-Day were scheduled to be occupied immediately by newly arriving forces. Had D-Day failed, there wouldn't have been enough housing for the withdrawing forces, complicating both supply and morale.

Dats why I love logistics, I suppose. And the fact that they pulled it off without spreadsheets, email, and Primavera makes it an even more impressive feat.

 

UK support for the US Army in the ETO was one of the major components of reverse lease lend. The airfields, camps, depots and hospitals needed to be built to support a US force in the UK that was vastly bigger than any other forces assembled.

It wasn't simply a case of moving in to empty camps whose previous occupants were now in North Africa or the far east., Much of the re-location was to re-locate the British on the East side of Britian and the US on the West to avoid tangled logistics on the roads and railways. The Amricans were always going to be supplied by ports on the west side of the UK and the British, who had a residual threat of German raids, had to be in the south east. This logistic necessity also drove:-

1) which army would land on the east most and which on the west most invasion beaches, and hence hhich army would have the role of pinning the Germans and which would have greater scope to break out.
2) The occupation zones of post war Germany.

 

Not just logistics, but all administrative details. When some of the usual "what if" geniuses start going on about how "stupid" this or that general or staff officer was, I always wonder if the "genius" knows what a mimeograph machine, teleprinter, or carbon paper was?

 

The United States produced a great deal of equipment, munitions, food, petroleum products, etc. for our allies in addition to the requirements of our own forces. This increased the proportion of workers at home to soldiers in the field.