Percentage of America volunteers/draftees?

I don't know the actual numbers but it is a fact that more people were drafted in to WW2 than volunteered. The opposite was true for Vietnam where despite all the stories of poor draftees getting the shaft more people volunteered for duty there than were drafted.

The explanation is that after the first patriotic rush to join up after Pearl Harbor most young men realized they would end up in the service soon enough whether they volunteered or not so they waited and made a little money in wartime industry until they got their notice. During the Vietnam war there were all kinds of incentives offered by the Army to those who volunteered, i.e. choice of assignment after a tour in SVN or choice of Military Occupation Specialty if you volunteered. These incentives made duty in Vietnam a little more palatable for those who thought it through before they got their draft notice.

Regards,

John Dupre'

Sometime in 1942(?), those who were draft age could no longer enlist, but had to be drafted. There were several reasons:

1. To spread the quailty of recruits over all of the armed forces. (Seems the AirForce, Navy and Marines were getting most of the 'higher' quaility men)

2. To try to prevent manpower shortages in war industries and farming. One of the 'lessons' of WWI was that you could not allow patriotism to strip your factories and farms of their best men.

3. To control the number of men coming into the services at any one time. That way training resources aren't wasted on too few men or strained trying to train too many.

Harry Truman got the impression that the Military wanted to draft evey able body man between 18 and 35 regardless of what it would do to the economy. He (and others) were able to fight them off, by requiring the Military to prove how many men the actually needed and they had to show that they had the resources to train the men they wanted. Needless to say the Military trimmed its manpower requirements.

The figure is misleading, because from January 1943 no one who was eligible to be drafted could 'enlist'. The most they could do was express a preference for one service or another at the induction station. From that date, the recruiting services of each branch were reduced greatly and concentrated only on those NOT draftable, i.e. females; overage professionals such as lawyers, cartographers and such; and pre-draft age high school students who were prime candidates for aviation training. Their figures probably also exclude all the National Guardsmen activated between Sep 40 and March 41

I recall reading that of the approx 15,000,000 people who served in the US armed forces during WW2, 12,000,000 were drafted. This is a little misleading since, IIRC, it became almost impossible to enlist in the US Army (except for 17 year olds who weren't eligible for the draft) as the war progressed because the draft was running so smoothly that the army figured they could better control troop strength by using the draft almost exclusively.

<<<< The opposite was true for Vietnam where despite

I saw a figure once that stated that more Canadians came south and joined the US armed forces during the VN War then there were Americans who fled north across the border to escape the draft. Don't know the exact figures, but I believe there is an organization in Canada for VN veterans.

Regards, TSB

Bill Walker...Producer and Cohost of The Shooting Bench radio program....General Manager, WDIS-Radio, Norfolk, Massachusetts.

According to Goralski's _WWII Alamanac_, that's correct. He says 38.8 % of US servicepeople were volunteers. (He doesn't give a source, but I've seen the same figure in official documents.)

Many 'volunteers' were young men who knew that they would be drafted anyway, so they volunteered in order to at least get the service they wanted.

(Why does the figure surprise you? What figure would better fit your concept of the times?)

The Army's _Green Book_ official history series, available at larger public libraries and government document repositories (check a local university library) has a whole volume on procurement and deployment of manpower. Try to find it.

Ed Frank