Demobilization

Demobilization is the release or “draw down” of wartime military forces as the nation resumes peacetime status following a war or major buildup. It is, then, the opposing process of mobilization, which is the assembling and organizing of troops, materiel, and equipment for active military service in time of war or other national emergency. The extent of the process of demobilization depends upon the mobilization that preceded it. Factors include the size, duration, and location of conflict, as well as the level of technology and state of the industrial base and degree of public support. These factors, in turn, determine the number of men mobilized, the duration of service, the distance they move, and the equipment they use. Demobilization is as tumultuous and as fraught with change as mobilization, for after mobilization, and after the conflict, while there can be a normalizing, there cannot be a return to normality. Over the course of American history, demobilization has been a largely haphazard and relatively unplanned process, reflecting a nation whose emphasis has been on peacetime pursuits while maintaining a small standing army.

For the United States, the history of demobilization begins, in modern terms, with the Civil War. Previous conflicts had involved forces small enough to make demobilization relatively invisible. Over the course of the Revolutionary War, for example, demobilization was a continual, and relatively informal, process. The Continental Congress had limited authority over the troops; soldiers were allowed to return home at the end of their enlistment, desertions were frequent, and men were often unceremoniously sent home after a campaign. With the cessation of hostilities, the Continental army was virtually disbanded. Men wandered home without medical examinations, outprocessing, written discharges, or pay.

The reasons for this are apparent after 200 years. The United States barely existed; the Continental Congress had little power; the army, composed of Continental troops and militia, was small and considered temporary; no bureaucracy existed to process or track either mobilization or demobilization. Significantly, there was strong distrust of standing armies during times of peace. That distrust was not only for the armed force itself, but the government that would control it. A standing force, it was felt, would contribute to a more centralized and more powerful government than many thought wise.

The War of 1812 and even the Mexican War changed this situation and sentiment very little. As during the Revolutionary War, men were continually inducted into service even as large numbers who had served out their enlistments were discharged. Terms of enlistment were short, from one to twenty months, and the total number of troops at any given time was relatively small for both conflicts. The Mexican War witnessed a movement to permanent enlistments, a precedent that would not be adopted again until the Spanish‐American War. At the end of each war, the army returned to a peacetime basis by disbanding all excess regiments and consolidating remaining ones with regiments in the active force. Demobilization could remain unorganized and informal because the forces were not large.

The Civil War changed the policy of demobilization, just as it changed warfare, public understanding of war, and almost everything else. True to tradition, prior to the end of the Civil War, little thought was given to how the war would end, much less to the processes of disbandment. As before, troops were continuously discharged after completing their terms of enlistment. With Lee's surrender in 1865, and a general public feeling that demobilization should be immediate, the Union faced the task of outprocessing over 1 million Federal troops. Demobilization directives were hastily drawn up and issued in May 1865.

The Union plan called for the movement of large units to rendezvous areas within the former Confederacy and the border states. This served both to facilitate the demobilization process and to position Union forces for reconstruction duties. Troops were marched to the rendezvous areas where they camped while muster rolls and payrolls were prepared. Units were mustered out of federal service and men were sent to their home state to be individually mustered out. Mustering out took time, and boredom and homesickness caused a mass of desertions. Payment for service was not uniform from state to state.

Meanwhile, Lee's Confederate army stacked its weapons, signed a pledge not to take up arms against the government, and marched home without pay. As word spread, many troops simply left without signing anything. Demilitarization of the South proceeded slowly and unevenly.

Because of the large numbers of troops who were recruited, fought, and were subsequently mustered out, America took some lessons on demobilization and applied them. The Spanish‐American War was a foreign war, which set it apart from the country's preceding experience; as in previous conflicts, the armed forces consisted of regulars and volunteers. No volunteer units were mustered out of the service during the conduct of operations. At war's end, most nonregular units were returned to their home state and demobilized. The federal government required that soldiers be transported to their respective state camps. There they were furloughed while their records were prepared. They returned for separation and pay. The exception was those units that were held over for occupation duty in the Philippines.

With the turn of the century, defense organization and legislation changed the face of the military establishment. The new Army General Staff lent the services a guiding structure; the Militia Act (1903) set the National Guard's relationship to the federal government. This represented a serious attempt to professionalize the military establishment. Each was intended to contribute to the ability of the services—and hence the nation—to mobilize for war and demobilize afterward.

The army that fought World War I was composed of regulars, National Guardsmen, and individual volunteers. Volunteer units were no longer called; most of the ranks were filled through conscription, which was passed in the summer of 1917. During this war, all troops under enlistment served for the duration of the conflict. Unfortunately, despite the existence of the General Staff, the end of the Great War found the United States as unprepared to demobilize as it had been to wage war. When Congress declared war in April 1917, the armed forces numbered almost 300,000. Nineteen months later, over 2 million men were serving in France, yet planning for demobilization began only a month before hostilities ceased. The army, relying on the draft, had greater problems with demobilization than the navy or Marines, of which most were volunteers.

The traditional unit demobilization began with the war's conclusion. Some units were still required to man the ports of debarkation, demobilization centers, supply depots, hospitals, and various garrisons. Due to strong public outcry, however, the War Department accelerated demobilization by discharging individuals, generally before deactivating their units. The discharge was carried out at demobilization centers throughout the country, where physical exams were conducted, financial claims made, and administrative details gathered. The centers were primarily designed to accommodate troops returning from overseas. Soldiers were discharged at camps closest to their homes; physical needs were attended to; coal miners, railroad employees, and railway mail clerks were discharged immediately. Units were demobilized according to plan, with replacement battalions first and combat divisions following. Because of the number of men under arms, the demobilization process affected society in general: communities with war industries experienced an immediate labor surplus when those industries closed down, and the large numbers of returning soldiers added to the unemployment problem.

In World War II, formal planning for demobilization began two years before the end of the war with Germany. For the first time in American history, demobilization was done primarily by individual rather than by unit. Demobilization by unit had previously been the standard for the army, and had worked well with small forces, for it allowed units to retain their integrity and combat effectiveness. The individual method, however, allowed for faster mustering out with acknowledgment paid to individual service—both of which were popular in American society. A service score plan was devised whereby individual soldiers were assigned points as credit for length of service, time spent overseas, time spent in combat, number of wounds sustained, and number of children at home. America began partial demobilization of its ground and air forces in May 1945 with over 8 million men under arms. The navy began demobilization on V‐J Day with a strength of approximately 4 million. Demobilization took from 1945 to 1947, and was characterized by upheaval, waste, and confusion. By June 1947, the total strength of the army was just over 900,000.

This immense demobilization affected all phases of American life. The army, after having been perhaps the most powerful military machine in Western history, dwindled to a state of near impotence, impairing national security and limiting the flexibility of foreign policy. Demobilization also adversely affected supply, maintenance, and storage of munitions; experts in those fields were normally in rear areas during fighting and among the first to leave the service. The army thus was left with not only an absence of manpower to tackle the job of organizing and mastering demobilization and reorganization but also a low level of expertise in many significant fields. Waste was incredibly high; thousands of items of equipment worth millions of dollars were left to rust in place. The mass exodus of men from units overseas caused a complete turnover in leadership. In some cases, whole units disappeared, to be replaced by untrained and untried fillers. Throughout the process, congressional criticism was intense, made particularly acute by upcoming congressional elections in which candidates demanded swift, if not immediate, dismantling of the military.

With the war's end, debate again resurfaced over the issue of universal military training. Late in 1945, President Harry S. Truman asked Congress for legislation requiring male citizens to undergo a year of military training. Proponents believed this would permit a quick expansion of the force when mobilization was necessary. Although this idea became the subject of extensive debate, American citizenry did not accept it, and reinforcement of the regular forces would continue to depend on the reserve forces. Interestingly, the draft, enacted in 1940, was maintained, although not without debate of its own, until 1973.

From the end of World War II until 1989, America was preoccupied by the Cold War, as a result of which it maintained a relatively large standing army for the first time in its history. Conscription was enforced until 1973 to ensure that strength was held at that high level. The draft ended in 1973; since then, all services have been filled by enlistments alone. Over the Cold War period, no large conflict erupted between the superpowers. The United States did participate in limited hostilities, however, including the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Both of these required the armed forces to be built up to fight on foreign soil; neither, however, resulted in mass mobilization or demobilization. During the Vietnam conflict, the United States returned to the earlier policy of “rolling” demobilization—recruits served in Vietnam for thirteen months (including one month of R&R) rather than for the duration, America's earlier pattern of demobilization.
[See also Militia and National Guard; Mobilization; Recruitment.]

Bibliography

William A. Ganoe , History of the United States Army, 1936.
Oliver L. Spaulding , The United States Army in War and Peace, 1937.
Kent R. Greenfield , The Organization of Ground Combat Troops, 1947.
John C. Sparrow , History of Personnel Demobilization in the United States Army, 1951.
Russell F. Weigley , History of the United States Army, 1967.

Susan Canedy