Demobilization

views updated

DEMOBILIZATION

Demobilizing the mass army and defense industry at the end of America's two world wars in 1918 and 1945 was an extremely complicated task. In 1918, American officials expected World War I to last another year and were taken by surprise when the Armistice was announced on November 11, 1918. With only preliminary planning for demobilization underway, the government did a hasty and poor job directing the shift from a wartime to a peacetime economy. During World War II, the government made significant strides preparing for demobilization well before victory was attained on the battlefield. In 1945, most Americans feared a return of the Great Depression once the war-fueled boom evaporated. Instead, the government found itself combating inflation.

world war i

At the end of World War I, the government immediately dissolved the wartime agencies that had directed the nation's economic mobilization. Concocting a viable demobilization plan, therefore, fell to the War Department. Returning four million soldiers to the workforce at the very moment that government cancellation of thousands of wartime manufacturing contracts made jobs scarce threatened to wreak havoc on the national economy. The military considered plans to keep soldiers in the service until a job became available for them or letting soldiers who had served the longest leave first. But these plans were rejected as too cumbersome and politically unfeasible. Instead, the War Department embraced a strategy that was easy both to manage and explain to the American people: simply demobilize units when their military rationale for existing ceased. The War Department began by releasing the 1.5 million men training in domestic camps, and then brought overseas units home in the following order: casuals, surplus and special service troops, troops in England, U.S. Air Service personnel, troops in Italy, combat divisions, and Service of Supply troops.

The army, however, encountered huge problems even implementing this basic demobilization scheme. Over-crowded debarkation camps in France, the ongoing Spanish Influenza epidemic, and horrendous winter weather turned the demobilization experience into a nightmare for many troops. Americans became furious when soldiers who had survived the war died while waiting for a ship home. Soldiers staged protests overseas, sent petitions, and enrolled their families in the campaign to return them home quickly and safely. Congress launched several investigations into the government's mismanagement of the demobilization process.

The government offered unemployed ex-servicemen little help finding jobs, and as a result veterans soon demanded additional retroactive pay to ease their postwar suffering. In 1924, veterans received an adjusted compensation bond that matured in 1945. During the Depression, calls for immediate payment of this bond led to the Bonus March in 1932.

Veterans were not the only ones who suffered in the postwar recession. Millions were out of work and a wave of strikes that involved nearly 22 percent of the total workforce rocked the country. Gradually, the economy improved when some industries, such as automobiles and housing construction, began to revive and consumer spending increased. Agriculture, however, remained a sick industry throughout the so-called "roaring twenties." Farmers had taken out loans to expand production to meet the wartime demand for agricultural products and were particularly hard-hit by the cancellation of Allied food orders when the war ended.

world war ii

Intent on avoiding a repeat of these past mistakes, the government expected to play a larger role in guiding the demobilization effort once victory was declared against Germany and Japan in World War II. The military developed a complex point system that awarded each soldier points based on length of service, days in combat, time overseas, and number of children, to determine who went home first. When Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, the military began a partial demobilization of high point troops. Once again, however, the end of the war came sooner than expected. Japan's capitulation on August 14, 1945 caught the military in the midst of transferring men from Europe to the Far East for the planned invasion. The military now fully confronted the logistical difficulties of dismantling an armed forces dispersed widely around the globe. Soldiers and the public clamored for troops' speedy return home, including wives who organized "Bring Back Daddy" clubs that sent baby shoes to congressmen. At the end of 1945, President Harry Truman worried that the quick pace of the demobilization was threatening the military's ability to assemble the needed occupation forces, and ordered a demobilization slowdown. This announcement led to a near-mutiny among overseas troops.

On the home front, several factors helped mitigate the expected rise in postwar unemployment. The GI Bill of Rights offered 16 million veterans unemployment compensation, housing loans, vocational education, and college tuition. These benefits strengthened veterans' purchasing power and staggered their re-entry into the workforce. Large numbers of women, youth, and aged voluntarily left their wartime jobs. Industry returned to the pre-war standard of forty hours a week, and generous government payments for terminating $65.7 billion in wartime contracts also protected jobs. With the administration selling off government-owned defense plants and equipment at bargain prices, many businesses received an important capital infusion during the demobilization period that helped them accelerate production of consumer goods.

After the war, Americans finally had goods to buy with the considerable savings that high wartime wages had helped them amass during the war. During this surge of consumer spending, the government decided to lift wartime price controls, and soon inflation, rather than unemployment, posed a more serious economic threat. At the same time, unions mounted a series of strikes for higher wages. To cool the overheated economy, the government curtailed federal spending, jettisoned planned tax cuts, and forced settlement of major strikes in the railroad and coal industry.

Overall, demobilization was the last phase of total war for the United States after the two world wars. During World War II, policy makers had planned more carefully than their predecessors for the peacetime conversion, and successfully avoided a postwar depression. After both wars, however, the public had little patience for government missteps. Anxious to return to normal life as quickly as possible, Americans expressed their dissatisfaction with the government's demobilization policies through political protests, strikes, and demands for veterans' benefits.

bibliography

Ballard, Jack Stokes. The Shock of Peace: Military and Economic Demobilization after World War II. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1983.

Keene, Jennifer D. Doughboys, the Great War and the Remaking of America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Severo, Richard and Milford, Lewis. The Wages of War: When American Soldiers Come Home—From Valley Forge to Vietnam. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.

Wecter, Dixon. When Johnny Comes Marching Home. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1970.

Jennifer D. Keene