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The Draft, 1940-1973

The Draft, 1940-1973 PDF Author: George Q. Flynn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
"Individual liberty is ingrained in American culture. Yet, in contrast to this cherished ideal, American men were inducted into military service under a system that flourished for more than twenty years before its rationalization was seriously questioned by more than a small minority of citizens." "Analyzing this paradox, George Flynn provides the first comprehensive look at an institution that managed to sustain political and public favor through two wars before dying out under a barrage of protests during a third. Placing the American draft within a historical context, he shows how social and political considerations determined the character of conscription in the United States." "The draft developed as it did, he argues, not mainly because of military needs or strategy, but because of political decisions initiated by civilians with nonmilitary agendas. Explaining why the draft remained relatively immune to political criticism prior to the Vietnam conflict, Flynn chronicles the draft's military and strategic successes and failures in America's mid-century wars. He shows how major institutions and lobbies representing science, education, and various professions and religions influenced it and how, ultimately and ironically, the selective character of the draft eventually made the system inequitable and helped cause its downfall."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Draft, 1940-1973

The Draft, 1940-1973 PDF Author: George Q. Flynn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
"Individual liberty is ingrained in American culture. Yet, in contrast to this cherished ideal, American men were inducted into military service under a system that flourished for more than twenty years before its rationalization was seriously questioned by more than a small minority of citizens." "Analyzing this paradox, George Flynn provides the first comprehensive look at an institution that managed to sustain political and public favor through two wars before dying out under a barrage of protests during a third. Placing the American draft within a historical context, he shows how social and political considerations determined the character of conscription in the United States." "The draft developed as it did, he argues, not mainly because of military needs or strategy, but because of political decisions initiated by civilians with nonmilitary agendas. Explaining why the draft remained relatively immune to political criticism prior to the Vietnam conflict, Flynn chronicles the draft's military and strategic successes and failures in America's mid-century wars. He shows how major institutions and lobbies representing science, education, and various professions and religions influenced it and how, ultimately and ironically, the selective character of the draft eventually made the system inequitable and helped cause its downfall."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Conscription and Democracy

Conscription and Democracy PDF Author: George Q. Flynn
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313074194
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Book Description
Finding the manpower to defend democracy has been a recurring problem. Russell Weigley writes: The historic preoccupation of the Army's thought in peacetime has been the manpower question: how, in an unmilitary nation, to muster adequate numbers of capable soldiers quickly should war occur. When the nature of modern warfare made an all-volunteer army inadequate, the major Western democracies confronted the dilemma of involuntary military service in a free society. The core of this manuscript concerns methods by which France, Great Britain, and the United States solved the problem and why some solutions were more lasting and effective than others. Flynn challenges conventional wisdom that suggests that conscription was inefficient and that it promoted inequality of sacrifice. Sharing similar but not identical diplomatic outlooks, the three countries discussed here were allies in world wars and in the Cold War, and they also confronted the problem of using conscripts to defend colonial interests in an age of decolonization. These societies rest upon democratic principles, and operating a draft in a democracy raises several unique problems. A particular tension develops as a result of adopting forced military service in a polity based on concepts of individual rights and freedoms. Despite the protest and inconsistencies, the criticism and waste, Flynn reveals that conscription served the three Western democracies well in an historical context, proving effective in gathering fighting men and allowing a flexibility to cope and change as problems arose.

Random Destiny: How the Vietnam War Draft Lottery Shaped a Generation

Random Destiny: How the Vietnam War Draft Lottery Shaped a Generation PDF Author: Wesley Abney
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1622736192
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Book Description
This book provides a concise but thorough summary of how the selective service system worked from 1965 through 1973, and also demonstrates how this selective process, during a highly unpopular war, steered major life choices of millions of young men seeking deferrals based on education, occupation, marital and family status, sexual orientation, and more. This book explains each category of deferral and its resulting “ripple effect” across society. Putting a human face on these sociological trends, the book also includes a number of brief personal anecdotes from men in each category, told from a remove of 40 years or more, when the lifelong effects of youthful decisions prompted by the draft have become evident. There are few books which address the military draft of the Vietnam years, most notably CHANCE AND CIRCUMSTANCE: The Draft, the War and the Vietnam Generation, by Baskir and Strauss (1978). This early study of draft-age men discusses how they were socially channeled by the selective service system. RANDOM DESTINY follows up on this premise and draws from numerous later studies of men in the lottery pool, to create the definitive portrait of the draft and its long-term personal and social effects. RANDOM DESTINY presents an in-depth explanation of the selective service system in its final years. It also provides a comprehensive yet personal portrait of how the draft and the lottery steered a generation of young lives into many different paths, from combat to conscientious objection, from teaching to prison, from the pulpit to the Canadian border, from public health to gay liberation. It is the only recent book which demonstrates how American military conscription, in the time of an unpopular war, profoundly influenced a generation and a society over the decades that followed.

Last Team Standing

Last Team Standing PDF Author: Matthew Algeo
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1613748884
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
During World War II, the National Football League faced a crisis unimaginable today: a shortage of players. By 1943, so many players were in the armed forces that the league was forced to fold one team and merge two others: the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles—the Steagles. Its roster that included military draft rejects, aging stars lured out of retirement, and even a couple of active servicemen who managed to get leave for the games. The team's center was deaf in one ear, its wide receiver was blind in one eye, and its halfback had bleeding ulcers. One player was so old he'd never played football with a helmet. Yet, somehow, this motley bunch managed to post a winning record—the first for the Eagles and just the second for the Steelers. But Last Team Standing isn't just about football. It's also about life in the United States during World War II, a time of fear and hope, of sacrifice and momentous change. It's about rationing, racism, and Rosie the Riveter. It's about draft boards, bond drives, and movie stars. Above all, it's about the men and women of the Greatest Generation who couldn't fight, but helped win the war in immeasurable ways.

The Rise of the G.I. Army, 1940–1941

The Rise of the G.I. Army, 1940–1941 PDF Author: Paul Dickson
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 0802147682
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 583

Book Description
“A must-read book that explores a vital pre-war effort [with] deep research and gripping writing.” —Washington Times In The rise of the G.I. Army, 1940–1941, Paul Dickson tells the dramatic story of how the American Army was mobilized from scattered outposts two years before Pearl Harbor into the disciplined and mobile fighting force that helped win World War II. In September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and initiated World War II, America had strong isolationist leanings. The US Army stood at fewer than 200,000 men—unprepared to defend the country, much less carry the fight to Europe and the Far East. And yet, less than a year after Pearl Harbor, the American army led the Allied invasion of North Africa, beginning the campaign that would defeat Germany, and the Navy and Marines were fully engaged with Japan in the Pacific. Dickson chronicles this transformation from Franklin Roosevelt’s selection of George C. Marshall to be Army Chief of Staff to the remarkable peace-time draft of 1940 and the massive and unprecedented mock battles in Tennessee, Louisiana, and the Carolinas by which the skill and spirit of the Army were forged and out of which iconic leaders like Eisenhower, Bradley, and Clark emerged. The narrative unfolds against a backdrop of political and cultural isolationist resistance and racial tension at home, and the increasingly perceived threat of attack from both Germany and Japan.

Rough Draft

Rough Draft PDF Author: Amy J. Rutenberg
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501739379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Book Description
Rough Draft draws the curtain on the race and class inequities of the Selective Service during the Vietnam War. Amy J. Rutenberg argues that policy makers' idealized conceptions of Cold War middle-class masculinity directly affected whom they targeted for conscription and also for deferment. Federal officials believed that college educated men could protect the nation from the threat of communism more effectively as civilians than as soldiers. The availability of deferments for this group mushroomed between 1945 and 1965, making it less and less likely that middle-class white men would serve in the Cold War army. Meanwhile, officials used the War on Poverty to target poorer and racialized men for conscription in the hopes that military service would offer them skills they could use in civilian life. As Rutenberg shows, manpower policies between World War II and the Vietnam War had unintended consequences. While some men resisted military service in Vietnam for reasons of political conscience, most did so because manpower polices made it possible. By shielding middle-class breadwinners in the name of national security, policymakers militarized certain civilian roles—a move that, ironically, separated military service from the obligations of masculine citizenship and, ultimately, helped kill the draft in the United States.

The All-volunteer Military

The All-volunteer Military PDF Author: Heidi L. W. Golding
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Draft
Languages : en
Pages : 52

Book Description


Conscription, Conscientious Objection, and Draft Resistance in American History

Conscription, Conscientious Objection, and Draft Resistance in American History PDF Author: Jerry Elmer
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004546685
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403

Book Description
Conscription, Conscientious Objection, and Draft Resistance in American History is the definitive history of conscription in America. It is the first book ever to consider the entire temporal sweep of conscription from pre-Revolutionary War colonial militia drafts through the end of the Vietnam era. Each chapter contains an examination of that era’s draft law, the actual workings of the conscription machinery, and relevant court decisions that shaped the draft in practice. In addition, the book describes the popular opposition to conscription: organized and unorganized, violent and nonviolent, public and clandestine, legal and illegal. Using sources never before utilized by historians, including government documents obtained in Freedom of Information Act requests, the book demonstrates how anti-conscription sentiment has been far deeper than is popularly appreciated.

Military Service and American Democracy

Military Service and American Democracy PDF Author: William A. Taylor
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700630406
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
“When I became secretary of defense,” Ashton B. Carter said when announcing that the Pentagon would open all combat jobs to women, “I made a commitment to building America's force of the future. In the twenty-first century, that requires drawing strength from the broadest possible pool of talent.” That “pool of talent”—and how our nation's civilian and military leaders have tried to fill it—is what Military Service and American Democracy is all about. William Taylor chronicles and analyzes the long and ever-changing history of that often contentious and controversial effort, from the initiation of America's first peacetime draft just before our entry into World War II up to present-day conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. A history that runs from the selective service era of 1940–1973 through the era of the All-Volunteer Force of 1973 to the present, his book details the many personnel policies that have shaped, controlled, and defined American military service over the last eight decades. Exploring the individual and group identities excluded from official personnel policy over time—African Americans, women, and gays among others—Taylor shows how military service has been an arena of contested citizenship, one in which American values have been tested, questioned, and ultimately redefined. Yet, we see how this process has resulted in greater inclusiveness and expanded opportunities in military service while encouraging and shaping similar changes in broader society. In the distinction between compulsory and voluntary military service, Taylor also examines the dichotomy between national security and individual liberty—two competing ideals that have existed in constant tension throughout the history of American democracy.

Smoke Em If You Got Em

Smoke Em If You Got Em PDF Author: Joel Bius
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1682473600
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Book Description
The American military-industrial complex and accompanying culture are most often associated with massive weapons procurement programs and advanced technologies. However, one aspect of the complex is not a weapon or even a machine, but one of the world’s most highly engineered consumer products: the manufactured cigarette. Smoke ’Em If You Got ’Em describes the origins of the often comfortable, yet increasingly controversial relationship among the military, the cigarette industry, and tobaccoland politicians during the twentieth century. Smoke ’Em If You Got ’Em is also a study in modern American political economy. Bureaucrats, soldiers, lobbyists, government executives, legislators, litigators, or anti-smoking activists all struggled over far-reaching policy issues involving the cigarette. The soldier-cigarette relationship established by the Army in World War I and broken apart in the mid-1980s underpinned one of the most prolific social, cultural, economic, and healthcare-related developments in the twentieth century: the rise and proliferation of the American manufactured cigarette smoker and the powerful cigarette enterprise supporting them. Using the manufactured cigarette as a vehicle to explore political economy and interactions between the military and American society, Joel R. Bius helps the reader understand this important, yet overlooked aspect of twentieth-century America.