policy - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
444
the Neutrality Act of 1937 was the most stringent, and even the outbreak of
the war in 1939 did not produce a rapid expansion of the Armed Forces -
although plans for such expansion were laid. Not until September of 1940,
with the continent of Europe lost to the democracies and increasing pressure
from Japan in the Far East, did the United States pass its first
peacetime conscription act.55/
3. World War II
The attack on Pearl Harbor changed American attitudes towards the
war, the military and, ultimately, the entire relationship between the
military and American society. Pearl Harbor itself and technological
" ~achievements such as the development of long-range rockets and nuclear
C
weapons demonstrated that the oceans no longer offered the United States
the geostrategic protection which they had long been assumed to provide.
The massive mobilization of manpower put nearly 16 million Americans in
uniform during the course of the war, four times the number that had served
in WW I, or one in every eleven Americans.56/ Equally significant, the
full-scale mobilization of American industry forged a partnership between
the military and industry that was to outlast the war.
As the war drew to a close, the United States was faced with an
unprecedented global environment. For the firs, time in its history, the
US was the leading world power with only one potentially serious rival -
the Soviet Union. Britain and France were too exhausted, bankrupt or
oitherwise unable to perform their pre-war international roles. If the
-dower vacuum created by the weakness of France and Britain and the collapse
of Germany was not to be filled by the Soviet Union,
would have to assume global responsibilities.
then the United States
In short, the United States
could not afford to return to its usual post-war isolationism and pacifism.
But, with the war's end, riots erupted at US military bases
around ,the world as servicemen clamored for release from active duty.
Shortly thereafter, efforts were made to liberalize the Services, and
reforms were imposed on the Army by an outside agency known as the
VK Doolittle Board. 57/
2-33
5-7 , W7 3