On September 16, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act that created the Selective Service System. Authorizing the conscription of 900,000 men between 21 and 36 years of age, the legislation marked the nation’s first attempt to mobilize a military force before it declared war, and was approved for one year. It narrowly won extension a year later, and then, with further amendment, enabled the huge expansion of the armed forces after the United States entered World War II.
The original impetus for the 1940 draft came from outside the government rather than from President Roosevelt or the War Department. The Military Training Camps Association, a private organization that stressed preparedness, lobbied Congress to use conscription as the means to prepare the nation for war. Conservatives who opposed the draft argued that it tampered with the nation’s traditional antimilitary, antistatist, and pro-individualist ideals and feared it would become a first step toward totalitarianism. Supporters, however, argued that the traditional volunteer system would not work.
The Nazi blitzkrieg that overran western Europe in the spring and summer of 1940 lent momentum to preparedness sentiment, and the Selective Service bill passed 47 to 25 in the Senate and 232 to 124 in the House. October 16 was set as the date when all males from 21 to 36 years old would register. It appeared that conscription might become a major issue in the election of 1940, one reason that Roosevelt was slow to back the measure, but Republican presidential nominee Wendell L. Willkie also supported the draft.
The Selective Service System administered the draft through 6,443 local boards and 505 appeal boards. It oversaw the registration of men, selection by lottery, requests for deferments or conscientious objector status, and appeals. Planners looked to the lessons of World War I and the Civil War to avoid flaws in the system, and consequently citizens rather than federal bureaucrats or military officers ran local draft board offices. Using the principle of a rational and orderly use of manpower, the Selective Service System attempted to balance military with domestic needs and to decide whether each man could do the country the most good as a soldier or as a civilian worker. Efforts to put the Selective Service System under the control of the War Manpower Commission, however, created a bureaucratic battle that Selective Service director Lewis B. Hershey fought to a standoff and that left him with authority over the draft.
During World War II, the Federal Bureau of Investigation checked on 373,000 draft evaders and obtained 16,000 convictions. In addition, 4.5 million of the 36 million men classified by local boards million appealed their classifications, mostly in hope of avoiding service. By war’s end, of the 22 million registrants between ages 18 and 38, some 10 million—or about 45 percent—had received deferments for a variety of reasons, mostly for family status, infirmity, or occupation. The military preferred men under 26, and fathers generally were not drafted until late in the war.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt is seen looking on as a blindfolded Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson draws the first numbers in the Selective Service lottery. (National Archives)
The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 exempted from combat men who “by reason of religious training and belief’ opposed war. Conscientious objectors served in noncombat roles in the military or performed national service in lieu of military duty. Many of these men worked as civilians in public service camps on conservation projects. Some served as human guinea pigs in experiments on diet, endurance, and control of diseases and infections. In all, about 40,000 men were classified as conscientious objectors.
Although the Selective Service Act included an antidiscrimination clause, it did not initially reduce discrimination against Aerican Americans in the armed forces. Top military officials refused to expand black units sufficiently to allow the induction in proportion to their numbers in the population, and a higher rejection rate for blacks than for whites suggests that the mostly white draft boards often discriminated against blacks. Several incidents of black resistance to the draft occurred in Chicago and other cities. Roughly 400 African-American men refused to serve, viewing the war as a white man’s war or refusing to serve in a Jim Crow army or fight for a country that denied them their civil rights.
The Selective Service System performed well during World War II and ensured that the military received the number and quality of men it requested rapidly and efficiently. The massive effort directed by the agency from 1940 until 1945 was unprecedented. In September 1939, U. S. Army strength stood at about 190,000 men, which made it the world’s 17th-largest force. Five years later, the army stood at more than 8.2 million and American armed forces were the world’s most powerful. During the war, local draft boards registered about 50 million men and inducted more than 10 million of them. In all, the agency conscripted nearly two-thirds of the 16 million men who served in the armed forces during the war. The rest were volunteers, as were the women who served in the military.
While they did not intend it, the lawmakers who passed the 1940 Selective Service Act created a historical precedent. After World War II ended, policymakers used this first “peacetime” draft act to justify extending the draft in the cold war until 1973.
Further reading: John Whiteclay Chambers II, ed., Draftees or Volun-teers: A Docwmentary History of the Debate over Military Conscription in the United States, 1787-1973 (New York: Garland, 1975); George Q. Flynn, The Draft, 1940-1973 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993); George Q. Flynn and Lewis B. Hershey, Mr Selective Service (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985).
—Edwin D. Miller
World History
