Army & Navy - DEMOBILIZATION: End of an Army

As rapidly as it could, the U.S. was stripping away its military strength.

With no postwar directive from Congress, but pushed by individual Congressmen and public demand ("Get the boys home and out of the service"), the War Department was turning out thousands of able, war-trained officers and noncoms who might have stayed to backbone the peacetime army if permanent rank and other inducements had been offered to them. The Army had already discharged more than 1,000,000 men and would soon be tearing itself down at the rate of 1,000,000 a month. Draft...