only 68 infantry divisions against both the japanese and hitler. Hitler invaded Russia with like 200 infantry divisions are you sure you dont mean corps or armies, or is there something i have completely misunderstood. the six infantry divisions b4 the war i can believe. I think at the beginning of ww2 the japanese had about 100 infantry divisions 3/4 of which wwhere fighting the chinese ( I read that somewhere )

Regards

Of course, the immediate motivation for declaring war on Germany came as a result of Hitler's conquest of Poland.

But, as I have read, Britain and France did not join with the USSR in standing up to Hitler on Czechoslovakia. I believe they learned that was a bad decision by 1941.

 

Which was -

 

 

I will add this -

 

 

 

"The people of the United States, having rejected the Versailles Treaty and the Covenant of the League of Nations after World War I, remained largely indifferent to most international concerns. They firmly discounted the likelihood of American involvement in another major war, except perhaps with Japan. Isolationist strength in Congress led to the passage of the Neutrality Act of 1937, making it unlawful for the United States to trade with belligerents. American policy aimed at continental defense and designated the Navy as the first line of such defense. The Army's role was to serve as the nucleus of a mass mobilization that would defeat any invaders who managed to fight their way past the Navy and the nation's powerful coastal defense installations. The National Defense Act of 1920 allowed an Army of 280,000, the largest in peacetime history, but until 1939 Congress never appropriated funds to pay for much more than half of that strength. Most of the funds available for new equipment went to the fledgling air corps. Throughout most of the interwar period, the Army was tiny and insular, filled with hard-bitten, long-serving volunteers scattered in small garrisons throughout the continental United States, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Panama."

 

 

 

 

"US Army in World War II
Manpower and Segregation
by Rich Anderson

Manpower, Replacements, and the Segregated Army

In late 1944 a severe problem in the U.S. Army in general was the manpower shortage. Plans to expand the Army to 213 divisions were never met and it was proving difficult to maintain the 89 divisions then in existence - even though almost one-quarter of them had yet to see combat. Furthermore, the prewar planning for replacements was found to be totally inadequate. The causes were manifold: U.S. industrial and agricultural demands could only be partially met by bringing women into the workforce; the Army was fighting a two-front war; fear of the blitzkrieg had resulted in an over-expansion of the antiaircraft and tank destroyer arms; the requirements of the massive expansion of the U.S. Armed Forces in general had reduced the manpower pool; and, perhaps worst of all, segregation meant that a large percentage o the available manpower, African-Americans, were restricted to service support organization and a few separate combat units."