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Among the approximately one million foreign volunteers and conscripts who served in the Wehrmacht during World War II were ethnic Belgians, Czechs, Dutch, Finns, Danes, French, Hungarians, Norwegians, Poles, [1] Portuguese, Swedes, [2] Swiss along with people from Great Britain, Ireland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Balkans. [3]
The World War I system served as a model for that of World War II. President Roosevelt's signing of the Selective Training and Service Act on September 16, 1940, began the first peacetime draft in the United States. The 1940 law instituted conscription in peacetime, requiring the registration of all men between 21 and 35.
The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as the Burke–Wadsworth Act, Pub. L. 76–783, 54 Stat. 885, enacted September 16, 1940, [1] was the first peacetime conscription in United States history. This Selective Service Act required that men who had reached their 21st birthday but had not yet reached their 36th birthday ...
During World War II, 18-year-olds were conscripted without any preliminary military training. [15] Conscription was lax as those who were more well-off generally avoided military service and serving in the military largely fell on those belonging to the peasantry which made up nearly half of the country's population by 1940.
The Waffen-SS (German: [ˈvafn̩ʔɛsˌʔɛs]; lit. ' Armed SS ') was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary Schutzstaffel (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with volunteers and conscripts from both German-occupied Europe and unoccupied lands. [3]
During World War II, the Waffen-SS recruited or conscripted significant numbers of non-Germans. Of a peak strength of 950,000 in 1944, the Waffen-SS consisted of some 400,000 “Reich Germans” and 310,000 ethnic Germans from outside Germany’s pre-1939 borders (mostly from German-occupied Europe ), the remaining 240,000 being non-Germans. [ 1 ]
The Wehrmacht directed combat operations during World War II (from 1 September 1939 – 8 May 1945) as the German Reich's armed forces umbrella command-organization. After 1941 the OKH became the de facto Eastern Theatre higher-echelon command-organization for the Wehrmacht , excluding Waffen-SS except for operational and tactical combat purposes.
Conscription was reintroduced in 1939, in the lead up to World War II, and continued in force until 1963. Northern Ireland was exempted from conscription legislation throughout the whole period. In all, eight million men were conscripted during both World Wars, as well as several hundred thousand younger single women. [272]