Today, when the military consumes nearly 60 percent of Washington’s discretionary spending, it’s hard to imagine that, less than a century ago, Portugal and 16 other nations fielded bigger armed forces than that of the United States. On the brink of World War II, American infantrymen were still carrying the same Springfield rifles that had been standard issue in the first great war. While the fact that America was wretchedly unprepared for World War II is embedded in nearly every account of the global conflict that started with Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, the subsequent mobilization of the American “home front” in support of the war effort has become the stuff of legend.
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