Scraping the Barrel: The Military Use of Substandard Manpower, 1860-1960 - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823239772 ISBN 13: 9780823239771

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 2012

Synopsis

It is a truism that history is written by the victors, and perhaps this is doubly so of military history, where the tendency is to relate the biggest battles, the most victorious and heroic deeds, the very best (or worst) of men. This book stands as a corrective to this belief.

Scraping the Barrel covers ten cases of armies’ using substandard manpower in wars from 1860 to the 1960s. Dennis Showalter and André Lambelet look at the changing standards in Germany and France leading up to World War I, while Peter Simkins chronicles what happened with the “Bantams,” special units of short men
used by Britain in the Great War.

Often the use of substandard men was to answer the sheer need for manpower in brutal, lasting conflicts, as Paul A. Cimbala writes of the U.S. Veteran Reserve Corps in the Civil War, or to keep war-damaged men active; sometimes this ethos was used to include men who wanted to fight but who otherwise would have been excluded, as Steven W. Short writes of the U.S. “colored troops” in World War I.

In the second World War it was to answer more dire exigencies, as David Glantz relates how the USSR, having suffered enormous losses, threw away many pre-war standards, reaching for women, ethnic/national minorities, and political prisoners alike to fill units. Likewise, Nazi Germany, facing many fronts and a finite manpower pool, was compelled to relax both physical and racial standards, and Walter Dunn and
Valdis Lumans look at these changing policies as well as the battlefield performance of these men.

In relating the stories of the substandard (for the military), Scraping the Barrel is also a humanist history of the military, of the more average men who have served their countries and how they were put to use. It throws light on how militaries’ ideas of fitness reflect the underlying views of their societies. The idea of “disability” has
been constructed based on a variety of physical, yes, but also social standards: as a value judgment on groups viewed as lesser―the aged, the lower classes, and those of different races and ethnic identities.

From the American Civil War, through World Wars I and II, through the U.S. Project 100,000 in the Cold War, substandard men have been mobilized, have served, and have fought for their countries. These men are the inverse of the elites who get the lion’s share of our attention. This is their untold history.

About this title

About the Author:

Sanders Marble is a historian for the U.S. Army Medical Command. He has written a variety of works about World War I and military medicine.

Review:

What Marble did with Scraping the Barrel is what any good historian does: inspire questions and leave the reader wanting to investigate further. (―H-Net Reviews)

This is an often fascination and well-written collection which reflects most favorably on its editor and those who have contributed to it. Together they have produced an important study in how military organizations, which have at times displayed considerable prejudice in viewing elements within their own society, have employed these same substandard forces in order to be able to continue to wage war. (Ivan Sustersic ―War In History)

Marble does us a great service by reminding us of the value of an inclusive military manpower policy. As a former Director of the Selective Service System I am all to aware of the cost of excluding men and women from military service. While on the face of it some excluded groups may not do as well as the "average" recruit, as a whole their contributions more than makes up for any extra effort in bring them through their service. Our ability to discriminate is so imperfect that It is best to treat each recruit as an individual, rather than to use the very imperfect and wasteful tool of stereotyping to fill the ranks. (―Bernard Rostker RAND Corporation)

Scraping the Barrel is the first holistic examination of the use of 'sub-standard' personnel in military organizations. The book makes an excellent contribution to the scholarship on the staffing and composition of military forces in both peace and war. (―Peter Mansoor The Ohio State University)

About this edition

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0823239772
• ISBN 13: 9780823239771
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 372
• Editor: Marble Sanders