With a conflicted history, the United States drafts people during war, has prided itself on voluntary forces during peace, yet leans heavily on patriotism to obtain these volunteers and enforce draft obedience. Almost every draft contained resistance, and the Cold War created a continuous draft. Amy J. Rutenberg corrects previous assumptions about the draft since World War II and demonstrates a slow change over time in how Americans came to avoid mandatory military service. While most studies of Vietnam War–era draft resistance begin in the 1960s, Rutenberg traces it to World War II and reveals that draft avoidance built over three decades rather than popping up because of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Rutenberg roots her study in exhaustive research at numerous archives. She details how men avoided the draft during World War II, despite mythologies about a “good war” and the greatest generation, with deferments such as for child rearing. This behavior intensified into the 1950s, when the government needed fewer soldiers. Government officials altered policy to expand deferments based on “domestic service,” such as fatherhood and scientific research, to assist Cold War ideologies. Thus, by the 1960s, mostly white, middle- and upper-class men already avoided conscription, so the Vietnam War exacerbated established practices rather than creating them. Rutenberg also exposes how class and race prejudices grew as a result. The War on Poverty met this draft evolution with a belief that military service offered hope for those locked in poverty and therefore disproportionately affected African Americans. Changes in notions of patriotic masculinity also shaped these conversations. And Rutenberg corrects Lewis B. Hershey's history of presiding over the draft, from George Q. Flynn's interpretation that he managed it to maintain his power to showing how Hershey shaped it based on changing societal norms, military needs, and directives from higher-ups.
