The Cold War Draft: Hershey's Channeling Machine
For a quarter-century after World War II the draft never stopped, and its director openly used deferments to steer men into the right jobs. From the 1948 draft through the 1951 creation of civilian alternative service to General Hershey's "Channeling" memo, which described conscription as pressurized guidance, the episode treats the draft as social engineering, with a fair hand on where the evidence is a smoking gun and where it is inference.
Who's who
- Lewis B. Hershey+4 more episodesSelective Service director, 1941-1970, associated with channeling
- Harry S. Truman+14 more episodesPresident who signed the Selective Service Act of 1948
Timeline
- March 1947Wartime draft law lapses, ending conscription for about fifteen months
- June 1948Truman signs the Selective Service Act, reinstating the draft
- June 1950North Korea invades the South; induction machinery returns to high volume
- June 1951Universal Military Training and Service Act authorizes 1-W alternative service
- 1965Selective Service circulates the Channeling memorandum
- 1973The draft ends
Still debated
Scholars ask whether Hershey's team designed channeling as social engineering or the 1965 memo supplied a tidy philosophy for a system that had accreted haphazardly. Whether 1-W was progress over wartime camps or the same evasion of responsibility is also argued, and the memo falls just outside the 1948-1964 window.
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