Agricultural Manpower Shortage in World War II: Analysis of a Historical Operational Environment

Abstract

What caused the agricultural manpower shortage in World War II? Historians have proffered a variety of explanations that attribute linear causality to a handful of independent variables. No scholar, however, has attempted to study the manpower shortage in its full causal complexity. This thesis, following the muse of analytic eclecticism, assembles a variety of cutting-edge political-science scholarship to develop a modified version of the Institutional Analysis Framework. The thesis applies this framework to the study of the agricultural manpower shortage during World War II. It argues that the agricultural manpower shortage was the result of emergent causality, which has significant implications for scholarly practice and strategic planning and intervention. Strategists and military planners must become adept at understanding both linear causality, wherein independent variables and dependent variables shed causal light on the world, and emergent causality, which -- however intractable it is to strategic levers -- is a component of sociopolitical affairs and war that cannot be eliminated.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 14, 2012
Accession Number
ADA569385

Entities

People

  • Tevina Flood

Organizations

  • United States Army Command and General Staff College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Employment
  • Families (Human)
  • Geography
  • Health Services
  • Medical Personnel
  • Military Organizations
  • Military Science
  • National Governments
  • National Politics
  • National Security
  • Nutrition Disorders
  • Personnel Management
  • Political Science
  • Political Systems
  • Reasoning
  • Second World War
  • Students

Readers

  • Industrial Economics
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Systems Analysis and Design