*
World War II infantry weapons specific weapon types
World War II Infantry Weapons: American Small Arms
Figure 1.--The Germans had excellent infntry wepons, especially their machine guns. American infantrymen were generally outclassed. There were one notable exception--the M-1 Garand semi-automatic rifle. The reason for this was the very limited military budgets in the inter-War era. The United States sinply did not have time to develop weapons comparable to the Germans after Pearl Harbor thrust the country into the malestorm of World War II. The one weapon that the Germans did not modernize was the basic infantry rifle.
President Roosevelt proclaimed the United States to be the Arsenal of Democracy even before America entered the War. The American infantry soldier, however, was forced to fight the Germans while outclassed in virtually every weapons category. There were one notable exception--the M-1 Garand semi-automatic rifle. It had replaced the World War I Springfield Rile, although the Marines did not get them in time for Guadalcanal. Infantry units did finally get Browning Automatic Rifles (BARs). Actually they were available for World War I, but the Army was concerned that the Germans might capture them. The reason that the Army failed in many other areas was the very limited military budgets in the inter-War era. The United States Army simply did not have time to develop weapons comparable to the Germans after Pearl Harbor thrust the country into the malestorm of World War II. And their was a major focus on the air war by American military planners. Two decades of almost non-stop attacks by pandering politicans and pacificts agaijst the arms industry, labeling industrialists as 'merchants of death', was not helpful in arms development. A series of Congressional investigations set out to prove that the arms industry not only profited excessively from the War, but drew America into it, turned up no such evidence. Still the charges continued. Another factor is that the World War I American Expeditionary Force was largely armed with Allied (British and French) weapons and America did not have a large arms industry to begin with. This meant that most of the American arms production did not come from well-established arms manufacturers, but companies manufacturing civilan products and converted to arms manufacture on a crash basis. Much of America's prodigious industrial power did produce some oustanding non-lethal equipment that was absolutely vital for the war effort. Among them were the deuce-and-a-half truck and a range of communication equipment. And the American weapons production significantly affected its Allies because it played a major role in arming its Allies as part of Lend Lease.
