Music

Acton, Acton, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, James Holland.

And I haven't got my normal psychic, Al Murray, here today who's gone AWOL.

He's headed north on a secret mission.

But I am joined by Paul Dixon,

who has written a brilliant book called The Rise of the GI Army,

1944 to 1941.

And this is a fascinating book,

and it's something that I'm personally particularly interested in.

This whole idea that America starts a war

very small in terms of kind of global scale,

and particularly in terms of its army.

Because we always think of the US Army in World War II as being this sort of huge kind of machine,

that after Pearl Harbor, it kind of sort of arrives fully formed as the arsenal of democracy.

But of course nothing could be the choice.

And Paul, you know, what I find to say fascinating is just how small it is in September 1939.

It's number 17 in the world after Portugal.

And it's in dismal shape.

Three years earlier, Chief of Staff Douglas McCarthy actually said

that the army was so small that it could fit in Yankee Stadium,

one of the larger baseball stadiums in New York City.

And it was a mess.

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