As of September 2023, there are over 100,000 American veterans of World War II still living, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Since their median age is 98, it is estimated that the vast majority will pass away by 2034, leaving roughly 1,000 alive a decade from now. More than 16 million people served in the U.S. Armed Forces during the war, which took the lives of 30-65 million people. To this date, the exact number of casualties remains unknown.
In September 1940, Congress sanctioned the Selective Training and Service Act, the first peacetime draft law in the nation's history. By then, most of Europe had been at war for a year. The legislation—also known as the Burke-Wadsworth Act—required men ages 21 to 45 to sign up for conscription. If inducted, they were appointed to serve for one year. When the U.S. officially entered the war, however, conscription limits were removed and service ran through the war's end.
The age of draftees was also lowered to 18 as the war developed, a change that ignited protests and a public campaign demanding the government lower the statutory age to vote. (Decades later, amidst the Vietnam War, this would prove to be the premise for the 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971.)
Over 36.5 million draft cards were issued during the time the U.S. fought in World War II; 10.1 million men were inducted between 1940 and 1947, which represented about 7.6% of the national population, according to estimates from the 1940 census. They joined 6 million volunteers in combat.
Sept. 16, 2025 will mark the 85th anniversary of the peacetime draft, so, in recognition, Stacker analyzed data quantifying draft numbers during World War II from multiple sources, including historical Census data, a report issued by the Selective Service System, and a WWII draft card project provided by Ancestry.com in association with the National Archives and Records Administration. Draft card data for Maine was not available; their draft cards were destroyed before being digitized. States, territories, and Washington D.C. are ranked by the number of inductees as a percentage of the total state population as estimated from the 1940 census.
