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The mechanics of the draft system during the Vietnam era, including the use of deferments, exemptions, and classifications.
The Selective Service operated a multi-tier classification system during the Vietnam War that sorted registrants into categories ranging from "available for military service" to legally exempt or defe...
was administered by the Selective Service through a system of classifications that determined who was "available" for induction and who could delay service via deferments such as student, occupational...
College and occupational deferments during the Vietnam era materially reshaped who went to war by providing legal, administrable routes out of the draft that were far more accessible to men with resou...
were the frontline arbiters of who went to and who could delay or avoid service: they evaluated paperwork, issued classifications and deferments (student, medical, family, occupational), and filled mo...
The formal decisions that removed from immediate induction were made through the classification process—local draft board entries and the Selective Service’s physical-exam and classification system—cu...
College and medical deferments during the created structural incentives that funneled educational and health‑profession opportunities toward men with socioeconomic advantages, and thereby redistribute...
Most government medical documentation specifically tied to draft deferments—physical exams, lab results, medical letters and similar files—was not preserved: the destroyed many individual draftee medi...
The December 1, 1969 draft lottery assigned sequence numbers to men born between 1944 and 1950 to determine induction order for 1970, a change meant to reduce perceived bias in the pre‑lottery system ...
The 1969 draft lottery reshaped who served in Vietnam more than how many served: it converted uncertain, uneven local draft practices into a national ordering that altered incentives to volunteer, cha...