During World War 2 when 30 something year old men, who were successful business leaders and business owners were drafted did they start as privates or were they give higher ranks based on there experience?

In the Army, men were generally assigned military occupational specialties to the extent that the service could utilize their pre-existing skills at some specific time. In 1943, only seventeen percent of men having a civilian skill that had a direct military equivalent were utilized by the Army in some other capacity. I have written previously on how men were allotted to either the Army or the Navy, how the Selective Service System treated skilled trades, and college students (1, 2), the latter generally accepted by the Army as ready officer material.

Commissions as officers in the Army direct from civilian life were reserved for a few specific occupations and circumstances. In the Ground Forces, direct commissions were relatively rare. They were more common in the Service Forces, especially the Medical Corps, where accredited doctors were automatically accorded the rank of first lieutenant at a minimum.

During the period of officer shortage in 1942 Army Ground Forces commissioned a few men directly from civilian life, but only for certain signal and ordnance units. This was accomplished by a process of affiliation in which a group of employees of an industrial concern were organized bodily as a military unit, the higher employees in the civilian group becoming officers in the military unit. The relation of officers and enlisted men under this system did not prove altogether satisfactory. Direct commissioning of civilians for other purposes was negligible in the Ground Forces.

As an example, the Nebraska Automobile Dealers Association was given permission to affiliate an ordnance medium maintenance company which later became the 255th Ordnance Medium Maintenance Company; company officers recruited 71 men from Nebraska who had experience in "automotive repair and related fields."

On 30 June 1942, nondivisional units in Army Ground Forces had only 15,013 officers of an authorized strength of 22,293, and three months later only 19,931 of an authorized 27,141. Shortages were most pronounced in engineer, signal, ordnance, and field artillery units....By the end of the year, owing to a tremendous increase in OCS output in the summer and fall, the...picture had changed from deficiency to surplus....Nevertheless, shortages persisted in some categories, particularly in the signal and engineer branches. The rapid activation of units produced an urgent demand for leaders which resulted all too often in hasty selection and premature promotion of officers. The dire need of technical specialists in some of the service categories led to the direct commissioning of large numbers of civilians. The process known as affiliation was frequently resorted to, particularly by ordnance and signal authorities. Under this scheme a telephone corporation was asked to furnish officer and enlisted personnel for an entire signal construction company, and an automobile manufacturer was called on to produce an ordnance maintenance company. It was contemplated that affiliated personnel would be given a thorough course in military training, but the need for service units was frequently so great as drastically to curtail instructions. Affiliation gave the services vitally needed specialists, and for enlisted personnel technical proficiency was perhaps the primary consideration. But the same was not true of the officers. Company commanders and executives had to be familiar with Army organization, customs of the service, and unit administration in order to discharge their duties effectively.

The placing of men in command of units before they learned their military ABC's produced bad results that were farcical when they were not tragic. Perhaps the worst consequences were those pertaining to discipline. In the automobileplant the assembly-line foreman had been addressed by his underlings in the free and easy spirit of "Hi Joe." When affiliation placed the group in uniform, "Joe," by virtue of his supervisory status as a civilian, became a captain. But the workers, suddenly converted into sergeants, corporals, and privates, found it difficult, notwithstanding the shining bars, the salutes, and the correctly intoned "Sirs," to think of their captain in any other light than "Joe." The situation was not helped by "Joe's" maladroitness in giving commands and his bungling of company administration.

And the situation with regards to the Medical Corps. Initially, after the passage of the Selective Service legislation in 1940, to prevent qualified men from being drafted as enlisted men and having to work their way through the Army bureaucracy to become officers, the Medical Corps wished to have doctors and dentists in danger of being drafted obtain commissions in the Officers' Reserve Corps. In October 1941, the Procurement and Assignment Service was created, whose tasks would be "(1) to receive from various Governmental and other agencies requests for medical, dental and veterinary personnel; (2) to secure and maintain lists of professional personnel available, showing detailed qualifications of such personnel; and (3) to utilize all suitable means to stimulate voluntary enrollment, having due regard for the overall public needs of the Nation, including those of governmental agencies and civilian institutions."

By March 1942, it was realized that the Procurement and Assignment Service was inefficient, both in completing the necessary paperwork and determining an applicant's necessity in a civilian versus military career. The Medical Corps established a system of state-based medical officer recruiting boards in 1942 to evaluate qualified candidates for appointment as officers in the Medical Corps. In September 1942, these boards were shifted from the control of the Surgeon General of the Army to the commander of the Service Command in their respective state. In November 1942, the War Department created the Officer Procurement Service (an overseer of officer procurement for the entire Army), which worked with the Medical Department's Procurement and Assignment Service in identifying and clearing doctors and dentists for military service.

It generally was recognized that men evaluated by the boards would be well along in their civilian careers, and they were awarded rank accordingly.

On 12 April 1942, the Director of Military Personnel, Services of Supply, instructed The Surgeon General to prepare a plan embodying the following points: (1) The authority to accept, examine, and commission applicants was to be decentralized to 48 State representatives; (2) commissions in sufficient numbers were to be tendered in grades above the lowest to attract qualified applicants, and upper age limits were to be relaxed to provide experienced Medical Corps officers in appropriate grades; (3) corps area and station surgeons were to be charged with active participation in the campaign to recruit Medical Corps officers; and (4) an intensive publicity campaign would be launched to call the attention of physicians and the public to the Army's need for doctors.

These provisions were carried out, and as his contribution to the plan, The Surgeon General issued instructions to the new recruiting boards, each board consisting of one Medical Corps officer and one officer whose branch was not specified....They were authorized to secure applications for commissions in the Army of the United States (Reserve officers were to apply to The Surgeon General himself for active duty) of qualified physicians under the age of 55 and of dentists under 37. The boards were to function in cooperation with the Procurement and Assignment Service....Medical societies also cooperated with the board, rendering them considerable assistance. The boards were to obtain applications, authorize physical examinations...and evaluate the professional qualifications and physical findings. They could appoint...applicants under the age of 45 years to the grade of first lieutenant or captain, the grade to depend upon experience and professional qualifications. The boards were to administer the oath and forward the completed papers to The Surgeon General. Regulations which determined rank on the basis of age and professional qualifications were to remain unchanged-applicants under the age of 37 years were appointed in the grade of first lieutenant, except that those who had passed the age of 30 were appointed as captains when they had been certified by an American specialty board or had completed 3 years' residency in a specialty in addition to the required 1 year's internship; or, if they were older than 36 years and 10 months and would reach 37 years about the time active duty began, they could be appointed in the grade of captain. The boards were not empowered to appoint certain types of applicants, but were to complete the applications and send them to The Surgeon General. Such were applicants in the age group from 45 to 54, those applying for a grade higher than that of captain, Negro physicians, graduates of American substandard or foreign schools, Federal employees, or persons drawing Federal pensions, and others whose qualifications the board questioned.