During World War II, the U.S. Army Finance Department disbursed approximately $176 billion. To fulfill that task Finance had to coordinate activities with foreign governments as well as other branches of the U.S. government and military branches. The department's first priority was paying the troops, but payments to contractors, vendors, and native laborers were also important.
War caught the Finance Department unprepared. Its procedures, designed for a stationary organization in peacetime, were applied without adaptation to a highly mobile wartime operation. A routine assignment such as...