The Politics of Veteran Benefits in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative History 1501751646, 9781501751646

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THE POLITICS OF VETERAN BENEFITS IN THE TWENTIETH ­C ENTURY

THE POLITICS OF VETERAN BENEFITS IN THE TWENTIETH ­C ENTURY

A CO M PA R AT I V E H I STO R Y

Martin Crott y, Neil J. Diamant, and Mark Edele

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

 Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress​.­cornell​.­edu. First published 2020 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Crotty, Martin, 1969–­author. | Diamant, Neil Jeffrey, 1964–­author. | Edele, Mark, author. Title: The politics of veteran benefits in the twentieth ­century : a comparative history / Martin Crotty, Neil J. Diamant, and Mark Edele. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020003586 (print) | LCCN 2020003587 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501751639 (cloth) | ISBN 9781501751646 (epub) | ISBN 9781501751653 (pdf ) Subjects: LCSH: Veterans—­Services for—­History— 20th ­century. | Veterans—­Government policy—­ History—20th ­century. | Veteran reintegration—­ History—20th ­century. | Veterans—­Social conditions— 20th ­century. Classification: LCC UB356 .C76 2020 (print) | LCC UB356 (ebook) | DDC 362.86/80904—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2020003586 LC ebook rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​ /­2020003587 Jacket image: Hero of the Soviet Union, Major General Aleksandr Vasilevich Gladkov, and his wife, Vera Potapovna, on their way to the Kremlin reception after the Victory Parade on Red Square, June 24, 1945. Photo by Yevgeny Khaldei. © Anna Khaldei.

Co nte nts

Acknowl­edgments  vii

Introduction: Veterans in Comparative Perspective

1

1. Victors Victorious

14

2. Victors Defeated

32

3. Benefits for the Vanquished

63

4. The Po­liti­cally Weak

93

5. The Po­liti­cally Power­f ul

120

Conclusion: Veterans Past, Pre­sent, and ­Future

162

Notes  173 Index  225

A c k n o w l­e d g m e nts

We have all acquired debts of gratitude to ­others in the research and writing that have led to this book, most separately, but some collectively as a triumvirate. Martin wishes to thank the staff at the National Library of Australia, where much of the primary research for the sections on Australia was undertaken, and the Australian Research Council and the University of Queensland for funding portions of this research. Neil offers his gratitude to Dickinson College’s Research and Development Committee, the University of Queensland, and the University of Melbourne for providing travel funds to Australia, as well as to David Gerber, a pioneer in the comparative study of veterans, and the School of Social Work at the University at Buffalo for the opportunity to discuss some of the preliminary findings of this book. He also acknowledges Shuto Sekoguchi for his research assistance, Alex Bates for help with translation, and Sam Albert for brewing many excellent cups of coffee while writing at Crazy Mocha. Mark gives his thanks to Brigitte Edele for helping to remember Ernst Jandl and to Debra McDougall for finding the lost volume of his poetry, to Rustam Gadzhiev, who provided research assistance, and to Oleg Beyda and Fallon Mody, who helped with editing. He also acknowledges  the assistance of an Australian Research Council F ­ uture Fellowship (FT140101100). We would all like to thank Emily Andrew, se­nior editor at Cornell University Press, for her enthusiastic embrace of our proposed book; Michelle Witkowski of Westchester Publishing Services for her skillful and kind shepherding of the manuscript through production; the anonymous readers for their thoughtful and constructive criticism; and Angel Alcalde of the University of Melbourne, who read the entire manuscript and provided detailed feedback and advice on further sources, which led to vari­ous last-­minute changes to our text. And we are all appreciative of the support offered by partners and families. They tolerated our absences and kept the home fires burning while we did b­ attle with archives that w ­ ere reluctant to reveal their secrets, or drafts that resisted taking the shape we wanted them to—­and put vii

vi i i

Ac know l­e dgments

up with the fits of absent-­mindedness that afflict all scholars inclined to mull over ideas at inopportune times. Perhaps self-­indulgently, we’d all like to thank each other too. The writing meetings in Canberra, Melbourne, Carlisle, and Brisbane have invariably been fruitful as well as fun, and we have all benefited enormously from exposure to each other’s ideas, insights, and inspiration. ­Earlier versions of sections in chapters 2 and 4 ­were first published as part of Martin Crotty and Mark Edele, “Total War and Entitlement: T ­ owards a Global History of Veteran Privilege,” Australian Journal of Politics & History 59, no. 1 (2013): 25–31. We thank Wiley Publishing Global for permission to reuse some of the material ­here.

Introduction Veterans in Comparative Perspective

Six soldiers returned from a war: an Australian, an American, a Chinese, a Rus­sian, a German, and a Brit. Each said, in their respective languages to their respective governments and socie­ties: “War was hell; we sacrificed; we deserve compensation and re­spect.” Governments considered ­these requests. Of ­these six, however, only three—­the American, the Australian, and the German—­received levels of compensation that came close to restoring what they had lost through their war ser­vice. Their Chinese, Rus­ sian, and British counter­parts received very ­little. They ­were pushed aside with arguments ranging from “Civilians suffered too,” to “What you did was what was expected and nothing more,” to “On the battlefield you may have been a hero, but ­here you are just like every­one ­else.” What explains such wide variation in postwar outcomes for veterans? Where and ­under what conditions did veterans emerge from the largest wars in the twentieth c­ entury with significant material recompense and higher status than their civilian counter­parts? ­These are the questions this book seeks to answer. Finding answers ­will not be easy—­soldiering and then veteranhood w ­ ere experienced very differently across space and time. Surveying the broad landscape of military engagements in the twentieth ­century, we can find soldiers in cutting-­edge fighter aircraft at thirty thousand feet, in submarines, in tanks and armored personnel carriers, and most commonly on their feet or bellies in Malayan jungles, Ukrainian steppes, and North African deserts. Aside from 1

2 I NT ROD UCT ION

troops engaged in combat—­a distinct minority in all modern forces—­soldiers also served as aircraft ground crew, postmen, chaplains, mechanics, intelligence officers, cooks, quartermasters, doctors and medics, trainers, recruiters, transport logisticians, and engineers and in hundreds of other noncombatant roles. War­time ser­vice varied considerably in time as well: some soldiers served from the commencement of hostilities to victory or defeat; o ­ thers, such as ­those picked off by r­ ifle fire in the Australian boats approaching the Gallipoli shoreline in World War I, or recently arrived reinforcements caught in the preemptive Soviet artillery barrage while assembling for the German assault at Kursk in World War II, w ­ ere cut down immediately on entering the fray. How soldiers returned home also varied widely. Some ­were unscathed, unscarred, and even improved by experiences that expanded their m ­ ental and professional horizons and boosted their confidence. ­Others ­were far less fortunate, returning with wounds physical and m ­ ental, vis­ib­ le and invisible, ranging from light to severe. Homecoming and veteran experiences also varied widely. Some returned to undamaged countries with well-­functioning government agencies and grateful socie­ties. They received financial compensation, preferential access to at least some employment, cheap homes, subsidized or f­ ree education and training, ­free and comprehensive health care, and ritual recognition through, for example, medals and parades. For such veterans, the experience of war might represent a short blip in an other­wise smooth life course, or even accelerate postwar professional success if they managed to acquire useful skills and contacts. T ­ hese w ­ ere the most fortunate ones. Other veterans returned to homelands that had been devastated by war, to socie­ties that viewed them with suspicion and nations that wanted to forget. The most unfortunate returned to desolation: families and friends killed, homes obliterated, and rulers who showed them no gratitude. War robbed them of their physical and m ­ ental health, loved ones, aspirations, and the purposes and ideals they considered core to their identity. Some even lost their homelands. Readjustment to peacetime life was painful, long, and unrewarding. We could drill down even deeper and examine individual biographies of veterans across all combatant nations, multiplying the meanings of the word veteran in the pro­cess. Yet we have written this book to do the opposite: locate similarities and patterns among the widely divergent postwar experiences of demobilized soldiers. Part of the reason, we expect, may have been curiosity—­ after reading the introductory paragraph of this chapter, w ­ eren’t you, reader, curious about why Americans, Australians, and Germans ­were fortunate and Chinese, Rus­sians, and Brits ­were not? We ­were. But t­here w ­ ere other, perhaps more “scholarly,” reasons. First, extensive research on veterans around



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the world—­spanning China, Rus­sia, and Japan to Germany, Canada, and the United States—­has found that despite experiential differences in war and macro-­level variation in how they returned home, veterans often faced similar challenges. Nearly universally, they had aged, matured, and acquired a distinctive set of experiences that made them feel dif­fer­ent from ­those who did not serve.1 Even if a veteran’s home country had not felt the physical impact of war, cities, towns, and even neighborhoods had changed, and t­ hese demanded adaptation to new circumstances. Skills that ­were once impor­tant might not be valued anymore; fiancées or wives might have found other partners; and civilians who remained at home during the war might have gained status at veterans’ expense. Across space and time, the soldiers who had widely dif­fer­ent war experiences shared similar worries once home: Who w ­ ill hire me? ­Will I be able to find a partner, or get along with my spouse? Many also had new concerns and worries regarding their physical health (Who ­will help me with my disability? How much pension ­will I receive?), upward mobility and status (­Will I be compensated, honored, or at least treated with re­spect?). Around the world, veterans also asked questions beyond their individual circumstances. ­Many found some sense of shared identity and camaraderie with other veterans, viewing their individual challenges as connected. Their status and power in their country’s civilian hierarchy was a common concern ­because it had direct implications for many aspects of their individual well-­ being and life chances. Among veterans who had fought for states that ceased to exist ­because of war, or for regimes that committed extensively documented war crimes, or simply on the losing side, this issue raised particularly vexing questions. Why would a government and society reward millions of former soldiers who fought for a state or regime that no longer existed or for a discredited cause? Why direct resources to ­those who had been defeated? But perhaps the broadest similarity between veterans—­bridging both war­ time and postwar experiences—­has been the roles of government and society in both drafting them for war and dealing with their prob­lems afterward. Given veterans’ numbers, and the potential mayhem they could cause having been exposed to military-­style organ­ization and, in many cases, or­ga­nized vio­lence, it was difficult for state officials to avoid an activist role in veterans’ reintegration. ­After World War II, for example, and including only the principal combatant countries of Germany, Japan, China, Italy, the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States, ­there ­were some ninety-­two million men who had served in the armed forces and survived.2 In the former Soviet Union alone ­there w ­ ere twenty-­ five million veterans of the “­Great Patriotic War,” constituting 15 ­percent of the population.3 Even in the absence of mass wars ­after World War II, veterans’ numbers have made them a force to be reckoned with. In the United States,

4 I NT ROD UCT ION

in 2012 t­ here w ­ ere 21.8 million veterans of vari­ous wars, most of them male (with 1.6 million ­women). Roughly 1.3 million of them served in multiple wars (837,000 in Gulf Wars I and II in Iraq; 211,000 in the Korean and Vietnam Wars; and 147,000 in World War II and ­Korea).4 Their numbers are in decline as veterans of World War II, ­Korea, and Vietnam pass on (the Department of Veterans Affairs estimated a 2019 veteran population of a l­ittle over nineteen million), but they still represent a sizeable portion of the US population and demand serious financial resources for purposes such as veteran health care.5 For the 2020 fiscal year President Trump requested $220.2 billion from Congress to provide veterans, their families, and survivors “the benefits, care and support they have earned through sacrifice and ser­vice to the Nation.”6 In Rus­sia, only one million of the twenty-­five million Soviet veterans of the “­Great Patriotic War” ­were still alive in 2004, which declined to about a quarter of a million ten years ­later, but their status and benefits far outstrip t­ hose of the rising number of demobilized soldiers of the undeclared wars in Af­ghan­i­stan and Chechnya, not to mention the new military intervention in Syria or the not-­so-­secret war in Ukraine.7 In China, between three and six million soldiers have been demobilized from the P ­ eople’s Liberation Army since 1978, adding to the millions of veterans from conflicts from the 1940s through the 1960s (including both civil war and foreign wars). Official Chinese sources cite a total number of fifty-­seven million veterans in 2017. In a pattern quite unusual for countries during peacetime, China is frequently shaken by veteran protests.8 Even Australia, a relatively minor player in the armed conflicts of the twentieth c­ entury and a nation of only twenty-­five million t­ oday, produced over a million veterans from its efforts in the world wars, and hundreds of thousands more returned from post–­World War II operations.9 As impressive as some of ­these numbers are, states have not always been concerned with veterans’ individual welfare and at times have restricted their ability to or­ga­nize and to press their claims. Historically, governments have been better known for strategically resettling them (and thereby reducing their threat) by setting up colonies, providing land grants, using them to ­settle underpopulated or strategically impor­tant frontier areas, and employing them in large numbers as part of a state’s security apparatus, patterns that appeared as far back as ancient Rome and China.10 But veterans have refused to go away. The dramatic rise in their prominence as a po­liti­cal force, without which a book like this could not have been written, was clearly correlated with the advent of mass warfare and total war in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.11 It was in this period, but particularly between the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the conclusion



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of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, that veterans emerged as a major social and po­liti­cal force in many countries. By 1950, almost all North American, Eu­ro­ pean, Asian, and British Empire nations—­and many o ­ thers besides—­had experienced major armed conflicts that produced substantial veteran populations whose demands for material recompense and symbolic recognition required the state to fashion a coordinated response. As the veteran population grew, veterans also became an object of academic study. Social scientists took an interest in veterans in the interwar period, when they w ­ ere recognized as a social category in their own right.12 Over the subsequent de­cades, scholars across many fields produced substantial research focusing on the challenges veterans faced reintegrating into postwar socie­ties and the myriad f­actors that played a role in their ability to adapt. Our previous studies on Australia, the USSR, and China, respectively, can be included in this lit­er­a­ture. However, in this book we are ­going for something entirely dif­fer­ent and new to this field: a comparative study synthesizing the existing lit­er­at­ ure into a higher-­level analy­sis of veteran politics. The need for such a synthesis, more than anything, is why it made sense for us to write this book. As we individually and collectively reviewed this large body of scholarship, several ­things puzzled us. First, while ­there have been many studies of the world wars that have ­adopted a comparative, and in the case of World War II even a global, perspective,13 the scholarship on veterans’ postwar demobilization and readjustment by historians, psychologists, sociologists, and other social scientists has overwhelmingly focused on individual countries.14 Second, despite the true-­by-­definition fact that World Wars I and II w ­ ere global affairs, the major Eu­ro­pean powers and the United States have received the lion’s share of attention. Third, ­because World War I veterans and their organ­izations ­were seen as culprits in the rise of Nazism and fascism, researchers have devoted disproportionate attention to the interwar years.15 To the extent that a comparative scholarship exists, it mainly brings together two, or at best three, cases, again mostly drawn from Western Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca.16 Fourth, an entire subsection of the lit­er­a­ture focuses on disabled veterans, treating them as a category apart from veterans as a ­whole.17 What we have undertaken h ­ ere is a more expansive framework of analy­ sis, treating disabled veterans as one group among a larger category. Disabled veterans frame their claims and mobilize in ways roughly similar to t­ hose of other veterans, and it is the po­liti­cal aspects of veterans’ experience that form the core problematic of this book. While it makes sense to retain the individual country as the main unit of analy­sis ­because states have almost always been the primary man­ag­ers of veterans and their prob­lems, and their policies created both inertia and vested interests in maintaining the status quo (known

6 I NT ROD UCT ION

as path de­pen­den­cy), the expansion of scholarship on veterans in Asia and the Soviet Union, as well as lesser-­known cases in Eu­rope and Australia, has made a comparative study with more than the usual two or three cases not only feasible but critically impor­tant to suggesting new research questions.18 This book is the first to draw on a wide variety of primary and secondary source materials in multiple languages (including Rus­sian, Chinese, Japa­nese, German, and French) to engage in a multicase analytical comparison including oft-­neglected cases from Asia (China, Taiwan, and Japan), the Soviet Union, and Australia, a non-­European military power that fought in most of the large wars in the twentieth ­century and whose veteran community has been both power­ful and extensively documented.19 In addition to this comparative approach, we expand a nascent lit­er­a­ture exploring the roles of international politics and the transnational linkages and transfers of institutions and ideas about the role of veterans in politics, and between veterans’ movements and veteran bureaucracies.20 ­After large-­scale demobilizations, many governments and socie­ties drew on historical and comparative examples of right-­and left-­ wing veteran po­liti­cal activism to warn about potential dangers should they fail to reintegrate into society. State officials sometimes sought out solutions by looking overseas, and veterans themselves created international associations and networks—­sometimes including former adversaries—­that allowed them to find out how their counter­parts w ­ ere faring.21 As we ­shall see, however, ­these forces always played out in domestic po­liti­cal contexts. In some cases, such as Taiwan, the USSR, the United States, Japan, and Poland, international politics had a significant impact on domestic politics, but in o ­ thers—­most notably China, the United Kingdom, and Germany, state officials ­were ­little interested in nondomestic organ­izations or ideas and policy inertia largely prevailed. The absence of international links or the failure to learn from the experiences of other countries is as impor­tant to the transnational story we tell ­here as are instances of connection and transfer. Taking on our question of where and u ­ nder what circumstances veterans attained an elevated postwar status in this expansive framework would not have been pos­si­ble had each of us worked in isolation. The usual distractions of academic work, particularly administrative responsibilities, and the sheer size of the task make multicountry comparisons difficult for individual scholars. We also needed each other to get a better picture of the world beyond the countries of our primary research (Australia, China, and the Soviet Union, respectively). Over the course of several years, we met face-­to-­face in Australia and the United States, Skyped, WhatsApped, and learned about veterans outside of our immediate specialization: Crotty read on the United States and the United Kingdom, Diamant on Japan and Taiwan, and Edele on Germany



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and Poland. We compared our findings and tested explanations. But we also cut some corners ­either ­because of space (with almost the ­whole world embroiled in World War II and much of it in World War I, we de­cided to not write about Italian, French, Bulgarian, New Zealand, Canadian, Korean and many other veterans), b­ ecause of the paucity of secondary sources in languages we understand, or b­ ecause a region was too far beyond our expertise. Africa, a continent with many wars, millions of old soldiers, and lively veteran politics, and Latin Amer­i­ca are such cases.22 Nor do we deal with ­those who contributed to the war effort but w ­ ere not uniformed, such as vari­ous re­sis­tance, guerrilla, or partisan forces. Auxiliary forces, such as the ­Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in Australia, have also been excluded. Since the focus of this book is on the veterans of major combatant countries in the two world wars, we have not discussed t­hose of border wars, anticolonial conflicts, civil wars (except for Taiwan), and insurgencies, but in the conclusion we suggest why the veterans of such conflicts might be useful subjects of further research. ­Because of ­these omissions, we strove to write this book not as a global history of all twentieth-­century veterans but rather as the first large-­scale, empirically grounded map for what we hope ­will become a new research field: comparative veteran studies. In addition to compelling one another to think more broadly about “our” veterans, the long gestation of this proj­ect encouraged us to stretch our minds to learn some conventions and concepts from disciplines that ­were a bit out of our comfort zones. Indeed, we see interdisciplinarity—­a term more popu­ lar in theory than in academic practice between the humanities and social sciences—as critical to fulfilling the promise of our agenda. Crotty and Edele are both historians, who brought to our ­table (in Australia, full of flat white and long black coffees and Tim Tams) an appreciation for the role of individual leaders and their personalities, zest for the telling detail, and a congenial narrative style. Diamant arrived with a background in historically oriented po­ liti­cal science and comparative politics, fields that typically prefer the application of concepts and theoretical frameworks on cases to telling richly colored stories about them. Merging t­ hese discipline-­based styles was often challenging but hopefully produced an approach that can serve as a useful model. In this book we refer to several concepts—­mostly drawn from a subfield of po­ liti­cal sociology called collective action theory—­sometimes explic­itly but more often operating in the background like software, pushing one fact into greater prominence than another. Aside from path de­pen­dency mentioned e­ arlier, our short concept list includes (1) framing, which refers to the way in which social movements, and their leaders in par­tic­u­lar, make public claims about their goals and interests; as a tactical choice, such claims can succeed if they resonate

8 I NT ROD UCT ION

with public opinion and then mobilize ­people to action; and (2) po­liti­cal opportunity structure.23 Attributed to Peter K. Eisinger in the American context but developed in a broader comparative framework by Charles Tilly in From Mobilization to Revolution (1978), the po­liti­cal opportunity structure is essentially a variable referring to the opportunities created and offered within a po­liti­cal system (­either formal, such as constitutional guarantees for freedom of speech or assembly, or informal, such as a culture of tolerance) that could explain a social movement’s success or failure.24 For example, in authoritarian regimes the po­liti­cal opportunity structure for successful collective action might be described as narrow to non­ex­is­tent, whereas in robust democracies it is typically more open or “wide.” The po­liti­cal opportunity structure is not something fixed in space and time: governments of all regime types can open or close them depending on the circumstances (for instance, even in democracies, striking for better wages was not easy during World War II). Furthermore, social movements can create openings where none existed. T ­ hese, in turn, can create pre­ce­dents that help f­ uture social movements. In other words, a po­liti­cal opportunity structure is a dynamic concept that must be studied longitudinally in concrete contexts. Interdisciplinarity ­shaped this proj­ect in other ways. Given the historical research on the development of the welfare state and given po­liti­cal scientists’ natu­ral inclination to focus on politics, we agreed it was essential to focus on the role of government. For better or worse, state bureaucracies have become the primary resource for veterans a­ fter war, w ­ hether in terms of financial expenditures on health care, pensions, and other entitlements or state-­sponsored rituals and anniversaries. We also recognized that what we call “the state” should be seen in disaggregated terms: beyond national politics, veterans are also affected by the capacity and willingness of local government officials to initiate policy, implement law, or provide support.25 In ­later chapters, we describe the relationship between veterans and the state as their vertical status. We also agreed that it was critical to examine the role of entities beyond the state such as city councils, religious organ­izations, chambers of commerce, charities, veterans’ organ­izations, and spouses and the ­family. In some instances, t­hese played an impor­tant role determining who was considered worthy of state benefits through the vote, the formation and mobilization of public opinion, or behind-­the-­scenes lobbying. We describe the relations between veterans and their fellow citizens as their horizontal status. ­Because ­these forms of status do not necessarily work in tandem (for example, favorable government policies and high levels of symbolic recognition could be matched by hostility from fellow citizens, or vice versa), researchers should strive to consider both. However, given the broad scope of this study and the relative ease



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of access to archival sources about government, we have placed greater weight on the vertical plane, while ­doing our best to include material about the horizontal dimension of veterans’ status. So, what do we have to show for all of this? In a famous scene in the 1996 film Jerry Maguire, the athlete played by Cuba Gooding Jr. impatiently demands, “Show me the money!” Having told you about WhatsApping, tasty Tim Tams, travel, interdisciplinarity, and the importance of comparative veteran studies, you would be justified in asking something similar of us. Without our divulging so much that you would not be inclined to read on, the three major findings of this comparative study are (1) that veterans around the world tended to face similar challenges ­after demobilization, raised similar demands, and framed t­ hese in mutually recognizable ways but had widely varying levels of success in having their claims met; (2) that across time and space, positive outcomes for veterans w ­ ere most directly correlated with their ability to or­ga­ nize and willingness to adopt the tactic of “­going to the mat” against politicians in the postwar period; and (3) that in a domestic and international po­liti­cal environment steeped in anti-­Communist or, in the case of the Soviet Union, anti-­anti-­Communist insecurity, such lobbying could establish beneficial veteran treatment regimes or weaken the po­liti­cal forces that supported policies that did not work well for them.26 To state this more bluntly, we argue that what mattered most in the end was politics: a domestic and international strug­ gle over the allocation of power, resources, values, and status. As with all po­ liti­cal strug­gles, the outcome of this pro­cess was highly contingent, and the contexts could vary widely and in unanticipated ways. To our own surprise, we found veterans who secured benefits and status ­after wars won or lost; within demo­cratic and authoritarian polities; u ­ nder liberal, conservative, and even Leninist governments; ­after wars fought by volunteers or conscripts, at home or abroad; and for legitimate or subsequently discredited ­causes. For the most part, they did so by compelling governments to concede to at least some of their demands through lobbying, protesting, and mobilizing public support. In a few instances, such as Taiwan and Japan a­ fter World War II or the Soviet Union from the mid-1950s, veterans benefited from government initiatives responding to other prob­lems that could nonetheless be exploited by veterans for their own ends. International politics and transnational exchanges often played a major role ­here.27 But in all our positive cases the critical ingredient was robust engagement in the po­liti­cal pro­cess. This gave veterans the opportunity to gain recognition and benefits as compensation and reward for their war ser­vice, as well as a greater voice in politics. But how did we arrive at this conclusion? What hypotheses did we begin with? And how did we move from hypothesis to result? Our study was primarily

10 I NT ROD UCT ION

guided by the form of comparative case study analy­sis that J.  S. Mill, the nineteenth-­century British po­liti­cal economist and phi­los­o­pher, called the Method of Agreement. In this approach to comparison, researchers use multiple cases to find, generally through pro­cess of elimination, the variable that appears common in all t­ hose with a shared outcome. For example, if we took ten countries that all shared a high GDP per capita over a ten-­year period and found that all had a­ dopted an export-­oriented growth strategy even though they differed in many other ways, we could make a case for a correlation (not causation) between this strategy and growth in t­ hese cases. However, in a nod to Mill’s Method of Difference (also known as the scientific method, which Mill did not think was appropriate to the social sciences), we also compared the existence of our orga­nizational f­actor in states with similar regime types (China/USSR; Australia/UK) or in the same state in dif­fer­ent periods (World War I/World War II in the US), where the absence of any veterans’ organ­ ization, or an excessively quiet one, led to a decidedly negative outcome for veterans.28 Despite this social science–­like perspective underpinning our comparative analy­sis, our treatment of the cases owes as much to historians’ interest in particularities and the empirical details that bring them to life. Hence, we use a mixture of archival and secondary sources to tell the story of veterans’ experiences in national contexts, while trying to keep our eyes focused on more generalized patterns. The story ­behind our hypothesis was a bit more complex. Since this is the first book to examine more than two or three cases of veteran treatment, and with so many variables (argh!) already “out t­ here”—­some of which we proposed in previous work—­there seemed fewer well-­established guideposts. Hence, we began with a hypothesis that seemed both intuitive and appropriate given the collective action framework that we employ: military victory, we thought, should make it much easier for veterans to gain support for their claims for postwar privilege. Why should t­here be such a link between victory and postwar status? First, from a po­liti­cal perspective, victory can incentivize politicians to reward t­hose who sacrificed for it as a form of joining-­the-­bandwagon credit-­taking. It would also make it significantly easier for politicians to persuade the public that veterans deserve benefits that other groups might not enjoy and thereby avoid a public backlash. In other words, victory would foster a favorable po­liti­cal opportunity structure for veterans. Second, we thought it would be easier for the public to agree to bear the considerable cost of veterans’ benefits, or at least not vociferously complain about them, if a war was successfully prosecuted. Third, we reasoned that the defeated combatants of total or near-­total wars would be much less well positioned to provide the benefits that veterans sought; they would be



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more preoccupied with restoring war damage. Fi­nally, we figured that military victory would make it easier for individual veterans and veterans’ organ­ izations to frame their demands in such a way as to mobilize po­liti­cal, social, and even cultural support. Patriotically claiming that “we defeated the ­enemy who threatened our way of life” would be an effective rhetorical tactic in the public sphere, allowing veterans to gain material benefits and symbolic recognition in the form of commemorative activities, museums, ­music, and art. As we expected, we found support for this hypothesis, but only in a few cases: Australia a­ fter World War I (and to a lesser extent ­after World War II) and the United States a­ fter World War II, the subjects of chapter 1. In ­these countries—­which we consider the best-­case scenarios in terms of veteran outcomes—­veterans fought on the winning side and w ­ ere generously rewarded by politicians. They also w ­ ere widely respected by the socie­ties to which they returned. That is, most enjoyed significant boosts to their vertical and horizontal status. Victorious soldiers rewarded by grateful nations—it seems relatively straightforward. In chapter 2, however, we look at cases that complicate any ­simple correlation between victorious wars and veterans’ high postwar status. Examining the United States and the United Kingdom a­ fter World War I, the United Kingdom ­after World War II, Soviet veterans a­ fter both world wars, and China, we find that victory did not prevent very many former soldiers from feeling betrayed by their governments, and often by society as well. While American World War I veterans could eventually point to some gains a­ fter a l­ imited contribution to the war effort and ­after many years of agitation, their counter­ parts in the United Kingdom, long-­suffering frontoviki in the USSR, and China’s veterans often languished in obscurity for de­cades despite having paid a far higher price for their victory. In chapters 1 and 2, therefore, we learn that victory does not provide all that we expected. But if winning wars can help, does losing them, even decisively, mean that veterans suffer along with the rest of their communities? Intuitively and in terms of the collective action lit­er­at­ ure, this seems plausible: it would be easy for politicians to shunt veterans aside if they did not feel gratitude to them and if they lacked widespread public support. Moreover, defeat is not exactly a positive frame within which to claim high status. T ­ hese issues are taken up in chapter 3. Using the cases of defeated Germany and Japan and further exploring the fate of the soldiers who retreated with the Nationalist Army to Taiwan a­ fter the Chinese Civil War, we discover that losing a war does not necessarily mean losing the peace. Even in utter defeat, even when ­causes have been discredited and states collapsed, veterans w ­ ere not discarded, and might even enjoy a reasonably high quality of care.

12 I NT ROD UCT ION

Having found that victory and defeat predict ­little, we turn to a somewhat dif­fer­ent problematic: In the cases of victory and defeat, what produced po­ liti­cally influential veterans who w ­ ere able to secure benefits and rights? We answer this question through a paired comparison in the following chapters. Chapter 4 focuses on China a­ fter its long period of war and civil war ending in 1949, the United Kingdom ­after both world wars, the United States ­after World War I, and the USSR ­after World War II. In ­these cases, veterans had ­little or ­limited success in securing meaningful social and po­liti­cal status. Why? In chapter 5 we elaborate on the reasons why Australian veterans of World War I, American veterans of World War II, Taiwanese veterans, and even German and Japa­nese veterans managed to do well ­after the guns fell s­ilent. Chapter 5 also explains why and how Soviet veterans of World War II eventually transformed themselves from unrewarded victors into central pillars of the last Soviet sociopo­liti­cal order in the 1970s and 1980s. Having laid out the hypothesis and the cases, allow us to address the final impor­tant methodological issue: mea­sure­ment. As with the prob­lem we identified with the hypothesis, ­there w ­ ere no established qualitative or quantitative ways of mea­sur­ing postwar success or failure in a broad comparative and historical perspective. So we came up with three guiding questions that served as a rough gauge. First, and most importantly, we ask w ­ hether veterans are recognized as a special and distinct group, particularly from other citizens who might have broadly similar needs or who make similar claims on the state. Second, to the extent that veterans are a special and distinct group, did governments establish differentiated and exclusive bureaucratic structures, laws, and policies that provided for their needs, and if they did, w ­ ere ­these rights and benefits made available to veterans but not to their fellow citizens? Third, are veterans and their views on m ­ atters such as war memorialization and foreign policy treated more seriously than nonveterans and theirs? While not all ­these questions are answered in each of the chapters, readers should be able to see at least some of them in the background as we go over the cases. When scholars try to answer large questions across many contexts, they are faced with a basic dilemma: how to capture particularities within each case while locating broader, sometimes more abstract, patterns between them. Since ­there is no scientific answer to this prob­lem, writers make their choices based largely on aesthetics. One could argue, as Glenn Altschuler and Stuart Blumin did with reference to the American context, that each case of veterans’ claims for benefits is “resolved through pro­cesses and events that reflect the institutions, resources, values, and par­tic­u­lar conflicts of the time.”29 This suggestion, however, strikes us as somewhat unrealistic in a more expansive analytical framework. As much as we are willing to stress uniqueness and con-



Vet era ns in Comparat iv e P e r sp ec t iv e

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tingency, our choice has been to try to identify common c­ auses, which we have broadly identified as politics. Variables such as the type of po­liti­cal system veterans return to, the extent to which they or­ga­nize and frame their demands in a way that convinces politicians and society that they deserve benefits, and make wise tactical decisions in critical moments seem to ­matter the most. ­Because ­these are all quite contingent, it is difficult to predict when veterans ­will achieve positive outcomes. However, the ingredients for such success (and failure) can be understood. We explore the implications of our findings for a new generation of veterans and suggest new directions for research on postwar demobilization in our conclusion.

Ch a p ter  1

Victors Victorious

That victors would be rewarded by grateful nations and states seems intuitive. France a­ fter World War I and Britain, the United States, and Australia a­ fter both world wars would appear, for example, to pre­sent relatively unproblematic po­liti­cal environments for veterans. In ­these cases, veterans fought for c­ auses that ­were widely regarded as legitimate, and that, despite the interwar pacifist movement, w ­ ere not seriously questioned afterward. Veterans reasonably claimed that they had defeated expansionist German militarism, Nazism, Italian fascism, and Japa­nese aggression. Many w ­ ere widely and repeatedly honored as heroes on their return. Po­liti­cally, the states for which the veterans had fought survived the war and could therefore be held to commitments they had made to soldiers. They w ­ ere all democracies that permitted freedom of speech and assembly; veterans could establish veterans’ organ­izations which could lobby the government as they pleased. In each, veterans ­were an electorally significant voting bloc. They also enjoyed po­liti­cally generated social capital when states gave them, and not many other potentially worthy groups, a special day on which they could be ritually honored.1 Monuments, ave­nues of honor, sports stadiums, bridges, and many other sites memorialized their deeds and sacrifices. Politicians in all t­ hese countries awarded veterans benefits that ­were not available to other citizens. Victory, it would appear, is strongly correlated with high postwar status.2

14



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15

In this chapter, we consider cases where victorious veterans w ­ ere compensated reasonably well for their war­time ser­vice and sacrifice, most notably Australia ­after World War I and the United States ­after World War II. ­These are the “best case” scenarios in our study. By way of contrast, in chapter 2 we introduce less well-­known examples where the recognition and rewards for victorious veterans w ­ ere skimpy at best, such as the United States ­after World War I, the United Kingdom ­after both world wars, and the Soviet Union and China ­after World War II. ­These case studies challenge the intuitive or perhaps even commonsensical notion that victory is a predictor of high status and generous rewards for veterans.

Australian Veterans Australia is the nation whose veterans could assert perhaps the most power­ ful cases for reward, and who stood to profit most clearly from their war efforts. In both World War I and II Australian ser­vicemen and ser­vicewomen fought on the winning side for c­ auses that garnered widespread popu­lar support. They suffered and sacrificed in ways that most of the civilian population did not. Primarily volunteers, they used their large, power­f ul, and well-­led organ­ization, the Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia (widely known, and hereafter referred to as the RSL), to pressure the Australian government into granting them rights, benefits, and entitlements that ­were, by international standards, and compared with what was available to the rest of the civilian population, remarkably generous. In a case of what might be called “benefit path de­pen­dency,” the privileges won ­after World War I made it far easier for veterans to successfully defend them—­and, perhaps more critically, far more difficult for politicians to deny them—­after World War II. As a loyal member of the British Empire in World War I, Australia enlisted some 420,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen, of whom 331,000 departed Australia. Some sixty thousand perished. ­These ­were large numbers considering that in 1914 Australia’s male population numbered only 2.6 million.3 Between two and three thousand Australian ­women also served as nurses, predominantly in the Australian Army Nursing Ser­vice. No nurses w ­ ere killed and although they suffered physical and m ­ ental injuries, the Australian commitment of personnel and its casualties ­were overwhelmingly male.4 Australian soldiers fought in the doomed Dardanelles campaign against the Ottoman Empire in 1915, throughout the M ­ iddle East in the ongoing campaign against the Ottomans, and most notably on the Western Front in France and Belgium

16 Ch apte r 1

from 1916 to 1918. Although the Dardanelles campaign was a spectacular failure, at home Australian troops ­were widely praised for their courage and perseverance. They ­were also lauded for their role in halting the German advances of 1918, and for spearheading the Allied offensives that led to the collapse of the German war effort. They arrived home bathed in acclaim for their military achievements and for announcing Australia’s arrival on the international stage. In the parlance of the time and ever since, they not only played a major role in defeating the Empire’s enemies on the battlefield but “gave birth to the nation.”5 In the vernacular of this book, ­these circumstances provided a highly favorable po­liti­cal opportunity structure and a helpful language for framing claims for privileged status. Australian veterans w ­ ere richly rewarded through a comprehensive set of repatriation provisions. Returned soldiers w ­ ere granted a war gratuity of one shilling for each day of ser­vice within Australia and one shilling and sixpence for each day overseas, calculated from the time of entering camp to the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty (even though t­ here was no fighting for the last eight months of this period, and many Australian soldiers w ­ ere on their way home well before the treaty was signed). Veterans who ­were in camp in Australia for three months and who served overseas for two years would thus be eligible for a minimum payment of some £60 if they enlisted in early 1917, and potentially considerably more if they enlisted ­earlier or served for longer.6 ­These payments amounted to significant sums in a country where the average working man’s wage stood at approximately £4 per week.7 Veterans also received discounted home loans, ­free vocational training, grants to help reestablish themselves in civilian life, preference in government employment, programs to assist them in becoming farmers, and a range of other benefits. The injured and incapacitated w ­ ere provided pensions that far outstripped t­hose available to nonveteran counter­parts and which w ­ ere more generous than t­ hose offered by postwar governments of other countries. The Commonwealth government also paid pensions to war w ­ idows and to the wives and c­ hildren of both the injured and the dead.8 Nonveterans occasionally expressed resentment about government largesse t­oward veterans, particularly given that it was not means-­tested and was available to veterans who had apparently suffered ­little harm or disadvantage. Their views have been echoed by one historian who argues that Australia operated a “welfare apartheid.”9 The Australian pension system was relatively generous not only in terms of rates payable but also in terms of eligibility. T ­ here was no time limit for applying for or receiving a pension, and the provisions for f­amily members w ­ ere extensive. As a result, the number of veterans, w ­ idows, and dependents who received pensions increased in the interwar years. By June  1921 war pensions



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­ ere paid to 79,491 ex-­servicemen, 93,995 of their dependents, and 49,051 dew pendents of deceased ex-­servicemen. By June 1939 ­these numbers had changed to 77,151 ex-­servicemen, 144,571 of their dependents, and 27,571 dependents of deceased ex-­servicemen.10 The Australian war pension system was particularly liberal ­toward veterans’ dependents on the grounds that dead or incapacitated ex-­servicemen ­were unable to fully discharge their masculine responsibilities ­because of their war ser­vice, and the state was thus obliged to fill the gap. As well as tending to the former soldiers, therefore, the Australian government helped veterans fulfill their duty of providing for their dependents. In addition to generous pensions and liberal eligibility regulations, veterans also enjoyed heightened civic status and w ­ ere heralded as heroes. War memorials, notably, frequently listed the survivors as well as the dead to emphasize their willing ser­vice as well as sacrifice. Anzac (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) Day was commemorated from 1916 onward and became a national public holiday from 1927.11 Perhaps not surprisingly, many veterans came to consider themselves as premier citizens. They often engaged in censorious efforts to protect and advance their reputation and demanded that their “­grand achievements” be recognized with “commensurate rewards.”12 To be sure, not all the efforts to promote the welfare and well-­being of the veterans w ­ ere successful. Most notably, the soldier settlement scheme—­a joint effort between the Commonwealth and the state governments to s­ ettle veterans on the land—­was poorly planned and had often tragic consequences. Too many settlers without the requisite skills, and often battling physical or psychological incapacities, w ­ ere placed on blocks of land that w ­ ere too small and often of poor quality. Despite a long list of concessions from governments, and often faced with much worse prices for their produce than had been anticipated, approximately half of the ex-­soldier settlers eventually failed and abandoned their holdings.13 James Newman Dann, for example, was wounded at Gallipoli and sent back to Australia in 1916 with a bullet still lodged in his body. Dann was unfit for heavy work and thus unable to resume his prewar occupation as a laborer. The Repatriation Department first found him work weaving baskets for the Red Cross, although it paid ­little. In 1921, it placed him on a five-­acre poultry farm outside Sydney as part of the soldier settlement scheme. But Dann developed tuberculosis and suffered considerable pain from the bullet wound. As a result, the Repatriation Department classified him as “totally incapacitated,” and increased his pension. He left his farm in 1923 and supported his ­family thereafter on his war pension and l­imited work. He died in 1953, having spent the last few years of his life in a Repatriation Hospital.14 Although his story is tragic, and the efforts to establish him as a farmer ­were prob­ably unduly optimistic, the relative generosity of his treatment is

18 Ch apte r 1

evident. This failure of implementation in regard to soldier settlers such as Dann should not be understood as an absence of state generosity or good intentions—­ever-­increasing state funding and concessions to soldier settlers kept roughly half of the forty thousand veterans on the land. Such positive attitudes ­toward veterans and the largesse that followed reflected a set of circumstances, some of which ­were unique to Australia during and immediately ­after World War I. First, in contrast to the conscripts who constituted the vast bulk of almost ­every other belligerent force, Australia’s veterans ­were all volunteers, and thus regarded as particularly praiseworthy for demonstrating loyalty and courage in facing the nation’s and the empire’s enemies. Second, veterans—­not politicians, ­lawyers, intellectuals, agitators, journalists, phi­los­o­phers or high-­ranking officers—­were credited with “giving birth to the nation” at a time when “blood and iron” w ­ ere regarded as essential to a nation’s foundation. Third, compared with ­those of Australian civilians, for whom the war was remote, soldiers’ sacrifices ­were obvious and impossible to dispute. Fourth, the Australian government could afford to pay generous benefits despite having accrued significant war debts.15 Fi­nally, veterans constituted a sizeable voting bloc. None of t­ hese f­ actors, however, are enough to explain the good fortune of Australian veterans. The government could have de­cided to spend its resources on other priorities; volunteer soldiers could have been dismissed almost as easily as conscripts (“It was your choice to go to war, so why should we pay?”). In other words, we still need to account for the postwar politics that made some of t­ hese background circumstances work decisively in veterans’ f­avor. In the end, we suggest, we must focus on the question of extraction of material and symbolic resources. Does the history of Australia’s World War II veterans help us figure out if any of ­these c­ auses proved decisive? In the big picture, it does not: Australian veterans continued to be well treated and received benefits and rewards similar to ­those of their World War I pre­de­ces­sors. As the path-­dependency model would predict, the groundwork laid by the World War I veterans established pre­ce­dents that w ­ ere closely guarded by the RSL and largely followed by policy makers. Australia, unlike the Soviet Union a­ fter World War I and China during World War II, did not experience a major rupture of its po­liti­cal system. The government remained in a financially sound enough position to provide veterans with many of their requests and the RSL continued to exist as the major veterans’ body. Australia also found itself on the winning side again. Continuity rather than change characterizes the Australian veteran experience across the two world wars.



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And yet t­ here ­were some significant differences that complicated the situation for World War II Australian veterans and the repatriation authorities. The first, and perhaps most impor­tant, was that unlike World War I when soldiers ­were volunteers and t­here was only ­limited mobilization of the home front (Australia did not experience, for example, the large-­scale movement of w ­ omen into new occupations as was the case in Britain), World War II saw Australia move to a “total war” footing once the Japa­nese entered with its attacks on December 7, 1941.16 With most of the Australian military ­either abroad or in Japa­nese prisoner of war (POW) camps following the fall of Singapore in February  1942, Australia appeared in mortal danger. John Curtin, the recently installed prime minister, oversaw a broad mobilization of national resources, including military, auxiliary ser­vices, and l­ abor—an “all in” war effort, as it was widely called at the time.17 This high level of mobilization beyond the military greatly expanded the pool of ­people who could lay claim to some form of repatriation benefits as parts of Australia became “Theatres of War.” Veterans could no longer universally claim the virtue of volunteerism, or of exclusivity in ser­vice. For instance, the Australian Soldiers’ Repatriation Act of 1943, although nominally covering only “soldiers,” also applied to members of the Royal Australian Naval Nursing Ser­vice, the Australian Army Nursing Ser­vice, the Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Ser­vice, the W ­ omen’s Royal Australian Naval Ser­vice, the Australian W ­ omen’s Army Ser­vice, the Australian Army Medical W ­ omen’s Ser­vice, the ­Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force, and members of the Voluntary Aid Detachment.18 This broadening of war-­related ser­vice had implications for how benefits ­were distributed. For former ser­vicemen, repatriation benefits w ­ ere broadly consistent with what their pre­de­ces­sors had received ­after World War I. In a path-­dependent fashion, the government offered them pensions, financial support during state-­funded job training, a revised soldier settlement scheme, and a war gratuity payment.19 A key difference, however, was that from early in the war the Australian government was committed to a program known as reconstruction, which sought to fundamentally reconstruct many of the bases of Australian social and economic life through, for example, improved educational provision and a social security program. As a result, postwar programs to benefit veterans jostled and competed for funding and attention with t­ hose for advancing the fortunes of nonveterans. Even though veterans received generous benefits, they sometimes complained that their level of distinction from nonveterans—­one of our mea­sures of veterans’ horizontal status—­was unduly reduced. The clear distinction between the all-­volunteer First Australian Imperial Force of World War I and the rest of the population did not hold

20 Ch apte r 1

for their World War II successors. Veterans of the volunteer Second Australian Imperial Force, which had fought in Southeast Asia, the Mediterranean, and elsewhere, and who regarded themselves as elites, now competed with conscripts, volunteers who had not served outside of Australia, members of the auxiliary forces, and munitions workers—in addition to civilians who expected more assistance from the federal government. In a context of a total national war effort and a program of national reconstruction, the neat and clear categories that separated the deserving male veteran from undeserving civilians—of both genders—no longer applied.20 This broadening of benefits within the larger context of state generosity can be seen in several benefit programs. Preference in employment provisions, for example, remained in the Australian Soldiers’ Repatriation Act of 1943, and continued to privilege t­ hose who had served in the armed forces in an active theater of operations, but they ­were ­later superseded by the provisions of the Re-­Establishment and Employment Act 1945, which applied to much broader categories of ­people whose employment had been upset by the war mobilization, and which restricted the operation of preference to returned soldiers to a period of seven years.21 Job training is another good example. Administered through the Department of Post-­War Reconstruction, the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme (CRTS) was in many re­spects an Australian equivalent of the training offered to American veterans through the educational provisions of the GI Bill.22 While not quite as lavish, it was nonetheless generous. It offered ­free part-­time and full-­time training in a wide range of institutions, employing a mix of employer-­provided on-­the-­job training, vocational or technical instruction at technical colleges, and professional training at universities. The government paid all tuition costs and provided a living allowance for up to three years. Unmarried men received a living allowance plus supplementary allowances for expenses such as travel, while married men received a higher living allowance rate of ninety-­six shillings per week—­the equivalent of the “basic wage” in Australia at the end of 1945, and thus equivalent to what an unskilled worker might earn from full-­time employment.23 Although aimed primarily at restoring men to the position in civil life—­including competitiveness in the l­abor market—­that they would have had if not for their war ser­vice, in the broader sense it also aspired to maximize the value of Australian ­human capital by pouring skilled l­abor into the workforce while si­ mul­ta­neously slowing the postwar influx of ­labor into the market.24 This would, it was hoped, reduce the likelihood of a major spike in unemployment.25 In 1949, the Department of Post-­War Reconstruction boasted that the training program was “one of the biggest re-­establishment schemes ever



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undertaken by a country in returning its ex-­servicemen and ­women to civilian life.”26 This was an exaggeration, but it was nonetheless a major undertaking and investment. Trainees benefited considerably. When they began to transition into the workforce, they received full award wages even before attaining full “efficiency,” with the difference between the full award wage and what they would ordinarily have been entitled to being made up by government subsidy.27 Many o ­ thers used the training provisions of the CRTS to advance in their chosen ­career at an accelerated pace or to pursue c­ areer options they had previously thought closed to them. Some, who had previously been combining study with work, found that the assistance provided allowed them to devote themselves to their studies full time, and that this made their personal advancement much easier.28 In using educational assistance to advance their prospects, Australian veterans of World War II echo the experiences of American GIs who much more famously profited from the educational provisions of the GI Bill. George Chippendale, for example, worked as a technical assistant in an herbarium before enlisting. ­After serving for a l­ittle over five years, primarily in Papua New Guinea, Chippendale, now twenty-­four years old, was discharged in early 1946 and returned to his former job. W ­ hether war ser­vice augmented his ambitions is not known, but Chippendale took advantage of the CRTS training provisions to attend university and qualified as a botanist. Some fifty years a­ fter the war, Chippendale described the CRTS as “a wonderful gift [which] has changed my life.” He described his post-retirement voluntary teaching at the University of the Third Age as a “way I can give back to the community.”29 Similarly, Brian Colcutt, who had enjoyed ­limited schooling before joining the Royal Australian Air Force, used the CRTS to boost his qualifications and advance his ­career in the public ser­vice. He ­later recalled how “lucky” he was to have such an opportunity, as it enabled a ­career that would have normally been beyond his reach a­ fter “an almost poverty-­stricken upbringing and . . . ​a rather chaotic and broken primary school history.”30 By the time the CRTS scheme concluded in the mid-1950s (designed specifically for World War II veterans, the final ac­cep­tances w ­ ere made in 1951) more than thirty-­eight thousand veterans had studied at university level and 230,000 had undertaken vocational or technical training.31 Together, they represented about a quarter of Australia’s World War II veterans.32 Australian veterans of World War II, much like their World War I counter­ parts, therefore remained a privileged group. When compared with the veterans of most other countries—­even victorious ones—­they ­were well provided for. They w ­ ere widely honored and celebrated, received first preference in

22 Ch apte r 1

government employment, and ­were given generous assistance in making their way back into the paid workforce, and the disabled w ­ ere compensated with pensions that ­were still well above the rate available to nonveteran civilians. Veterans ­were given preferential access to housing and opportunities to establish themselves on the land as farmers or in population centers in business. If not quite so privileged as their ­Great War pre­de­ces­sors, when compared with the general population they still did very well for themselves. In the mid-1980s John Barrett extensively surveyed Australian World War II veterans about their experiences. Three-­quarters of the respondents judged the rehabilitation and repatriation assistance as satisfactory.33

American Veterans ­after World War II American veterans ­after World War II are the most well-­known example of victorious veterans being well treated ­after their return. The contrast with their ­Great War pre­de­ces­sors is dramatic. World War I veterans’ experience was largely negative. Returning to a country that had been reluctant to enter the war in the first place, and which produced l­imited public mobilization and ­little social consensus about the need to fight, in the early 1930s many of them marched on Washington to demand early cash payment of government bonds they had been granted as compensation for their ser­vice, only to be dispersed by the armed forces ­under ­f uture general Douglas MacArthur—­the so-­called Bonus March.34 The United States’ involvement in World War I was l­imited, fractious, and not a defining national experience. World War II, on the other hand, cost the lives of over four hundred thousand US citizens, produced over a million casualties in total (an unpre­ce­dented number in US history), was fought in direct defense against German and Japa­nese aggression, stretched over four years, and produced a vast number of veterans—­nearly sixteen million. Unlike World War I, it was a popu­lar war, with one historian noting that it was the only major war in US history that was not controversial.35 And although the war was, for the most part, fought far from American shores, it demanded high levels of mobilization on the home front, as well as massive propaganda campaigns. Having been directly attacked by Japan, most US citizens ­were well aware of why they ­were fighting in the Pacific, although ­there was somewhat less clarity about Europe—­unless one was Jewish.36 Equally impor­tant, since the war was covered extensively in the press and in newsreels for four years, civilians ­were well informed about the demands placed on their fighting men and the extent of their sacrifices in locations as diverse as Guadalcanal, Normandy, North Africa, Okinawa, and the skies over Germany.



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Enjoying full employment, high wages, and relative safety at home, civilians ­were on shakier ground trying to claim that their sacrifices, such as putting up with rationing and a wage freeze, w ­ ere on par with t­ hose of members of the armed forces.37 It was clear that the vast number of returning veterans would need jobs, housing, and a modicum of recognition. With veterans returning at the same time that workers ­were being demobilized from war industries, the government feared that large-­scale unemployment could lead to social unrest and a repeat of the chaotic Bonus March episode.38 The Selective Training and Ser­ vice Act of 1940, therefore, guaranteed military personnel their old jobs back with no loss of se­niority or conditions, provided the veterans ­were still able to perform the job satisfactorily, and they applied for reinstatement in a reasonably timely manner ­after discharge.39 Fears of disgruntled and potentially violent or radicalized veterans mixed with a degree of idealism, expressed in Franklin D. Roo­se­velt’s 1941 statement that the postwar United States should guarantee not only freedom of expression, freedom of worship, and freedom from fear but also freedom from want.40 Roo­se­velt also maintained that the generation who had been trained to wage war now had to be trained to “discharge the heavy responsibilities of the postwar world.”41 ­After the growth of the US state during the New Deal and World War II, and as happened in Australia where the government also took a much more interventionist and big-­spending role in war­time, it was not much of a stretch to envision a federal role in expanding access to education for a large number of returning veterans to whom the nation was grateful, who ­were held in high esteem, and who needed to be reintegrated into peacetime society for their own benefit as well for the country’s postwar fortunes. Diverting veterans from immediate entry into an overcrowded job market into subsidized training and education programs would provide a response to several of t­ hese challenges.42 Nevertheless, ­there was nothing inevitable about the creation of the GI Bill. With Congress growing increasingly conservative and with even Roo­se­velt backing away from New Deal policies, the president’s initial proposals w ­ ere far more modest than what was eventually enacted as the Ser­vicemen’s Readjustment Act in 1944. For instance, Congress considered a proposal that would have given ­those who had served for six months or more a year of subsistence to undertake training, and a longer period of assistance to one hundred thousand veterans judged to be the “best and brightest.”43 It took substantial po­ liti­cal maneuvering and pressure from the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) to produce the eventual bill that provided much more generous benefits than ­those originally envisaged.44

24 Ch apte r 1

The Ser­vicemen’s Readjustment Act, known colloquially at the time and ever since as the GI Bill or the GI Bill of Rights, was signed into law by Roo­se­velt on June 22, 1944.45 It was an extremely generous piece of legislation that was designed to facilitate the large-­scale movement of veterans back into peacetime society, improve veterans’ lives, and benefit the wider US society. It attempted to address many of the challenges veterans faced ­after demobilization—­such as how they would get by in the short term, reskill for peacetime, and establish families and c­ areers. Among veterans, perhaps the most immediate and pressing fear was unemployment, a fear the government shared given the potential for unrest in a large pool of unemployed veterans.46 But such fears proved largely unwarranted: most veterans w ­ ere welcomed back into their former occupations, while ­others used the training and skills they acquired during the war to get new or better jobs in the buoyant postwar economy (postwar unemployment peaked at 5.3 ­percent in 1950, which was less than half the rate of unemployment faced by the World War I “doughboys” in 1921).47 ­Those who remained unemployed, or who merely needed a period of rest, recuperation, and readjustment before reentering the workforce, ­were well provided for. In addition to the substantial $300 “mustering out” payment that all veterans w ­ ere granted from 1944, nine million made some use of unemployment payments.48 The GI Bill’s generosity is most famously recalled for its education provisions. As first enacted, the GI Bill offered veterans up to $500 per annum for college tuition, books, and supplies, in addition to a monthly stipend of $50 for single men and ­women and $75 for ­those who ­were married or other­wise with dependents. All veterans who had served for a minimum of ninety days received up to one year of benefits, while t­hose with longer rec­ords of ser­ vice received the benefits for a longer period; an extra year of ser­vice entitled the veteran to an extra year of benefits.49 Subsequent amendments made the bill even more liberal. ­After a worryingly small number of veterans accessed educational benefits in the first year of their provision, and amid criticism that it was too stingy, Congress altered the GI Bill to raise monthly allowances for attending college from $50 to $65 for t­ hose without dependents, and from $75 to $90 for ­those with. From this point on, and stimulated by additional liberalizing amendments, uptake rapidly increased.50 Nearly eight million veterans—­approximately half of the entire US veteran cohort from World War II—­took advantage of the educational benefits provided ­under the GI Bill. In the de­cade ­after the cessation of hostilities, 2.2 million veterans received a college education and 5.6 million used other educational or training provisions.51 To be sure, some veterans would have enrolled in college anyway, but in far lower numbers, and many with considerably more



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difficulty. Surveyed some fifty years ­later, approximately half of t­ hose who attended universities and colleges, and three-­quarters of t­hose who pursued other educational and training programs, said that they could not have afforded ­these opportunities w ­ ere it not for the GI Bill. Even allowing for an ele­ment of post factum romanticization (and its opposite, criticism for failing minorities and w ­ omen), the educational opportunities offered by the GI Bill w ­ ere a boon for many veterans, the majority of whom came from working-­class backgrounds and who would not have other­wise enjoyed such education and training, or the consequent economic and social mobility. While the GI Bill is prob­ably best-­known for the access to college and other types of education it provided veterans, it also included a range of other benefits. When first enacted it provided a government guarantee of 50 ­percent of the amount of loans for farms, businesses, and homes, up to $2,000, at discounted interest rates. As with the educational provisions of the GI Bill, uptake was initially rather slow, but in late 1945 the government eased the conditions and many more took advantage. Over four million veterans, or nearly 30 ­percent of ­those eligible, eventually made use of the home loan assistance the GI Bill provided, with another two hundred thousand purchasing farms or businesses.52 ­Those veterans who made use of the GI Bill’s provisions enjoyed better incomes, higher levels of educational achievement, and higher home owner­ship rates, among other advantages, than ­those who did not. The GI Bill propelled many veterans into a privileged position in the postwar United States. Interviewed over half a ­century ­after he used the provisions of the GI Bill, for example, Luke LaPorta, the son of an Italian immigrant, recalled growing up poor in Queens, New York, unable to envision a college education as a possibility. Although his naval unit never left the United States, LaPorta developed a heightened sense of self-­worth through his military ser­vice (the beneficiary of an enhanced “horizontal status” in our terminology) and used the GI Bill to fund his college education. LaPorta eventually acquired a doctorate and worked hard to repay society through extensive civic engagement.53 Thousands of other veterans have similar life stories, thanks in considerable part to the GI Bill. ­Others who would have attended college in any case found the experience much more rewarding and affordable b­ ecause of the GI Bill and the large cohorts of fellow veterans.54 More than just compensated for their sacrifices, veterans such as LaPorta ­were meaningfully rewarded for their ser­vice and experienced enhanced lives afterward. By 1956, for example, to take but one mea­sure, 42 ­percent of veterans owned homes compared with 34 ­percent among nonveterans of the same age cohort.55 But, like any government benefit program, not every­one within the target group benefited or received equal consideration. Not a few scholars have

26 Ch apte r 1

argued that its uneven implementation and effects reflected the power structures and prevailing prejudices of the day, particularly with regard to race and gender. As noted by Olivier Burtin, the American Legion, the most impor­tant lobbyist ­behind the GI Bill, was dominated by white, male, and middle-­class men, whose membership in the Midwest “overlapped substantially” with racist organ­izations like the Ku Klux Klan. Its fervent, decades-­long anti-­Communist discourse, much like other white supremacist organ­izations, described blacks as particularly gullible to Communist propaganda on account of their low status in American society. Fear of left-­wing militancy among veterans was supplemented by an assessment, realistic as it turned out, that returning African American veterans—of whom ­there ­were a million—­would no longer tolerate their inferior status and would threaten the established social order.56 When southern whites responded through a campaign of terror and multiple lynching of veterans, the Legion failed to rally to the cause of men who ­were being victimized rather than rewarded for their ser­vice. Take, for example, the case of Isaac Woodward. Discharged a­ fter four years in the army on February 12, 1946, he boarded a bus home to his f­amily. Just three hours ­later, with ­little to no justification, police in Batesburg, South Carolina, accused Woodard—­still in uniform—of creating a disturbance and beat him with fists and nightsticks, causing permanent blindness. The next day he was hauled before a judge and fined $50 for causing a disturbance. His attackers, in contrast, ­were acquitted by an all-­white jury.57 Congress was not much better than the Legion in protecting the rights of black veterans. During World War II, Congress was dominated by racist Southern Demo­crats and conservative Republicans, without whom the GI Bill could not have become law, and they left ample room for racial discrimination in its application. Entrenched racism within the organ­izations and agencies that ­were supposed to advance the interests of veterans, Burtin argues, “made it more difficult, if not impossible, for non-­white veterans everywhere in the United States to claim their benefits” using the GI Bill.58 Take, for example, education benefits. Since fewer blacks completed their high school education owing to higher rates of poverty, poorer health, and racist discrimination in educational access, fewer veterans qualified for college admission. While black veterans could access the same benefits once admitted to college, and notwithstanding the fact that the black population of many northern and western universities increased substantially and the number of African American students tripled between 1940 and 1950, they had fewer chances of admission ­because of lack of qualifications and segregation, and could often only attend poorer and less prestigious institutions.59 Mexican-­ American veterans, many of whom suffered from similar health and education



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deficits, experienced similar prob­lems.60 For a variety of reasons, including racism, minority veterans did not join the American Legion and the VFW at the same rates as whites and therefore received less advice about their rights and how to exercise them.61 To its critics, the GI Bill was a massive state investment in able-­bodied white men who w ­ ere healthy and educated enough to 62 join the armed forces. Taking advantage of job training provisions was also difficult for black veterans, particularly in the Deep South. Rather than create a centralized system, the designers of the GI Bill forced veterans to work through local Veterans Administration (VA) and United States Employment Ser­vices branches, which ­were staffed almost exclusively by whites—­a highly problematic “point of access” in many areas.63 ­These officials referred black veterans to the least skilled occupations regardless of their qualifications. Veterans also received less “on the job” training b­ ecause they found it harder to find employers willing to sponsor and train them. Obtaining VA loan guarantees was also problematic ­because financial institutions often refused to lend to African Americans.64 Although black veterans did somewhat better where they ­were able to or­ga­nize their own leagues and associations to assist veterans in taking advantage of the GI Bill, they nonetheless failed to profit as much as white veterans.65 The American Legion did l­ittle to help, and opposed the VA granting recognition to the United Negro and Allied Veterans of Amer­i­ca. The VA seemed largely uninterested in combating racial discrimination, including resisting a bill, for example, that would have prohibited the distribution of GI Bill funds to segregated schools.66 It similarly refused to intervene in housing developments that excluded black purchasers, and even some of its own hospitals excluded black veterans except in emergency cases.67 World War II may have become the launching pad for the US civil rights movement through veterans who ­were no longer prepared to accept racial vilification and discrimination, but the re­ sis­tance to African American demands for equality remained stubborn and deeply entrenched.68 In March 1945 Frank Hines, the head of the VA, promised that black veterans would suffer no disadvantage in their reestablishment in civil life. It was a commitment that the VA, the American Legion, and national and state lawmakers manifestly failed to live up to.69 ­Women, who constituted 2 ­percent of the armed forces, w ­ ere another group that could not take full advantage of the GI Bill. Only 40 ­percent used their educational benefits ­after their return compared with over half of their male comrades.70 Moreover, ­because ­women faced greater pressure to marry and establish a ­family, ­women’s completion rates ­were also lower. Educational, training, and business loan benefits also disproportionately favored men, who ­were more likely to seek professional advancement and business opportunities

28 Ch apte r 1

whereas w ­ omen w ­ ere expected to be homemakers.71 In fact, in some instances ­women’s educational opportunities ­were curtailed as colleges reduced their admission of w ­ omen to make room for returning soldiers.72 Female veterans also had a difficult time convincing banks to provide them with loans, GI Bill assistance notwithstanding.73 But as imperfect as it was, the GI Bill nonetheless provided considerable advantages for a very large cohort, sustaining them as they reestablished themselves in civilian life, and allowing them to improve their prospects. The big, perennial questions faced by almost ­every veteran returning to civilian life—­ Where and how w ­ ill I find work? How can I catch up to my peers who have not served? Where w ­ ill I live?—­were made far less intractable for American World War II soldiers than their World War I pre­de­ces­sors. Considering that only one in e­ very sixteen American ser­vicemen endured prolonged periods of combat, and over a quarter of them never left the United States, the terms of the GI Bill can only be characterized as highly generous, a reward more than compensation for sacrifice.74 Many GIs w ­ ere surprised at the liberality of the law, and regarded it not just as a right earned, but as a note of appreciation from their government and fellow citizens.75 The positive reputation of the GI Bill rests partly on the advantages it offered veterans, but also on the benefits it distributed to other sections of postwar American society. It produced a vastly better-­trained ­labor force and added considerably to the professional and educated classes. It funded, for example, the training of 450,000 engineers, 360,000 teachers, and many other skilled professionals.76 Colleges expanded their teaching staff and their physical infrastructure in response to veteran demand, which in turn powered the US higher education system for de­cades ­after the majority of the veterans graduated.77 The US government managed to avoid the dangers and ugly spectacle of a discontented yet esteemed veteran population. By the mid-1950s, the educational provisions of the GI Bill had cost the government some $10 billion in subsistence payments, and a further $3.9 billion in tuition fees, but the return for veterans, the government, and the country at large w ­ ere so substan78 tial that t­ here was relatively ­little caviling at the cost. Looking at the GI Bill in comparative perspective serves to highlight just how differently World War II veterans ­were perceived and treated to ­those of a generation e­ arlier. One key feature that separates American World War II veterans from their World War I pre­de­ces­sors is the way they w ­ ere considered a distinctive group. Unlike in the Australian experience, where World War II veterans sometimes complained that, when compared with World War I veterans, their privilege vis-­à-­vis civilians was diminished, American World War II veterans ­were more clearly distinguished from ­those who had not



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served in uniform. ­There had been some suggestion, for example, that the benefits of the GI Bill should be extended to munitions workers, and to ­others who had made substantial and nontypical civilian contributions to the war effort. But the American Legion resisted, and in the end the GI Bill provided nothing for the nineteen million ­women who worked in American war industries and in auxiliary roles.79 Similarly, a campaign by the Gold Star Wives to have GI Bill benefits extended to Amer­ic­ a’s 101,000 war w ­ idows attracted ­little support. Gen. Omar Bradley, then the head of the VA, cited the extra cost to the government—­a specious argument, as the cost would have been a fraction of the outlay on sixteen million veterans. The more likely reason was the assumption that war w ­ idows could remarry and would not need GI Bill benefits, but Bradley’s reluctance to depart from the “general basic policy of limiting such benefits to persons who rendered active ser­vice in the armed forces” suggests something of a gender order, where t­ hose who had served in the military had first claim on benefits, regardless of the war-­related sacrifices of ­others.80 Care for disabled veterans also improved significantly. Advocates for disabled veterans emphasized their unique deservingness, distinguishing themselves from disabled nonveterans whom they successfully excluded from the same benefits. Suggestions that vocational training for disabled veterans should be moved out of the VA in order to create a more efficient single program for both groups ­were stoutly and successfully resisted. Veterans received dif­fer­ ent, and better, treatment ­under their own agency, which was justified through appeals to their sacrifice and ser­vice. Nonveteran disabled w ­ ere treated as unfortunate individuals.81 The US government invested enormous resources in the VA hospital system, including the addition of outpatient ser­vices, so that veterans had easier access to specialized medical care for war-­related injuries—­ and sometimes, if they could not afford treatment from other providers, for non-­war-­related maladies. The government paid pensions based on economic loss (to about one in ­every eight of the surviving veterans), costing the Trea­ sury $75 million a month by 1950.82 In some ways, the education and vocational training disabled veterans received ­under the Veterans’ Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1943 ­were even more generous than ­those provided ­under the GI Bill. Disabled veterans ­were provided four years of training regardless of the length of time served in the military, they w ­ ere paid disability pensions and living allowances while they studied, and no limit was placed on the costs of books and supplies.83 The relatively generous treatment of disabled veterans was reflected in a number of other mea­sures of varying significance, such as the provision by 1950 of twenty-­five thousand ­free cars to veterans who had suffered a leg amputation.84

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Veterans also received “mustering out” pay of $300 from 1944, a considerable advance, even allowing for inflation, on the $60 that their World War I forebears had been granted.85 They also received preference in federal employment via the Veterans Preference Act of 1944.86 The material rewards and compensation granted to American veterans, ­whether ­those veterans ­were disabled or not, a­ fter World War II vastly exceeded that available to their World War I counter­parts, who must have looked on with some envy. Veterans’ privileged status a­ fter World War II can also be seen in symbolic gestures. It is telling that Armistice Day, created a­ fter World War I, was renamed “Veterans Day” ­after lobbying from the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). In his 1954 presidential proclamation announcing the change, Eisenhower gave the day a decidedly dif­fer­ent twist to what Wilson had in 1919, stating, “On that day let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all ­those who fought so valiantly on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so their efforts s­ hall not have been in vain.”87 The same proclamation also established the Veterans Day National Committee to coordinate and plan observances.88 In sum, the GI Bill and other mea­sures represented a major achievement for US veterans, the high point in their treatment and status. By throwing the weight of the federal government ­behind efforts to ensure that returning soldiers would have access to jobs, education, housing, and medical care, the GI Bill and the Vocational Rehabilitation Act marked a major expansion of the state’s recognition of the obligations that w ­ ere owed to veterans.89 In the years afterward, some criticized the GI Bill for being overly generous, giving veterans an unfair advantage and costing the public too much money. Partly as a result of this perceived munificence (but more for reasons that we address in chapter 5), veterans of the Korean War w ­ ere granted somewhat less than their World War II pre­de­ces­sors, as ­were ­those who served in Vietnam. Through the Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act of 1952, Korean War veterans received most of the benefits of the GI Bill, but not all. The most substantial changes w ­ ere designed to prevent the “gaming” of the system by educational institutions interested in ­little more than obtaining federal tuition fees on behalf of the veterans, and a 50 ­percent reduction of the period for which veterans could claim unemployment payments (from fifty-­two weeks to twenty-­six)—­a cost-­cutting mea­sure prob­ably justified by the easing of fears about high postwar unemployment. With less assistance in obtaining the sort of life-­changing education that World War II veterans ­were entitled to, and with more restricted unemployment relief, some Korean veterans complained,



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with some justification, that they w ­ ere not being as well treated as their forebears of less than a de­cade e­ arlier.90 It was a similar story for Vietnam veterans. Although in 1966 Congress passed a version of the GI Bill designed for Vietnam veterans, and updated it in 1972 and 1974, veterans similarly complained about reduced benefits, again with some justification when compared with the beneficiaries of the 1944 bill.91 A study authorized by Congress in 1972 reported back the following year that the benefits w ­ ere, with adjustments such as for rises in the cost of living, not as generous as ­those provided to the World War II generation. An academic study completed some five years l­ater calculated that Korean War veterans effectively received 25  ­percent less in terms of educational entitlements and support than did the World War II generation, and that Vietnam veterans received even less, although not by much.92 Following the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, however, Congress, responding to the hyperpatriotic po­liti­cal environment, returned the post–­World War II spirit of state generosity to the GI Bill.93 The pattern of American provision for veterans—­where the perceived excesses of generous provision for one generation of veterans is met with much-­reduced benefits for the next, and then improvements for the following one a­ fter regrets over perceived parsimony—­has thus continued beyond the age of total war and into the era of more l­imited Cold War and War on Terror conflicts. Just as Amer­i­ca’s World War I veterans ­were hampered by the perceived excessive generosity ­toward Civil War veterans, so might veterans of ­Korea and Vietnam look askance—­and jealously—at the original GI Bill. US veteran outcomes, however, w ­ ere determined by much more than simply a pattern of the state alternating between munificence and thrift. We consider, therefore, that in Australia ­after both world wars and in the United States a­ fter the second, the victors w ­ ere well rewarded, and in terms of benefits they w ­ ere the most fortunate of all the groups considered in this book. They w ­ ere recognized as being owed a debt by their governments and fellow citizens, and they received considerable compensation, preferential treatment, and reward. It may not have been all that they sought, but it did ameliorate the effects of their war­time sacrifices. Exclusive benefits marked them as a “special” category of citizen. But being victorious was not all that ­these groups had in common. They also w ­ ere citizens of demo­cratic polities where politicians could be held to account for promises that ­were broken. If some of t­ hese other conditions w ­ ere not pre­sent, if the ability of veterans to force the state’s hand was restricted, victors on the battlefield could face defeat in their efforts to secure compensation and reward.

Ch a p ter  2

Victors Defeated

In chapter  1 we described the munificent rewards granted to Australian veterans of World Wars I and II and American veterans of World War II. In many re­spects, this might strike you as altogether unsurprising. ­After all, in ­these cases veterans had sacrificed—in differential amounts to be sure—­fighting dangerous enemies on behalf of their country. In what might be interpreted as a moment of natu­ral justice in which grateful citizens and governments discharged a debt owed, veterans w ­ ere successful in their quest for benefits, compensation, and rewards. Two in­ter­est­ing questions are raised by t­hese cases: (1) Are generous benefits closely associated with clear-­cut victory against foes considered to be extremely aggressive? (2) Does the po­liti­cal opportunity structure of democracy as a regime type ­matter when it comes to securing benefits? In Australia and the United States, veterans had relatively open po­liti­cal space to or­ga­nize, lobby, and vote for politicians who supported generous laws, and remove from office ­those who did not. Through such means the victors on the battlefield ­were able to ensure that they received at least close to what they considered they deserved a­ fter their return. But was it the victory that mattered most? Or their ability to use the po­liti­cal pro­cess to extract trea­sure and other rewards from their governments? In this chapter we run ­these questions through a comparative test. We first look at three cases in which veterans returned home in comparably similar 32



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circumstances—­victorious wars in demo­cratic polities: British and US veterans of World War I, and British veterans of World War II. In both countries, we ­shall see, veterans w ­ ere significantly less well compensated than their Australian and American (World War II) counter­parts, strongly suggesting that neither victory nor democracy necessarily produce generous benefits. We then turn to victorious veterans in authoritarian regimes. Their governments could do more or less as they pleased when it came to rewarding favored groups. But as we show in the cases of the Soviet Union ­after World War II, China ­after the long wars against the Japa­nese, and the civil war between the Communist and Nationalist Parties (1945–1949), victory and authoritarianism did not translate into generous benefits even though the debt owed to the veterans was enormous. Soviet and Chinese veterans fought in conflicts of murderous intensity, suffered appallingly, and became casualties at astronomical rates. Moreover, ­these regimes owed their survival to the exploits of their war­ time militaries. In chapter 3 we take our “victory” variable one step further by examining cases that involved losers who nevertheless managed to secure valuable resources, material as well as symbolic.

American Veterans ­after World War I The treatment of US veterans ­after World War I needs to be understood in the context of previous American conflicts and the pension policies that ­were put in place a­ fter them.1 Most critically for our purposes, government efforts on behalf of previous generations of veterans ­were widely perceived to have been both corrupt and overly generous, and this produced a backlash against their World War I counter­parts. ­After the American Revolution, for example, veterans of the Continental Army ­were originally given very ­little, but from 1819, ­after many expressions of discontent and soldier riots, they ­were granted annual pensions of $240 and $96 for officers and enlisted men, respectively, if they w ­ ere in need and had served for nine months or more. Veterans did not have to provide evidence of privation and ­there was no need for their alleged hardship to be traceable to the war. From 1832, ­those with two or more years of ser­vice in the Revolutionary War could claim a pension equivalent to their full army pay. Not surprisingly, veterans responded enthusiastically, and the cost to the US federal bud­get was much greater than anticipated.2 ­After the Civil War, Union veterans ­were also treated generously, with a pension law enacted in 1862 to provide for disabled soldiers and for the families of ­those who ­were killed (Confederate veterans ­were considered rebels and did not receive anything from the federal government).3 Pensions ­were

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initially restricted to ­those with a war-­induced disability, but in 1890 pension rights w ­ ere extended to all honorably discharged Union veterans and their families if the veterans suffered from a ­mental or physical disability, ­whether it was caused by the war or not. By the early years of the twentieth ­century, all Union veterans w ­ ere eligible for an old-­age pension.4 This extension of benefits meant that a pension system that was initially designed to compensate veterans for injuries sustained while in ser­vice evolved into a comprehensive welfare system that all citizens paid for but which benefited only Union veterans. In 1870, for instance, only 5 ­percent of surviving Union Civil War soldiers received war pensions but by 1915, with the expansion of entitlements, this had increased to 93 ­percent.5 By the early twentieth ­century, pensions for Civil War veterans and their ­widows w ­ ere paid to 18 ­percent of the American population over sixty-­five years old. Representing roughly 40 ­percent of federal spending in peak years, the pension system was criticized for having excessively low qualification levels and overly generous benefits. That it was also entangled with the mutually beneficial relationship between the Republican Party and or­ga­nized Union veterans cum voters made it particularly vulnerable to (sometimes justified) charges of corruption.6 Given this tainted legacy, it was highly unlikely that World War I soldiers would be compensated as generously (or more generously) than their Revolutionary and Civil War counter­parts. But it was not only domestic politics and bud­get considerations that mattered: “victory,” while objectively the military outcome of ­these wars, meant very dif­fer­ent ­things in history and culture, and was therefore a flimsy rhetorical resource for framing demands in the postwar b­ attle for benefits. It was difficult to challenge the argument that the American Revolution had established the United States, or that the Civil War, ­because it had preserved the Union against the secessionist confederacy, had been a righ­teous cause. Veterans of each could bask in the reflected glory of the c­ auses and widespread sacrifices (in the Civil War 2.2 million men w ­ ere enlisted into the Union forces, constituting 37 ­percent of the male population between the ages of fifteen and forty-­four, and of t­hese some 365,000 w ­ ere 7 killed and 282,000 wounded). In contrast, World War I was not integral to the core narrative and my­thol­ogy of the United States. Notwithstanding the loss of American shipping due to unrestricted submarine warfare and shock and outrage at the death of American civilians in incidents such as the sinking of the Lusitania, the war was mainly fought by the United States for American interests, not core values or in defense of the homeland. Impor­tant as it may have been to the United States that Britain and her Allies prevail, it was not vital to the nation’s survival or prospects in the way that it was for France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and many other belligerents. Moreover, un-



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like the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, it was fought on foreign soil and many ­people ­were not convinced that American participation was necessary.8 In the absence of a consensus, the war generated many social and po­liti­cal divisions. Unlike their ­f uture World War II counter­parts, World War I veterans, while militarily victorious, could not easily frame themselves or be cast as the makers or preservers of the nation or its values in the way other generations could. Nor could veterans lay claim to extraordinary sacrifices, as had been the case a­ fter the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. The United States was a late entrant to the war. Although it mobilized rapidly and had 4.7 million men enlisted in its armed forces by the war’s end, just ­under one-­half traveled abroad and its soldiers, for the most part, saw action only during the last few months of the four-­year conflict. American losses w ­ ere not insubstantial (116,000 dead and 200,000 wounded), but amounted only to a fraction of the total losses suffered by other major combatant nations (approximately one-­tenth of the losses suffered by Australia on a per capita basis, for example).9 They also paled in comparison to Civil War losses.10 Neither the scale of World War I mobilization nor its losses produced a tectonic shock for the United States, or created unpre­ce­dented issues surrounding former soldiers, as was the case in many other countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia. The conduct of the war and the bitterness of the peace did not add much to postwar veterans’ rhetorical quiver. The US military often performed poorly due to the inexperience of its soldiers, officers, and high brass, and the war produced no “glorious” events such as the D-­Day landings or the B ­ attle of the Bulge that highlighted the American experience of the Eu­ro­pean theater in World War II.11 It certainly did not help that President Woodrow Wilson’s high-­ minded idealism went largely unrealized, particularly when the United States failed to join the League of Nations. The war produced a lit­er­at­ ure and a public memory that ­were characterized by disillusion—­there was no remaking of the United States, let alone the world, and the hopes and dreams of many ­women, workers, black Americans, and Progressives w ­ ere gradually dashed in the war’s aftermath.12 Owing to the bud­getary excesses and politicization of the previous pension system and the lower status of its World War I veterans, postwar compensation was miserly. The War Risk Insurance Act of 1917 gave life and disability insurance to soldiers at much lower rates than they would have been able to obtain normally, alongside pensions for the disabled and for the ­widows and c­ hildren of t­ hose killed. But aside from ­those who required medical care or the disabled who opted for the l­imited vocational training opportunities, the US government provided ­little to veterans ­either as a reward or to help reestablish themselves in civilian life.13 The first million soldiers who ­were

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discharged received nothing except for their uniforms and their medals. The remainder w ­ ere provided with train fare home and “mustering out pay” of $60 to tide them over u ­ ntil they could resume their regular occupations.14 ­These mea­sures all emphasized self-­reliance, and, by granting ­little in the way of benefits and strictly limiting any ongoing obligations to support veterans, reduced the hit to the federal bud­get. Aside from providing pensions for ­those who had suffered disabilities due to their war ser­vice, the federal government sought to escape any ongoing liabilities.15 In the context of a war­time economy that produced substantial profits for some industrialists and higher wages for workers who stayed at home—­while soldiers risked their lives for measly pay—­these benefits appeared to veterans particularly tightfisted.16 The US government also, initially at least, neglected to build its own institutions to look a­ fter returning soldiers. On discharge, veterans w ­ ere at the mercy of ser­vices provided by the Public Health Ser­vice, which found itself overwhelmed by the sudden influx of patients. Even two and a half years ­after the armistice the hospital program for veterans was, in Rosemary Stevens’s assessment, “a nightmare of red tape, inefficiency, confusion and neglect.”17 ­These and other prob­lems resulted in the establishment in August 1921 of the Veterans’ Bureau, whose mission was to consolidate ser­vices. ­After some fits and starts the Veterans’ Bureau did get a better ­handle on health care, but ­those who w ­ ere discharged in 1918 had to wait three years for this improvement. The bureau was itself far from perfect, was hampered by scandal, and was superseded by the Veterans Administration (VA) in 1930.18 Health care and benefits did improve through the interwar period with the development of a large system of hospitals devoted to veteran care. By the outbreak of World War II ­there ­were over fifty VA hospitals in operation catering to nearly sixty thousand veterans of World War I.19 That the state should provide health care for ­those who had been injured in the line of duty was never a seriously contested proposition, but ­there was ongoing debate over ­whether ­others whose ailments could not be directly attributed to war ser­vice should be eligible for ­free treatment. Veterans and their advocates argued for the latter on two bases: (1) that they suffered from a range of maladies and generalized poor health that w ­ ere likely the result of their war ser­vice, even though they could not be directly and clearly attributed to it; and (2) that they had earned such a benefit by virtue of their ser­vice.20 The first basis of the claim was simply a ­matter of the difficulty of establishing a causal link, but the second basis was a claim to privilege. Between the passage of the World War Veterans Act in 1924 and Roo­se­velt’s dramatic cuts to veteran entitlements in 1933, ­those with complaints that ­were not directly attributable to war ser­ vice could receive treatment in VA hospitals if they ­were unable to afford treat-



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ment elsewhere, and if ­there was enough room in the institution. The right was removed by Roo­se­velt in 1933 but restored—­over his veto—in 1934.21 Much as it is tempting to see this as a substantial victory for veterans—as Jessica Adler tends to—it amounted only to a highly conditional and uncertain privilege. It is also worth noting that when Roo­se­velt withdrew the right to treatment for t­ hose whose injuries could not be directly attributed to war ser­ vice in 1933—­a move that saw the population of the VA hospitals plummet from forty-­three thousand to thirty-­three thousand in just three months—­the mea­sure must have affected many whose illness and injuries ­were the result of war ser­vice, even if that could not be clearly demonstrated so long a­ fter the fact.22 Overall, the health care provision for veterans in the interwar period has to be regarded as no better than “mixed.” Government assistance in helping demobilized soldiers reenter the workforce also left much to be desired, a particularly challenging prob­lem for men without jobs to return to. They came home to an economic environment of rising unemployment, social unrest, l­abor strikes, and a Bolshevik scare. By April 1919, a whopping 41 ­percent of returned veterans w ­ ere unemployed. Although the employment picture improved, veterans found the job search difficult and prolonged. Making m ­ atters worse, Congress defunded the US Employment Ser­vice in 1919. The War Department then stepped into the breach, but it too reduced its role in the ­labor market as the economy improved from the end of 1919.23 Vocational training arrangements for ­those who needed to acquire or update their skills ­were generally not much better. The Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1918 was designed to return the disabled, as much as pos­si­ble, to the workforce through government-­contracted training provided by universities, schools, and businesses. However, this proved inadequate, and prompted the Veterans’ Bureau to establish its own schools for disabled veterans, the first opening in November 1921. But the schools ­were often spartan and underfunded, and of l­ittle benefit to ­those who enrolled, most of whom finished their training without a formal qualification.24 In addition to ­these material deficiencies, veterans ­were also slighted at the symbolic and ritual levels. A good example of this was “Armistice Day,” commemorated in the United States from 1919 onward but not made into a national holiday u ­ ntil 1938.25 Veterans’ contributions w ­ ere nearly lost in the commemorative hoopla on Armistice Day, unlike its successor holiday (Veterans Day). Woodrow Wilson, for example, issued a message to countrymen on November 11, 1919, which presented World War I as an effort of all Americans. Former servicemen—of whom ­there ­were several million and of whom 116,000 had died—­were not singled out for special praise:

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We ­were able to bring the vast resources, material and moral, of a g­ reat and ­free ­people to the assistance of our associates in Eu­rope who had suffered and sacrificed without limit in the cause for which we fought. Out of this victory t­ here arose new possibilities of po­liti­cal freedom and economic concert. The war showed us the strength of ­great nations acting together for high purposes, and the victory of arms foretells the enduring conquests which can be made in peace when nations act justly and in furtherance of the common interests of men. To us in Amer­i­ca the reflections of Armistice Day w ­ ill be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of ­those who died in the country’s ser­vice, and with gratitude for the victory, both b­ ecause of the t­ hing from which it has freed us and ­because of the opportunity it has given Amer­ic­ a to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of nations.26 When viewed in comparative perspective the deficiencies in the US repatriation system stand out even more clearly. In Australia, veterans benefited from special repatriation hospitals, a dedicated minister for repatriation who was appointed in 1917, and a Department of Repatriation (1918) to consolidate ser­vice provision—­the forerunner to the Repatriation Commission which was established in 1920 with an expanded function that included pensions.27 Even German veterans did better, with the benefit of a Weimar Republic system that, like Australia’s, was established in a timely and well-­coordinated fashion. In the absence of robust federal programs, US veterans spent much time and effort trying to secure something ­else of value—­cash, or in the lingo of the day, a “bonus payment”—­battles over which consumed veteran politics during the 1920s and 1930s. In veterans’ view, such a bonus was a form of appropriate compensation for having served abroad at a time of a booming domestic war­time economy. The American Legion, established in 1919 and the largest of the Great War veterans’ organ­izations, won congressional support for a Bonus Bill in 1922, but was unable to prevent a veto by President Harding, primarily on the basis of its high cost.28 But unexpected bud­get surpluses in the early 1920s undermined this financial responsibility argument, and in 1924 Congress passed a bill—­and overrode President Coo­lidge’s veto of it—­ which provided for a payment of $1 per day for ser­vice in the United States and $1.25 per day for ser­vice overseas (up to a maximum of $615 for t­hose who went overseas and $500 for ­those who never embarked), with interest accruing at 4  ­percent per year. However, only ­those entitled to $50 or less could get immediate payment; all o ­ thers ­were required to wait twenty-­one years—­until 1945—­before they could cash in their bonus certificates.29



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Facing troubled economic times in the late 1920s and early 1930s, veterans began to demand ­earlier payment of their promised bonus and did win some concessions from Congress. The demand for immediate cash payment began before the Wall Street crash, but intensified as the economy contracted in its wake, leaving former soldiers disproportionately affected; the veteran unemployment rate has been estimated as being 50 ­percent higher than the nonveteran population in the ­Great Depression.30 In February  1931, Congress overrode a presidential veto and increased the amount that veterans could borrow against their bonus certificate from 22.5 ­percent of its overall value to 50 ­percent. While seemingly a rather paltry concession, it provided something of a lifeline to many veterans; by January 1932 some 2.5 million had borrowed against their bonus certificates to the maximum permitted level.31 But continued economic distress led many veterans to demand full and immediate cash payment of the bonus. The House of Representatives responded positively. In May 1932, over forty thousand veterans gathered in Washington to happily witness the expected passing of the Bonus Bill. Their hopes ­were quickly dashed: The Bonus Bill was defeated in the Senate on June 17, 1932, and on July 28, 1932, the ­future general Douglas MacArthur deployed cavalry and tanks to evict the frustrated veterans, torching their improvised dwellings. In the pro­cess, several police ­were injured and two protesters killed.32 The image of the government using vio­lence against impoverished World War I veterans aroused public sympathy, but this did not translate into legislative success in the short term.33 When the marchers returned in 1933 President Roo­se­velt welcomed them and met their leaders, as did his wife Eleanor, but he still did not accede to their demands.34 Fluctuating fortunes extended to pensions. A ­ fter considerable lobbying by the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), in 1930 Congress passed legislation that extended disability payments to an extra 150,000 veterans who had previously been excluded as a result of being unable to prove a causal connection between their war ser­vice and postwar maladies.35 The pension rates w ­ ere lower than for ­those who could prove that their ailments w ­ ere directly related to war ser­vice, and the pensions w ­ ere available only to t­ hose whose incomes did not meet the federal income tax threshold, but it was nonetheless a significant liberalizing measure—­and one that had to be forced through over a presidential veto ­because of concerns about its financial cost.36 By the end of 1932 over four hundred thousand veterans and dependents received pensions on the basis of injuries and disabilities that w ­ ere not demonstrably caused by war ser­vice, dramatically increasing the pension bill to over $800 million annually. So generous was this provision that some described the pension system as a “veterans’ racket” and its beneficiaries as “Trea­sury raiders” and “plunderers.”37 Veterans

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also benefited from smoother administration and ser­vice provision through the establishment of the Veterans Administration, a consolidation of several federal agencies, including the Veterans’ Bureau.38 While the VFW and the American Legion w ­ ere both supportive of the administrative reforms, the Legion was much less enthused about the pension gains, regarding them as unaffordable and suggesting to its own members that they show more restraint. Only at the eleventh hour did it support the extension to pension entitlements, and then apparently only to avoid being placed in the invidious position of publicly opposing a benefit to its members that its rival organ­ization, the VFW, supported.39 The pension gains turned out to be short-­lived. Veterans’ demands at a time of financial crisis provoked what Stephen Ortiz has termed a “countermobilization” by ­those who believed that veterans ­were being treated with excessive generosity.40 Soon ­after his election, President Roo­se­velt, concerned about reducing the federal government’s bud­get deficit, signed the Economy Act in 1933, which repealed virtually all federal laws that provided benefits to veterans. Even though he quickly reinstated some of them, the net effect was to reduce the benefits payable to veterans with war-­related disabilities by anywhere from 25 to 88 ­percent depending on the disability. It also removed the pension eligibility of over five hundred thousand veterans and their dependents, including some one hundred thousand who suffered from tuberculosis but who ­were unable to prove that they had contracted the disease while on active ser­vice, as well as their “general hospitalization benefits.”41 Most of ­those who lost their pension rights—­some 390,000—­had become eligible only ­after the 1930 liberalization, but o ­ thers who had received pensions for tuberculosis since the 1920s, or who ­were severely incapacitated, ­were also affected. ­These ­were severe cuts which drove some veterans to suicide.42 Over the next few years veterans’ fortunes again turned. Congress reversed most of Roo­se­velt’s cuts although pensions for nonservice-­related disabilities and hardship ­were never restored.43 The most significant—­and symbolic—­gain came in 1936 when the Bonus Bill was fi­nally passed by Congress, overriding Roo­se­velt’s veto.44 The act allowed veterans to exchange their bonus certificates for US Savings Bonds, which they could then cash out immediately. Most took this option, and only thirty thousand bonus certificates remained to be cashed out when the maturity date of 1945 arrived.45 American veterans ­after World War I thus had a mixed rec­ord of winning entitlements from their government, but overall did relatively poorly. Not having fought in a war of vital importance to the nation, not having suffered in ­g reat numbers or over a long period of time, and not having a proud legacy that could readily be identified, they w ­ ere always in a poor bargaining position—­even though the United States was victorious. The material rewards



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they received in the form of the bonus payment w ­ ere grudgingly given, took a long time to win, and, in most cases, prob­ably did not compensate them for the financial sacrifices they had made, let alone provide them with a substantial reward. T ­ hose who passed away before 1936 received very ­little or no benefit from the awarded bonus. Perhaps just as importantly, veterans w ­ ere told loudly and clearly that they did not have special status—­unlike t­ hose of previous US conflicts and their World War II successors. They did not have their own national day—­Armistice Day was as much a cele­bration of peace as an honoring of the men who fought, and it did not become a national holiday u ­ ntil 1938. (Memorial Day was established ­after the Civil War, and was more for Civil War veterans than for t­ hose of World War I.) Perhaps most tellingly, the veterans received l­ ittle in the way of praise or cele­bration from several presidents, in stark contrast to the way Billy Hughes spoke about Australia’s World War I veterans. Coo­lidge and Roo­ se­velt both vetoed mea­sures that would have improved the fortunes of veterans, and both Wilson and Roo­se­velt maintained that they formed no special category of citizen and ­were entitled to no special consideration.46 The repeal of mea­sures that gave pensions to veterans with non-­war-­related disabilities was financially prudent but also deeply symbolic. Pensions ­were granted for disabilities based on causation, not b­ ecause of veteran status alone. It was their disabilities and their ­causes that ­were unique and deserving of special treatment, not the men themselves.

British Veterans ­after World War I If the United States’ poor treatment of its World War I veterans is not particularly surprising on account of the relatively small number of casualties, its late entry into the war and the lack of any sense of existential crisis, the same cannot be said for Britain, an even more counterintuitive example of veterans being poorly compensated. Britain made enormous sacrifices in World War I, particularly as it bore an increasing share of the burden of fighting the German Army on the Western Front. While extensive mobilization of the home front, rationing, and food shortages caused by the German U-­boat campaign brought hardship to civilians, the heaviest burden of the war effort fell on the 6.147 million British soldiers who fought it.47 Britain suffered some three-­quarters of a million killed, and another 1,663,000 wounded.48 Of t­ hese, some 750,000 ­were left with permanent disabilities.49 British soldiers and sailors also ­were widely praised for their achievements during the war and on its victorious conclusion ­were promised much. In the

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first postwar election campaign, Lloyd George claimed that the “freedom of the world” was owed to the men of the British Navy, and that the courage and endurance of British soldiers over the preceding years was unmatched in ­human history.50 But for all their achievements in saving Britain from the real or ­imagined prospect of German overlordship, Britain’s veterans ­were given relatively meager rewards. T ­ hose who suffered the most w ­ ere disabled veterans, who encountered tremendous difficulties qualifying for pensions and, for ­those who ­were successful, getting by on the support that was provided. Time was of the essence both for British veterans who wished to qualify for disability benefits and for dependents, most commonly ­widows. At first, they had to claim their pensions within two years of discharge or death, although this was liberalized somewhat by the War Pensions Act of 1921 which expanded it to seven years, for both veterans and dependents. ­After the seven-­ year win­dow closed, however, getting a war-­related pension became considerably more difficult.51 In contrast, in Australia ­there was no time limit: veterans who found that war injuries deteriorated with age and interfered with their earning capacity could apply for a pension at any time, as could dependents. As a result, unlike in Australia where the number of veterans, war ­widows, and dependents claiming war pensions increased in the interwar period, it slowly declined in Britain. Similarly, whereas expenditure on pensions in Britain declined in the interwar years, in several other countries, such as Germany and Australia, it remained relatively constant, and even increased.52 In another example of Britain’s tightfisted approach to veterans, an entire pension category that was provided to many other British Empire veterans was unavailable in the United Kingdom. Called “Ser­vice Pensions” in Australia and a “War Veterans’ Allowance” in Canada, t­ hese pensions w ­ ere given to “burnt-­ out” men who could no longer make a living ­because of physical and ­mental ill-­health which could not be directly attributed to war ser­vice but which was suspected to be a consequence of it. ­These pensions ­were available in Canada from 1930 and in Australia from 1936.53 In contrast, the British Legion unsuccessfully campaigned between 1936 and 1938 for pension assistance for at least one hundred thousand ex-­servicemen unable to work owing to the “intangible results of war ser­vice.”54 When veterans managed to secure pensions, they often found them quite inadequate considering their needs. As in many other countries, the British government had initially assumed that the charitable sector would be able to provide for disabled former soldiers. But as the war continued it realized that the task would be beyond charitable organ­izations’ capacity, and took to heart veterans’ claims that their welfare should be a ­matter of right rather than a charitable gift.55 In 1917, pensions w ­ ere made available for injuries and disabili-



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ties that w ­ ere aggravated by war ser­vice (prior to this change the government only paid for conditions that ­were wholly attributable to war ser­vice). To streamline distribution, the government established the Ministry of Pensions. It also increased pension rates, newly excluded them from income tax assessment, and set up appeals mechanisms.56 In 1920, rates w ­ ere further increased: a veteran with 100 ­percent disability could receive forty shillings per week, and the partially disabled less. But for ­those whose disabilities ­were so serious that they had l­ittle prospect of finding remunerative employment in the postwar economic turmoil, this pension was extremely low. Forty shillings per week compared quite poorly with the eighty-­four shillings an unskilled laborer could expect to earn weekly, or the ninety-­nine shillings earned by a coal miner.57 ­Because ­these pensions did not include an allowance for the wives and c­ hildren ­unless the ex-­serviceman was married at the time he qualified, disabled veterans had a difficult time providing for their families. In contrast, the postwar German government, to take but one example of many, increased pensions when a veteran married or had c­ hildren. A married German veteran with two ­children received a pension 40 ­percent higher than an unmarried one.58 ­Matters did improve somewhat over the course of the interwar years, but largely due to deflation rather than government largesse. Deflation reduced prices and wages, but left pensions unaffected. By 1934–35, the 100 ­percent disabled man’s annual pension of £104 was closer to the £129 an unskilled laborer could expect to make over the same period. Nonetheless, the difference was still considerable, and the wages of an unskilled worker immediately a­ fter the worst of the Depression is a low standard of comparison.59 Facing inadequate pension rates, most veterans—­disabled and healthy—­ preferred to reenter the workforce. But this was easier said than done: the vocational training assistance offered was poor, and training programs ­were closed in 1922.60 Unlike France, Belgium, and Germany, the British government did not compel private firms to employ disabled veterans. Much of the vocational rehabilitative effort was left to voluntarism; the sole scheme for reintegrating disabled ser­vicemen into the workforce was the “King’s Roll,” which appealed to employers’ patriotism and sense of noblesse oblige.61 Given the extent of unemployment among ex-­servicemen—­estimated at a quarter of a million in 1920, rising to five hundred thousand in 1924—­the lack of state assistance was a major prob­lem.62 With l­ ittle help in retraining or finding employment, l­imited and means-­tested unemployment relief, and low pensions that made no provision for f­ uture dependents, many British veterans w ­ ere 63 forced to rely on charity. Indeed, as historians have documented, the expectation of charitable provision may have been one of the reasons the British government never accepted full responsibility for the care of veterans. By 1936

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t­ here ­were more than five hundred charities operating for the benefit of ex-­ servicemen and their families. Collectively, they represented an enormous philanthropic enterprise that continued through the entire interwar period, but they ­were never able to adequately fill the gaps and shortcomings in state provision.64 This inadequacy stands out in particularly sharp relief when compared with their counter­parts in Eu­ro­pean countries and British dominions such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

British Veterans ­after World War II Just twenty-­one years ­after the end of World War I Britain was once again at war with Germany. In June 1940, Britain and its empire stood desperately alone: in just six weeks Hitler had conquered Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France, and chased the British Expeditionary Force from the Eu­ro­pean mainland in its hasty and much-­mythologized escape at Dunkirk.65 The United States had offered only lukewarm support and the USSR was allied to Germany. At this critical juncture, with Hitler offering Britain peace terms that Realpolitik would suggest should have been accepted—if only to give itself breathing space to rearm—­Britain chose defiance. The Royal Air Force managed to deny the Luftwaffe the air supremacy that was a necessary precondition for the invasion of Britain, then moved to the offensive with its morally contentious, but nonetheless effective, bomber offensive.66 British troops suffered reverses in Greece and Crete, and mixed fortunes in North Africa, but eventually, with the United States’ forces and other allies, forced Germany from North Africa, Italy, and Western Eu­rope. British seamen evacuated defeated forces, protected convoys on their way to Britain and supplying the USSR, slayed the U-­boat menace, and protected, conveyed, and supplied invasion forces. The United Kingdom conscripted nearly six million men in a war not of its choosing. Of ­these some 305,800 died, 277,100 ­were wounded, and 172,600 ­were taken as prisoners of war (POWs).67 British veterans of World War II experienced a somewhat better repatriation than their World War I counter­parts, but ­there was no dramatic break with past policy as was the case in the United States, where recognition of the poor provision for ­Great War veterans and the trou­bles this caused was one of the ­factors motivating more liberal post–­World War II provisions. This negative path-­dependent outcome for veterans—­the opposite of what had happened ­after World War II in Australia—­was largely po­liti­cal: the British government prioritized the establishment of the welfare state. While the government sought full employment for former soldiers, it did so within a



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broader policy involving the entire workforce. The attempt to provide “cradle to the grave” protection and support for all, a program that enjoyed widespread public support expressed in the landslide victory for the ­Labour Party in the 1945 general elections, reduced the resources available for veteran-­ specific benefits as well as, at least in theory, the need for them. The provision of health care, educational opportunities, and relief payments for all members of the community, while not necessarily reducing the absolute entitlements of veterans who could now look to the welfare state for assistance, reduced their relative privilege by closing the differential between veteran and nonveteran entitlements.68 It did not help that postwar Britain was relatively impoverished compared with Australia and the United States; maintaining high degrees of veteran privilege was an unaffordable luxury.69 In this po­liti­cal context, what­ever improvements w ­ ere made to the provision for veterans ­were minor when looked at in comparative perspective. What ­little t­ here was took considerable effort to win. In fact, the initial scale of pensions for veterans at the start of World War II put them at a disadvantage compared with World War I pension recipients, including a lower pension rate that was initially justified on the grounds of a lower cost of living. Not u ­ ntil 1947 did the government place the World War II generation on the same footing as their World War I pre­de­ces­sors with regard to pension rates, appeals mechanisms, and application deadlines.70 ­There w ­ ere some other gains, of varying significance. In 1943, it was accepted that the onus of proof in claims for pensions should be on the government, effectively awarding the benefit of the doubt to claimants.71 Postwar training for the disabled was markedly better than ­after World War I, and was augmented by employment opportunities in government workshops and in private industry as employers ­were now compelled to employ a percentage of disabled.72 From 1946, pensions for the disabled included an allowance for spouses even if the disabled veteran married ­after disablement, thus removing a particularly illiberal and inequitable restriction.73 Nonetheless, ­these gains amounted to l­ittle more than the removal of egregious inequities and had been won long ago in countries such as Australia. British veterans did receive some other benefits to ease their transition back into civil society, but they w ­ ere far from lavishly treated when compared with the Australian and American cases. Many received grants for fees and allowances to allow them to attend university or undertake other training, but the supply of places could not keep up with demand and many missed out, including about a third of t­ hose who wished and w ­ ere qualified to enter university.74 An unmarried private released ­after five years of ser­vice with three of them overseas might expect a ­little over £100 in gratuities and back pay. A

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significant amount of money though this was, it was far less than the monetary rewards for Australian and American soldiers, particularly given British soldiers’ notoriously poor war­time pay.75 Other mea­sures to reintegrate ex-­ servicemen and ex-­servicewomen ­were also problematic. The Civil Employment Act of 1944 required employers to provide veterans with their former jobs on their demobilization but economic changes during and a­ fter the war meant that such positions often no longer existed.76 Few veterans w ­ ere destitute, and they had many f­actors working in their ­favor that their World War I pre­de­ces­sors did not. A ­ fter the war, unemployment was relatively low, and veterans had access to the benefits of the welfare state. They w ­ ere also aided by the now well-­established British Legion, which provided ex-­service personnel with interest-­free loans to buy ­houses and establish businesses, educational grants, and other financial assistance when necessary.77 But given what they had endured and achieved, and given the benefits available to their American and Australian counter­parts, few British veterans of World War II would have considered themselves privileged. Nor did their lot improve markedly in subsequent years. The Legion campaigned to double the basic pension rate and had some success with a series of increases through the 1950s, but ­these increased at around the same percentage rate as social insurance payments, so the gains maintained the thin margin of veteran privilege rather than increasing it.78 Compared to former soldiers in most Allied nations, British dominions such as Canada and Australia, and even many of their former enemies, British veterans remained an underprivileged group.79 The British experience of the two world wars was bleak, and only partially rehabilitated by accounts of “against the odds” heroism at Mons, at Dunkirk, and during the “Blitz.” It produced no inspiring narrative frames equivalent to the Australian “birth of the nation” or American tales of the “good war” and the “greatest generation.” Nor did its veterans, as a rule, profit from their ser­vice. Not surprisingly, therefore, one searches in vain for stories of former soldiers enhanced by their war ser­vice and grateful for their postwar treatment, ­whether in memoirs or historical accounts. The World War I veterans’ voices captured in Peter Jackson’s remarkable 2018 film They ­Shall Not Grow Old speak of a depressed postwar job market in which veterans w ­ ere “not wanted” and of “no commercial value,” and of civilians being e­ ither uninterested in or uncomprehending of soldiers’ experiences and achievements.80 Seventy-­five years ­after he was blinded during the 1915 Dardanelles campaign, one British veteran told an Australian historian: “How I wish I had been an Australian. . . . ​ Your ­people looked ­after men like me, ruined by the war, while I was thrown on the scrap-­heap back home.”81 Alan Allport’s Demobbed similarly features stories of demobilization invariably characterized by disappointment and injus-



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tice, but from World War II. In one, a veteran named Ron Ayers requested to be reinstated to his former sales position at an electrical manufacturing firm but was appalled to be offered the same wage as he received when he had enlisted. Exemplifying the weakness of veterans’ horizontal status, his employer told him that the men who had not served displayed greater loyalty to the business than he had, and had earned their positions, unlike Ayers, who was reinstated only ­because it was required by law.82 At least some veterans from Australia and the United States ­after World War II had similar experiences, but in the British case veterans lacked a more heroic overarching narrative to serve as a mobilizable counterweight.

Soviet Veterans ­under Stalin ­ here was not much Stalin agreed on ideologically with US presidents or BritT ish prime ministers beyond the pragmatic anti-­Nazism that united all three sides between 1941 and 1945. But in one re­spect, Stalin, Wilson, Roo­se­velt, and Churchill agreed: veterans formed no special category of citizen and w ­ ere therefore not entitled to much special consideration. Indeed, the USSR ­under Stalin’s dictatorship belongs among the most dramatic examples of veterans ­going unrewarded for their successes on the battlefield. This denial is even more remarkable b­ ecause of the Red Army’s level of sacrifice and magnitude of achievement in World War II. Infantry in par­tic­u­lar ­were often treated like cannon fodder and ordered into b­ attle at gunpoint; they ­were often underfed, and generally treated as expendable.83 Soviet soldiers faced an extremely ruthless ­enemy that regarded them as racial inferiors and afforded them l­ittle mercy in captivity.84 Of the nearly 5.8 million POWs held by the Germans, over 40 ­percent did not survive the war—­the most lethal experience of captivity in World War II.85 Overall, close to nine million Soviet ser­vicemen and ser­vicewomen died or remained missing in action. T ­ here w ­ ere fifteen million cases of wounds, burns, or frostbite and nearly eight million cases of serious illness among members of the armed forces. This level of suffering reflected the size of the task. Red Army soldiers bore the brunt of what was then the world’s most power­f ul military mounting the biggest invasion in history. And the Red Army soldiers triumphed. At ­g reat cost they fought the Wehrmacht to a standstill, first in 1941, then again in 1942, before utterly defeating it. Despite repeated reverses, they counter-­attacked at Yelnia and Smolensk in the summer of 1941, at the gates of Moscow in the winter, in the ruins of Sta­lin­ grad in 1942–43, and on the Rus­sian steppe outside Kursk in 1943, before liberating Eastern Eu­rope and taking Berlin in 1945 in a continuous bloodbath.86

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In return for ­these considerable efforts, Red Army veterans ­were given virtually nothing. Benefits ­were meager even during the years of mass demobilization (1945–47), when a patchwork of legislation for demobilized soldiers, repatriated former POWs, decorated soldiers, and disabled veterans converged to cover most former soldiers. While some have celebrated the stingy demobilization benefits of 1945 as a “Soviet GI’s Bill of Rights,” they ­were more akin to what American soldiers received on discharge a­ fter World War I: ­free travel home, food during the journey, a uniform and shoes, and mustering-­ out pay. On return, reintegration benefits ­were promised, but seldom delivered.87 On paper, veterans had privileges with regard to housing, tax, work placement, and education. They w ­ ere supposed to receive material help in reestablishing their civilian lives. Such “Stalinist care about the h ­ uman being,” as propaganda discourse had it, prompted some historians to write about “Stalinist welfare” for war veterans.88 In practice, however, the delivery of ­these benefits was haphazard and incomplete.89 “I came home and I still live in very bad circumstances,” wrote a homeless veteran in 1946 to the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. “­Every day I go to the executive committee of  . . . ​[the province I live in]. ­Every day I appeal to the public prosecutor of  . . . ​[the province] for help. I regularly appear at the militia station and the executive committee but nowhere can I get just treatment. Nobody gives me and my ­family a place to live.” Thus, just as he had lived “in wet trenches” at the frontline, he now lived “with my f­ amily u ­ nder the open sky.”90 He was not alone. The Soviet Union had been a poor country before the war and it faced nearly incomprehensible levels of destruction. Six million h ­ ouses, seventy thousand villages, and nearly two thousand cities and towns had been destroyed according to the official count. In the regions of the country that had escaped fighting, infrastructure was crumbling, housing overcrowded, and sanitation catastrophic. Millions of Soviet citizens—­veterans or not—­were homeless. Thousands more lived in all kinds of improvised housing—­from dugouts and tents to ramshackle dormitories. ­Others shared apartments and ­houses, and made a living in hallways, kitchens, or the corners of other p­ eople’s rooms. The destruction extended to ­human life. With twenty-­seven million excess deaths, the war amounted to a demographic catastrophe. And the ­dying did not stop with Victory Day. The initial stages of the occupation of Germany ­were as chaotic as they ­were lethal, for both occupiers and occupied. Guerrilla war continued well into the 1950s in the formerly in­de­pen­dent Baltic republics and eastern Poland, all annexed in the opening stages of World War II and reincorporated into the Soviet Union at its end. Meanwhile, the rest of the Soviet Union was subject to yet another deadly famine, killing about one and a half million p­ eople in



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1946–47. ­Under such conditions, what­ever was promised to veterans could only be delivered to a minority.91 That veterans competed with other groups with similarly valid claims to state assistance made a difficult situation worse. The letters from demobilized soldiers and war invalids that piled on the desks of officials on all levels of the administrative hierarchy w ­ ere read together with t­ hose of other entitled citizens. The veterans who stood in line in dank corridors to petition the authorities rubbed shoulders with war w ­ idows and war orphans, the families of active ser­vicemen, cadres who had been evacuated far into the hinterland and who now returned, often together with their families, to the overcrowded cities, single ­mothers and ­mothers with many ­children, who had been promised increased state support in an attempt to increase the birth rate. Even repatriated citizens, seen as potentially infected with fascist or demo­cratic propaganda, shared much of the entitlements of demobilized soldiers if they had passed the “filtration” by the security ser­vices.92 During the immediate postwar years, veterans often won out in strug­gles for state assistance, not least ­because of what we have described as their “horizontal status” in the introduction to this book: other citizens largely agreed that the former defenders of the motherland deserved special treatment. This “informal status,” which, as we w ­ ill soon see, was notably fragile in China, often made the difference between receiving help and returning home empty-­ handed.93 Indeed, it could lead to privileged treatment well beyond the rights instituted in demobilization legislation.94 One veteran recalled his exam for admission to university. Rather than the rigorous academic testing he was supposed to conduct, the dean of the history faculty at the country’s top institution—­Moscow State University—­“glanced at my bar of medal ribbons, pulled my application ­towards himself and wrote something in it.” The hero thus passed on the merit of his war rec­ord.95 Such goodwill ­toward the survivors of the war against Nazi Germany was exploited by con men who posed as war heroes and made a comfortable living as a result.96 However, such individual cases of good luck did not add up to a special status for war veterans.97 Auguring poorly for their ­f uture status, the somewhat tentative honeymoon between state, society, and veterans came to an end in the late 1940s. With mass demobilization complete by 1948, concurrent with reforms to disability pensions and the abolition of privileges connected to major decorations, few formal advantages remained. From then on, state agencies showed ­little special regard for veterans, who nearly dis­appear from the archival rec­ord. Veterans complained, sometimes bitterly, about this lack of attention. “Instead of a holiday ­after four years of military life,” wrote one of them to the public prosecutor in the summer of 1945, “instead of reconstructing

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one’s ­house­hold together with one’s wife, . . . ​one has to fight against types who have not been at the front, soulless and narrow minded p­ eople,” who staffed the bureaucracy.98 Veterans thus continued to constitute what has been called an “entitlement group”—­a collectivity of p­eople who assumed they should be treated in special ways. However, ­under Stalin, the Soviet state refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of ­those feelings and did not institute a special status for its former defenders.99 Veterans received ­little to no state privilege. This Stalinist refusal followed a path established u ­ nder Lenin: demobilization a­ fter World War II replayed what had been worked out ­after World War I—­only in a less complex environment. In what used to be the Rus­sian Empire, World War I was embedded into a larger “continuum of crisis,” an “Imperial Apocalypse” where war fed revolution, which quickly transformed into multiple civil wars.100 The latter, in turn, combined conventional military operations with banditry, counterinsurgency, terror, and guerrilla warfare.101 This peculiar situation had several consequences for the history of veterans’ benefits. For one, t­ here was not one group of veterans, but three: veterans of what the new rulers called the “Imperialist War” (World War I), veterans of the Red Army, and veterans of the vari­ous “White” and “Green” forces, to say nothing of s­ imple bandits and warlords. As the Bolsheviks won the Civil War and established a new state, they related to each of t­ hese overlapping groups in peculiar ways. Their moral debt was greatest t­ oward ­those who had saved them during the Civil War, and h ­ ere former Red Guards w ­ ere the clearest case. Survivors of the original revolutionary volunteer force before the creation of the conscripted Red Army, the Red Guards ­were rewarded with higher pensions than other disabled veterans.102 Most Red Army soldiers, by contrast, had been conscripted and kept in line by threats of vio­lence flanked by concessions to ser­vicemen and their families.103 Nevertheless, the new rulers clearly preferred them over o ­ thers. While a 1919 directive noted that pensions ­were paid to both Red Army personnel and “soldiers of the former army,” the commissar of Social Welfare clarified in 1926 that his organs concentrated “first of all” on the welfare of “invalids of the Civil War and families of p­ eople, who have been drafted into the Red Army.”104 Even ­here, however, benefits ­were only available to “invalids” of the Civil War (not more than 4 ­percent of the millions mobilized), disabled of the “Imperialist War” (i.e., World War I), and the families of fallen soldiers in both conflicts.105 Besides pensions, ­these groups ­were supposed to receive practical help in everyday life from local authorities, l­abor ­unions, and places of employment, at times supported by Red Army funds and material help.106 The Bolsheviks thus never entirely forgot World War I.107 The census of 1920 counted surviving participants in the “imperialist” and “civil” wars sepa-



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rately, neatly tabulating their tallies by age and region. Overall, nearly 3.4 million veterans of the world war and just ­under a million civil war veterans ­were thus officially recognized, together constituting 4 ­percent of the population. ­Under the law of 1912, all disabled veterans would have had pension rights, and their number was considerably smaller—­only seventy-­one thousand ­were recognized as physically impaired or psychologically ill. Although this group only constituted 0.06  ­percent of the population, the Bolsheviks still abolished the law of 1912, and returned to the previous princi­ple of poor relief. What mattered for veterans’ benefits was need, not which war had caused it.108 The new rulers even increased the pension for needy disabled Imperial Army soldiers, who received the same as Red Army invalids. The Bolsheviks also recognized the claims of war w ­ idows and orphans of the tsar’s war, but, again, they w ­ ere only eligible for aid if they could show they ­were “needy.” If classified as “poor,” as many w ­ ere, World War I veterans, w ­ idows, and orphans, like their Red Army counter­parts, could also benefit from the revolutionary re­distribution of property in the village. This policy was partially a reaction to the bankruptcy of the state they had taken over, but ideology played an equal role: as revolutionary Marxists, the Bolsheviks’ bent was to discriminate based on class rather than martial ser­vice.109 The veterans of forces who had fought against the Bolsheviks in the Civil War, meanwhile, w ­ ere threatened with continued discrimination at best and persecution at worst. White officers ­were formally disenfranchised, which not only meant losing the right to vote (which might strike us as unimportant, given that voting was a merely formal m ­ atter) but also excluded them from ­careers in party and state, from higher education, from receiving rations, and from access to any state help. Former rank-­and-­file enemies w ­ ere not targeted in this formal way but ­were still subject to social exclusion.110 Guidelines for welfare workers issued in 1934 first reminded them of the moral debt to their own—­“invalids who are former Red Army men, Red Partisans, and so on, take pre­ce­dence in work placement”—­before excluding t­hose who had fought against the Bolsheviks ­after 1917: “In all of this work a firm class-­based approach is necessary. It is forbidden to place into work or train [for a new profession] socially alien ele­ments. Among t­ hose [excluded] are invalids of the White armies, kulaks, former factory ­owners, landowners, gendarmes ­etc.”111 During the ­Great Terror ­things got worse as “former Whites” w ­ ere identified as a target group of the now beginning mass terror and ­were subject to execution or lengthy concentration camp sentences.112 Many World War I veterans, therefore, found themselves persecuted rather than rewarded if they had fought on one of the many “wrong” sides in the postrevolutionary civil wars.

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Although healthy former Red Army soldiers did not receive a special ­legal status, they did constitute a favored recruitment pool for administrative positions. By 1922, 73 ­percent of the executive committees of rural soviets (the local government), w ­ ere staffed by such veterans, which was a far higher proportion than most of rural China.113 The efforts to transform soldiers into civilian cadres continued ­after the demobilization of the war­time army was complete. From 1925 onward, special courses trained t­hose soon-­to-­be-­ demobilized in specialized agricultural professions. By 1926, between 40 and 60 ­percent of all released ser­vicemen received such training. Their numbers ­were further augmented by prerelease education of ­f uture village activists—­ chairmen of rural soviets, party activists, and o ­ thers.114 But such preferential treatment only affected only a subgroup of returned soldiers. It did not constitute a special status across the board. Soviet policies ­toward veterans ­after World War II continued this basic pattern. Again, the welfare system focused on victims of war, again tried to mobilize them to work as much as pos­si­ble, and again veterans ­were denied a special ­legal status and the right to or­ga­nize. The law on generalized military ser­vice of September 1, 1939, freed conscripts from taxes on their allowance, protected their families from eviction from their places of residence, allowed them and their families to use postal communications f­ree of charge, and promised special legislation regarding disability pensions. Commanders and their families ­were, in addition, eligible for reduced apartment rents, as well as special prices for travel on trains, ships, and buses.115 On July 16, 1940, some four months a­ fter the conclusion of the Soviet-­Finnish Winter War, pensions for disabled ranks ­were legislated, followed on June 5, 1941, by the equivalent for officers. Together with rules on the aid to soldiers’ families, war ­widows, and orphans instituted four days ­after the German invasion, this legislation formed the basis for military welfare during the G ­ reat Patriotic War of 1941– 45.116 Consistent with the ­legal tradition ever since 1912, most of this legislation was targeted t­ oward soldiers and their families, not veterans. It tried to encourage faithful ser­vice, not reward past deeds. The exceptions to this rule ­were war w ­ idows, orphans, and war invalids.117 Demobilization, too, was staged as a replay of the drama of the 1920s. Again, some ­limited benefits w ­ ere promised, celebrated as extraordinary achievements of Stalinist “care for the h ­ uman being,” and sometimes even delivered. Again, most of this delivery was left to local actors drawing on local resources. Again, the main work of reintegration relied on nonstate institutions, in par­tic­u­lar the ­family.118 The authorities drew actively on their experience with the ­earlier instance of demobilization, only now they dealt with much larger numbers—8.5 million between 1945 and 1948 in most of the stan-



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dard accounts, possibly closer to ten million according to more recent reconstructions.119 They did so while ner­vously anticipating revolutionary vio­lence by ­those who had seen life outside of the “Workers’ and Peasants’ Paradise.”120 This challenge, however, did not materialize, partly ­because t­ hose who did voice antiregime sentiments ­were swiftly arrested, tried, and locked away.121 Nevertheless, the possibility that veterans could turn against the regime was enough to ensure some demobilization benefits and their grandiose cele­bration in official discourse. Once the threat subsided and demobilization had passed without too much trou­ble; once potential military opposition to Stalin’s rule had been dealt with by putting generals in their place, in prison, or against the wall; and once the insurgencies in the western borderlands ­were ­under control, benefits w ­ ere cut drastically. Privileges attached to major decorations ­were abolished in September 1947; Victory Day became a “working holiday” in December; and benefits for war invalids ­were decreased a year ­later, when mass demobilization finished, and with it the temporary privileges of the demobilized.122

Veterans in the ­People’s Republic of China ­ ntil the end of Stalin’s life in 1953—­and indeed beyond the end of Stalinism—­ U Soviet veterans w ­ ere thus again treated with benign neglect at best. Nevertheless, they would in the medium term manage to or­ga­nize and in the long run achieve both symbolic and ­legal recognition. Their status as “defeated victors” was temporary, even if many did not live to see this change. Hence, in our view the Soviet case was not the worst-­case scenario. This distinction belongs to China, which ­today is among the few countries in the world that experiences ongoing, large-­scale veteran protests, often involving hundreds and even thousands, from privates to se­nior officers—­all during a nearly forty-­year period of dramatic economic growth and peace. ­These demonstrations, taking place nationwide but generating headlines mainly when they happen in Beijing, have been sparked by a variety of ­causes: unemployment, meager benefits, inadequate health care, and a pervasive sense that war­time sacrifices are not appreciated by the government and fellow citizens.123 Protests among veterans have surprised many con­temporary observers of the Chinese po­liti­cal scene.124 In response to the legitimacy crisis caused by the 1989 Tian­anmen Square Massacre, the Communist Party has invested vast sums producing slick military-­themed films for tele­vi­sion, movie theaters, and online; Chinese citizens are entreated to watch lavish spectacles of precision-­ timed soldiers on parade; “Army Day” (August 1), in which citizens are called

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on to assist soldiers and military families, is a well-­established po­liti­cal ritual; in all official media ­People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers and veterans are lauded as victors in wars against Japan (1937–45), the Nationalists (Kuomintang; KMT), and the United States in the Korean War (1950–53) and in skirmishes with the former Soviet Union (1969) and Vietnam (1979).125 Ordinary citizens are informed ad nauseam that the Communist Party cares deeply for its military personnel and is trying its best to ensure that promised benefits are forthcoming. Furthermore, China is a high-­capacity state known for achieving many of its national objectives. In ­these circumstances, why would veterans, supposed beneficiaries of this victorious official narrative, be a major source of social instability, ranking just below farmers whose land was dispossessed by developers working in league with local officials and unemployed factory workers?126 To help quell this unrest, in March 2018 the ­People’s Republic of China (PRC) government announced the establishment of a new Ministry of Veteran Affairs in order “to better look a­ fter” former soldiers.127 While this is a bureaucratic innovation in the Chinese po­liti­cal context, stand-­ alone ministries for veterans ­were introduced de­cades ­earlier in most Western and East Asian countries. China’s learning curve when it comes to best practices in veteran administration has been strikingly slow. To more historically inclined scholars, however, con­temporary veteran protests have a familiar air about them, and are anything but counterintuitive. As in the case of research on Soviet veterans, Chinese archival and other secret intraparty documents demonstrate that the Communist Party leaders betrayed veterans’ basic interests and desires since the early years of the state. Similarly, Chinese veterans engaged in multiple forms of collective action in the 1950s, during the radical phases of the Cultural Revolution (1966–68), in the first de­ cade of economic reforms (1978–88), and into the new c­ entury. They committed suicide by the thousand in the early 1950s ­after suffering from posttraumatic stress, poverty, marital woes, and overt and more subtle forms of discrimination. Beyond official propaganda, a widespread sentiment within the Chinese state itself was that military ser­vice should not translate into civilian privilege. For their part, veterans, most of whom hailed from rural areas, colorfully compared their plight to a mule, which having done the hard work of pulling the grindstone to turn wheat into grain, is then put to death by its own­er.128 In postwar b­ attles for interests and privilege, most veterans came away with the short end of the stick. This outcome was not, as we have seen thus far, entirely uncommon. What makes the Chinese case quite unusual, and the reason we include it in a chapter about victors who turn into losers, is its politics, specifically, leaders’ decisions about (1) the “narrative of victory” (in China the state did not specifically credit “veterans,” or “demobi-



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lized soldiers” in Chinese, with victorious wars); (2) bureaucracy (­until March 2018 veterans did not have a differentiated administration); and (3) law (the Chinese government has yet to enact a statute about veterans’ benefits, so courts have ­little to no role in resolving their prob­lems). T ­ hese decisions—­ apparently made without investigating international best practices in veteran treatment (even as it copied foreign models in other areas)—­contributed mightily to veterans’ problematic status in the de­cades ­after 1949 and go a long way to explaining con­temporary unrest.129 Although it is tempting to view China’s antiveteran po­liti­cal practices as a more “generic” feature of nondemo­cratic states (authoritarian or Leninist authoritarian), or as the direct result of poverty, our comparative vantage point demonstrates other­wise. Readers might note ­here the similarities to the Soviet Union ­under Stalin. In that case the war narrative also conspired with lack of bureaucratic organ­ ization and an absence of enforceable legislation to deny veterans special status. What is special about China, however, is that this state of affairs has changed very l­ ittle in over sixty years. The Soviet Union, China’s po­liti­cal mentor, opened po­liti­cal space for veterans to or­ga­nize nationally, as did politicians in Taiwan, Germany, and Japan. ­These states also passed laws stipulating veterans’ benefits. Even without broad access to information about their international counter­parts, Chinese veterans ­were well aware of the sources of their predicament. Over many de­cades of protest, using multiple forms and across many regions, they consistently urged the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to permit them what they regarded as key to overcoming most obstacles to their status as privileged citizens: an in­de­pen­dent veterans’ organ­ization. But no association has materialized, and in its absence, they have remained at the mercy of their po­liti­cal overlords. Below we examine two policy areas where this absence was deeply felt—­their desire to acquire urban residence and to find reasonably remunerative and dignified employment. Throughout history, po­liti­cal leaders have worried about veterans in postwar periods, and conjured up a variety of methods of resettling them, such as providing land grants and employing them in large numbers in state security forces.130 The motivations for such efforts w ­ ere complex, rooted in leaders’ desire to reward supporters and coopt potential challengers, their fear of unrest among a population schooled in the use of weapons, and sometimes a genuine sense of gratitude for difficult ser­vice and sacrifice. Chinese emperors have almost always thought about veterans from a statecraft perspective, resettling large numbers of them in military colonies in frontier regions and tasking them with pacifying ethnic groups unhappy with Han Chinese rule. The results of this approach ­were mixed: veterans benefited from tax-­free land, but many fled as soon as the colonies ­were or­ga­nized.131 In ­later centuries, at

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least some veterans successfully sold their land, but how many, and how they fared afterward, is unknown. Chinese civilian officials, who might have written about this phenomenon, lacked “intrinsic and professional interest in the affairs of the army.”132 During the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the ruling Manchus—­a non-­Chinese ethnic group—­believed that their conquest of China required “perpetual full-­time mobilization,” and as a consequence never instituted a demobilization pro­cess.133 Soldiers, known as “bannermen,” did enjoy exclusive state benefits such as land grants, stipends, and affirmative action policies for the Civil Ser­vice examination, among o ­ thers, but w ­ ere banned from other occupations (such as trade) and had to work the land even though they did not want to farm.134 With provision for stipends failing to keep pace with the growth of the size of the bannermen population over three centuries, many become impoverished, and some resorted to banditry to survive. While poverty afflicted veterans in both the West and China, ­those in the West had three impor­tant advantages over their Chinese counter­parts. First, largely thanks to universal conscription introduced ­after the French revolution, Western veterans eventually enjoyed the benefits of what has been called martial citizenship, the notion that, in return for military ser­vice, a former soldier can gain the right to vote, full po­liti­cal participation, and perhaps even a modicum of re­spect, or what we call “horizontal status.”135 In China, this idea gained currency among some po­liti­cal reformers (who avidly studied the sources of Western military superiority) in the latter half of the nineteenth ­century, but it failed to establish deep roots in practice; China did not become a republic ­until 1911, and its po­liti­cal elite has never granted widespread suffrage rights, least of all to veterans.136 Second, Western veterans de­cided for themselves ­whether to take advantage of land grant programs; Australian, Canadian, American, and Roman veterans ­were not coerced as a ­matter of policy to make their living off the land. Fi­nally, veterans in the West, following the pre­ce­dent established by Caesar and Augustus, appear to have enjoyed higher levels of po­liti­cal patronage. In China, Confucian elites produced a philosophical framework that placed soldiers in a lowly position in the social hierarchy—­one had to be a prostitute to go lower. They made sure that “cultural” capital—­knowledge of the written word in particular—­rather than military prowess remained the preferred path to upward mobility, albeit one that was not always achieved in practice. The Soviet case was between ­these extremes. While relying on soldiers as pillars of the de facto social order of the Soviet warfare state, po­liti­cal leaders constantly worried about “Bonapartism.” A takeover of the revolutionary polity by an ambitious military man, a­ fter all, had proved to be the endpoint of the French Revolution, an example always on Bolsheviks’ minds.137



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How much t­ hese po­liti­cal legacies influenced the CCP’s policies t­ oward veteran resettlement despite its promilitary propaganda and rituals is not known. Central state archives in China, unlike t­ hose in the former Soviet Union, are almost impossible for foreign scholars to access, and CCP chairman Mao Zedong, who held forth on almost all issues ­under the sun and found time to compose poetry, did not publish a single document or speech on the issue. That qualification aside, it is difficult to explain how the CCP leadership ­adopted its single-­most long-­standing and detrimental policy ­toward veterans without calling attention to this historical and comparative background. Despite knowing that veterans did not want to return to impoverished (and sometimes war-­torn) villages; that they expected, having conquered the country, to be able to live where they wanted to; and that urban wages exceeded rural incomes, Chinese politicians implemented a rural resettlement policy, known as yuanji anzhi (“native place resettlement”) or more colloquially, cong nali lai, hui dao nali qu (“go back to where you came from”). Data culled from intraparty news reports and county-­and provincial-­level historical accounts (known as gazetteers) reveal the extent to which the Communist Party, despite having risen to power as a rural-­based insurgency, attempted to restrict its own veterans’ residential freedom. To be sure, t­here ­were exceptions, at least on paper: veterans who had a special technical skill and could find an employer willing to hire them—an unlikely prospect as we ­will see—­might be able to attain l­egal urban residence. In addition, t­ here was a small degree of temporal variation—in the mid-­to late 1950s t­ here ­were counties in which not a single rural veteran was permitted to move to a city, but in the years just prior to the Cultural Revolution (1964–66), when the military was “in vogue” and its soldiers promoted as national role models, more veterans w ­ ere allowed to move.138 Nevertheless, residential discrimination was official state policy even though it contradicted Article 90 in the constitution which granted citizens “freedom to change their residence.” On May 5, 1954, for example, the intraparty newspaper Internal Reference (Neibu cankao) reported on veteran resettlement in eight townships in Jianyang, a rural district in northern Fujian Province on China’s eastern seaboard.139 Among ninety-­one veterans, eighty-­eight ­were “working in agriculture”; only one had nonagricultural employment, working in a small stall.140 Local gazetteers confirm this pattern. The Civil Affairs section of Anhui Province’s gazetteer notes that they absorbed 224,344 veterans between 1950 and 1958, among whom 198,448 (88.5 ­percent) ­were returned to the countryside from which they came.141 In Shandong Province, approximately fifty thousand demobilized soldiers arrived in the first six months of 1957. Of t­hese, close to 80 ­percent returned to the countryside.142 It was only during the breakdown of state control during the Cultural

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Revolution, or, more precisely, between 1970 and 1971, when veterans temporarily gained the upper hand in this ­battle for ­legal residence.143 Many veterans resisted the government’s efforts to resettle them back to their villages, where the chances for upward mobility ­were extremely ­limited. Tactics included claiming official authorization, writing letters to higher authorities, staging parades while carry­ing aloft a picture of Chairman Mao, beating up officials who tried to force them to leave, threatening to commit suicide, and creating a ruckus inside government offices and train stations.144 They said to each other: “­You’re a fool and an idiot if you d­ on’t fight with government officials,” and when reprimanded quipped, “Party, Government—­I ­don’t give a damn!” This prompted county officials to write, “Veterans such as this should be punished, not just ‘talked to.’ ”145 Faced with this re­sis­tance, top officials blamed ­those responsible for implementing policy. Reflecting the urban bias that has characterized the CCP’s investment, grain procurement, housing, educational, and other policies, “native place return” ran headlong into a power­f ul sense of entitlement and privilege among veterans, the direct result (as in the Soviet case) of the success of the revolution, their official high status, promilitary propaganda, and sacrifices.146 Nevertheless, t­ hese feelings did l­ittle to change national policy. Many veterans of China’s war with Vietnam in 1979, much like their pre­de­ ces­sors during the Mao era (1949–76), ­were rapidly mobilized from rural regions in South and Central China, often with the promise of urban and industrial employment ­after their discharge. They, too, ­were aggrieved when such positions materialized only for a select few, leaving the majority b­ ehind to fend for themselves in the new market economy (and marriage market) that favored ­those who ­were younger and wealthier over ­those whose claim to status was war­time sacrifice.147 Much like their efforts to secure urban residence, veterans also experienced serious challenges in the l­abor market. This should hardly be surprising: historically many states strug­gled to absorb, or reabsorb as the case may be, hundreds of thousands of p­ eople into the workforce; the United Kingdom ­after World War I and World War II is a case in point. Aside from sheer numbers, veterans, having acquired new skills (technical, leadership, or orga­nizational) and a stronger sense of self-­worth and confidence during their ser­vice, often have higher expectations about upward mobility.148 As a 1946 article about American veterans put it, “Can we expect that such a man should come home . . . ​to his place ­behind the cigar ­counter?”149 In China, employment issues ­were particularly acute ­because of the heavi­ly rural composition of the military and a weaker industrial base than in the United States and USSR, albeit one that grew rapidly during the 1950s thanks to massive state investment.



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The questions before us, therefore, are twofold. First, w ­ ere policies crafted in such a way, and w ­ ere institutions put in place, to privilege Chinese veterans as employees, echoing the “preference” granted to returned soldiers in many other countries? Second, regardless of the policies, did veterans think of themselves as experiencing an exclusive state benefit stemming from their war­ time ser­vice? We would argue that national policies ­were insufficient on both dimensions, and that most veterans did not feel as if their ser­vice was rewarded and appreciated. The consequences of this reverberated throughout the polity in multiple forms of individual and collective petitions, letters, work stoppages, protests, and suicides. Much like resettlement policy, ­there is ­little available evidence of high-­level policy deliberation and planning about veteran employment during the mid-­ to late 1940s. The assumption seems to have been that most veterans would simply resume farming, accepting this sacrifice for the sake of “socialist construction,” and that ­others, following historical pre­ce­dent, could be sent to rugged frontier areas for military-­style colonization. Indeed, throughout the 1950s, entire PLA brigades and divisions ­were ordered to demobilize together, leaving the command structure essentially intact; military rank was converted to a civilian pay scale. Located primarily in Xinjiang and Qinghai Provinces in the Northwest and in the Northeast, ­these men constructed railroads, oil fields, and other large-­scale civil engineering proj­ects, as well as opened land for agricultural production. Life was hardly privileged. In 1950, for instance, a unit of twenty thousand soldiers became the “Xinjiang Production & Construction Army Corps.” Lacking any form of housing, the veterans erected grass-­ made shacks, and protected themselves from the ele­ments by raising earthen walls. In Qinghai, veterans predominated in the workforce; two thousand ­were assigned to one oil well alone, constituting some 70 ­percent of the employees; in a Xinjiang oil field, veterans represented roughly half the workforce. Some protested their conditions. A 1957 report issued by the State Council called attention to “twenty significant protests” involving veterans “in the last several years.” Four of ­these, involving roughly 1,880 ­people, ­were initiated by “collectively demobilized” veterans.150 Such veterans ­were also involved in protests during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s and into the new ­century.151 The Communist Party’s apparent lack of planning and consideration for what its veterans wanted was reflected even more clearly in urban employment. In theory, it should have been relatively straightforward to employ all veterans in appropriate positions in China’s cities and towns; unlike a market economy that empowers private employers to choose their employees, by 1956 the Chinese state had nationalized most of the economy, including the ­labor market. In practice, however, getting employers to hire veterans proved

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difficult, largely on account of a decentralized hiring pro­cess that opened a wide space for discrimination. In the planned economy, veterans’ dossiers ­were sent by Civil Affairs offices, ­labor bureaus, or short-­lived Veterans Committees to the personnel departments of the hiring units, usually together with ­those of other applicants. Since only a small percentage of Chinese firms offered full-­time jobs with socialist benefits (pensions, insurance, paid leisure activities), competition was fierce, and veterans often lost out to men who ­were younger, healthier, better educated, and, importantly, “natives” of that city; veterans ­were almost always “outsiders.” But what allowed such discrimination, examples of which we ­will see below, was poorly designed national policy that allowed l­ittle to no or­ga­nized voice to veterans. Multiple directives, ­orders, guidelines, and “Decisions” authored by central state bureaucracies and sent to institutions around the country used, intentionally we must presume, the word should with regard to the hiring and remuneration of veterans, and providing them benefits.152 The recipient institutions and individuals, however, as far as we can ascertain, ­were not punished if they did not comply.153 An even less consequentialist term—­may—­was used in a 1957 policy document referring to stipends for veterans attending vocational schools.154 Unsurprisingly, incidents of local officials taking advantage of this leeway to deny veterans’ benefits fill the archival rec­ord.155 This flexibility, however, could only go so far. China’s po­liti­cal system is Leninist authoritarian, a­ fter all. To abide by national guidelines, local officials did hire veterans. The government produced reams of statistics about how many w ­ ere hired each year. What the statistics do not reveal, however, is that, once hired, veterans w ­ ere often treated poorly by employers and fellow workers (a striking difference with Soviet World War II veterans, who enjoyed high horizontal status), or assigned to jobs that ­were demeaning, poorly paid, and well below their skill level and/or rank—­often in the hope that they would leave of their own accord.156 Examples of veterans’ losing b­ attles on the l­abor front appear in all forms of bureaucratic reporting. A 1954 report in Internal Reference about the situation in Fujian Province, ­after duly noting that rural veterans ­were resettled in the countryside thanks to the concern of the Communist Party, pointed out that not a few ­were “inappropriately resettled in cities,” leading to much dissatisfaction among veterans and creating a “bad influence on society.” In Quanzhou, for instance, an unemployed veteran was observed begging in the street. More scandalously, three female veterans ­were “working as prostitutes” for the same reason; in Ningde City, a veteran who had not found work in two years “was forced to steal” to survive. Some protested by destroying their medals and honorary certificates, telling o ­ thers that “joining the military is for-



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saking your f­uture; demobilization is basically unemployment”—­a prob­lem that they laid directly at the feet of local officials.157 When work was found, it was often temporary or contract-­based manual ­labor.158 Such positions granted no status, gave ­little security, paid low wages, and offered few medical benefits, even in the case of workplace accidents. In Shao County, Fujian, a veteran who had been assigned to work on road repair broke his leg and died as a result of his wounds; he was unable to pay for medicine or a hospital stay. News of ­these experiences spread: the death caused by the broken leg was called “too tragic” by townspeople; in Ningde students said, “It’s good we d­ idn’t join the army when they w ­ ere recruiting!” Officials who compiled this report blamed officials who “did not pay any attention to veterans ­after they ­were discharged and moved to their jurisdiction,” as well as “individual veterans” who “think of themselves as heroes” and thus “have a bad attitude” at work.159 Expecting to be treated as privileged citizens, veterans expressed ­bitter disappointment about their employment situation. Many penned letters to ­People’s Daily, the official CCP newspaper.160 But not much changed. In a 1960 investigation of four factories in Nanhui County (in the Shanghai suburbs), resentment ran deep: Many veterans feel that they risked their life fighting the ­enemy, ­were not too late participating in the revolution and have made a definite contribution to it, yet when they return to their localities their salaries are lower than almost every­one ­else’s. Two veterans make 35 yuan a month, but have four ­children and their wives ­don’t work. It’s very tough for them, but they c­ an’t raise the salary issue given the po­liti­cal atmosphere.161 Given this level of frustration and disappointment, many veterans engaged in more risky forms of protest against discrimination, such as collective petitioning, work stoppages, and even strikes.162 More tragically, unemployment (and the resulting poverty), discrimination, beatings, being framed on false charges, unrequited love, sex scandals, marriage prob­lems (often caused by poverty), chronic health issues, depression, “po­liti­cal history” prob­lems, and post-­ traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) frequently drove veterans to taking their own lives. Suicides appeared in intraparty reports from the earliest years of the regime and well into the 1960s.163 If the examples of the USSR and China suggest that Communist and authoritarian governments are less likely to reward victorious veterans simply ­because they are less accountable, the cases of the United States ­after World War I and Britain ­after both world wars confound the issue. In both cases, victor nations,

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despite being demo­cratic and having a considerable number of veterans, provided in rather meager fashion for their veterans. Chinese, Soviet, and British soldiers returned victorious, as did American soldiers ­after World War I, but received ­little consideration in return. Meanwhile, German soldiers could lose two world wars, the second one catastrophically and often criminally, and still receive significant status ­after the war. Japa­nese veterans also fared reasonably well despite a rec­ord that was not much better. Clearly, victory explains less than might be ­imagined, and is far from determinative, even when combined with a consideration of the regime type to which the victorious soldiers returned. What, then, of the complexity of the wars? Can the Chinese case, in which veterans w ­ ere granted ­little horizontal and vertical status, be explained by the distinctive features of the Chinese experience of war in the 1930s and 1940s? China’s conflicts, which involved fighting Japan for de­cades with two rival po­ liti­cal parties, each with its own army, followed by civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, make the experience of World War II for most countries appear relatively straightforward. Britain, the United States, and the USSR ­were more or less unified states (notwithstanding collaboration, civil wars in the western borderlands and the question of partisan warfare against occupation in the case of the Soviet Union) that fought shorter wars against external enemies without the added complications of major internal schisms.164 But if complexity explains anything (and it may go some small way to elucidating the poor horizontal status of Chinese veterans), it falls far short of unlocking the bigger riddle. If so, Chinese veterans would be an outlier—­but they are not. As victorious veterans treated poorly by the governments in postwar years, they have historical bedfellows in both authoritarian and demo­cratic regimes. Victory, then, is not a r­ ecipe for gaining substantial privilege. Nor is victory in wars that are fought by one nation-­state against another without civil war–­ style complications. Nor, even, is victory in demo­cratic po­liti­cal systems where leaders are unable to revert to authoritarianism to deny privilege. In the case of Britain a­ fter both world wars, and the United States a­ fter World War I, veterans did not have to contest their status as victors but nonetheless enjoyed ­little in the way of preferential treatment. So, should we now take victory or defeat off the explanatory ­table altogether? The case for ­doing so is strong if we consider the possibility of positive veteran outcomes for ­those who ­were defeated on the battlefield. As we show in the next chapter, veterans could be on the losing side yet still emerge from war with high status and standing. In ­doing so, they consign victory and defeat to the dustbin as explanatory paradigms and persuade us that we need to look elsewhere.

Ch a p ter  3

Benefits for the Vanquished

Military victory, even when decisive and fought for a cause considered legitimate, does not ensure that veterans benefit substantially in the postwar period, even in demo­cratic nations, and even when the wars are clearly delineated conflicts against other states. In this chapter we look at the counterintuitive story of veterans of defeated armies who obtained generous benefits, outpacing ­those provided to other claimant groups. Examining Germany ­after both world wars, Japan ­after total defeat in 1945, and Taiwan, the oft-­forgotten loser of the Sino-­Japanese War (1937–45) and the Chinese Civil War (1945–49), this chapter argues that defeat and discredited wars have been more problematic for war memory than for the distribution of material and symbolic benefits. Indeed, the two can be entirely detached ­because of pro-­veteran politics. To explain this difference, we must burrow into the po­liti­cal dynamics in war­time and postwar environments. What happened in Germany a­ fter 1918 and then again ­after 1945, in Japa­nese politics in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and in China and Taiwan in the early to mid-­twentieth ­century that led to a conducive environment for veterans to pursue their interests? We turn to t­ hese questions in chapter 5. In this chapter we establish the empirical case for defeat and status. We begin with Germany, move on to Japan, and end on the maybe least well-­known case in this chapter, Taiwan.

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German Veterans ­after World War I If you launched and lost two world wars which devastated your own country as well as your neighbors’ lands; if you w ­ ere complicit in the most iconic genocide in the twentieth c­ entury; if you failed to protect the w ­ omen of your nation from mass rape by an ­enemy so incensed by your criminal be­hav­ior that he lost all normal restraint in dealing with civilians—if you did all of that, could you still gain special status ­after the war? You could, it turns out, if you had chutzpah, organ­ization, and a willingness to confront a po­liti­cal elite just as implicated in the crimes of the past; this, in a nutshell, is the lesson to be learned from German war veterans’ experience in the twentieth ­century.1 Germany lost World War I, but many Germans refused to accept this s­ imple fact. Many believed that the soldiers had been undefeated in the field, but “stabbed in the back” by politicians who made revolution and capitulated to Germany’s enemies. This destructive myth undermined the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic. Right-­wing veterans’ organ­izations played an impor­tant role in this destabilization, leading the late George Mosse, a prominent scholar of the period, to conclude that poorly reintegrated war veterans w ­ ere a major ­factor in the brutalization of politics, leading to National Socialism and, ultimately, to the even greater horrors and devastation of World War II.2 More recent research has questioned Mosse’s thesis. Several historians have found that once the revolutionary upheaval that accompanied the end of the war was over, most veterans reintegrated well into postwar society.3 Only social misfits like Adolf Hitler w ­ ere prone to look for a home in the totalitarian movements of the postwar years.4 While the lit­er­a­ture written by Weimar-­ era veterans often focused on t­ hose who found it challenging to fit in, t­ here was also no shortage of descriptions of veterans who managed quite well, albeit tinged with nostalgia for the brotherhood of the trenches.5 “Perhaps it is ­because of the civilian clothes sprinkled about everywhere among the military togs,” complained Erich Maria Remarque’s protagonist in the less well-­ known sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front, “or maybe that profession and ­family and social standing, like so many wedges, have split us asunder; but certain it is, the old feeling of comradeship has gone.”6 Reintegration, however, was not just left to “profession, ­family, and social standing.” The state also took a highly active and positive role, despite the Weimar Republic being the product of an antiwar revolution against the very state that had waged World War I. As historian James Diehl noted, this republic treated veterans exceptionally well (certainly better than the British state did with regard to its own veterans). The welfare system for veterans—­already leading among Eu­ ro­ pean nations before the war—­ was fundamentally



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r­eformed. Pensions, medical care, and vocational rehabilitation “­were systematically developed and expanded.” Even former officers—­notoriously conservative and antirepublican—­received “remarkably generous” provisions. “The republic,” Diehl concluded “did the best it could and for the most part treated its veterans as well as or better than most governments.”7 This generosity, however, did not generate much gratitude. In par­tic­u­lar, a radical minority of right-­wing veterans w ­ ere disappointed with their postwar lot. “­Those who had fought in the war felt that they had a claim for a better deal than they ­were actually getting,” wrote Erich Fromm in his 1941 study of the psychological roots of modern authoritarianism. “Especially the many young officers, who for years had been accustomed to command and to exercise power quite naturally, could not reconcile themselves to becoming clerks or travelling salesmen.”8 Fromm universalized the experience of a substantial minority to an entire generation of officers. He essentially accepted, albeit with the value judgment reversed, the image projected by veterans in right-­wing organ­izations. T ­ hese protofascist and fascist organ­izations managed to coopt the image of the returned frontline soldier for their particularistic politics.9 And their hostility to the Weimar state was not the result of government neglect, but rather its opposite. In a study comparing the German situation with the British one, Deborah Cohen concluded that it was the bureaucratized welfare system itself that caused widespread frustrations, while the combination of benign neglect by the state and civil-­society benevolence of the British case was much more likely to convey the thanks of the nation.10 In an alternative interpretation, the Weimar Republic’s very generosity (rather than the inevitable red tape) doomed its relations with or­ga­nized veterans. It made it too easy not to “operate as economic-­interest groups,” and thus left the minority of former soldiers who w ­ ere or­ga­nized in veterans’ associations f­ree to play ideological politics instead.11 In ­either case, the Weimar Republic is an example not only of veterans of a lost war gaining major social ser­vices in their ­favor but also of such a welfare system failing to generate po­liti­cal loyalty to the state providing it.

German Veterans ­under National Socialism While the politics of or­ga­nized veterans did not cause the downfall of the Weimar Republic, they did contribute to the crisis that led to the rise and eventual seizure of power by the National Socialists. The Nazis, of course, ­were fond of portraying themselves as the embodiment of the war generation. The new Germany, they claimed, would restore former soldiers’ dignity and provide the

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re­spect they deserved. But beyond rhetorical flourishes and heavy-­handed symbolism, veterans’ real status declined ­under Hitler. And in sharp contrast to the republics preceding and succeeding the Third Reich, veterans w ­ ere not able to or­ga­nize freely and lobby for entitlements. The existing veterans’ organ­ izations ­were quickly “coordinated” (gleichgeschaltet) and transformed into part of the mobilizational apparatus of Hitler’s totalitarianism. ­There w ­ ere four organ­izations, each catering to a specific group: the Kyffhäuserbund for veterans of World War I, the Soldatenbund for Wehrmacht veterans, the National-­Sozialistische Kriegsopferversorgung (NSKOV) for the disabled, and the Reichsoffiziersbund (RDO) for retired officers. ­These ­were intended to mobilize veterans for the National Socialist cause and convince them that insufficient legislation was only a temporary shortcoming, to be overcome once victory and conquest would make Germany g­ reat again.12 Eventually, three of t­hese organ­izations ­were merged into a superor­ga­ni­za­ tion for veterans, making former soldiers a highly vis­i­ble and even celebrated part of the Nazi order. While ­doing nothing for the economic or ­legal position of former soldiers, the Nazi regime managed to convince its enemies that veterans w ­ ere an essential part of Hitler’s regime. Indeed, their high symbolic status seemed to link them to pre–­World War I German society, thereby suggesting that Nazism was only a radicalized version of the deeper-­seated prob­ lem of “German militarism.” Hence, as in the case of Japan, the Allies quickly outlawed veterans’ associations and canceled their benefits a­ fter 1945.13

West German Veterans a ­ fter World War II ­ fter World War I, veterans on the po­liti­cal Right could still believe that they A had not been beaten in the field of ­battle, and that it had been Jews, social demo­crats, and w ­ omen who had stabbed them in the back, robbed them of their masculinity, and turned them from warriors into victims of war.14 But ­after World War II such male fantasies ­were much harder to sustain. The glorious Wehrmacht had been decisively vanquished, German cities catastrophically devastated, their own lands (and their ­ women) despoiled so comprehensively that any posturing of the soldier as “undefeated in the field” would have been laughable.15 The moral crisis of total defeat was all-­encompassing. ­Every adult could know that the war in the Soviet Union had been criminal. ­Those who did not want to know had to ignore the postwar newspapers, which reported on the Nuremberg War Crime ­Trials, the (failed) indictment of the military as a



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“criminal organ­ization,” the “criminal ­orders” of 1941, and much besides.16 Already in 1941, the Holocaust by shooting had been an open secret, and civilians pleading ignorance had to try very hard to misremember what they had read in the letters from their loved ones fighting in “the East.”17 By 1945, Germany, home of the master race, was occupied by the subhuman Rus­sians, the effeminate French, the uncultured Americans, and the En­glish traitors to the Aryan race.18 Soon, the country that the Wehrmacht had tried to expand well beyond the borders prescribed by the national anthem (“Von der Maas bis an die Memel/von der Etsch bis and den B ­ elt”) was divided into two truncated states: the Communist German Demo­cratic Republic (GDR) and a cap­ i­tal­ist Federal Republic. In the latter, to which most former soldiers returned, many feared they would have to own up to what they had done while in uniform.19 Such anx­ie­ ties ­were heightened as veterans found themselves competing for welfare with surviving Jews, displaced persons from Eastern Eu­rope and the Soviet Union, German refugees and expellees, war ­widows and orphans, veterans of previous wars, and “war damaged” civilians who had lost home and hearth, limbs and sanity, loved ones and breadwinners in the apocalypse Germany had unleashed.20 A worse environment for building a veterans’ movement and veteran privilege is difficult to imagine. Veterans ­were direct targets of the victors’ wrath.21 The role or­ga­nized veterans had played in the downfall of the Weimar Republic, their central symbolic status in the Third Reich, and the assumption that Nazism was a radical expression of deep-­seated German militarism all conspired to make them into obvious targets of occupation policy. Breaking German militarism once and for all demanded dismantling veterans’ high status and denying them any peacetime “reward” for the bloody business of soldiering.22 During the occupation period (1945–49), veterans’ organ­izations ­were prohibited, pensions canceled, and the separate benefit system for former soldiers of the Weimar and Nazi years dismantled. As was the case in Japan, war veterans in need of state assistance w ­ ere to be treated just like other welfare recipients. This “civilization” of veterans, their treatment as simply disadvantaged civilians, broke with a long tradition of German social policy that saw demobilized soldiers as more deserving than other Germans in need. Having fought and lost two world wars, it seemed, German veterans fi­nally reaped the rewards for defeat. Their special status in the German polity seemed over once and for all.23 And yet, within a few years veterans of Hitler’s war openly celebrated their war­time bonds and commemorated fallen comrades. As one memoirist recounts his incredulity about the resurgence of the ­bearers of the highest Nazi combat award, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross (Ritterkreuz):

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If somebody would have told me back in 1945, that the ­bearers of the Iron Cross very soon would be or­ga­nized in an “order” (Ordensgemeinschaft) and meet annually to celebrate their heroism with g­ reat bombast; that they would be greeted, to the tunes of an army band, by the local mayor and by generals of the German army (Bundeswehr)—­I would have thought it the effusion of a sick brain. On such official occasions, on each chest dangles the Iron Cross, suspended carefully around the neck on a black-­white-­and-­red ribbon, the order, which in its very center is adorned with a fat, unmissable swastika.24 Such meetings w ­ ere routine affairs. The year 1951 saw not only a controversial debate about rearmament of West Germany but also a foundational boom in unit-­based veterans’ organ­izations.25 Ultimately, ­these “tradition associations” (Traditionsverbände) became more impor­tant for the German veterans’ movement than the e­ arlier associations of par­tic­u­lar groups of potential welfare recipients: war disabled, returned prisoners of war (POWs), and c­ areer officers in search of their pensions.26 The reach of the latter declined, both ­because they had essentially won the fight for the restorations of their benefits by the early 1950s and ­because attempts at uniting them into one large and po­liti­cal association of all war veterans spectacularly imploded in the aftermath of a 1951 press conference where the leader of the new organ­ization showed his true colors. World War II, he charmingly asserted, had been Poland’s fault; the Wehrmacht had saved Eu­rope from Bolshevism; officers who had tried to kill Hitler w ­ ere traitors; and the Waffen-­SS was a heroic fighting force.27 The ensuing international scandal—­were the Nazis again on the march in the German veterans’ movement?—­ended any prospect of a resurgence of Weimar-­style veteran politics on the right.28 As early as the mid-1950s most veterans had successfully reintegrated into postwar society. West Germany’s veterans’ benefit system provided much of their economic, social, and medical needs, and the highly consultative way this system had been instituted integrated mainstream veterans’ organ­izations into the po­liti­cal system to an extent unimaginable in Weimar. The growing largesse of the German welfare state engulfed in an unpre­ce­ dented economic boom even managed to buy off fringe ele­ments. Despite “fire-­eating editorials” in its publications, the organ­ization of Waffen-­SS veterans “eventually became a Traditionsverband cum interest group, whose main goal was pensions, not a restoration of the Third Reich.”29 The euphemistically named “Mutual Aid Society” (Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit, or HIAG) grew out of ad hoc drinking meetings at local pubs (Stammtische), which, by late 1950, began to form a loose association. By October 1951, HIAG



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included some 376 local branches of former Waffen-­SS soldiers. In the following year, the organ­ization drew up bylaws, which demanded that the former elite Nazis be granted “civil and po­liti­cal equality with the [veterans] of the other branches of the Wehrmacht” and “the l­egal incorporation of the Waffen-­SS within the social and economic benefit structure” of the republic. Their claim to benefits relied on a breathtaking misrepre­sen­ta­tion: that the Waffen-­SS was “the fourth branch of the Wehrmacht” and not an elite armed unit of the Nazi Party. But the attempts to get state funding for its constituency also relied on declaring “loyalty to the federal Republic of Germany and its democratic-­parliamentary structure,” which the bylaws duly proclaimed. At the height of its influence, in the late 1950s, HIAG had or­ga­nized between 4 and 8 ­percent of the survivors of Hitler’s elite. ­After winning partial inclusion of its constituency into veterans’ welfare legislation in 1961, membership quickly dropped, a trend further accelerated when, in 1972, HIAG was placed on a list of radical right-­wing organ­izations to be monitored by the state.30 From then on, HIAG, boiled down to a hard core of true believers, became increasingly marginalized, a pro­cess completed in the 1980s.31 In the meantime, the Traditionsgemeinschaften of the former Wehrmacht flourished. Between 1951 and well into the 1970s, Wehrmacht veterans w ­ ere integrated into West German society with a casualness “barely imaginable ­today,” as one historian wrote. Larger socie­ties—­there ­were at least two thousand formal associations in the 1960s—­were at pains to stress that their meetings ­were not militaristic or revanchist. This veterans’ movement was many ­things, but first of all it was gemütlich—an untranslatable German term encompassing coziness and cheerful belonging. “Bourgeois sociability and entertainment,” that is, chowing sausage sizzles, imbibing beer, and grooving to oompah m ­ usic, ­were the order of the day. Memories of combat w ­ ere secondary in such ­family gatherings.32 Smaller groups, however, openly celebrated their war­time exploits away from wives and kids: Once, in a posh pub at the German-­Austrian border, by random coincidence, I encountered a social eve­ning (Kameradschaftsabend) of such undaunted warriors of the Second World War. They ­were Bavarians and Austrians from the Steiermark. They met ­there regularly. Patting each other on the back with shining eyes they told their stories, accompanied by the admiring murmurs of their comrades. One recounted how he had shot a cowardly r­ unning Frenchman “in the arse.” His neighbor narrated how he shot Rus­sian pi­lots, suspended from their parachutes, “out of the sky”: happy memory of shooting skeet. A third remembered how he “made short work” of a captured partisan.33

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Like everywhere ­else, of course, such or­ga­nized veterans ­were in the minority—­estimates vary from maybe 5 ­percent to a maximum of 35 ­percent in the 1950s.34 Many more preferred silence and privacy. “He once had been / in Rus­sia,” reads a poem written by a man who had managed to avoid this fate; “nobody / w ­ ill get him back t­ here / what he has seen / and done t­ here / he buried deep / inside himself.”35 We return to this pro­cess of repression of “toxic knowledge” about the recent past in chapter 5.36 ­Whether they celebrated their past war with comrades, attended beer-­song-­ and-­wurst reunions with their regiment, or just stayed at home, German veterans not only had recovered their social status but also enjoyed strong state support. This recovery was path dependent—it returned to the system set up in the Weimar Republic, which in turn had elaborated a longer tradition. Germany eventually became represented in the World Veterans Federation (WVF) from 1953, but the po­liti­cal ­battles for recognition preceded this internationalization.37 The German case is thus not one where international entanglement prompted pro-­veteran legislation. Rather, the German case was used by the WVF as a positive example to be emulated elsewhere. In a 1955 report distributed to its constituents all around the world, it promoted West Germany as a comprehensive system of welfare for returned soldiers: The Ministry of ­Labor in each of the federated states, ­under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of L ­ abor, has attached to it a special rehabilitation board (Versorgungsamt) which is responsible for all ­matters connected with pensions and other monetary compensations and with rehabilitation in general. Medical care, with the exception of prosthetic ser­vices, is provided for through the regular Sick-­relief Funds. Vocational rehabilitation is or­ ga­nized by the ordinary employment authorities with the collaboration of rehabilitation agencies (Hauptfürsorgestellen).38 Medical care was provided ­under legislation covering disabled veterans, war ­ idows, war orphans, caregivers of seriously dependent veterans, and their w immediate families. ­There ­were “special rehabilitation hospitals” for disabled veterans and civilians in most states, which also operated facilities for the totally incapacitated and provided four-­to eight-­week “walking courses” for amputees newly fitted with prosthetics. Medical treatment was f­ ree for seriously disabled veterans, their caregivers, and dependents, no m ­ atter the cause of the ailment (that is, it was not necessary to establish a causal link to war ser­vice, often a point of contention in veterans’ benefit schemes). Veterans’ associations ran their own “homes for the brain-­injured and other seriously disabled veterans,” and a wheelchair allowance could be transferred to buying “a



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special motor tricycle” or a bicycle “if that is more suitable,” for which annual upkeep allowances ­were also provided. Disability pensions ­were available for veterans who had been diagnosed with an illness or injury during their ser­ vice or within one year of demobilization. ­Later diagnoses could also be valid if a direct link to a service-­connected injury could be established. Vocational training was provided f­ ree of charge. In addition to providing a disability pension, the state also gave disabled veterans “loans for the purpose of building or buying a h ­ ouse or flat, farming, setting up business or purchasing equipment. Assistance is given for ­children’s education.”39 This snapshot captured a trend: care for “victims of war” (Kriegsopferversorgung) remained a major task of the federal government. By 1950, three billion marks had been spent on benefits for war victims, representing a whopping 34 ­percent of state revenue.40 Such expenses would have been hard to sustain had the economy not gone from strength to strength during the emerging postwar economic miracle. Despite an expansion of the benefits legislation, by 1960 only 9 ­percent of the federal bud­get was allocated to war victims, providing 1,204 marks per capita per annum to ­those eligible (or US$300.74).41 By international comparison, pension rates w ­ ere relatively low in Germany in the early 1950s (US$277 per annum, compared with US$491 in ­Great Britain, US$540 in Greece, US$1,036 in Israel, or US$2,172 in the United States), but such difference partially reflected exchange rates and the situation of a country still in the pro­cess of escaping the postwar economic crisis, albeit at a very fast rate.42 In real terms, a German veteran on a full disability pension was unlikely to go hungry. His financial resources ­were enough to buy 606 kilograms of potatoes a month, or 111 kilograms of bread, or 373 eggs. That was a far cry from the 2,742 eggs his US counterpart could afford (if he spent no money on anything ­else), but it was not a starvation rate (as was often the case in the victorious Soviet Union).43 The efforts of the postwar welfare state to care for Hitler’s veterans was indeed remarkable given that the over 1.5 million war pensioners made up 3 ­percent of the population. Of the countries listed in the veterans’ benefit study—­which had no information on the Soviet Union or China—­only the United States had a larger number (nearly two million), but they formed only 1.2 ­percent of the population in a much richer society nearly untouched by direct war damage.44 And the number continued to grow. Eventually, more than four million p­ eople received payments as victims of war in West Germany.45 This state of affairs was the result of determined legislative activity between 1950 and 1954, when benefits for disabled veterans and returned POWs ­were written into law while pensions for ­career officers ­were reestablished.46 This legislation was driven by a highly consultative pro­cess between the state

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and the new organ­izations of war victims, returned POWs, and former ­career officers.

East German Veterans a ­ fter World War II The lit­er­a­ture on the other German successor state to the Third Reich (besides Austria, which reclined on the comfortable status of the “first victim of Nazism”) is less well developed. Given what the Wehrmacht had done in conjunction with the Einsatzgruppen and police battalions in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, veterans in the Soviet-­occupied east of Germany had ­every right to expect the worst. And, indeed, Stalin had proposed in Tehran in November 1943 to shoot “fifty thousand” German officers and technicians in order to extirpate German militarism once and for all. ­After Churchill’s angry intervention, this proposal quickly turned into a joke.47 But given Stalin’s track rec­ord, one can doubt ­whether he was joking. During the ­Great Terror of 1937–38 the dictator had presided over the execution of 60 ­percent of his own army’s marshals, 94 ­percent of army commanders, 90 ­percent of corps commanders, and 68 ­percent of division commanders, whom he unjustly suspected of treason.48 In occupied Poland in 1940, he ordered the shooting of well over twenty thousand of the Polish equivalent to ­those he proposed to put against the wall in Germany.49 It is also chilling that Stalin’s number—­fifty thousand—­was fairly close to the fifty-­eight thousand demobilized officers the Allies eventually classified as “potentially dangerous.”50 Given such pre­ce­dent and “jokes,” the Soviet regime in East Germany turned out to be remarkably benign. Once the initial lawlessness had ended and rampaging Red Army soldiers and looting displaced persons had been reined in, surprisingly few ­were shot.51 Between 1945 and 1955, fewer than three thousand Germans w ­ ere sentenced to death in Soviet-­occupied 52 Germany. The surviving veterans ­were not neglected but also not elevated to the extent that happened in the west. In the Soviet-­occupied east, their needs ­were integrated into the socialist welfare state. ­After pension payments had been abolished together with the administrations in charge of them, veterans ­were treated as civilians: “Benefits ­were l­imited to ­those who qualified for general welfare.”53 ­There w ­ ere fewer of them in the workers’ paradise: The Soviet zone was smaller than the combined western zones, and both the soldiers demobilized in the chaos of 1945 and l­ater returnees from war­time captivity often tried to reach the occupation zones of the western Allies, terrified of “the Rus­sians” and “the Communists.” Nevertheless, since 1948, in the GDR, too, soldiers



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who returned from the war or from captivity with “physical damage of at least 66%” (!) w ­ ere eligible for pension payments, although h ­ ere the payment was 54 adjusted downward depending on other income. As in the West, they w ­ ere reintegrated as victims, with the exception of a minority of war criminals who ­were prosecuted.55 As in West Germany, too, the new “National P ­ eople’s Army” relied to a significant extent on former Wehrmacht officers, however “antifascist” they now might be. Associations, however, remained taboo, just as in the Soviet Union u ­ nder Stalin.56 The reintegration of Hitler’s veterans in the GDR did not rely on the myth of the “clean Wehrmacht.” On the contrary, the crimes of the “fascist Wehr­ macht” w ­ ere an impor­tant part of the official discourse about the past. But the historic guilt of Wehrmacht soldiers was collective rather than individual: former soldiers confessed their general guilt as part of Hitler’s army, but ­were exculpated immediately through their alleged conversion to antifascism in Soviet captivity. Only t­hose whose claim to this transformation could be challenged—in par­tic­u­lar ­those returning from US, British, or indeed Yugo­slav detention—­would be excluded from postwar East German society.57 Once reeducated into antifascists, Hitler’s former soldiers could return and show their devotion to the GDR by their work for the new regime and the rebuilding of their new state. By the end of 1952, therefore, most officers of the “fascist Wehrmacht” w ­ ere officially declared rehabilitated by the po­liti­cal leadership of the new state.58

Japa­nese Veterans ­after World War II Like the Germans a­ fter 1945, postwar Japa­nese had to come to terms with all-­ embracing, unconditional defeat at the hands of the Allies. ­After nearly eight years of total war, starting in China (1937) and then expanding to much of Southeast Asia in 1941, Japan lost its empire, including all countries occupied during the war (China, Burma, the Philippines) as well as ­those that formed its foundation prior to World War II, such as Manchuria (1932), ­Korea (1910), and Taiwan (1895). The death toll from the war years was staggering. According to a postwar official history, roughly 2.3 million soldiers and sailors w ­ ere killed, in addition to an estimated five hundred thousand to one million civilian casualties, including t­ hose incinerated in strategic raids on Osaka, Kobe, Nagoya, and Tokyo, and the two atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.59 The roughly five million military personnel who survived the war surrendered to Allied forces wherever they happened to be and, courtesy of the US Navy, ­were repatriated between 1945 and 1947, with the exception

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of ­those who survived Soviet captivity (mainly from Manchuria) who ­were repatriated in the mid-1950s.60 Back in Japan, t­ hese veterans, like ­those in Germany, found themselves competing for scarce resources with civilians who suffered tremendous privation during the war and confronting the US-­led occupation authority (known as the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers, or SCAP) determined to snuff out the remaining vestiges of the Japa­nese military and the culture of “militarism” that had supported it since the Meiji-­era military reforms of the 1870s. For instance, on November 13, 1945, SCAP ordered the dissolution of the Military Protection Agency, which provided veteran care before and during the war, and on November 24 Memorandum #338 ordered the Japa­nese government to stop all public and private annuities, assistance money, and pensions (which had been issued since 1938) to “military personnel and other persons disabled ­because of war injuries,” which included the war bereaved (parents, w ­ idows, orphans), and disabled, and other veterans.61 Tokushima shinbum, a regional newspaper, called t­hese changes “fitting punishment for individuals deemed responsible for the war,” while SCAP asserted that “the pension system [for the war bereaved] is a means to perpetuate the soldiers’ class status by heredity, which became a significant source of Japan’s aggressive policies.”62 Fearing the right-­wing activism veterans became known for in the prewar years, in January 1946 occupation authorities banned all military, “militaristic,” and quasi-­military social organ­izations, and a month ­later Japan’s Ministry of Welfare was prohibited from providing any form of “preferential treatment” in welfare provision—­a move “intended partly to eliminate special government support for war veterans and their families” (including the war­time priority system for veterans in hospital care) as a means of both demilitarizing and demo­cratizing Japa­nese politics and society.63 However, in a sequence of events foreshadowing veteran politics a­ fter the occupation, only two years l­ater, largely as a result of lobbying from Japa­nese welfare officials, some 325,000 disabled veterans, many of them amputees, not only accessed new state-­ supported rehabilitation programs for civilian disabled p­ eople but constituted a majority (65 ­percent) of their patients.64 According to the Japa­nese historian Takemae Eiji, the Ministry of Welfare “came to play a vital role in alleviating the distress of the Emperor’s impecunious and discredited former soldiers and sailors.”65 Despite the somewhat dif­fer­ent circumstances of their repatriation, Japa­ nese veterans of World War II shared an impor­tant characteristic with their counter­parts in Germany and Taiwan: a poor reputation that raised many doubts about their worthiness for postwar benefits. In Taiwan, as we w ­ ill soon



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see, Nationalist (Kuomintang; KMT) soldiers could hardly claim credit for defeating Japan during World War II or “liberating” Taiwanese from the yoke of Japa­nese imperialism given the rapaciousness of early KMT rule and the benefits Taiwan received as an efficiently managed “model colony.” In Japan, veterans faced serious questions about their war­time actions thanks in part to reports of military atrocities that circulated widely in the immediate postwar years, encouraged by US authorities who wished to discredit the Japa­nese military and eliminate it as a force in Japa­nese po­liti­cal and social life.66 In a notorious case, a veteran named Kodaira Yoshio (1905–49) murdered multiple Chinese ­women, some of them pregnant, with bayonets. He then returned to Japan, where he became a serial rapist and murderer. Other veterans earned a poor reputation in less horrific ways by joining gangs and engaging in black marketeering and theft as survival strategies. Unsurprisingly, not a few films depicted veterans as menacing figures who threatened the postwar social order ­because of their war experiences or inability to re­adjust to civilian life.67 Much like the troubled veterans in the film The Best Days of our Lives in the United States (1946), t­ hese film-­version Japa­nese veterans could reintegrate only with substantial assistance from ­family and friends—­the government presumably did nothing to help them.68 Academic studies of Japa­nese veterans in the postwar era, unlike their counter­parts in the West, have been rare, reflecting the broader tendency to focus on the “happier” story of Japan’s seemingly miraculous economic recovery and resurgence, or on stories in which the protagonists have already died (such as kamikaze pi­lots) or fit the postwar “victim” narrative, such as the war bereaved. Except for Lee Pennington’s pathbreaking 2015 work on disabled veterans—­the first full treatment of this population since the end of World War II—­scholars (mostly historians) have incorporated veterans mainly as a mechanism to explore issues such as the decline of empire and decolonization, Japan’s problematic relationship with its war­time past, and the per­sis­ tence of right-­wing nationalism. Thanks to the explosive growth in voter rolls, publications, and po­liti­cal parties in the immediate postwar period (which ­were closely tracked and analyzed by SCAP’s power­f ul “G-2” military intelligence arm whose rec­ords are accessible in the U.S. National Archives), the years 1945–52 have received the lion’s share of attention.69According to this scholarship, veterans fared poorly, and disabled veterans worst of all. John Dower’s magisterial Embracing Defeat, for example, devotes one section to veterans ­under the subheading “Despised Veterans,” noting that the very same communities that sent soldiers to war “often did not welcome them back” b­ ecause they w ­ ere “losers”; that veterans “received hostile glances” when p­ eople learned about

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war atrocities; and that disabled veterans and ­those with post-­traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) ­were deeply stigmatized. He cites one veteran who wrote that “not a single person gave me a kind word.”70 Pennington similarly argues that disabled veterans ­were “forgotten men,” “casualties of history,” and “forgettable embodiments of an unjust war” who ­were reduced to pitiable figures begging on streets. They ­were not regarded as worthy of preferential treatment on the basis of their “social identity as veterans,” leaving the field of public sympathy open to conquest by war ­widows and the war bereaved as “acceptable icons of sacrifice.”71 Other historians have found that veterans (and civilians) who w ­ ere captured and spent years in China or the USSR returned only to find employers wary of hiring them (lest they ­were influenced by Communism), and society unwelcoming. Such veterans ­were at best living memorials of war­time loss, or at worst traitors for publicly criticizing crimes committed by the Japa­nese military on their repatriation.72 War ­widows, according to Hiroko Storm, ­were embedded in a roughly similar narrative structure: ardent supporters of the military during the war who ­were victimized a­ fter it was over.73 This perspective makes intuitive sense. ­After all, most Japa­nese did not choose to go to war with China and the United States, did not elect its militarist governments, and suffered tremendous loss of life and property during the war. Why should veterans reap benefits from their ser­vice to the disastrous cause of war­time nationalism? While commonsensical, this perspective omits impor­tant pieces of contrary evidence, some of it contemporaneous. While it is the case that Japa­nese publications in the late 1940s called attention to troublesome veterans, particularly their prominence in black market activities, as well as to their difficulties reintegrating into civilian society, not all news was negative. SCAP’s Research and Analy­sis Division, for example, found a survey of “fourteen representative places of employment” (such as banks, factories, government offices and corporations) in the business newspaper Jitsugyō no Nihon, focusing specifically on the hiring of veterans. According to the paper, “most of t­ hese places of employment are accepting demobilees with kindness, even at the sacrifice of many positions which have hitherto been filled by ­others.” SCAP analysts concluded that citizens’ treatment of veterans—­what we have called their horizontal status—­was “generally good.” SCAP also cited Japa­nese publications that praised the government’s new (1947) “Livelihood Assistance Law,” which, although not legislated with veterans or even military personnel specifically in mind, was “of g­ reat benefit” to them.74 (Indeed, subsequent studies found that “most of the initial beneficiaries w ­ ere handicapped veterans, families of soldiers killed in b­ attle, and the chronically unemployed.”)75



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Not all was gloomy in the cultural realm ­either. During the 1950s the image of veterans in film and lit­er­a­ture changed to the extent that even a veteran suffering from PTSD and who “still believed he was in the war” could be warmly embraced by the community “unconditionally accepting both him and his never-­ending war.”76 Po­liti­cally, veterans’ organ­izations—­some with seven hundred thousand members—­engaged in overtly po­liti­cal activities when the United States asked the Japa­nese government to rearm in 1951 b­ ecause of the Korean War. ­These organ­izations mobilized support for defense spending and attempted to influence policymaking in that area.77 At a more individual level, some veterans felt comfortable enough to write their memoirs immediately ­after the war.78 But perhaps the most critical nugget of evidence missing from the narrative of “Japa­nese veterans as undeserving losers” is simply money, specifically the US$361 billion spent by the central and prefectural governments on “compensation” for millions of veterans and their families between 1952 and 1994, of which three-­quarters was spent on military pensions.79 Throughout the occupation years, as historians have rightly noted, SCAP was “consistent” in its refusal to lift the ban on veterans’ benefits, frustrating Japan’s Ministry of Welfare. But a mere two days a­ fter the occupation ended and Japan regained its sovereignty, the ministry introduced the draft of the “Law for War Invalids and Families of the War Dead,” which passed on April 30, 1952. The military pension system (Act 155) was reinstated in August 1953, six years before the civilian pension system was introduced.80 Administered directly by the Prime Minister’s Office’s Compensation Bureau, the pension law was designed to provide “regular compensation” to military personal who served thirteen years or more as warrant officers or above (12.5+ years for noncommissioned officers), as well as “temporary compensation” to t­ hose who served “at least seven years continuously,” with specific amounts varying by rank at the time of discharge.81 In effect, Act 155 covered most of the prewar officer and noncommissioned officer (NCO) corps and ­those drafted when the war with China began in 1937.82 Between 1953 and 2007, the law has been amended thirty-­ five times, and all but three w ­ ere cost-­of-­living increases.83 Spending on veterans was a state priority. According to an internal bud­get history of Act 155, between 1953 and 1988 expenditures on veterans significantly surpassed the bud­geted allotment (to take a typical year, in 1969 the state bud­geted ¥2,303 million but paid out ¥28,000 million), forcing the government to borrow to cover the deficit. At its peak, Act 155 provided some form of material support to 2,800,000 veterans, which represented at least one-­third of all returning veterans from the empire, and perhaps as many as two-­thirds, depending on the assessment of how many veterans ­there ­were.84

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Aggregate figures such as ­these, however, do not answer what is perhaps the more critical question: was individual compensation enough to make a difference in everyday life, or was it ­little more than poor relief u ­ nder a nicer name? For high-­ranking officers and warrant officers t­here is ­little question that veteran status provided good benefits: in 1953, admirals and generals received a base annual pension of ¥494,000 ($1,372, calculated at the exchange rate of $1 = ¥360) and the latter ¥87,000 ($241) at a time when the average annual expenses for an urban ­family of 4.92 ­people ­were ¥256,572 ($712), or $60 per month.85 Lower down the military hierarchy, ordinary veterans (lance corporals and below), most of whom ­were bachelors prior to enlistment, received monthly stipends ($3.40) that could cover roughly 15 ­percent of their living expenses in the countryside—­where most lived since the military recruited very heavi­ly ­there.86 Veterans’ families continued to receive ­these benefits ­after veterans passed away. In other words, veteran officers—­some of whom surely presided over war­time atrocities—­did well; lower-­ranking officers with families in cities ­were able to meet monthly expenses more easily; rural, lower-­ranking bachelor veterans had some extra income. Disabled veterans and their wives received additional funding based on their level of disability, rank, and time of ser­vice. ­These benefits—­administered by a dedicated, high-­status state authority—­have left the impression among Japa­nese that veterans have been “well-­compensated,” particularly in reference to other claimant groups from the war, such as regular civilians and orphans.87 Such groups also felt envious of war ­widows and the bereaved when the government awarded them compensation in 1952.88 As was the case in many other places, veteran privilege was expressed through payments to members of veterans’ ­family circle, not just to veterans themselves. Given Japan’s dire postwar economic circumstances and the tremendous size of its veteran population, the “enormous amount of money compensating veterans,” as well as the war-­bereaved, should be considered reasonably generous.89 That said, Japan’s veteran assistance program left many b­ ehind. Among Japa­nese citizens, soldiers who joined ­later in the war—­for example, ­after the attack on Pearl Harbor—­were not eligible for payments ­because of the seven-­year minimum requirement.90 Nor ­were the many civilians in Manchuria, ­Korea, China, and elsewhere who had been detained immediately ­after the war, some of whom spent time in POW camps. Pressed by ­these claimants, the Japa­nese government eventually established the Public Foundation for Peace and Consolation, which provided a onetime, largely symbolic ¥100,000 “consolation award” (a paltry $800 at 1988 exchange rates), as well as other tokens of recognition such as a set of official documents noting their



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ser­vice (signed by the prime minister), and for ­those over seventy years old, a silver cup.91 Non-­Japanese veterans have found themselves almost entirely excluded from the circle of official compensation: none of the benefits described above could be provided to noncitizens. As a result, ethnic Korean soldiers residing in Japan prior to World War II, colonized Taiwanese and Koreans drafted for the war effort, and ­those pressed into ser­vice as corvée ­labor in countries ­under Japa­nese occupation, ­were excluded from receiving Japa­nese government benefits.92 This situation persisted ­until 1987, when the Diet, responding to years of public pressure and lawsuits, passed two laws offering “condolence money” for colonial subjects, mainly in Taiwan.93 In May 2000, the Diet awarded a lump sum payment of ¥4 million ($37,000) to Koreans, Taiwanese (“Formosans”), and other Asians who served in the Japa­nese military; ­widows of veterans received $24,000. However, only an estimated two to three thousand p­ eople could have benefited from this reluctant gesture e­ ither ­because of aging or ­because compensation was restricted to “permanent residents” of Japan.94 ­These noncitizen and nonresident veterans, rather than Japa­nese nationals, ­were, on balance, the true losers in postwar politics over war-­related compensation. Ignored for de­cades by Japa­nese authorities, they w ­ ere also denied benefits by the postwar governments of Taiwan and ­Korea. In Taiwan, many of ­these veterans served in the Japa­nese military and participated in the anti-­KMT uprising in 1947. They found themselves “suspected of disloyalty by their new motherland” and often unemployed. As one recalled, “I was like a stray dog.”95 Denied even the semblance of an honorable defeat, they ­were deprived of any agency in how their experiences ­were memorialized po­liti­cally and culturally for nearly four de­cades.96 In ­Korea, discontented veterans played an impor­tant part in the violent unrest that afflicted that country over de­cades.97

Veterans on Taiwan Much like Japan in 1945 and Germany ­after both world wars, veterans of the Nationalist Party (perhaps better known by its acronyms KMT or GMD) belong in that inglorious ­family of collapsed, defeated states. But unlike China, which remained China, and Germany, which remained Germany—­albeit divided into two parts ­after the war—­and unlike Japan, which remained Japan, many Nationalist veterans lost something more difficult to replace: their entire country. And ­those ­were the fortunate ones. Veterans who remained on the mainland a­ fter 1949 w ­ ere subjected to po­liti­cal persecution and economic

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discrimination by the victorious Communist Party. The men who fled to Taiwan as the P ­ eople’s Liberation Army conquered China avoided this fate, but nevertheless found themselves in an alien land, impoverished, property-­less, and confronting a hostile population without the support of families who w ­ ere left ­behind as the Civil War ended. To be sure, not all veterans suffered this fate. The other large groups to make their new homes on Taiwan ­were the po­liti­cal and military elites of the KMT, particularly from the air force, who managed to emigrate in a more orderly fashion, with families intact. ­These w ­ ere not auspicious beginnings, but over time veterans on Taiwan, despite having lost the Civil War, as well as the war against Japan (even though they claimed victory), fared significantly better than their victorious counter­ parts, their former Communist adversaries, on the mainland. Even as losers of both war and country, KMT veterans ended up with a reasonably generous package of benefits, both material and symbolic. When they returned to the mainland in the late 1980s a­ fter an agreement between the two rival governments, veterans w ­ ere healthier, wealthier, more po­liti­cally impor­tant to the state, and enjoying a higher quality of life than the families they left ­behind in China; hardly anyone wished to stay.98 This was also the case among Chinese POWs from the Korean War: t­ hose who opted to return to China experienced “lifetime stigma and persecution,” while the Nationalists on Taiwan “treated the prisoners as valuable ­human resources” who “enjoyed opportunities that ­were unimaginable on the mainland.”99 The primary explanation for this favorable outcome, particularly considering the po­liti­cal circumstances, ­will be discussed in chapter 4. ­Here we wish to explore the historical and po­liti­cal conditions that ­shaped their military experience on the mainland and their veteran experience on Taiwan, as well as describe the variety of government initiatives that facilitated their transition from military to civilian life. As we ­will see, the one area that remained unresolved for many veterans, and which caused them significant heartache, was ­family life. Having left families ­behind, many strug­gled to reconstitute new ones. Short of importing ­women willing to marry veterans (a market that did develop ­later), ­there was ­little the KMT government could do to resolve this issue. ­Because the Taiwan case involves four separate but overlapping wars—­the long Chinese Civil War (1927–49), World War II (1937–45), the Cold War (1947–91), and the Korean War (1950–53)—­and ­because readers are less likely to be familiar with this case (and, more generally, regional history) than most of the ­others, we have to provide more extensive background to understand the difficult predicament of Nationalist veterans, as well as to locate the source of their rising postwar fortunes. As we have noted throughout this book, vet-



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erans, like any social group, do not emerge de novo but out of complex historical circumstances. Of singular significance was the decision of China’s two main po­liti­cal parties in the early 1920s to adopt the Leninist model of civil-­ military relations in which po­liti­cal parties, rather than “the state,” controlled armed forces. This understanding of the role of the military meant that in China, and unlike all the other major World War II combatants, ­there ­were two “party armies,” first battling Japan, mostly separately but sometimes together, and then each other during the Civil War. Decisions about veterans’ benefits, or lack thereof, ­were therefore party decisions. Major strategic and foreign policy decisions also trace back to party politics. Since this common practice had enormous implications for warfare, and therefore the status of veterans, we should begin with why this model found so many adherents and continues to shape the politics of veteran privilege in China and Taiwan. At the same time, we must be careful to avoid a narrative that features only two central po­liti­cal actors. Chinese politics was complicated by the presence of politicians, officers, and soldiers belonging to vari­ous regional entities who owed only conditional loyalty to e­ ither the Communists or the Nationalists, as well as many international actors, especially the Soviet Union, Japan, and the United States. Even though ­today the Chinese Communist Party is known as “revolutionary,” it was the KMT that first took this moniker upon itself. ­After gradually losing power ­after defeats at the hands of the British and French in the mid-­ nineteenth c­ entury and fi­nally overcoming the massive Taiping Rebellion (1850–63), the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) unexpectedly collapsed ­after a series of revolts around the country. Sun Yatsen, who for years had been organ­izing against the Qing as head of the Revolutionary Alliance, a hodgepodge of antidynastic groups, suddenly found himself as the “provisional” leader of the new Republic of China. Sun, however, did not control a sizeable military force, had no executive experience governing territory, and lacked a strong network inside the country, having spent a sizeable portion of his c­ areer in exile fund­-­ rais­ing among overseas Chinese communities.100 In fact, when the revolts that ended the dynasty started, Sun was in the United States. As a result, he was soon replaced by a former Qing provincial governor and general, Yuan Shikai (1859–1916), who assumed the presidency of the republic. Yuan, however, had even greater aspirations. In 1913 he ordered the assassination of Song Jiaoren, a major leader of the KMT. In December 1915, following the pre­ce­dent set by two millennia of Chinese rulers, he declared himself the emperor of the new “Hongxian dynasty,” a move opposed by Sun and his followers, who ­were committed to republicanism and constitutionalism.

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­ fter failed revolts against Yuan in several areas of the country, Sun received A asylum in Japan. Fortunately for him, Yuan died in June 1916, and he returned from exile in 1917, establishing his headquarters in South China. Yuan Shikai’s death ushered in over three de­cades of weak central government control. China was never an easy place to govern given its vast size, large population, poverty and illiteracy, and the po­liti­cal vacuum at its center brought to the fore regional elites whose main source of power was control over local militias or larger army formations.101 This, too, was not new: absent a federal system that apportions power between the center and localities in an institutionalized arrangement, politics in China often veered between higher degrees of centralization, usually when a dynasty was at its peak, and decentralization to local leaders when the center weakened. ­After 1916, therefore, China entered a period dominated by so-­called warlords (the word junfa was inspired by the Japa­nese term).102 As a concept, warlordism is shorthand for a decentralized po­liti­cal system whose major players are military officers who owe ­little to no allegiance to the central government in terms of providing tax revenue, security, or social welfare to p­ eople who live in their territories, but are instead more interested in fighting one another for more territorial control. ­Because official Chinese historiography tends to legitimize the benefits of centralized control and downplay its costs (such as the Mao Zedong era), the warlord period (1916–28) has been widely vilified for having brought death, the spread of disease, and wanton destruction of property. While true in some areas, it was also the case that some provincial warlords ­were national-­minded and sympathetic to students during the 1919 May 4th Movement.103 It was in this po­liti­cal context that Sun Yatsen and other elites became attracted to Leninist solutions to the question of control over military forces. Since ­there was no meaningful “central state” to begin with, and warlords ­were a deadly po­liti­cal threat, it made sense for weak po­liti­cal parties to build their own armies and indoctrinate soldiers in party doctrine and ideology, a task that Sun apparently took on reluctantly.104 Unlike the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which was formed explic­itly on the Soviet example in 1921, neither Sun nor other se­nior leaders in the KMT, such as Chiang Kai-­shek, ­were Marxists. However, they w ­ ere all po­liti­cally and culturally comfortable with the notion of “po­liti­cal tutelage,” in which a self-­proclaimed, po­liti­cally conscious elite leads the unenlightened masses; in this sense ­there was considerable overlap between Leninism and Confucianism, which also gave educated elites the leading role in society.105 The KMT and CCP also ­were willing to accept orga­ nizational and tactical advice from Soviet agents during the early 1920s. T ­ hese agents strong-­armed the CCP and KMT into an alliance against the two forces seen as most responsible for China’s prolonged po­liti­cal crisis: warlords and



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foreign imperialists. The Soviets threw their support ­behind the KMT as the stronger party in the alliance, pushing the Communists to accept a ju­nior partner role. In this capacity the CCP specialized in propaganda and agitation. Between 1923 and 1926, the KMT gradually built up its own military force, the National Revolutionary Army, drawing its officer corps from the highly professional Baoding Military Acad­emy (established in 1912) and the newer, more politicized Whampoa Military Acad­emy (1924). Many of the CCP’s ­future leaders, including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, China’s f­ uture premier, gained valuable experience as organizers during this “United Front,” Mao as leader of the KMT’s Peasant Institute and Zhou as an officer at Whampoa, whose superintendent was Chiang Kai-­shek. In 1926, the National Revolutionary Army, aided by the Communist Party, began its campaign to unify the country ­under its leadership. Deemed the “Northern Expedition” b­ ecause it originated in the South, this campaign was si­mul­ta­neously military and po­liti­cal. Led by Chiang, the KMT’s approach was a combination of encouraging warlord leaders to defect with their armies intact (applied mainly to warlords in South China), negotiating ad hoc alliances, and engaging them in ­battle. Only three warlord factions ­were decisively defeated.106 ­Those who ­were incorporated into the KMT, in contrast, could maintain their territory, taxation powers, and even the internal composition of their militaries, which ­were highly personalized. The effect of this par­tic­u­lar method of war-­making and state-­making was to create a sort of hybrid state (several warlords became ministers ­after 1928) and army composed of warlord leaders and Baoding-­and Whampoa-­trained generals leading troops with mixed loyalties and commitments.107 While the long-­term military viability of this arrangement was always dubious considering that China’s primary rival was Japan, a centralized nation-­state with a strong industrial base and a conscripted military, the politics ­were wise considering the weak state of the Nationalist military. ­After moving against the Communist Party in 1927, massacring thousands of activists and members in the l­abor movement, and forcing the remnants to the countryside where they eventually became a rural insurgency, Chiang consolidated enough support among educated and business elites, the urban ­middle class, and rural landowners to fi­nally establish a new but still militarily weak and underinstitutionalized government in Nanjing. The old prob­lem of multiple centers of power not only was never resolved but worsened as Chiang resorted to “divide and rule” tactics with regional warlords. ­These internal divisions, however, did not prevent foreign governments from recognizing Chiang’s government as legitimate. Formation of the new government did not ease the military pressure for long. During the 1930s the KMT military faced challenges from two dif­fer­ent

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sources. First, the Chinese Communists, though rousted from their urban strongholds in 1927, regrouped in the mountains of Jiangxi Province, recruiting to their side poor men and ­women through a radical program of land distribution from the wealthy, and through marriage reform. Chiang, largely relying on regional troops rather than ­those loyal to the central government, mounted several unsuccessful attacks against them between 1930 and 1933 before fi­nally succeeding in driving them out in 1934, killing, wounding, or capturing 80 ­percent of their forces.108 The other threat, which Chiang’s critics claim he took less seriously ­until 1937, emerged from Japan. Since the 1870s Japan had replaced the Qing dynasty as the region’s dominant power, handily defeating it in a war in 1894–95, taking control over Taiwan (known as Formosa at the time) and ­later ­Korea (1910) as colonial possessions. ­After the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911 and the western colonial powers slaughtered one another in World War I, Japan filled the vacuum throughout the 1920s, backing vari­ous warlords and issuing demands to the weak central government. Japan’s stance became even more confrontational from the early 1930s, fueled by militarism at home and the crisis of the ­Great Depression. Shanghai was attacked in 1932, and Manchuria, former homeland of the Manchus who ruled China as the Qing dynasty, was added to their roster of colonial possessions as Manchukuo (“State of the Manchus”). The KMT, lacking the military capacity to challenge Japan, emphasized appeasement, diplomatic protest, and appeals to worldwide public opinion, with some success. Japan was roundly condemned by the League of Nations and withdrew from that body in 1933. ­These aggressive moves, however, paled against what was to come. In early July 1937, with a relatively small-­scale confrontation near the Marco Polo (Lugou) Bridge southwest of Beijing, World War II began in Asia. Reversing his previously conciliatory stance, Chiang committed his government to re­sis­ tance, deciding to take a stand in Shanghai to protect China’s largest city, relieve pressure on the North China front, and keep open supply lines from the Soviet Union. Between August and October, China threw into the b­ attle roughly seventy divisions and five artillery regiments (three hundred thousand to five hundred thousand troops, compared with two hundred thousand Japa­ nese), including most of its short supply of well-­trained ju­nior officers, nearly all its elite units, warlord soldiers from Guangxi Province known for their fighting prowess and patriotism, and ­others from around the country. But no ­matter how skilled or devoted ­these soldiers ­were, they ­were no match for Japan’s advanced weaponry and naval and aerial superiority, which left Chinese troops nearly completely exposed to bombardment, including “friendly fire” by pi­lots of the Nationalist Air Force. By early September, Japan had already exhausted China’s offensive capabilities, and ­after it received reinforcements



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took the city in early November as Chiang fi­nally ordered a retreat. But this was easier said than done: the Japa­nese Air Force destroyed the key transportation lines, making slow-­moving columns of troops easy targets. Among the three hundred thousand killed in the b­ attle for Shanghai w ­ ere roughly ten thousand ju­nior officers, many from Chiang’s crack units. By the end of 1937, the Japa­nese had taken Peking (Beijing), Nanjing, Hangzhou, and nearly all its centers of industry, commerce, and culture. With one-­third to one-­half of his forces remaining, Chiang and his government retreated to the southwestern city of Chongqing (then called Chungking), where they would remain ­until the United States defeated Japan. The defenseless city became the target of hundreds of aerial attacks between 1938 and 1943.109 Among the two contending parties in China it was the Nationalists, as the party controlling the state, that bore the main costs of the war against Japan in terms of personnel lost, weapons destroyed in (mostly) losing ­battles, and legitimacy, which was shattered by its inability to protect the country. As sympathetic as many con­temporary scholars are to Chiang’s strategic decision to maintain a defensive posture ­after 1937—­mounting large-­scale assaults on Japa­ nese positions between 1938 and 1944 would have been suicidal given their overwhelming firepower—­there is ­little doubt that the “optics” ­were terrible as far as ordinary citizens w ­ ere concerned.110 As the Communists took advantage of Japan’s occupation (­after 1938 Japan recruited collaborators, so-­called puppet leaders, to help it govern territories ­under its control) by creating a “state within a state” in the Northwest and in several areas in eastern China ­behind Japa­nese lines, the KMT military strug­gled to meet the most basic requirement of fighting a war: conscripting young, strong, motivated, and healthy young men.111 Before the war, the Military Ser­vice Law (1933, implemented starting 1936) made it fairly easy for families of any means to avoid ser­vice. The poor joined largely b­ ecause “they did not have money to go to school,” could not find a substitute, or did not pay the appropriate bribe to a recruiter or local official. Despite their ­legal exemption, even families’ only sons ­were drafted.112 During the war, the KMT strug­gled to keep up with its manpower needs and responded by instituting universal conscription, which was soon abandoned ­because it led to frequent abuse and local unrest. Nevertheless, for many of China’s extremely poor families, military ser­vice was better than starvation, allowing the KMT to recruit roughly 13.5 million p­ eople annually between 1937 and 1945.113 But by the very end of the war the conscription situation was far more desperate. Widely disseminated photo­g raphs at the time, which ­later came to seal the fate of the KMT military’s reputation in the eyes of many observers, showed dragooned military recruits—­ including teen­agers and older men—­shackled to one another to prevent

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escape (which was not infrequent; ­others ­were abused on the way to training camp, or even starved to death; even on the battlefield soldiers w ­ ere harshly 114 punished for small infractions). Throughout the entire war the KMT failed to institute a regularized discharge system for soldiers. Officers might just write a two-­sentence note asking local officials “to take care of ” the soldier—­resulting in widespread fear of a never-­ending ser­vice. No discharge money was provided, or other benefits.115 Life in the KMT forces was tough, and when their ser­vices ­were no longer required, most soldiers ­were left largely to their own devices, with the exception of some disabled veterans who ­were placed in US-­ funded vocational training camps established in 1940 by the Association of Vocational Rehabilitation for Honored Ser­vicemen (Rongyu junren zhiye xiedaohui). But even in t­hese camps l­ittle rest or comfort could be found. As noted by Chao Wang, “the urgency to provide enough grain for aiding the warfront demanded the wounded and disabled to return to military farming so as to achieve the goal of ‘making the strong fight and the wounded produce.’ ”116 ­After Japan’s defeat at the hands of the United States, its vast empire went home, assisted by Japa­nese local organ­izations and the US military.117 The KMT, in line with Article 9 of the Potsdam Declaration, pardoned nearly all of the Japa­nese troops who surrendered on the mainland.118 Amid much chaos as former collaborators turned to banditry and KMT troops looted from the departing Japa­nese, the government returned to Nanjing and reclaimed national sovereignty over the mainland and other territories in a deal with the Allied Powers to end the “unequal treaties” of the nineteenth ­century.119 ­After US-­brokered peace talks with the Communists collapsed, the Chinese Civil War resumed in full force in late 1945.Having lost most of its most talented ju­nior officers and best soldiers during the war, and unable to control corruption in its ranks, the KMT military lost several decisive ­battles in northeast China during 1947–48. It did so despite receiving significant support in war materiel and funding from the United States, much of which eventually ended up in Communist hands or foreign bank accounts. Flush with victory, the Communist armies sped south and southwest, taking over Beijing in December 1948, Nanjing in April 1949, and Shanghai in June. With the KMT forces losing or­ga­nized combat effectiveness, much of South China was conquered with ­little re­sis­tance, although KMT guerrillas continued to operate in the Southwest ­until as late as 1952, and even l­ater from across the border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos.120 As his government and army ­were collapsing around him during 1947–48, Chiang prepared his retreat from the mainland. He dispatched General Chen Yi to Taiwan, which had been evacuated by the Japa­nese (roughly 232,000 military



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and 350,000 civilians) during 1946 in a mostly smooth pro­cess.121 Despite this “liberation” from colonialism, the po­liti­cal environment was hostile. The KMT was harshly critical of the Taiwanese for their alleged betrayal during the war—­many had been conscripted by Japan—­and for their weak connection to what the KMT considered to be “Chinese culture.” This was not entirely “fake news”: Japan considered Taiwan a “model colony” to showcase to the West and had invested substantial resources in education and infrastructure during their nearly half-­century of colonial rule. Ordinary Taiwanese did not speak Mandarin Chinese, the official standard, but a local dialect; educated elites working in middle-­class professions such as teachers and journalists spoke and wrote Japa­nese. Many had attended Japa­nese universities. But the Imperial Japa­nese Army had also conscripted them, as well as Koreans and o ­ thers, to defend their empire. Not surprisingly, they “felt ambivalent about the period of Japa­nese occupation” as well as resentful of having wasted their youth serving Japan.122 Taiwanese, in contrast, did not have such mixed feelings when considering the KMT and other “mainlanders,” who w ­ ere almost universally despised for corruption and arrogance. Even had their be­hav­ior been exemplary, KMT veterans would have been tainted by association. But their personal background and history ­were no panacea ­either. Air force officers ­were better educated and largely came from the upper reaches of Chinese society on the mainland, but their disastrous bombing runs in Shanghai and inability to ­counter Japan’s aerial superiority throughout the war did not help their reputation.123 On the other side of the class divide in the military ­were ordinary conscripts, most of whom ­were poor, unhealthy, and uneducated. Having been drafted from regional forces ­after the ­Battle for Shanghai, some never saw ­battle. ­After an arduous journey by boats from the mainland, Hong Kong, or Southeast Asia, they arrived bedraggled and penniless, forcing many to resort to looting—­ sometimes or­ga­nized by officers—to survive. Some locals called them “pigs, good for nothing but with an insatiable appetite.”124 ­These macro-­issues aside, any chance for positive relationship between the ­people on Taiwan and the remnants of the KMT army was quashed in February 1947, soon a­ fter Chen Yi arrived. In response to a growing number of attacks against KMT rule—­people ransacked police stations and dormitories of Mainlander bureaucrats and beat officials who could not speak Japa­nese or Taiwanese—­Chiang Kai-­shek acceded to a request to dispatch more troops from the mainland to Taiwan. Their arrival in March inaugurated a campaign of terror lasting several years.125 In what is known as the “February 28 Incident,” or just “228,” protesters ­were arrested and prosecuted on trumped-up charges. Many ­were executed, among them many pre-1947 community

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elites.126 Chen Yi l­ater claimed that the agitators w ­ ere ­people who “thought like Japa­nese” and “looked down on the Chinese,” while Chiang Kai-­shek fingered them as veterans who had been conscripted on Taiwan and sent to fight for Japan in the Pacific theater.127 To ensure that no further challenge could emerge, the government placed the island ­under martial law (lifted only in 1987), which was enforced by KMT party cells in all workplaces and by regular police and security police staffed, in the common historical pattern, by many former soldiers.128 Defeated twice on the mainland, tainted by a corrupt state and ill-­disciplined be­hav­ior, impoverished, family-­less, and without any hope of gaining some of the horizontal re­spect we have seen in the Australian, American, and Soviet cases, t­ here was ­little reason to expect that the six hundred thousand KMT veterans in Taiwan would fare well in ­either the short or long term.129 Yet, for po­liti­cal reasons, they ­were rewarded in several impor­tant ways, leading to a significantly higher quality of life than their mainland counter­parts. Most importantly, the KMT state on Taiwan helped them find jobs. In 1954, it established the Vocational Assistance Commission for Retired Ser­vicemen (VACRS), claiming it was “unpre­ce­dented” in Chinese history.130 Enlisted men w ­ ere mainly employed in the public sector, such as in road maintenance, janitorial work, and “gofers” in public institutions such as schools, whereas former officers worked as clerks in government institutions (retired generals w ­ ere given jobs as advisers in public enterprises ­until the mid-1960s). However, ­because the public sector was relatively small and once having received ­these positions veterans ­were unlikely to leave them, VACRS also initiated veteran factories to create jobs.131 On an even larger scale, it or­ga­nized (and owned) the “Retired Ser­vicemen Engineering Agency,” a highly profitable venture thanks to its mono­poly over public construction proj­ects. In Taiwan it is most famous for building the East-­West Cross Island Highway in the 1950s, which opened land, forests, and mines in the central mountain range. Roughly one-­third of all local currency spent from US aid was used on the highway even though the proj­ect could only employ—­thanks to the complex engineering and extremely difficult l­abor—­less than 10 ­percent of VACRS personnel.132 ­These initiatives gave many veterans skills that could be deployed in the more lucrative private sector, which was nearly wiped out in the ­People’s Republic of China (PRC) ­after 1956.133 The VACRS also or­ga­nized veteran farms, usually on marginal land such as mountain slopes and on surrounding islands. Unlike veterans in the PRC who ­were sent back to their villages regardless of their reception, in Taiwan the VACRS recognized veterans’ desire to live collectively, as well as the deep challenges of inserting them into a society where they w ­ ere unwelcome and could not easily communicate. On



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farms they w ­ ere or­ga­nized into units of roughly twenty, and each farm could have ten to hundreds of such units on it depending on its size. In the early years, the VACRS paid their living expenses ­until they w ­ ere able to support themselves, expecting that this would not last long. This proved unrealistic given the conditions of the land, the lack of machinery, and veterans’ age and health. Many left to look for work elsewhere, an option that was considerably easier in Taiwan than in the PRC, even though both w ­ ere Leninist authoritar134 ian states. In 1956, the KMT veterans’ organ­ization also established medical care. By the mid-1950s it was clear that veterans’ fighting capacity—­not impressive to begin with—­had further diminished with age and multiple chronic and long-­ term illnesses, including m ­ ental. As early as 1954, the government had designated roughly seventy thousand of them as “combat in­effec­tive” ­because of psychiatric prob­lems (1,000 cases), tuberculosis (15,000), leprosy (800), blindness (300), amputations (150), and “many ­others suffering from vari­ous chronic disabilities.”135 Any hope of retaking the mainland would therefore have to rest with a new generation of locally conscripted soldiers. In response, VACRS took over the administration of ten military hospitals for the care of veterans, but this proved insufficient as they had scattered around the country. From 1972 on, the army agreed to help veterans thanks to an agreement between VACRS and local authorities that allowed veterans and their families to go to public health clinics for basic care. By 1979, VACRS was administering thirteen specialized hospitals, much like Veterans Administration hospitals in the United States (but unlike the PRC).136 Veterans incapable of productive l­ abor owing to age or permanent or temporary disability also benefited from state assistance. The VACRS funded twelve “Veteran Homes”—­each housing between 1,000 and 2,300 residents—­ where they could live out their final days in each other’s com­pany, an arrangement known in the psychiatric lit­er­a­ture to be highly beneficial.137 The government also offered a ­limited allowance to each veteran, which could be increased if small side proj­ects sponsored by the community, or­ga­nized as a “lineage group” (also known as a common surname group) on their common property, ­were successful. In addition to managing property, t­ hese veteran lineage organ­izations created shrines and inscribed the names of deceased veterans on a genealogical tablet.138 News of vari­ous veteran activities around the country was published in newsletters and newspapers specifically devoted to veterans, VACRS Chronicles, The Road to Success, and Junkuang Weekly. No comparable institutions or veterans’ media ­were established in the PRC. ­Until now we have used the generic term veteran in the case of Taiwan, but this obviously was not the word used in Chinese. In the PRC, veteran was

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translated as “demobilized soldier” (fuyuan junren), “disabled soldier” (canfei junren), or zhuanye junren, which indicated a soldier who transferred over, rank attached, to a civilian enterprise. Not only did ­these soldierly terms lack a referent to national honor or glory, they could also be problematic when the army did not have high status. In Taiwan, however, all soldiers from the mainland w ­ ere designated by Chiang Kai-­shek as rongmin—­“honorable citizens.” This sense of having made a special contribution to war and the state was strongly emphasized in military education, which veterans continued to receive throughout the 1950s and 1960s, generating a self-­identity quite at odds with the circumstances surrounding their recruitment. The government also took pains to cultivate the status of rongmin throughout the school system as part of their larger propaganda effort to enhance their legitimacy. The KMT and its two dominant figures—­Chiang Kai-­shek and his power­ful son Chiang Ching-­kuo—­frequently focused on the special, paternalistic relationship with rongmin ­because of the war years. According to Yu-­Wen Fan, rongmin came to see themselves as “old cadres” and “old subordinates” of Chiang, who had followed his leadership in many b­ attles. ­Every collective farm erected a statue of Chiang Kai-­shek and celebrated his birthday. VACRS groups took pride in supplying the Chiang f­ amily with gifts such as the rug in his office, fruit, and other agricultural products.139 The Chiangs reciprocated, ­going on well-­publicized inspection tours of veteran farms in mountainous areas, and frequenting local branches of the VACRS.140 Of course, the flip side of paternalism was Leninism, which gave the KMT blanket authorization to monitor and control veterans’ be­hav­ior, both in the initial transition from soldier to workplace and during their years of employment.141 ­Whether ­because of carrots, sticks, or both, over the de­cades rongmin became one of the most loyal, if not necessarily power­f ul owing to their disadvantaged economic situation, patronage groups of the KMT, as well as a highly dependable voting bloc. This connection between the party and the veterans, argues Yu-­Wen Fan, “mitigated the latter’s grievances and even normalized their economic disadvantages.”142 In the PRC, in contrast, veterans certainly thought of themselves as loyal and patriotic, but they failed to receive the same level of po­liti­cal patronage and steady leadership. Despite the benefit and attention lavished on rongmin by the KMT government, their lives w ­ ere difficult, in part ­because of government policy (or lack thereof ), in part b­ ecause of circumstances rooted in the conditions of their recruitment, demobilization, and politics in Taiwan. Joshua Fan’s research has found that the KMT was far from prepared to resettle its defeated army from the late 1940s ­until the early 1950s and “did not provide any assistance to the vast majority of the newly arrived” mainlanders.143 “For months and even



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years,” he writes, the soldiers “lived in train stations, factories, store­houses, ­temples, schools, and other public buildings, ­until they could find or afford better places or ­until they ­were assigned a place in the military dependents’ villages.”144 What made a difficult situation worse was that the KMT Air Force, having arrived much ­earlier and with high-­level government officials and businessmen and their families on board, had already occupied most available spaces.145 Furthermore, with the outbreak of the war in K ­ orea in 1950 Chiang tried to convince President Truman to deploy his troops to join the fighting, partly in the hope of sparking an uprising in the PRC against the Communists. This fervent quest to retake the mainland, which was publicized more widely than the history of the war against Japan, required mainland soldiers to be ­battle ready and well disciplined, but the growing realization in the mid1950s that this would not happen led to despair that families would never re­ unite.146 It also meant that the KMT would not allow its soldiers to demobilize and become true “veterans” ­until the mid-1950s. This was pointedly expressed in its prohibition on marriage (officers and older NCOs excluded) in the 1952 Restriction Law, resulting in roughly one-­fifth of rongmin remaining bachelors their entire lives.147 But even when soldiers secretly formed families in violation of the law (as roughly six thousand of them did by 1957), or when the law was eased in the latter half of the 1950s, their marriage prospects ­were still sketchy.148 ­Women who came from the mainland did not want to marry down, and since t­here ­were fewer of them (at a ratio of 1:3), they had many choices. Nor w ­ ere the rongmin a popu­lar choice among most Taiwanese ­women b­ ecause of their inability to speak the local dialect, poverty, lack of kin and other networks, and association with the despised KMT (although they did have one “asset”: lacking parents meant no mothers-­in-­law to deal with). As a result, when veteran marriage rates increased in the early 1960s, it was mainly to lower-­status aboriginal ­women (descendants of Pacific Islanders who lived ­there since the seventeenth c­ entury), impoverished ­women from ethnic groups like the Hakka, or “problematic” ­women such as divorcees, ­widows, and former prostitutes, or to ­those who w ­ ere physically or mentally handicapped.149 This situation was quite dif­fer­ent from that of Soviet and German veterans, who returned home to find an extreme shortage of men, resulting in de facto polygamous relationships, and would have impor­tant implications for the rongmin’s relationship to the KMT.150 The situation of KMT veterans was therefore complicated. Despite having lost to the Japa­nese and to the Communists, they ­were feted in propaganda and received multiple state benefits, which seems to have created a sense of themselves as a distinct status group that claimed a degree of “owner­ship” over

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the island. But ­because of their personal circumstances and the immediate postwar politics on the island, ­there was ­little chance that they could mobilize social support on their behalf or become elites like the higher-­status mainlanders who moved to Taiwan. In this case, then, we see a very wide gap between veterans’ vertical status, which was quite high, and their horizontal status, which was exceedingly low. But what explains the fact that their situation improved dramatically ­after the early 1950s? Why would the KMT state, having long neglected veterans in policy, suddenly develop a range of programs to benefit them? Why did similarly surprising turns in the fate of veterans occur in Germany and Japan as well? Is ­there a connection between ­these cases? ­These questions are all answered in chapter 5, when we look at the international spillover effects from states whose veterans’ benefits programs ­were successful. First, however, we need to return to cases where veterans ­were not well rewarded despite victory on the battlefield, and to ­those cases where more fortunate victors w ­ ere granted privilege and status. Having established that battlefield victors do not necessarily receive generous treatment from grateful governments, that this happened in democracies as well as authoritarian regimes, and that the complexity of conflicts fails to explain much, where does the answer lie? It is, we suggest, in the realm of politics, in ­those spaces where veterans encounter (or do not, if the state wishes to avoid it) the apparatus of the state and attempt to bargain with it. How successful veterans are in this encounter depends on several f­actors, as we w ­ ill see. In some cases, it is a wrestling match between the state and the veterans, but in o ­ thers, international and transnational influences also play a part.

Ch a p ter  4

The Po­liti­cally Weak

­Whether veterans ­were victorious in their wars or w ­ ere part of defeated forces did not determine their repatriation outcomes. Some victorious armed forces—­most notably Australian and American ones ­after World War II and Australians a­ fter World War I—­produced veteran communities that ­were largely cohesive, well or­ga­nized, and amply rewarded by their national governments. But other victor nations—­such as China and the Soviet Union ­after World War II, and Britain ­after both world wars—­produced veteran communities that received far less, and which would have looked at their Australian and American counter­parts with considerable envy. Meanwhile, at least three vanquished nations—­Germany, Japan, and Taiwan—­ rewarded their old soldiers with considerable benefits despite the lost wars. This chapter is the first of two that search for an answer to this puzzle: what determines veterans’ status if it is not victory or defeat, and if it is not authoritarian versus demo­cratic systems of government? This chapter begins with ­those who failed to gain a special status. What caused their postwar defeat? Chapter 5 then analyzes what constellation of forces enabled other veterans to do well as a group ­after wars. As we ­shall see, the answers to both questions lie in the realm of po­liti­cal history: ultimately, to grant a special status, to expend taxpayers’ money, or to do the opposite and refuse to do so, is a po­ liti­cal decision. It is therefore a question of power and allocation of scarce resources. 93

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To explain negative outcomes for the veterans of victorious armies, then, we need to turn to the po­liti­cal pro­cess and the attempts to convert claims into entitlements. Why c­ ouldn’t British, Soviet, and Chinese veterans and American veterans of World War I formulate strong arguments for compensation and reward, mount them powerfully, and have them positively received? What was it about the postwar contexts, the ways in which the appeals for compensation and rewards ­were formulated, and the ways in which ­those appeals ­were received and treated by postwar governments, that denied such apparently deserving veterans what they might have regarded as their just desserts?

Chinese Veterans u ­ nder the CCP Veterans of the P ­ eople’s Liberation Army in China w ­ ere often treated poorly despite their ostensible belonging to the winning side in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ­battles against Japan, the Nationalists, the United States, and Vietnam. W ­ hether b­ ecause they w ­ ere ordered to return home to the countryside or b­ ecause they entered the urban workforce as unconnected, low-­ skilled outsiders, many bitterly complained about their low status throughout the Mao era. They continue to do so t­ oday. In blog posts, some have pointed out that the poor situation of Chinese veterans is “unusual” in comparative perspective, noting the extensive benefits American veterans receive u ­ nder the 1 GI Bill. In accounting for veterans’ low status in a poor country such as China, it is tempting to focus primarily on socioeconomic variables. That is, Chinese veterans remained poor ­because the country was as well. But such explanations are overly simplistic—­poverty was a condition, but it did not necessarily compel leaders of the ­People’s Republic of China (PRC) to decide to send veterans back to the countryside, or their decisions to not write a statute about veterans’ rights, create a “Veterans Day” in the calendar of po­liti­cal rituals, or establish a Ministry of Veterans Affairs u ­ ntil March 2018, particularly when examples of such a ministry abound across the globe.2 In our view, broad and somewhat abstract socioeconomic explanations let politicians—­who have power over bud­gets, ideology, patronage networks, and official symbolism—­ off the hook. In the China case, we argue that even though veterans, both individually and in groups, confronted the state in a feisty manner—­perhaps more so than any of their western counter­parts—in the absence of large-­scale and even minimally autonomous veterans’ organ­izations, they could not push

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back against state policies that did not serve their interests or protect them against their rivals. Lacking an or­ga­nized voice in the state and society, they found themselves on the sidelines in terms of national narratives, bureaucratic politics, and law. Veterans ­were well aware of this prob­lem and over the de­ cades or­ga­nized illegally, but to ­little avail. The prob­lem for veterans began with official discourse. The CCP has made its contributions to the defeat of the Japa­nese military a cornerstone of its nationalist narrative, particularly from the early 1990s when it launched a campaign to promote “patriotic education.” According to the standard narrative, which has been supported by massive state investments in monuments, museums, ritual activities (such as mobilizing youth to hang honorary plaques on the doorposts of military families), and millions of hours of study throughout the education system, the Party—as small as it was in the 1930s and 1940s—­overcame the military prowess and technological advantages of the Japa­nese military though brilliant military tactics such as guerrilla warfare, the superior motivation and discipline of its troops, and the support of the majority of the Chinese ­people.3 The Nationalist Party (Kuomintang; KMT), in this version of history, was tainted by corruption, cared more about eliminating the Communists than the Japa­nese, and therefore lost what­ever public support it might have enjoyed ­after establishing the first republic in 1911. This discourse continues to be hard to accommodate within the ruling ideology of Marxism. Although China’s economic reforms and post–­Cold War western triumphalism have convinced many that Marxism is no longer relevant to the CCP’s core identity, we should not forget that China paid much attention to ideology during the Cold War, and ­under current General Party secretary Xi Jinping, still does.4 In Marxism, as some readers might vaguely remember, workers (the “proletariat”) are the leading revolutionary class, although led by the Communist Party. Seen through this ideological prism, Communist military victories ­were mainly cast as class-­based achievements, not ­those of “soldiers” as a group or “the military” as an institution. Factually, workers cum revolutionary victors was always an ideological sleight-­of-­hand: China, ­after all, lacked a large industrial working class, and the bulk of its military was recruited from the countryside a­ fter the CCP was forced to leave its urban bases in 1927.5 As a result of this historical configuration, the peasant “class” also was given its share of status: in the 1954 Constitution it was “allied” with the proletariat (but soldiers ­were not), and placed on the post-1949 marquee as victors of the revolution.6 But which social class contributed more ­toward victory is less consequential than noting that, in all cases, “veterans,” as a social category and as po­liti­cal actors, simply did not exist; one cannot find

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the term in the constitution or ideological treatises. In China, as initially in the Soviet Union, victory in war failed to produce a militarized identity that could successfully compete with class categories. In addition to the absence of “veterans” in Marxist conceptions of society, Chinese veterans also strug­gled to establish themselves as critical actors in national narratives owing to the po­liti­cal circumstances surrounding each conflict; in the language of collective action theory, the “po­liti­cal opportunity structure” was never conducive to asserting veteran status. Consider the ­matter of the time span of twentieth-­century conflicts. World War II in the United States and the USSR’s “­Great Patriotic War” ­were relatively short, and in the postwar de­cade militaries, and combat soldiers in par­tic­u­lar, ­were widely credited as having contributed the most to the successful outcome.7 But whereas ­those of us in the West tend to think of World War II beginning variously in 1938 (the USSR), 1939 (Germany, the United Kingdom, and Australia), or 1941 (the United States), in China the war started in 1937 at the latest.8 If we recall some history, China’s conflict with Japan dated back to the Sino-­Japanese War (1894–95), the “21 Demands” issued by Japan in 1915, and militarized encroachments and outright colonialism in Manchuria in northeast China in the early 1930s. It is not implausible to claim that China had been at war with Japan for half a c­ entury. Unsurprisingly, China’s protracted, complicated conflict produced a distinctively long list of p­ eople claiming credit for having “participated in the revolution” (canjia geming). In addition to the two po­liti­cal parties and armies, ­there w ­ ere also militias, guerrillas, and party workers who could, and did, claim that their participation was as impor­tant as that of the soldiers.9 ­Others included trade ­unionists who or­ga­nized anti-­imperialist strikes during the 1920s and 1930s; W ­ omen’s Federation officials who helped “liberate” ­women from the shackles of “feudalism” during campaigns to enforce the Communists’ new Marriage Law; village officials who took on landlords during land reform (a defining feature of CCP rural policy) b­ ehind ­enemy lines; intellectuals who composed propaganda for newspapers; and artists creating inspirational po­liti­cal cartoons. ­After the CCP’s victory in 1949, this large revolutionary cast diminished and diluted “victorious” Chinese veterans’ claim for higher status. At a Shanghai boat repair factory, for example, u ­ nion officials told veterans in 1957: “It took 30 years of bloody strug­gle for our working class to establish the u ­ nion. You c­ an’t enter just like that to enjoy power and benefits.”10 Fi­nally, “victory” meant something dif­fer­ent from what it did in our other cases. For the CCP, the war­time victory of 1945 was far less impor­tant than its total conquest of the KMT in the Civil War (1945–1949) ­because the latter produced the Communist state. This notion was evident in the 1950s and

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1960s, when the CCP paid far more attention to revolutionizing politics, society, and culture than to commemorating the war. In contrast, the United States, Australia, and the USSR already had states when the war ended, and could pay much more attention to t­ hose directly affected by it, including their veterans. Was t­ here something bordering on inevitable about the treatment of veterans given the unusual circumstances of Chinese wars? Or something culturally Asian given the legacy of Confucianism? We think not. The case of the Soviet Union, another Marxist state, suggests that ideology did not “determine” veterans’ status. Despite their many challenges in the postwar period, veterans eventually became a central ele­ment of state discourse, legislation, and claim to privilege in the 1960s and 1970s. They also enjoyed high horizontal status. Japan was defeated in the Pacific War, and in the postwar period many civilians claimed that their status as victims rendered them worthy of compensation and honors. However, the official narrative of the war stresses the contributions and sacrifices of its armed forces, and veterans have received unique benefits. In the United States, ­there was also a multiplicity of actors in the total mobilization, but veterans emerged as the most privileged group. But all of t­hese did not just happen. T ­ hese frames w ­ ere pushed into the po­liti­cal and public spheres by strong veterans’ organ­izations, most of which had close ties to the ruling elite. In China, in contrast, the majority of its po­ liti­cal elite from 1934 to 1969 w ­ ere city-­based, leftist intellectuals who had been involved in the swirl of po­liti­cal and cultural critique and activism during the early Republican period, a cohort scholars have called the “May 4th Generation” a­ fter the May 4, 1919 protests against warlordism, colonialism, and Confucian culture.11 High-­ranking military officers rarely served on the Po­liti­cal Bureau’s Standing Committee during the 1950s and throughout the reform era. As a result, they enjoyed none of the postwar po­liti­cal patronage that came the way of veterans in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States. The fact that Chinese veterans did not have their own national organ­ization does not mean that they ­were left to fend for themselves. The Chinese state’s main goal was to manage and control veterans, and ­toward this end it expended considerable resources. How they went about this goes a long way t­ oward explaining veterans’ relatively low status. Like many states, successive twentieth-­ century Chinese regimes established large and specialized bureaucracies with administrative jurisdiction over dif­fer­ent types of industries, populations, and ­legal ­matters (multiple levels of courts, dif­fer­ent types of police forces, ­etc.).12 This orga­nizational differentiation, however, completely bypassed the central bureaucracy the CCP assigned to ­handle veterans’ affairs: the Ministry of Civil Affairs. In Chinese politics, the concept civil (min) was extraordinarily broad.

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On the political-­military side of it, in addition to its overall responsibility for “ordinary” veterans, Civil Affairs officials ­were expected to care for disabled veterans (evaluating degree of disability, dispensing aid), as well as revolutionary martyrs (military and nonmilitary), and military families. Beyond t­hese, the CCP placed ­under its umbrella a mélange of functions united only by their identification with ordinary civilians. ­These included resettling refugees; distributing welfare to the urban and rural poor; registering marriages and divorces; managing orphanages, m ­ ental institutions, and se­nior citizen homes; supervising local elections; rehabilitating prostitutes and opium addicts; providing relief to victims of natu­ral disasters; supervising religious organ­izations; and the official naming of districts. Within its jurisdiction of caring for military-­related personnel, Civil Affairs set up two sub-­bureaucracies. Disabled veterans, direct relatives of revolutionary martyrs, and military families ­were assigned to the “Preferential Treatment” Division, which mostly distributed financial aid; the larger group of “ordinary” veterans, on the other hand, w ­ ere relegated to the “Resettlement” sub-­bureaucracy, the name itself not suggesting any privileged status. Personnel-­wise, the CCP assigned to Civil Affairs many clerks who had primary-­to-­middle-­school education, in contrast to higher-­status ministries dominated by technocrats and educated elites. More problematically, within the PRC’s administrative flow chart, Civil Affairs bureaucrats w ­ ere h ­ oused in local governments and, most critically, subordinate to the CCP party committee and party secretary. Many of the prob­lems veterans experienced can be directly traced to ­these orga­nizational arrangements.13 Situating many P ­ eople’s Liberation Army (PLA) veterans in the same bureaucracy that handled welfare for the “ordinary” urban poor did not bode well for their status, or for their sense that their contributions would be appreciated by other state officials as bona fide. As noted by Suzanne Mettler in the context of the GI Bill, ­people evaluate the legitimacy of the state by the quality of interactions they have with lower-­level implementing officials.14 Many veterans found themselves treated with the usual disdain reserved for the poor,15 forcing them to make a nuisance of themselves to get attention. In 1957 in Qingpu, a suburban county of Shanghai, veterans bitterly complained that Civil Affairs officials helped only t­ hose who raised a g­ reat fuss, frequently ignored State Council directives, and did not bother to look at their personal dossiers when assigning them jobs, rendering moot any mention of meritorious ser­vice.16 As recipients of welfare payments, veterans and military families experienced the same sort of surveillance the state conducted among the poor. Concerned about waste and fraud among aid recipients, Civil Affairs dispatched

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investigators into neighborhoods to figure out how p­ eople ­were using their aid and how welfare rolls might be reduced. Unsurprisingly, ­these officials sometimes acted harshly with aid recipients, asking personal questions and requiring them to fill out long forms. In some areas, interviews succeeded in reducing the welfare roll by some 65 ­percent, but poor veterans and military families felt that they w ­ ere being unfairly investigated. Some thought that the price for receiving state assistance was excessive. One f­ amily member of a veteran said, “It would be easier if we took down our honorary plaque; that way we ­wouldn’t have to deal with all this hassle.”17 In other cases, however, the source of veterans’ prob­lems was not extensive state surveillance but the opposite: getting lost in the shuffle between their military units and Civil Affairs. In Qingpu, a 1952 report complained that no one was on hand when officers returned to their communities. At the county seat—­the administrative unit two levels above the village—­they ­were given minimal amounts of food and had to spend their own money to buy more.18 In Anhui Province, housing officials did not allocate housing to some returning veterans and another office did not supply them with farming tools. The report called this treatment “incorrect” and instructed officials to give veterans “the same treatment as the masses get.”19 This orga­nizational design—­fi­nally rectified ­after nearly seventy years—­was clearly not built to privilege veterans as a group. Given its longevity, and the fact that the CCP leadership not only was made aware of prob­lems but also had the ability to learn about more successful models around the world, we have no choice but to assume that this was an intentional decision, or series of decisions. In comparative perspective, nesting veterans inside large welfare bureaucracies has happened, but not often, and the outcome has not been positive.20 Throughout Asia, and therefore easily “knowable” to the Chinese leadership, US allies copied its model of a separate bureaucracy for veterans. In Israel, established almost the same year as the PRC, t­ here are no veterans per se ­because of universal conscription, but in the earliest years of the state David Ben-­Gurion, the prime minister, de­cided that disabled veterans would be ­under the jurisdiction of the most prestigious bureaucracy in the country—­ the Ministry of Defense. What, then, explains this policy stagnation (or path dependence)? We would argue that the absence of veterans’ organ­izations played a key role. B ­ ecause policy legacies and the interests and inertia they create can be so strong, policy change and innovation require well-­organized and sustained bottom-up activism that receives at least some support in official quarters, as seen in the case of the GI Bill and the Australian Soldiers’ Repatriation Act. The counterfactual claim ­here is that had Chinese veterans been able to or­ga­nize on a large scale, Civil Affairs would not have retained

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its post-1949 structure for so long. Why it changed in 2018 is not yet clear, but it appears that large-­scale, well-­publicized protests caused by the rapid demobilization of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, a new leadership committed to strengthening China’s international status and domestic security, and more research on veterans abroad and in China fi­nally produced an administrative change that should have happened a long time ago. That said, t­ here are reasons to be skeptical about the f­ uture success of this new ministry. First, in China as elsewhere, bureaucracies require power to be effective, and it is far from clear that the greenhorn ministry ­will possess this resource vis-­à-­vis other bureaucracies, and more importantly, employers in the state and private sectors; its current minister, Sun Shaocheng, has been promoted from within the Ministry of Civil Affairs, never a heavy hitter.21 Second, if we look at this issue comparatively, t­ here is no evidence that bureaucracy alone can solve employment, medical, and status-­related prob­lems among veterans (particularly in a quasi-­market economy that values skills many veterans do not possess, and that has historically discriminated against rural ­people). In addition to its status as an international outlier in terms of its orga­ nizational arrangements for veterans, China is also quite dif­fer­ent in the absence of national legislation that articulated veterans’ rights and privileges in ways that w ­ ere less subject to local discretion. In the absence of law, neither disabled veterans who disputed the official level of disability they w ­ ere assigned (which determined the aid they could receive) nor veterans who contested discriminatory administrative practices had ­legal recourse in courts, which to this day are reluctant to get involved in such cases (even though veterans do try to use them to gain po­liti­cal leverage).22 Veterans ­were, in a sense, enveloped by bureaucracy (Civil Affairs), while also quite isolated within the state ­because they lacked allies against Civil Affairs. We think it is telling that the only veterans mentioned in China’s 1982 state constitution w ­ ere ­those who ­were disabled (all veterans ­were ignored in the 1954 version, and they ­were the only group of regime supporters who did not participate in the “all-­people discussion” about the draft constitution). Currently, in an ideological irony that has not escaped veterans’ attention, the state constitution promises to protect private property ­owners’ rights, but still not veterans. In the absence of any statutory or institutional protections, many returning veterans ­were vulnerable to po­liti­cal predation, which was reported on extensively during the Mao era. Even worse, Chinese courts ­were mobilized against them to preserve the po­liti­cal status quo that favored locals over outsiders. In the countryside, reports noted many incidents of local officials who used courts to take revenge against veterans who acted as whistle­blowers against corruption.23 In 1954 in Shanghai, for example, the Shanghai Procura-

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tor’s office investigated the veteran situation in Hongkou District. Noting “a lot of prob­lems,” the investigators called specific attention to the case of a veteran surnamed Wang, who was employed by the Shenghua Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Com­pany. According to their report, Wang had allegedly caused a work accident that resulted in significant damage to its property. Claiming he acted deliberately, com­pany officials labeled it a “counterrevolutionary incident.” In October he was detained, and he was held in prison without a hearing ­until November 1955, when the Hongkou District Court formally sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment. Wang appealed to the Shanghai Intermediate Court, which investigated and cleared him of all charges. Factory officials, however, refused to rehire him.24 Such cases appear frequently in the archival rec­ord and reveal the extent to which veterans had tremendous difficulty asserting a horizontal claim to status, or martial citizenship. But just as impor­tant are absences: at least in the documentation made available to scholars, ­there are no cases where veterans sue in court as plaintiffs ­either to gain privileges or to seek compensation ­after suffering injustice. This was not ­because the CCP was completely allergic to law; in the early 1950s t­ here ­were laws dealing with marriage, l­abor, land reform, and a new constitution. Subsequently, numerous p­ eople took advantage of courts, as well as local governments, to litigate. A ­ fter the period of economic reforms began, hundreds of new laws w ­ ere passed, but again none governing veterans’ affairs. Why this legislative neglect? ­Here, again, it behooves us to look comparatively. It is rare for states to make law that benefits one social group (sometimes to the detriment of o ­ thers) without being pushed hard to do so, often ­after protracted ­battles in which each side gathers and mobilizes allies.25 This po­liti­cal pressure, in turn, depends heavi­ly on large-­scale organ­ization, which must muster the requisite leadership, tactics, and mobilization of resources. The absence of veterans’ legislation in China, we suggest, is also tied to their inability to or­ga­nize and to find power­f ul allies in the state or society. Veterans ­were aware of the sources of their marginalization. They w ­ ere also aware of a solution: veterans’ organ­izations, the larger the better. Demonstrating a feistiness that has characterized activism in China throughout modern history, veterans stated their desire for associational life in many bouts of collective action, alongside the usual demands for better material conditions. At e­ very turn and juncture, however, they ­were rebuffed by the CCP. During the Hundred Flowers Movement in early 1957, for example, a veteran working in the Guizhou Provincial Forestry Bureau, in cooperation with an unemployed veteran and two o ­ thers from dif­fer­ent units, formed an organ­ ization called the “China Veterans Association.” This group demanded

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“orga­nizational in­de­pen­dence” and “parallel” status with the CCP. According to the press report, the veterans held secret meetings “during which members complained that veterans w ­ ere dregs who ­were not receiving adequate attention from the party and government,” and tried to recruit veterans in Shanghai, Beijing, and Sichuan Province. In May of 1957, the China Veterans Association, taking advantage of a scheduled meeting of CCP-­approved “veteran representatives,” threatened a street demonstration if their demands ­were not met. The CCP counterattacked: this protest leader was declared a “rightist” and the veterans’ association was disbanded as “reactionary.”26 Efforts to form veterans’ organ­izations ­were a prominent feature of the Cultural Revolution as well. In December 1966, over eighty veterans, most of whom came from Jiangsu and Fujian Provinces, met with Premier Zhou Enlai. Noting that the prob­lems in t­ hose provinces w ­ ere “serious,” the veterans implored Zhou to accede to their central demand: the establishment of an “in­ de­pen­dent, national veterans’ organ­ization.” Instead, Zhou only agreed that the veterans could establish a “liaison organ­ization.” This “coordination unit,” he said, would be permitted to conduct a “national register of veterans,” which would make it easier for veterans to locate one another as well as making it “easier for the government to mobilize you in case of a war, when you would be needed.”27 In 1976 Mao Zedong fi­nally passed away, and two years ­later, China, ­under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, embarked on the program of economic reforms that has (perhaps more than its revolution) truly shaken the world. Given China’s con­temporary prosperity, it is easy to forget that the reforms did not begin auspiciously. In 1979, China fought a month long border war against Vietnam, which did not end well for China’s military, and, per usual, produced yet another wave of (mostly rural) disgruntled veterans who experienced a rocky transition back to civilian life.28 For instance, while they ­were serving in the military, many farmers who remained made enough money to get married and secure better housing.29 The urban jobs that had been promised to ­these farmer-­veterans did not always materialize, partly ­because they had to compete with several million other veterans who ­were demobilized as Deng Xiaoping downsized the bloated PLA.30 Faced by t­ hese challenges both new and old, veterans formed ad hoc, illegal organ­izations. In Zhejiang Province, for example, veterans or­ga­nized (in December 1980) the “Zhejiang Province United Veterans Federation”; in Kunming, veterans formed the “Yunnan Province, Kunming City, Action Committee General Headquarters,” and the “Negotiating Team of the Disabled Veterans Fighting for Employment Rights.”31 In Wuchuan County in Guangdong Province, Vietnam War veterans who ­were upset about their poor mar-

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riage prospects and unemployment formed an organ­ization called the “Grieving Hearts Army.”32 This “army,” led by a former ju­nior officer, staged a military-­style assault on Communist Party offices, taking several officials hostage, before being branded a “counter-­revolutionary organ­ization” and suppressed by the local party committee.33 While the Grieving Hearts Army was not typical in its violent engagement with the CCP, the official response to it was. And so it remains: veterans continue to or­ga­nize, usually on a smaller scale (county or below), but the Communist Party refuses to allow any form of organ­ization beyond the village (and even ­these are surveilled). Years of collective petitioning and protests have not moved the CCP from its long-­standing position, even though it often considers the reasons veterans are protesting to be reasonable and legitimate. As our study demonstrates, absent large-­scale veterans’ organ­izations, even the latest policy move by the leadership—­creating the Ministry of Veterans Affairs— is unlikely to alleviate most of their prob­lems.

British Veterans ­under the Establishment Like their Chinese counter­parts, British veterans w ­ ere unable to leverage their war ser­vice into generous pension and repatriation arrangements. At first glance this might appear somewhat surprising: Britain emerged victorious from both wars, and its ser­vicemen ­were widely lauded for what they had achieved, particularly ­after World War II when Britain had confronted Hitler’s Germany, at first virtually alone. Ser­vicemen and ser­vicewomen suffered extensively, with Britain losing some three-­quarters of a million killed in World War I, and another 305,800 killed in World War II.34 One might regard the heroes and victims of Mons, the Somme, Amiens, Dunkirk, the B ­ attle of Britain, Burma, the ­Battle of the Atlantic, Normandy, the bomber offensive, Arnhem, and numerous other actions as likely candidates for extensive national gratitude. They had not only saved Britain from German hegemony on the Continent in World War I but in its successor had, in the words of Winston Churchill, saved Christian civilization, the British way of life, the British Empire, and indeed “the w ­ hole world” from the “abyss of a new dark age.” Ser­ vicemen and ser­vicewomen w ­ ere at the forefront of Britain’s “finest hour,” and Churchillian rhe­toric about “so much owed by so many to so few,” although directed at Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter pi­lots, might have applied more broadly to t­ hose in the ser­vices throughout the war years.35 Britain was, moreover, a democracy in which returned soldiers could exercise power at the ballot box, the moral justifications for Britain fighting w ­ ere rarely questioned

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(particularly in World War II), and t­ here was a large differential between the sufferings of the ser­vice community and ­those on the home front, particularly in World War I.36 But t­ here w ­ ere several ele­ments of the British experience of the world wars that served as counterforces and l­imited the potential for favorable repatriation outcomes, particularly when compared with the Australian case. For example, for Australians, the experience of World War I (and of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 in par­tic­u­lar, when Australians first went into action) represented the “birth of the nation.” The veterans ­were, therefore, not just the victims of war, or patriotic citizens who had fulfilled their civic duty, but found­ers of the nation. For Britain, World War I was remembered as, at best, a necessary evil; it left nothing positive b­ ehind—­only destruction, death, and disease. Futile slaughter and the ruin of a generation ­were the dominant memorial tropes in the interwar period, as reflected in much of the lit­er­a­ture from the time, such as the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and the writings of Robert Graves.37 ­There are other significant differences that also hinted that British veterans ­after World War I would be in a weaker position to claim benefits than their Australian comrades and even their former German adversaries. Australian veterans had served overseas and w ­ ere therefore clearly differentiated from ­those who remained in safe Australia; German culture long distinguished between the Frontkämpfer or “front fighter” and t­ hose in noncombat roles. In contrast, the British tended to refer to veterans as ex-­service personnel, obliterating the distinctiveness of t­hose who served for extensive periods in operational theaters and depriving them of the opportunity to mark themselves as a class apart.38 British soldiers, moreover, ­were often reluctant conscripts and the civilian population had been extensively mobilized into munitions production and had suffered from war­time rationing, the threat of U-­boat blockade, and direct (but on a smaller scale, particularly compared with World War II) attacks from German bombing. Veterans’ mobilization, commitment, sacrifices, and sufferings w ­ ere extensive, but they did not stand out in as sharp a relief as ­those of Australian veterans. The World War II scenario was remarkably similar. British ser­vicemen took part in the defeat of Germany, and to a lesser extent Japan, but could claim ­little glory ­because of the more significant contributions of the Soviet Union and the United States. Most soldiers ­were conscripts, civilians ­were extensively mobilized for war production and for home defense, and civilians suffered significantly from German bombing in 1940 and 1941, Hitler’s “vengeance” weapons, and the attempted U-­boat blockade. While British ser­vicemen ­were miraculously rescued from Dunkirk, successfully fought off the Luftwaffe in

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the ­Battle of Britain, and inflicted defeats on the Germans and Italians at places such as El Alemain, they achieved relatively ­little in the Pacific War, and the ­g reat b­ attles that brought Nazi Germany to its knees ­were fought primarily by the Red Army and, to a lesser extent, the United States. Moreover, the civilian suffering, although much less in terms of casualties than that endured by veterans, affected postwar memory. Unlike American memory, in which members of the “greatest generation” ­were primarily soldiers, sailors, or airmen, British postwar memory tended to celebrate the “stiff upper lip,” “keep calm and carry on” stoicism of the civilian population.39 On any hy­po­thet­ic­ al list of reasonably commonsensical variables contributing to a better postwar outcome for veterans, it seems to us, Australia would definitely top Britain. But what we would consider to be the “objective real­ ity” of their contributions was not the critical f­ actor; scorned losers—­who would be at the very bottom of such a list—­can do quite well. What sealed the fate of British veterans from a benefit perspective, we suggest, was the weakness of their major veterans’ groups. In this re­spect, the contrast between them and the Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League (RSL) in Australia was perhaps the starkest. The potential po­liti­cal power of the British veterans’ body was significant but never adequately marshaled into an effective po­liti­cal voice by a veterans’ organ­ization able and willing to engage in aggressive advocacy. ­There w ­ ere several bodies representing British veterans during and in the years immediately following the war, the main one of which was the British Legion. The organ­ ization’s origins, membership, leadership, constitutional structure, and po­liti­cal connections all militated against its channeling veteran discontent and disadvantage into effective pressure on the British government. Far more so than the Australian RSL and the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW), the British Legion operated on behalf of the establishment, dampening down and containing veteran anger rather than using it to extract concessions. From its formation in 1921 the British Legion was never seriously challenged as the primary body representing and advocating for ex-­servicemen. But unlike the RSL, which was formed from a relatively straightforward amalgamation of the major veterans’ organ­izations in the main Australian states in 1916, and which was thus fully operational well before the end of the war, the British Legion’s origins ­were convoluted, and it was relatively late in its establishment. It also strug­gled to hold together a body of former soldiers that, as its pre­de­ces­sor organ­izations reveal, was deeply divided by class and politics. Prior to World War I, Britain had no history of veterans’ organ­izations, let alone an existing body, and no prior history of state provision for veterans; their welfare had traditionally been left to the charitable sector. However, the

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sheer scale of the challenge of World War I, along with obvious prob­lems and discontent surrounding their discharge, training, employment, and pensions, brought British veterans together while the war was still in pro­g ress, and promoted the formation of several rival organ­izations. They w ­ ere, however, organ­izations with specific po­liti­cal affiliations, ideologies, and memberships that inhibited a common approach to resolving shared challenges. For instance, the National Association of Discharged Soldiers and Sailors was formed in 1917 with close links to trade ­unions, and was followed in the same year by the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers, which was motivated primarily by outrage at government moves to reexamine some categories of disabled and demobilized soldiers with a view to reenlisting them.40 The working-­class flavor of ­these organ­izations prompted the formation of the conservative and establishment-­linked Comrades of the G ­ reat War ­later in the same year, while the more socialist-­leaning National Union of Ex-­ Servicemen was formed in 1919.41 ­These rivals ­were often suspicious of each other. The members of the executive committee of National Federation, for example, repeatedly pledged themselves to secrecy and to not communicate with members of the other organ­izations without prior approval from the rest of the executive, on pain of expulsion.42 Suspicion and rivalry hindered cooperation and splintered the potential power of a united veterans’ voice. ­After government efforts to unify the organ­izations in 1918 and 1919 failed, partly ­because the British government wanted leverage over the operations of the proposed merged organ­ization, in mid-1921 the organ­izations joined to form the British Legion. All agreed that the new body would be demo­cratic, not affiliated with any po­liti­cal party, and would not take sides in industrial disputes.43 This was essentially the same basis on which the RSL had been established in Australia some five years ­earlier. For all the early trou­bles the RSL experienced, it gave Australian veterans a head start of five years over their British counter­parts. This delay worked against the interests of British ex-­service personnel in two ways. First, the British Legion did not exist when critical repatriation policies ­were being de­cided at the war’s conclusion and in its immediate aftermath. Unlike the well-­organized and spirited RSL, which was able to successfully lobby Hughes and his ministers on behalf of all returned soldiers as repatriation policies and practices ­were being designed and put into place, British ex-­service personnel ­were divided into several organ­izations with vastly dif­fer­ent ideas and outlooks. By the time the British Legion was founded, the main repatriation questions had already been settled. In a path-­dependent fashion, any ­f uture, pro-­veteran reforms would have to unwind an existing state of affairs with power­f ul vested interests maintaining the status quo.44 Second,

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the tortured formation of the British Legion inhibited its ability to attract members, and thus denied it the mass membership base of an organ­ization such as the RSL. While RSL membership fluctuated substantially in the interwar years, during its most crucial negotiations with the Australian federal government in 1919 it claimed to have almost half of the returned soldiery among its members.45 Veterans’ organ­izations in France and Germany also amassed much greater memberships—­over two million in both cases—­than did the British Legion. Partly ­because it did not exist when it was needed most, the British Legion did not grow into a mass organ­ization. It never incorporated more than a tenth of the eligible veterans.46 The relatively small membership base might not have proven such a handicap had t­ hose who joined the organ­ization pressed their case with vigor, and had the Legion harnessed their discontent. But by the time of the organ­ ization’s formation the worst of the veterans’ anger had dissipated, and the occasional postwar vio­lence and unrest had waned. Without the resentment and rancor generated by the alleged “stab in the back,” the Treaty of Versailles, and socialist revolutionary forces, all of which fueled the anger of many German veterans, and without the effective nurturing of a sense of grievance that the RSL undertook in Australia, most British veterans settled relatively quietly into peacetime life.47 Nor did leaders encourage their members to be more militant. It was not out of character that the Legion leadership invited Prince Arthur of Connaught to open the 1925 Annual Conference, during which he impressed on delegates that their repre­sen­ta­tions to government would be better received if they ­were “framed in an amicable and not in a hostile spirit.”48 The leadership of the British Legion was primarily composed of “establishment” figures who ­were more likely to have the interests of the British ruling classes at heart than the less elitist leadership of the RSL. The Legion’s first president was Field Marshal Douglas Haig, who was succeeded on his death in 1928 by Adm. John Jellicoe and then by Maj. Gen. Frederick Maurice from 1932 to 1947, all of whom ­were upper class and highly decorated with military and civilian honors, including earldoms and knighthoods.49 Other se­nior figures within the organ­ization, with few exceptions, also came from the social and military elites.50 The Legion even maintained a House of Commons branch u ­ ntil 1955, with over 100 members of Parliament and staffers, while branch presidents ­were often local notables or ex-­officers.51 But even though the British Legion was well connected po­liti­cally, it was not inclined to exploit this resource to improve the lives and status of British ex-­service personnel. Its latest historian, Niall Barr, has characterized the British Legion as an organ­ization of the establishment rather than one threatening to it.52

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This argument about the British Legion is further strengthened by a closer examination of the relationship between its leaders and the members it was established to represent. In addition to its officer-­class origins and leadership, the Legion also featured a power­f ul central executive that often resisted the ­will of the bulk of the ex-­servicemen in the organ­ization. The National Executive Council controlled the organ­ization’s funds and was authorized to expel individual members or even entire branches. Meeting ­every three months, it could also formulate policy without consulting Legion members. In this re­ spect it was quite dif­fer­ent from the RSL, in which the leadership was much more beholden to the views of its members.53 Unsurprisingly, some Legion members ­were displeased by this leadership style. On several occasions disgruntled veterans passed resolutions at the annual conference calling on the national executive to become more po­liti­cally active and take a more militant stance on questions affecting their benefits, particularly pension issues. But such resolutions ­were often ignored, and disaffection with the British Legion’s passivity continued.54 At the Legion’s annual conference in 1929, for example, severe criticism was directed at the National Executive Council for ignoring a 1928 resolution that demanded greater militancy on pension issues, and expressed concern that the National Executive Council was formulating and pursuing its own policies while ignoring the wishes of members.55 Discontent with the leadership resulted in the formation of the breakaway British Limbless Ex-­Servicemen’s Association in 1932.56 But still the Legion’s leadership resisted taking a more aggressive approach. In 1933, for example, the British Legion Journal published an article critical of the Ministry of Pensions, claiming that benefits for veterans had “been wrung from unwilling hands,” and that the “Ministry had failed in its trust.” When government ministers expressed outrage, the Legion leadership disavowed the article and its allegations even though rank-­and-­file members largely agreed with its sentiments.57 This disconnect continued into the post–­World War II years and goes some way t­ oward explaining the organ­ization’s ongoing relative passivity. The Legion leadership’s tactical choices also did l­ittle to improve the lives of ordinary veterans. Rather than focus on extracting resources from the state, the Legion spent considerable time and energy d­ oing charity work, becoming a major player in this field. For instance, on Poppy Day, celebrated e­ very Armistice Day, the Legion raised substantial funds through the sale of individual poppies and wreaths.58 As well as disbursing this money to the needy, the Legion was also involved in sponsoring and managing employment bureaus, sheltered workshops, poppy factories, and even a taxi-­driving training school. ­These activities diluted its energies but provided socially esteemed

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channels for charitable contributions to veteran welfare when lobbying produced disappointing results.59 Ironically and predictably, the success of its fund­ rais­ing and charitable activities undermined the Legion’s ability to convince politicians to increase state funding on veterans’ behalf. In her impor­tant study of British and German veterans, Deborah Cohen has noted that the millions of wounded veterans from World War I constituted a “community of despair,” but also one of danger as they ­were open to po­liti­cal radicalization. In Germany many flocked to radical politics, but much less so in Britain, where, by the mid-1920s, veterans—­reflecting the British Legion’s motto of “Ser­vice, Not Self ”—­became “bulwarks of the established order, loyal to king and country.”60 In Cohen’s view, this lack of militancy proved to be lethal to their campaigns for improved benefits b­ ecause of the philosophical reluctance on the part of public servants in the United Kingdom to tackle major social prob­lems. In this re­spect as well, Britain was quite dif­fer­ent to both Germany and Australia, where bureaucrats ­were more interventionist.61 But the timidity of the British Legion, and its refusal to take more militant action to force a shift in the mindsets of bureaucrats and politicians, must bear part of the blame. The upshot was that the Legion achieved l­ ittle for British veterans in terms of obtaining support from the state, ­either in the interwar period or following World War II, when it largely continued along its existing path. Even given the opportunity to join the World Veterans Federation in the 1950s, where it could have developed more effective pressure tactics and devised more advantageous pos­si­ble outcomes for British veterans, “the influential British Legion and the British Empire Ser­vices League did not join.”62 The Legion’s official historian, Graham Wootton, has suggested that the Legion was able to obtain for British veterans better treatment a­ fter discharge than they had ever received before.63 This is, however, a relatively low bar given that returned soldiers had not previously been regarded as a state responsibility at all and had needed to turn to charity if unable to provide for themselves.64 The victories to which Wootton points are relatively small, including ­matters such as persuading Prime Minister Bonar Law in 1922 to abandon his stated intention to abolish the Ministry of Pensions, and persuading the government in 1923 to not reduce pensions in light of the deflation Britain was experiencing at the time.65 Wootton nonetheless maintains in his official history of the Legion, more so than in his l­ater work about veteran influence on po­liti­cal decisions, that the Legion had had a considerable leverage over British politicians in the interwar period and following World War II. But perhaps more telling is the number of failures he relates: the failure to get the time limit for pension claims removed, the failure to have laws passed for the compulsory employment of some of the disabled, and the sense by the mid-1920s, among

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even highly placed leaders in the Legion, that they ­were not achieving as much for the ex-­service community as they had hoped.66 Niall Barr has also disputed the idea of significant British Legion clout, grounding his arguments in an examination of British government files rather than accepting Legion claims at face value. Barr convincingly argues that the Legion had minimal impact, and that government files tend to show the government controlling the Legion rather than vice versa.67 The Legion is thus more memorable and notable for dampening down veteran anger, and for assisting in the mass peaceful transition to postwar life, than for winning benefits for its members. Britain’s ex-­servicemen ­after both the world wars only occasionally a­ dopted the sort of militancy that Australian veterans showed in postwar riots and ongoing threats of vio­lence, or which American ex-­ servicemen displayed in the Bonus March. While ­there ­were occasional riots, including against the treatment meted out to soldiers and veterans, they petered out relatively quickly and do not appear to have been part of a strategy aimed at forcing the government to grant more concessions to veterans, unlike the Australian ones that w ­ ere at times encouraged by the RSL.68 As Cohen and ­Reese have both suggested, British veterans’ quiescence, which was encouraged by their veterans’ organ­ization, left them poorly compensated and rewarded for all they had sacrificed and achieved in twice confronting and overcoming German aggression.69 In this regard the British Legion served the establishment well by limiting the claims made on the rest of the nation, but it was veterans who paid the price.

US Veterans ­under Veto The case of US veterans ­after the two world wars is distinctive in this study. It is the only case in our sample in which veterans received markedly dif­fer­ent treatment a­ fter the two world wars, a break from the positive and negative path dependencies we discussed in the Australian and British cases, respectively. US veterans a­ fter World War II received generous benefits on their discharge, principally through the provisions of what became known as the GI Bill. In this re­spect, they stand in marked contrast to their World War I pre­de­ces­sors, who received poor treatment ­after their return, campaigned for years before the Bonus Bill was fi­nally passed in 1924, and strug­gled yet again to get their bonus paid in cash, which it fi­nally was in 1936. It also stands out in comparative perspective: the bonus (called a “war gratuity” in many other countries) was awarded to veterans in the United States much l­ater than in Britain or its dominions. All this happened even though they, like their World War II suc-

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cessors, returned victorious and w ­ ere represented by the American Legion and the VFW, the same veterans’ organ­izations that secured better treatment for World War II veterans. What best explains this outcome for American World War I veterans? Much like the British case, the answer lies in the reluctance of a well-­connected veterans’ organ­ization to go to the proverbial mat with politicians on behalf of their members. In this case, the American Legion, like the British Legion, was in­effec­tive in much of its lobbying. Like the British Legion, its formation headed off more radical possibilities, and replaced antiestablishment veterans’ organ­izations—­primarily the World War Veterans in the American case. The Legion seems to have been, for much of its existence, more concerned with promoting its version of “Americanism” and containing veteran discontent than with pressing for benefits.70 However, in contrast to the British case, the Legion faced serious competition from a rival organ­ization—­the older VFW, which had been the secondary organ­ization representing World War I soldiers. The entry of the VFW into the debate broke the impasse between veterans demanding the payment of a cash bonus and a government that refused to pay it. The VFW proved to be a far feistier organ­ization than the Legion, and its determined lobbying attracted considerable veteran support. Its status threatened, the American Legion responded by becoming more vigorous. This interor­gan­i­za­tional dynamic eventually improved the entitlements of World War I veterans and ensured that the World War II generation would receive far superior treatment. The American Legion was established at a meeting in Paris, presided over by Col. Theodore Roo­se­velt, on February 15, 1919.71 ­Because it was open to ­those who served in the armed forces but had not departed American shores, the Legion had an enormous pool of potential members given the United States’ ­limited role in World War I. Or­gan­i­za­tion­ally, it enjoyed good early fortunes: only a year ­after its founding it had 843,000 members and was granted a congressional charter and official recognition by the War Department. Its leadership was power­f ul and well connected.72 But the Legion was not an organ­ization inclined to aggressively push for benefits. The Legion’s founding meeting included twenty officers but not a single enlisted man. ­These officers represented socially conservative forces who feared the unsettling and disruptive forces unleashed by the war—­evident in revolutions both successful and unsuccessful in Europe—­and who w ­ ere keen to ensure that the war experience did not radicalize soldiers.73 It was no coincidence that high-­r anking officers of the American Expeditionary Force assisted in the founding of the Legion.74 Although eschewing radicalism could have been a tactic to attain better long-­term outcomes for veterans, the

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American Legion, like the British Legion, erred on the side of caution. Its advocacy was half hearted, and often failed to reflect members’ interests. The timing of its formation, s­ haped by the United States’ late entry into the war, certainly did not help: it was founded when the war was over, and was therefore too late to shape repatriation policies, many of which proved to be completely inadequate.75 The Legion was especially slow to push back against an official discourse that refused to acknowledge that veterans had special needs and claims to status, ­whether disabled or not. President Calvin Coo­lidge, for example, stated in his bud­get message to Congress in 1923 that while the country could not do too much to assist the disabled, t­ hose who w ­ ere not disabled “are offered the opportunities available to e­ very other citizen.”76 Franklin Delano Roo­se­ velt made similar comments to the American Legion in 1933, frankly telling them that veterans did not constitute a specific class with specific rights.77 It is likely that such views w ­ ere widely shared in the public sphere. American veterans, a­ fter all, w ­ ere conscripts and could not appeal to their nobility in volunteering or having contributed to the “birth of the nation” (unlike Australian veterans). The Legion’s failure to contest the idea that veterans did not constitute a specific class of citizen meriting particularistic concessions was a major handicap to securing compensation for the nondisabled. ­Because it sensed a lack of public and po­liti­cal support, the Legion’s advocacy for the payment of the bonus was lukewarm. Even at the outset it refused to campaign for what was called “adjusted compensation” for veterans on the grounds that the government could not afford it.78 Instead, the Legion preferred to concentrate on winning concessions for the disabled, an undertaking in which it enjoyed some successes. Thanks to its energetic lobbying efforts, Congress approved the establishment of the Veterans’ Bureau in 1921—­a single body that could oversee pensions, vocational training, and health care—­ and in securing the passage of the 1924 World War Adjusted Compensation Act (or “Bonus Act”). It also successfully campaigned for an increased timeframe for veterans to make pension claims, and for cases of tuberculosis and psychological disorders reported before January 1, 1925, to automatically be regarded as war related.79 The Legion was also influential expanding the hospital system for veterans in the interwar period, loosening the eligibility criteria for treatment, and advancing administrative reform in the establishment of the Veterans Administration in 1930.80 Adler credits the Legion and the smaller and more focused Disabled American Veterans lobby group for developing a veterans’ health care system that was considerably more generous than originally intended. For example, veterans could, u ­ nder certain circumstances, access Veterans Bureau

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(VB) and Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals for the treatment of ailments unrelated to their war ser­vice.81 Adler is right, but the vacillating and conditional nature of this benefit, and the fact that it only benefited the disabled and sick, are both impor­tant qualifications. Despite the health care improvements, it was the payment of the cash-­based bonus—­the principal form of reward for veterans who ­were not disabled by their war ser­vice, and an additional reward for ­those who ­were—­that became the touchstone issue for veterans in the interwar period, and the rec­ord of the Legion in campaigning for it was indifferent. ­After successfully lobbying for the passage of a Bonus Bill through the Congress and Senate in 1922, the Legion suffered a setback when President Harding vetoed it, citing its excessive cost. Renewed and intensified lobbying produced another Bonus Bill in 1924, but the bonus was to be paid in bonds that could only be redeemed in 1945, or paid in cash to a dependent only on the veteran’s death.82 For most veterans this was an unsatisfactory outcome; they would have to wait for another twenty-­ one years before receiving the payment, long ­after it was most needed. But then the two veterans’ organ­izations took dif­fer­ent paths. While the American Legion accepted the payment in bonds as the best deal it could get, the VFW maintained its militant stance, pushing for liberalization of the terms of the bonus payment, such as first lobbying for e­ arlier payment to permanently incapacitated veterans, and by 1929 for cash payouts for all veterans.83 In 1930 it also succeeded in getting Congress to pass nonser­vice war-­related disability pensions, although ­these proved to be short-­lived.84 In pressing for such mea­sures, the VFW better reflected the needs of many of its members suffering from the economic downturn and the ­Great Depression.85 By 1931, the unemployment rate among veterans was significantly higher than for nonveterans, and they w ­ ere desperate for relief through pensions or the bonus.86 ­Because the bonus became such a hot-­button issue and assumed a symbolic importance beyond its financial worth, the VFW reaped the benefits of its militant advocacy, rapidly increasing its membership. The flow of its members to the Veterans for Foreign Wars left American Legion leaders ­little choice but to support immediate payment.87 And yet their efforts continued to be halfhearted, trailing the VFW’s per­sis­tent lobbying and militancy by a substantial margin. In February 1931, Congress increased the amount veterans could borrow against their bonus certificates from 22.5 to 50 ­percent, overriding Hoover’s veto. The VFW accepted this change as a temporary compromise but continued to press for full cash payment, including organ­izing marches on the Capitol and continuing its lobbying of members of Congress. And although the VFW did not or­ga­nize the Bonus March of 1932, it was sympathetic and

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supportive.88 By contrast, the American Legion president, Henry L. Stevens, maintained his opposition to immediate cash payment of the bonus throughout 1931 and into 1932, siding with the government against the bulk of veteran opinion. The Legion was accordingly less supportive of the bonus marchers than the VFW.89 In 1930 and 1931, the Legion hosted President Hoover at its annual conventions and supported his efforts to resist the demands for immediate cash payment of the bonus, even helping him write speeches that emphasized the importance of “self-­help.”90 In 1933 it also hosted the newly elected Franklin Roo­se­velt, allowing him to explain to members why he opposed granting veterans special privileges—­such as the bonus payment, or pensions for injuries not attributable to war ser­vice.91 Given that Roo­se­velt opposed cash payment of the bonus and had recently made dramatic cuts to veteran entitlements, the Legion’s leadership effectively lent cover to a president whose policies stood in opposition to veterans’ demands. Roo­se­velt had offered to bear the wrath of the veteran lobby when seeking congressional authorization for his cuts, but the Legion was remarkably compliant.92 The Legion did eventually come around to adopting a less accommodating approach ­toward the federal government and became more strident in its activism. The breakup of the Bonus Marchers’ Washington encampment and Roo­se­velt’s cuts to pensions and entitlements in 1933 made its support for the authorities less ­viable, and it can hardly have escaped notice that VFW membership increased threefold between 1929 and 1932, reaching two hundred thousand, when its calls for immediate cash payment of the bonus ­were the most strident.93 But it was pressure from ordinary members that ultimately forced the Legion and its new national commander, Edward A. Hayes, to adopt a more aggressive approach. Hayes, a conservative, was philosophically inclined to continue its moderate tradition. But in late 1934, by an overwhelming majority vote, the Legion forced its national leadership to change course on the bonus issue and press for immediate cash payment.94 Hayes directly challenged Roo­se­velt’s position that t­ here ­were plenty of Americans worse off than veterans, and that veterans did not constitute a status group ­unless they ­were demonstrably disabled by their war ser­vice. In October 1934 he stated: The experience of ­those of us who have been devoting the past fifteen years to the prob­lem of the World War veterans has supplied us with ample proof to show that a vast majority are in a class of handicap ­because of their ser­vice in the war. . . . ​Certainly ­these men are a class by themselves, separate and apart from ordinary citizens and are entitled to e­ very protection a grateful government can give them.95

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The Legion’s post-1934 tactical shift paid dividends. ­After massive mobilization of veteran discontent and relentless lobbying of congressional representatives, many of Roo­se­velt’s cuts ­were restored, often over his veto.96 The 1935 bill to pay the bonus immediately and in cash, however, could not muster enough votes to override Roo­se­velt’s veto. It was only in 1936, when the Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars fi­nally presented a united front, that Congress was able to muster enough votes for an override.97 In June 1936, payments to veterans commenced. The amounts ­were far from insignificant: the average payment was $581, about 30 ­percent of the median ­house­hold income in the veterans’ age bracket, costing the government $1.9 billion. It was a major victory.98 World War II veterans benefited from this long b­ attle and the orga­nizational co­ali­tion it produced.99 It provided a cautionary tale to US citizens that veterans could be troublesome if not adequately cared for; Eleanor Roo­se­velt warned that if World War II veterans w ­ ere not well treated, the rest of the United States would “reap the whirlwind.”100 Many advocates for the GI Bill argued that the mishandling of World War I veterans’ claims was unjust and a ­mistake that should not be repeated.101 For its part, the American Legion learned the importance of cooperating with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the desirability of having mea­sures in place before most veterans returned. It may have been of scant comfort to World War I veterans, but their difficulties ensured that their successors fared much better.

Soviet Veterans ­under Lenin and Stalin Organ­ization and the lack thereof also played a major role in the fate of Soviet veterans of World War II. Unlike US veterans of World War I, Stalin’s soldiers ­were not late or l­imited participants in their war. Nevertheless, Soviet veterans ­under Stalin did not receive a special status commensurate with their level of suffering, sacrifice, and achievement. In the treatment of veterans ­after World War II, t­ here was considerable path de­pen­den­cy: solutions a­ fter 1945 imitated e­ arlier models and the reasons for neglecting veterans also remained the same. What drove this continuity? First, ­there was no ideological incentive for a regime that claimed to rule in the name of “the working class,” not in the name of returned ser­vicemen. Like their Chinese counter­parts, the Soviet leaders ­were Marxist-­Leninists with a distinct view of what constituted a legitimate social group. Veterans ­were not one of ­these—­they ­were simply “a section of the Soviet ­people” who could not be separated from the rest of society, “­those who had not been in the army.”

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The Soviet rulers’ socialist dream conjured up a world in which each and e­ very citizen would be taken care of in the near f­ uture, so no special provisions for veterans would be necessary. Generalized welfare for the laboring masses, not veterans’ benefits, would take care of any prob­lems returned soldiers might have. It mattered l­ittle that, for the time being, such welfare existed on paper only and had been replaced in the 1930s by a highly stratified, “Stalinist” system matching rewards to the perceived contribution of the individual to state building and preparation for war. With an eye to what happened elsewhere, Stalinists associated particularistic care for veterans with fascism, or at the very least with “reactionary” politics.102 Even if the Soviets had wanted to build a veterans’ benefit system, ­there was no money to do so. In the mid-1920s, the regime could not meet the demand for artificial limbs or adequately h ­ ouse, feed, and clothe t­hose still in uniform, let alone give money to nondisabled former defenders in a situation where veterans of world and civil wars made up 4  ­percent of the population.103 Likewise, ­after World War II, t­ here w ­ ere simply too many former soldiers, who now constituted between 12 and 15 ­percent of the population in a devastated country.104 Complaining veterans often heard this ­simple phrase: “­There are too many of you—go away.”105 When Soviet officials reviewed the privileges attached to major ­battle decorations, they quickly realized how expensive this exercise alone was. As a result, what started as a review of the procedures for renewing the benefits ended with their abolition.106 If the Soviet state could not afford the payments to its most decorated war heroes, how could anybody expect it to institute an overall welfare policy for the defenders of the motherland? Rewarding veterans for their war­time ser­vice would have been not only too expensive but also counterproductive. The regime wanted veterans to return to productive life and to further sacrifice themselves in the rebuilding of the country, which soon prepared for war against the United States. In the escalating Cold War, and in par­tic­ul­ ar the breakout of fighting in K ­ orea, resources ­were again transferred from welfare to warfare. But it was not only vertical status that waned ­after demobilization was over. Horizontal status also dis­ appeared as other citizens began to tire of veterans’ demands. Civilians had suffered no less during this most brutal of the Second World Wars, in which civilian casualties outran military ones by at least a ­factor of two.107 Like many veterans, they also lived in terrible circumstances once the guns fell s­ilent. Why should only veterans get help? Why, indeed, should a war w ­ idow, whose husband had made the ultimate sacrifice, not be as privileged as the former soldier who had not?108

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Similar arguments, of course, w ­ ere raised in post–­World War II Germany, but t­here they ­were po­liti­cally unsuccessful b­ ecause or­ga­nized veterans emerged victorious in the po­liti­cal debate. In the Soviet Union u ­ nder Stalin, in contrast, such lobbying was impossible. Despite their shared sense of entitlement, t­ here was l­ ittle veterans could do as a group, other than gripe, complain, and petition the authorities as individuals. In Stalin’s totalitarian state, veterans’ organ­izations ­were not tolerated by a regime jealously guarding its orga­nizational mono­poly. Again, we can see strong aspects of path de­pen­dency ­here. The ­unions of war invalids that had emerged from World War I had annoyed the authorities early on, who declared them “unnecessary” and disbanded them. Red Army veterans thus could not join existing associations and ­were also prohibited from founding their own. Even special cells for Civil War veterans within the Bolshevik Party ­were declared undesirable by a civilian leadership wary of in­de­ pen­dent sources of organ­ization and power. The young Soviet Union thus became the only one of the major belligerents of World War I without l­egal organ­izations representing veterans.109 This legacy lived on ­after 1945. Not that veterans did not desire to or­ga­nize. Some even knew of international examples and tried to emulate them. “It is well-­known,” wrote one of them to the Central Committee in 1946, “that veterans’ organ­izations exist in Amer­i­ca, France, and other countries.” Such examples should be imitated by the Soviets, he argued. A veterans’ organ­ization could, he believed, help in the Soviets’ “fight against the warmongers, the unmasking of the reactionaries.” But his vision extended to the domestic realm as well. H ­ ere, the new organ­ ization would fight negative phenomena such as drunkenness and hooliganism among veterans. It would also assist them in their strug­gle against “functionaries and bureaucrats.”110 The response from the latter was predictable: no such organ­ization was permissible. Interestingly, the officials also had their eyes on transnational examples, but drew quite dif­fer­ent lessons from them: veterans’ organ­ization w ­ ere “reactionary,” “imperialist,” and “anti-­ Soviet.” As examples, they cited the American Legion, some of whose members had indeed engaged in vio­lence against striking workers, and whose leader, Alvin Owsley, said in 1922, “The Fascisti are to Italy what the American Legion is to the United States.”111 According to the Soviet reading, the British Legion, too, was an “anti-­democratic organ­ization.” In France, most organ­izations ­were ­either “Petain-­ists” or “DeGualle-­ists,” the Soviets thought. “Progressives” ­were the exception.112 That the new regime was a dictatorship further militated against veterans’ desires, as the rulers ­were simply not dependent on the affirmation of former

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soldiers at the ballot box. Even demobilization benefits w ­ ere granted only when serious vio­lence by released soldiers threatened the new regime. In 1920, demobilization of over a million men fed into preexisting anti-­or non-­Bolshevik groups, described, depending on po­liti­cal allegiance of the observer, as “bandits,” or “partisans.” The uprisings ­were put down with overwhelming military force flanked by terror against potential or a­ ctual supporters among the civilian population. But the desperate attempts of the Bolshevik rulers to stay in power also involved some carrots besides the stick. The Tenth Party Congress introduced economic concessions to the peasantry as part of what would soon be known as the “New Economic Policy.” The demobilization benefits introduced in January of 1921 belong in the same context. They ­were an attempt to decrease the likelihood of the subsequent 2.5 million demobilized soldiers ­going over to the “green” e­ nemy. Transitory mea­sures designed to ease reintegration, they ­were intended to smooth the way of the demobilized soldier, “from the barracks all the way to his home,” to use the words of a Central Committee circular letter. Veterans ­were supposed to be greeted festively by the local organs who w ­ ere also in charge of finding them work, clothes, shelter, and the essentials of everyday life if returning to urban settlements or helping in the reestablishment of their agricultural homestead. This work was delegated to local temporary commissions, the trade ­unions, and places of employment. Like l­ater in China, ­there was no Commissariat for Veteran Affairs at any level of government. Once reintegrated, former soldiers ­were to be regarded as civilians, with no special status and no claim to special benefits.113 The same was true ­after World War II. Once demobilization was over without having caused too many challenges to the regime, it could afford to be even less generous. What­ever meager benefits ­there had been ­were mostly dismantled by 1947. The c­ auses of the shift a­ fter World War II resembled t­ hose of the 1920s: ideological predisposition against seeing veterans as a group, lack of democracy, and the absence of veterans’ organ­izations. Thus, the Leninist ideological and po­liti­cal systems—­both in their Stalinist forms and in their ­earlier variants—­presented an extreme obstacle to veterans gaining recognition. In a totalitarian dictatorship, it is ultimately the dictator and his closest associates who decide policy. If they are hostile to veterans’ benefit systems and veterans’ organ­izations, t­ here is very l­ittle that can be done “from below.” But as we have seen, this situation was only an extreme case of a wider prob­lem: if veterans cannot find a strong common voice and a receptive audience in the corridors of power, their ability to gain a special status is severely circumscribed. As the experiences of the United Kingdom and the United States a­ fter World War I show, even the existence of a veterans’ organ­

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ization is no guarantee if the organ­ization does not aggressively represent the grievances of returned soldiers, or if the government functions with a po­liti­cal mindset that stresses self-­help and charity over state intervention. Chapter 5 builds on the discussion h ­ ere by exploring t­ hese entangled prob­lems of veteran politics in more detail—­organ­ization and the domestic po­liti­cal constellation—­ but this time from the perspective of ­those who did well.

Ch a p ter  5

The Po­liti­cally Power­f ul

Victory and defeat, we have argued, do not provide enough explanatory power in accounting for how veterans have fared a­ fter war. While ­there are prominent cases of victors achieving high status, t­ here are compelling counterexamples of victorious soldiers returning home only to suffer widespread neglect and even outright discrimination. Indeed, t­ here are cases where defeated soldiers enjoyed high postwar status. Victory and defeat on the battlefield are therefore poor predictors of postwar outcomes for veterans. The point holds for both demo­cratic and authoritarian regimes, for we have seen that victors can be treated poorly in both. So we are still left with our original question: If victory and defeat are not determinative, what best explains our positive and negative outcomes? Stated in the most general terms, our answer is “politics.” In chapter 4 we reviewed several scenarios of veteran neglect that, in our interpretation, resulted from their po­liti­cal weakness. In this chapter we build on this analy­sis by examining in greater detail several cases of successful veterans’ movements, as well as veteran communities that piggy-­backed off ­these cases. We argue that their successes came about as a result of a constellation of forces, which can be broken down into three general areas: (1) veterans’ orga­nizational power and their skill in lobbying aggressively for their cause, (2) the domestic environment they found themselves in, and (3) the international constellation, within which both veterans and the elites they confronted in their domestic po­liti­cal system moved in. 12 0

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The single most impor­tant variable for veteran success is the existence of a well-­organized, tactically clever, purposeful, and united veterans’ movement. Organ­ization is critical: we are not aware of any example where veterans enjoyed a high vertical status without being effectively or­ga­nized. But organ­ization alone does not guarantee success. Much also depends on the constellation of domestic and international forces. In the former, the state must be at least minimally open and responsive to veterans’ demands, even if access is merely through a crack or pinhole. We realize that this formulation might read as annoyingly abstract, but it tracks the comparative evidence: old democracies ­were not more responsive than younger ones (the United Kingdom was less generous than Weimar or postwar Germany); Leninist regimes ­were both closed (­under Stalin, and in China), as well as more open (in Taiwan, and u ­ nder Brezhnev); po­liti­cally conservative governments embraced veterans ( Japan), but so did Germany, where a pro-­veteran consensus existed across the po­liti­cal spectrum. The USSR u ­ nder Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika, committed to building “socialism with a ­human face,” made veterans into a pillar of the po­liti­cal and social order. At the tactical level, some veterans ­were quite successful advocates for their cause, “shaping the po­liti­ cal arena” (to use Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier’s term) through lobbying, protest, and voting in ways that profitably ­shaped the benefits they received.1 ­Others ­were not. In this chapter we consider how Australian and American veterans of both world wars mobilized and why governments responded favorably. We then move to Soviet veterans a­ fter Stalin and describe the way they took advantage of the l­ittle wiggle room they w ­ ere allowed and transformed themselves from defeated victors to successful lobbyists for their cause. Three groups of veterans of lost wars who nevertheless did well in the postwar world round out the picture: Taiwanese, Japa­nese, and German. As we ­will see, if veterans are able to develop power­ful po­liti­cal networks domestically and internationally, and if they find themselves placed in favorable geopo­liti­cal and domestic circumstances, losing a war is not a barrier to securing rights and benefits. Lacking an effective, and if necessary aggressive, organ­ization, by contrast, is.

Australian Veterans and the RSL A critical and distinctive feature of the Australian experience of World War I was its soldiers. ­Because the Australian federal government’s attempts to introduce conscription in 1916 and 1917 both failed, all ­those who fought in the war ­were volunteers. During the war, propaganda posters drew increasingly

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sharp contrasts between the heroes who had bravely gone off to fight, and “slackers” and “shirkers” who remained safely at home.2 Many war memorials and rolls of honor listed not only the dead from the local community but all who had volunteered to fight—­and by unsubtle implication, all ­those who had not.3 War­time propaganda also lauded t­ hose who served as having “given birth to the nation” and as having eased doubts about Australia’s national worthiness.4 Primed by t­ hese efforts, a­ fter the war, when the time came to politic about benefits, the primary veterans’ organ­ization—­the Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia (RSL)—­found it easy to tap into and mobilize public support on returned soldiers’ behalf. A key figure in postwar debates and ­battles for veterans’ benefits was Prime Minister William “Billy” Hughes. Hughes, consistent with his divisive rhe­toric during the war years, claimed on his return from the Paris Peace Talks in 1919 that Australians could be divided into two classes—­those who had supported the war effort, and t­ hose who had not—­and that he would make sure that ­those who had fought would be well cared for. The rest, he declared, deserved nothing and would receive nothing. Despite the overlap between war­time and postwar rhe­toric, this lavish praise and support for veterans was hardly inevitable. By 1919 ­there was no longer any need to recruit more soldiers for the war effort. Moreover, veterans’ unruly be­hav­ior and their demands for improved repatriation benefits could have prompted Hughes to consider them a threat to him, his government, and the state.5 Hughes could also have used the opportunity of his return a­ fter more than a year abroad to move beyond the divisive war­time rhe­toric and encourage postwar national unity at veterans’ expense. But none of this came to pass; returned soldiers maintained their elevated status immediately a­ fter the war and well beyond it. This was not all Hughes’s d­ oing; he appears to have been played by veterans and their leaders. An RSL representative was in the group that greeted Hughes when he disembarked from the ship in Fremantle on August 23, 1919, and his car was soon commandeered by two hundred veterans who roped and dragged it to Fremantle Town Hall, with more veterans following ­behind.6 ­There, in front of a full h ­ ouse, Hughes was feted with speeches by the state premier, the mayor of Fremantle, and H. E. Bolton, the president of the state branch of the RSL. Bolton said that the returned soldiers regarded Hughes as a friend and looked to him to address their grievances.7 ­Whether out of genuine admiration for returned soldiers or a po­liti­cal calculation that veterans could be a potentially valuable electoral asset, Hughes did not disappoint. Ignoring the many contributions to the Australian war effort of Australian workers, volunteers, nurses, and o ­ thers, not to mention

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overlooking the fact that Australia had contributed a very small portion of the total Allied forces, he lauded their deeds and promised to reward them: [Australia] owes nothing to t­hose who being able to fight remained ­behind, but it owes every­thing it has to ­those who being able to fight went out and fought. . . . ​The returned soldiers look to me as their friend. They w ­ ill look not in vain. T ­ here are in this country sheep and goats— (laughter)—­those who deserve to be saved, t­ hose who have earned salvation, and t­ hose who have done nothing.8 ­ fter this meeting Hughes met face-­to-­face with an RSL del­e­ga­tion. ­After A hearing about some of the veterans’ grievances, Hughes reassured the RSL that he meant what he said about his high regard for the returned soldiers and his determination to ensure that they ­were well treated. He even described himself as the veterans’ “advocate” in government.9 The following day, Hughes reiterated ­these sentiments in even more glowing terms at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Perth in front of a crowd of three thousand, many of whom w ­ ere veterans. Hughes’s rhe­toric soared: The Australian soldier has earned for himself a niche in the ­temple of the immortals. His name ­will live forever. He has done for me and you and all of us something which can never be undone. He has made the name of Australia known throughout the earth. Whenever men speak of heroism and deeds of bravery the name of Australia is honoured. . . . ​ We owe every­thing to them. T ­ here is nothing we have or can have which does not come to us through their sacrifice and their valour.10 Hughes’s rhe­toric about the mighty deeds of Australian soldiers was repeated when he arrived in Melbourne, then the Australian capital. But it was the RSL that was responsible for much of the stagecraft. Prior to his arrival they had pressed all government and private employers to give veterans time off to greet the prime minister. When Hughes arrived at Spencer Street Station, veterans attached ropes to his car, escorted it to the Town Hall, and forged a passage through the crowd for him. They draped him in an Australian flag and adorned him with an Australian soldier’s hat, rendering him into their image of a patriotic Australian who had fought for his country.11 ­Later on, at an RSL-­organized reception, Hughes met RSL leaders and veterans’ and soldiers’ ­fathers. The RSL’s Victorian branch president, G. R. Palmer, introduced Hughes as “Australia’s greatest statesman” and implored him “to give effect to t­ hose promises made by its Government from 1914 to 1919.” If ­these ­were kept, he assured the prime minister, the RSL “would be b­ ehind him

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wherever he moved.”12 Hughes returned the compliments, praising the former soldiers for their contributions to the war effort and expressing sympathy for their hardships: ­ hose who have not been out of the country during the period of the T war can have no conception of the hell through which ­those boys have passed, of the sacrifices they have made, of the privations they have endured, or the dangers they have daily faced. Some of ­these ­things unroll themselves like a pa­norama before my eyes as I speak. They have done ­g reat ­things. They have earned for Australia a name that ­will never die. . . . ​Upon this firm foundation has the Commonwealth been raised by the valour and the sacrifice of the best and the bravest of our men.13 In such statements, Hughes reaffirmed and officially sanctioned the RSL outlook, worldview, and claims for generous repatriation mea­sures. Veterans credited themselves with birthing the Commonwealth and viewed themselves as distinct from t­hose who had not gone abroad. They regarded themselves as a class apart, and therefore deserving of generous benefits. At other meetings and receptions in Melbourne, when he journeyed to Sydney and Brisbane, and when he addressed parliament, Hughes’s statements reflected the RSL’s claims to patriotic identity and entitlement.14 As he watched from the stage at the receptions he attended, and read the reports of t­ hose he did not, Gilbert Dyett, the recently elected federal president of the RSL, was surely delighted. With only gentle encouragement from the RSL, Hughes had boxed himself into a rhetorical corner that would aid the RSL’s case in subsequent negotiations. This shared rhetorical framing was influential ­because Prime Minister Hughes and RSL federal president Dyett w ­ ere soon to begin impor­tant negotiations regarding veterans’ benefits and the management of Australia’s repatriation system. Although a system was already in place, including many mea­sures that the RSL had lobbied for, the RSL was still not satisfied, and prepared a further log of claims. Principal among t­hese ­were a war gratuity, a more generous pension scale, and a Repatriation Commission that would administer repatriation benefits at arm’s distance from government. Hughes, with his rhe­toric about how much was owed to Australian soldiers, and his dictatorial style of leading his government, represented the best hope for veterans.15 Hughes also held the key to strengthening the RSL or­gan­i­za­tion­ally. In 1919 it was a fractious and splintered organ­ization, and Dyett was struggling both to hold it together and to exert his authority. Winning major concessions from Hughes would quiet his detractors and consolidate his power in the RSL.

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At the same time that the RSL depended on Hughes to get what it wanted, it also exerted considerable power over him, and over the authorities in general. The repatriation of soldiers to Australia had been difficult and problematic, resulting in riots in most major cities.16 Veterans’ public drunkenness and antiestablishment vio­lence (which the authorities feared was influenced by Bolshevism) threatened public and civic order.17 What’s more, Hughes was in a much weaker position po­liti­cally than his be­hav­ior and the enthusiastic reception he received on his return home would suggest. Expelled from the L ­ abor Party in 1916 over his advocacy of conscription, he remained prime minister only by stitching together a co­ali­tion of pro-­conscription ­Labor members of parliament (MPs) and former conservative opponents, which called itself the Nationalist Party. The Nationalists w ­ ere held together by the party’s commitment to the prosecution of the war, but with the war over, its electoral fortunes and Hughes’s survival as prime minister ­were open questions. Before fractures in his co­ali­tion developed into major splits, Hughes de­cided to call an early election to capitalize on his triumphant return. But to win, he would need the support of veterans.18 Taking advantage of this opportunity, Dyett and his RSL colleagues played the situation expertly. They held good cards. The RSL was the dominant veterans’ organ­ization, and its membership included nearly half of the returned soldiers; it had well-­prepared proposals to amend a repatriation system that was still in a state of flux (far more than ­after World War II); and it was well aware of Hughes’s po­liti­cal difficulties and his previous rhe­toric about supporting veterans (who had already proven themselves to be disruptive if their demands ­were not met). In this context it did not take much further prodding for Hughes to promise—­and deliver—­ substantially improved benefits, such as better pensions, the war gratuity, and a repatriation commission to the RSL’s liking, along with a range of other minor concessions.19 Even though veterans ­were largely satisfied with the major ele­ments of Australia’s repatriation system almost immediately ­after they returned, the RSL continued to exploit its po­liti­cal connections, the cultural cachet of veterans (which it promoted), and the print media to obtain further benefits, vigorously resisting any suggestion that they be curtailed. Dyett continued to advocate for veterans in an insistent, per­sis­tent, and restrained manner even though the RSL lost some of its po­liti­cal clout as membership declined and vio­lence became less likely as veterans aged and settled into civilian life.20 The further victories attained by the RSL are discussed in chapter 2. In evaluating the sources of ­these successes, how much weight should we place on one variable over another? It was certainly the case that the circumstances of soldiers’ ser­vice and their achievements gave Australian veterans

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an armory of valuable resources, including power­f ul rhe­toric, a rec­ord of achievement, and claims to moral virtue. They successfully deployed t­ hese in their ­battles for benefits and rewards. In our view, however, it was not their victory, or their volunteer status, or their having “given birth to the nation” that ultimately extracted benefits from the state. That, we argue, was a po­liti­ cal achievement, attained through a spirited, well-­organized, mass membership veterans’ organ­ization which mobilized t­ hese resources, used threats of vio­ lence and promises of peace, and offered the illusion of an explicit po­liti­cal endorsement to an embattled prime minister desperate for veteran support as he headed into an election. Hughes may have received enough support from the returned soldiers to justify the concessions he granted—he remained prime minister a­ fter the 1919 election and served in that role for several more years—­ but the veterans did better, winning major concessions that significantly improved the lot of Australian veterans and that w ­ ere defensible enough to be retained and even improved on through the interwar period. In the pro­cess, they won critical pre­ce­dents, established orga­nizational practices, and learned impor­tant po­liti­cal lessons that also served the post–­World War II generation well. In many re­spects, the experience of World War II should have greatly strengthened the RSL and its ability to lobby for veterans. The war saw Australians fighting in direct defense of the nation for ­causes that ­were considered irreproachable. The introduction of conscription for some forces fighting in the Southwest Pacific meant that the Australian armed forces more than doubled the size they had reached in World War I. Moreover, the RSL was already well established and had an impressive track rec­ord winning rights for veterans. Indeed, membership boomed: by the end of 1945 it stood at over 270,000, more than a threefold increase over 1939. Numbers peaked at just ­under 374,000 at the end of 1946.21 Despite ­these numbers and the opportunities they offered for the application of po­liti­cal pressure, the RSL compromised its position of strength over the course of World War II. It embroiled itself in a long and messy debate about w ­ hether t­ hose who had been conscripted into the Commonwealth Militia (eligible for ser­vice only in a restricted theater of operations) and who had served in a theater of operations as militia members could be admitted to the organ­ization—­and, conversely, w ­ hether ­those who had joined the volunteer Second Australian Imperial Force (eligible for ser­vice anywhere) but who had not served abroad should be admitted. The eventual resolution—­that the former w ­ ere eligible for membership but the latter ­were not—­was reached only ­after lengthy debate that made it clear to conscripts that they w ­ ere regarded somewhat suspiciously. This mismanagement reduced the RSL’s moral

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authority, compromised its claim to represent all veterans, and prompted the emergence of a rival organ­ization, the Australian Legion of Ex-­Servicemen.22 Such missteps notwithstanding, the RSL retained its status as the premier veterans’ organ­ization. It remained closely connected to the federal and state governments. During the war years it lobbied the government for improved treatment of Australian soldiers and for benefits for veterans, winning several minor but still useful concessions.23 In 1943, for example, the federal government increased most pension rates by some 20 ­percent, and lowered the evidentiary burden on applicants.24 The RSL lobbied on almost all questions affecting veterans, such as pensions, housing, preference in employment, and a revised soldier settlement program. Since much of ­these already existed, the RSL found itself in the envious position of working mainly to improve on and then protect the status quo. It is a tribute to the potential power of Australian veterans, to the work of the RSL, and to the “path de­pen­dency” generated by the World War I pre­ce­dent that no fundamental revisions to veterans’ privilege appear to have been contemplated, let alone proposed or implemented. What changes ­there ­were amounted to ­little more than tinkering at the edges.

American Veterans, the Legion, and the VFW ­ here w T ­ ere many ­factors working in American veterans’ ­favor in their fight for benefits and entitlements in the wake of World War II. ­There was a general consensus that what one senator characterized as the “neglect and indifference” of World War I veterans should not be repeated.25 Roo­se­velt, for example, declared on a number of occasions that the rehabilitation programs for World War II veterans had to be better, and from 1943 urged Congress to move on the m ­ atter.26 He was also in general agreement that ­those who served in the armed forces had made greater sacrifices than ­those who had stayed at home, and deserved to be compensated as such. Conservatives, for their part, ­were reluctant to expand the welfare state (unlike Britain and Australia), which left more funds available for veterans. Unlike the poor whose entitlement to welfare was always contested, veterans, having defended the nation ­after it was directly attacked, w ­ ere seen as deserving their benefits.27 Furthermore, veterans returned home when, thanks to the New Deal, ­there ­were new expectations about the possibilities for government action in welfare and social policy, providing power­f ul recent pre­ce­dents for the granting of benefits to war veterans.28 ­There was also a broad consensus that a consumer-­ driven economy was the key to avoiding a postwar slowdown that would result in high unemployment. The GI Bill was of a piece with other legislation

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and policy mea­sures that favored mass consumerism. For instance, unlike many countries burdened with large war debts that required cost-­cutting, American veterans benefited from fiscally expansionary policies.29 The growth of the US economy and changes to tax rates and tax systems also enhanced the pool of finance available to be spent on veterans. Federal tax revenue increased from $2 billion in 1939 to $35 billion by 1945, while the federal government’s share of US tax revenue increased from 16 ­percent to over half by 1950.30 From po­liti­cal and economic standpoints the United States had the w ­ ill and the means to support generous veterans’ benefits. Alongside an ele­ment of idealism, fear also worked in f­ avor of the returning veterans. Many worried about the potentially destabilizing effects of demobilized soldiers. Advice lit­er­at­ure written in 1944 and 1945, sometimes penned by authors who drew on the example of interwar veterans attracted to fascism, warned that demobilized soldiers might become susceptible to extremist po­liti­cal groups, or engage in criminal be­hav­ior, should they not reintegrate successfully. “Power­ful reactionary forces, semi-­Fascist and Fascist groups, are at work ­today,” editors of the New Republic warned, “preparing to utilize the bitterness and resentment of the demobilized soldiers.” ­Others w ­ ere concerned that veterans might join the Ku Klux Klan in significant numbers.31 Radicalism, alienation, and unemployment w ­ ere all evils that could be headed off by a generous and considered program of reintegration. But if American World War II veterans had much operating in their ­favor, they also had to overcome substantial po­liti­cal opposition. Perhaps the most significant obstacle was Roo­se­velt. Already disinclined to recognize veterans as a distinct and privileged social group, early in his presidency he had canceled some of their benefits by executive order. In 1933, in a statement to the American Legion, he stated, “No person, b­ ecause he wore a uniform, must thereafter be placed in a special class of beneficiaries over and above all other citizens. The fact of wearing a uniform does not mean that he can demand and receive from his government a benefit which no other citizen receives.”32 His attitude appeared to have softened in World War II, but by how much was an open question. Another potential source of opposition was conservatives’ wariness about the government’s large role in the war­time economy and social policy carry­ing over into peacetime. They had killed off ambitious postwar plans advanced by the National Resources Planning Board, and eventually the board itself, as they sought to restrict the size of the postwar government.33 A major program of veterans’ benefits would be costly, and a potential “Trojan h ­ orse” for more generalized welfare commitments. This po­liti­cal opportunity structure was therefore of a mixed nature. Providing benefits that ­were only a small improvement on ­those offered to the

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World War I veterans was certainly in the historical cards since it would have satisfied Roo­se­velt as well as conservatives. That the United States eventually opted for dramatic rather than modest changes owes much to veterans’ organ­ izations, specifically, the American Legion’s tactical acumen and per­sis­tent pressure, with critical assistance from the smaller Veterans of Foreign Wars. By 1940 the American Legion had over a million members, counted many congressmen among its members, and enjoyed the support of other nonmembers in Congress.34 Size and good connections, however, are not necessarily consequential; as we have seen, neither the British Legion nor the American Legion a­ fter World War I lacked ­these, but their results ­were disappointing. What had changed dramatically in the interwar years was the Legion’s tactics— it became a far more assertive organ­ization. Much of this was rooted in vigorous competition from the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and other organ­izations. Legion leaders realized that winning generous repatriation benefits was not just a question of serving its constituency, or of securing justice, but a m ­ atter of orga­nizational survival. The Legion’s feisty posture can be seen in several dif­fer­ent areas. It was the decisive f­actor converting the vague plans and ideas that circulated in Washington throughout the war years into a series of clear proposals.35 In 1943, Warren Atherton, the Legion’s commander, appointed a committee to draft an “omnibus bill” that would bring together the vari­ous mea­sures favored by the Legion (much of this “wish list” was preserved in the GI Bill), and made the case for generous veterans’ benefits to the House Veterans Affairs Committee.36 The Legion also moved quickly to incorporate the men of World War II into its ranks, making them eligible for membership in 1942 and claiming responsibility for advocating on their behalf.37 Po­liti­cally, the Legion applied considerable pressure to have its proposed bill accepted when it was publicly released in January 1944. Atherton met with Roo­se­velt to explain the proposed legislation within a week of its release and incorporated some of his suggestions. The Legion headed a well-­organized publicity campaign that emphasized the debt owed to veterans and the bad outcomes that might follow if they ­were left dissatisfied. Radio, theater trailers, and newspaper features ­were used to marshal public support which was impressed on Congress through a petition of a million signatures.38 Despite some misgivings, the VFW lent its support from February 1944. The result of this flurry of activity was that the American Legion’s GI Bill became the only “game in town” if the public and government w ­ ere to accede to most veterans’ demands.39 Roo­se­velt also indicated growing support for the mea­sure, perhaps calculating that the votes of ­those in the ser­vices would be impor­tant to his fortunes in the 1944 election—­ which they turned out to be.40

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The Legion was also closely involved in pushing the bill through the complex legislative pro­cess, including a moment of high drama near its conclusion. Dif­fer­ent versions of the bill ­were passed by the House and Senate, and the committee charged with reconciling them was unexpectedly deadlocked. An absent committee member, Congressman John Gibson, had to be located late in the eve­ning and rushed back to Washington for a vote the next morning.41 The Legion came to the rescue: ­after a frantic search it located Gibson and arranged for his flight back to Washington for the vote.42 When the bill was signed into law by Roo­se­velt on June 22, 1944, representatives of the American Legion and VFW ­were ­there, a testament to the central role they played in ensuring that Amer­ic­ a’s World War II veterans had much brighter f­ utures than their forebears of a generation ­earlier.43 The po­liti­cal environment, or “po­liti­cal opportunity structure,” remained favorable for American veterans a­ fter the bill’s initial passage into law. Alongside what became an enduring national narrative about the “good war” fought by “the greatest generation,” the emerging Cold War and engagements in “hot” places such as ­Korea meant that the United States remained in a high state of war readiness and never eschewed war as a legitimate undertaking, unlike at least some of the combatant countries of both World War I and World War II. The US economy continued to boom ­until the 1970s, thus obviating the need for drastic reduction in federal expenditure—­a notable difference to the interwar period and the G ­ reat Depression. The ballooning Veterans Administration (VA) bud­get and administrative apparatus could be relatively easily accommodated in the boomtime United States.44 Favorably disposed presidents also assisted. Unlike Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roo­se­velt, who had not served in the armed forces and who denied claims that veterans constituted any sort of special class, Truman and Eisenhower ­were much more sympathetic. Truman was a veteran of World War I, a member of the VFW, and a life member of the American Legion, with which he was closely associated. Indeed, Truman was a leading figure in the organ­ ization of a patriotic parade when the Legion held its convention in Kansas City in 1921, and presented flags to the Allied commanders who had come to visit, including the French marshal Foch, British ­grand admiral Earl Beatty, and the commander of the American Expeditionary Force, General Pershing.45 The American Legion was critical to Truman’s rise in politics, and when he became president he quickly reaffirmed his commitment to the regime of veterans’ benefits introduced by his pre­de­ces­sor.46 Truman’s successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, as the former supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Eu­rope, was similarly sympathetic to the plight of veterans, many of whom he had commanded, and their families.47 It is also worth noting that in 1947

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more than half of the members of Congress ­were veterans.48 Veterans had many friends in high places. The reduced benefits for Korean and Vietnam War veterans reflect, in part, the lack of national commitment and endorsement of ­these wars. Both w ­ ere fought in places that had previously registered only marginally in US po­liti­cal consciousness, and neither could arouse the emotional commitment of a “total war” against the horrors of the Third Reich or Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and savagery during the war. The Korean War soon became the “forgotten war,” while the memories of Vietnam often served to divide Americans from each other rather than generate useful narratives about the exploits of American soldiers. The war also caused something of a bud­getary and economic crisis in the United States. The 1970s ­were marked by generally slow economic growth and burgeoning federal bud­get deficits, hardly a helpful climate for mounting claims on the public purse. Combined, ­these circumstances presented a less favorable environment for successful veteran activism than the mid-­to late 1940s. But as we have seen, determined veteran activism can overcome such obstacles, and generous benefit regimes can be instituted even in highly unfavorable circumstances. The blame for the poor outcomes for Vietnam veterans can be attributed not only to the unfavorable po­liti­cal opportunity structure but also to a more divided veterans’ movement. Although further research is needed into the relationship between veterans’ organ­izations’ lobbying and the benefits granted to Vietnam veterans, it is clear that Vietnam veterans w ­ ere unable to pre­sent a cohesive or united voice to Congress. The split in activism for Vietnam veterans is epitomized by the divide between the American Legion and the Vietnam Veterans against the War (VVAW). Whereas the former body was well established, well connected, and conservative in its outlook, the latter was much more radical. According to the FBI agents who reported on its formation to the bureau’s director, J. Edgar Hoover, the VVAW was “possibly the first antiwar group formed by veterans of an American war still being waged.”49 Whereas the Legion was staunchly in ­favor of the war and often advocated for its escalation, the VVAW was, as its name suggests, staunchly opposed, and advocated for withdrawal.50 Whereas the Legion and the VFW led a parade of twenty thousand p­ eople in New York in support of the war effort in 1965, the VVAW’s membership ­were more likely to be out protesting against the war, as they did at the 1968 Demo­ cratic Convention in Chicago and in April 1971 in Washington, D.C., when they publicly discarded their medals.51 Such protests appalled the leadership of the American Legion, which frequently cast antiwar protesters as disloyal and called for tougher action against them.52

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Completely dif­fer­ent attitudes to the war, vastly dif­fer­ent worldviews, and animosity between the two bodies (epitomized and embodied in what might be apocryphal stories of Legion members taunting VVAW protesters as embarrassments who had not been able to win their war) did not auger well for combined action on entitlements. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that while the VVAW was railing against Nixon’s poor treatment of veterans and in par­tic­u­lar their reduced educational entitlements, the Legion sided with the VA in claiming, inaccurately, that the Vietnam generation’s GI Bill was as liberal as the World War II version.53 The divide between the conservative Legion and the radical VVAW left the field open for even more organ­izations, such as the Vietnam Veterans of Amer­i­ca, which was formed in 1978 on the basis that the extant organ­izations ­were ­doing a poor job of looking a­ fter Vietnam veterans’ interests.54 If we are correct in arguing that veteran privilege emerges from united veterans’ organ­izations that are able to adroitly exploit po­liti­cal opportunities through aggressive collective action, the veterans’ movement during the Vietnam War would seem to be a negative case in point.

Soviet Veterans and the SKVV Soviet veterans of World War II, like their Australian and American counter­ parts, had power­f ul arguments for a special status. While most ­were not volunteers (unlike the Australians of World War I), and although the differential between soldier and civilian suffering was much less in the Soviet Union than in Australia or the United States, Soviet soldiers had more: they had saved their country and arguably the world from a fascist nightmare; Stalin’s regime and possibly the dictator himself owed their very survival to their sacrifice. However, first the meager benefits went largely undelivered, then w ­ ere canceled altogether. Veterans ­were not pleased with this state of affairs, but in the first de­cade a­ fter the war they could do l­ittle but protest individually: the po­liti­cal system was totalitarian, the dictator unresponsive, and resources scarce ­because of destruction and the demands of the Cold War arms race which took pre­ ce­dence over any type of welfare expense. Soviet veterans had no state bureaucracy to look out for their interests and no organ­ization to defend them. State ideology denied their very existence as a social group with shared and legitimate interests.55 And yet, by the final de­cade of the Soviet Union, and in sharp contrast to their counter­parts in China, their status had risen to such an extent that scholars could classify them as major pillars of the Soviet order and hence as major losers of the transition to post-­Soviet capitalism.56

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The answer to the question of how vanquished victors eventually came to enjoy a degree of privilege is complex but must start with organ­ization. In 1956, the Soviet government suddenly allowed the creation of a Soviet veterans’ association, the Soviet Committee of War Veterans (SKVV). Its foundation was a stunning reversal of a long-­standing policy against allowing veterans to or­ga­nize on a large scale, a stance that went back to the revolutionary period when the Soviet state had been forged (and which continues to this day in China). The refusal to allow veterans’ organ­izations was grounded, on the one hand, in po­liti­cal pragmatism: the mono-­organizational state would not allow alternative foci of organ­ization which could detract from its mono­poly of power or undermine the unity of Leninist top-­down governance. On the other, it was also rooted in ideology. Veterans ­were not a social class in any meaningful sense of the term. They ­were not defined by their position vis-­à-­ vis the means of production and did not have clearly shared life-­chances. Hence, veterans did not, objectively speaking, exist.57 When the Soviet government in 1956 suddenly allowed a veterans’ organ­ization, this change destabilized both pragmatic and ideological convictions. The reversal in the Soviet stance on the question of veterans’ organ­izations was prompted by a transnational moment: the growth of the international veterans’ organ­ization. Founded in 1950, the World Veterans Federation (WVF or FMAC—­Fédération Mondiale des Anciens Combattants) had become an international force organ­izing veterans in the West. In 1952, it gained consultative status at the United Nations. From the Soviet perspective, it was unduly dominated by Cold Warriors, particularly Americans. The Soviets wanted to join to ­counter the nefarious ideological influence of ­these “reactionaries.” Given that the FMAC was an umbrella organ­ization of national associations, the Soviets had to invent their own institution. Hence the SKVV was born.58 In the Soviet state’s conception, the Soviet Committee of War Veterans was intended to be a front organ­ization for driving a wedge into the international veterans’ movement. In Stalin’s time, such a scheme would prob­ably have succeeded, but ­under the liberalized atmosphere of Khrushchev’s Thaw the veterans recruited to staff it brought their own agenda to the t­ able. The foundational conference took place in September 1956, some seven months ­after the famed Twentieth Party Congress with Khrushchev’s “secret speech” about Stalin’s deviations from Leninist norms of party life. Many now felt emboldened to speak and act as citizens. “Why does all of this happen in such a ste­reo­typical manner?” asked one of a group of war disabled who had gate-­crashed the first meeting of the SKVV’s section for war invalids. “Where do ­these candidates come from? Who nominated them? We ­don’t

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need generals or col­o­nels. We have come ­here mainly with questions about our transportation—­the lack of wheelchairs!”59 From the very start the SKVV was coopted by veterans as an interest group to lobby on their behalf. Despite repeated reminders that no local organ­izations ­were allowed to exist, they still popped up all over the Soviet Union in the wake of the 1956 conference.60 When the SKVV leadership demanded they dissolve, they refused. “That’s not for you to decide, comrades,” responded a leader of an unauthorized Veterans’ Council of the Fifty-­Third Guards R ­ ifle Division in 1958. “You ­can’t disband us!”61 Nothing comparable took place in the Chinese case. The emergence of the SKVV as a lobbying organ­ization on behalf of Soviet veterans was a decisive change in the institutional makeup of veterans’ politics. It operated in an ideological ecosystem permeated by memories of the war—­the second aspect of this story. By the 1970s, the Soviet war cult had assumed bombastic proportions. Monuments, movies, novels, memoirs—­ including ­those of General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev—­celebrated the victory of the Soviet ­people over Hitler’s fascism. Victory Day (May 9) had become a non-­working day again in 1965. It evolved into the most popu­lar holiday in the calendar, a day when the regime could celebrate its greatest achievement while ordinary ­people could bask in the glory of their own participation in this world-­historical event, remember their own war, and mourn the dead. The war had become the center of Soviet identity, a meeting ground between the regime and its citizens, a central moment of the annual cycle of rituals reasserting the unity of the polity.62 It was anchored both in the all-­Soviet universe and in local particularities and regional patriotisms.63 Within this ecosystem it was relatively easy for veterans to make a case for their own importance, status, and concerns. The newly formed veterans’ organ­ization, in turn, furthered the war cult. The quest to build more monuments was informed by international examples. As one speaker pointed out at the first plenum of the committee: In other countries, for example in Germany, in the center of each village or neighborhood ­there are memorial plaques made of granite, listing the names of t­ hose who had died during the war. In Paris t­ here are more than two thousand memorial plaques honoring the heroes of World War II. And ­here in Moscow, ­there is only one such plaque, and it appeared only very recently. Moreover, it honors the French. Our ­people have thousands of heroes, but we do not know the names of many of them.64 What would become the most bombastic war cult of any combatant nation was fueled in part by the example of the former ­enemy.

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Transnational influences on Soviet veterans w ­ ere not confined to organ­ ization and memorialization. Unor­ga­nized veterans could be moved by foreign examples to demand specific benefits. One demobilized officer got hold of the British propaganda journal Britanskii soiuznik, still in circulation within the Soviet Union in 1946. He learned that in Britain veterans “receive an order for buying (or for receiving ­free of charge) a civilian suit.” He talked to other veterans, who confirmed that the same privilege should apply to demobilized Red Army soldiers, or at least to officers. He wrote to the army newspaper to inquire if in the Soviet Union, too, demobilized officers like himself “have a right to receive an order to buy civilian clothes.” He added, hopefully: “And how is such a right implemented (if it exists)?” He had already gone to the local military registration office to demand said suit but was told that ­there was no such benefit. “I d­ on’t completely believe them,” he explained, and complained that the thin cotton summer uniform he had received on demobilization was of no use to him. He would have to sell it, while the state would be short of a uniform needed to clothe another soldier. “Would it not be better,” he argued with a flawed but hopeful logic, “to give out an order for buying a civilian suit?”65 He would be disappointed, as would many ­others who made similar claims on the basis of international comparison. One unofficial group which or­ga­nized a protest in 1958 to put pressure on the newly formed Soviet Committee of War Veterans went as far as claiming that “invalids are supplied much worse in the Soviet Union than in cap­i­tal­ist countries.” This point, while doubtlessly true if the comparison was with the United States, Australia, or Germany, struck veteran functionaries they tried to influence as “anti-­Soviet propaganda.” The instigators ­were given a strong talking to in order to avoid similar occurrences in the ­f uture.66 To make the case for veterans’ benefits was thus one ­thing. To be heard by policy makers was quite another proposition. Veterans pushed their case forward in 1978, when the government started a public debate about the draft of a new constitution. Attempting to advance their own agenda, veterans responded enthusiastically. One veteran, from a village in Kyiv region, demanded a new paragraph to the foundational law, which would make “the care for war veterans and war invalids” the “responsibility of all leaders of organ­izations and institutions, the duty of all citizens of the USSR.”67 Other suggestions included constitutional guarantees of a lower pension age, better pensions, privileged access to housing, ­free transport, access to special burial places in cemeteries, or, generally, “care and attention” ­toward veterans.68 Such proposals, compiled in reports from the newspapers they ­were sent to, ­were brought to the attention of General Secretary Brezhnev, who fancied himself a war hero.69 In a speech to the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet legislature, on October 4,

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1977, Brezhnev summarized the popu­lar reactions to the draft. On the proposals from the veterans, he asked: “Is it pos­si­ble to find additional funds in order to provide some more benefits to t­hose who have defended the freedom and in­de­pen­dence of our Motherland in the most difficult circumstances?” He answered in the affirmative: “It seems to me that it is pos­si­ble.”70 While Brezhnev’s announcement was met with “prolonged applause” from the delegates, it was not backed by any policies. But encouraged by the leader’s pronouncement, SKVV officials appealed to the po­liti­cal leadership to act.71 Rank-­and-­file veterans wrote letters citing Brezhnev, pointing out that no new privileges had been instituted, and pressed for the implementation of the promise.72 This combined pressure eventually yielded results. On November  10, 1978, a joint decision by Communist Party and Soviet government introduced a range of ­legal privileges for veterans of the ­Great Patriotic War.73 The group covered was subsequently broadened a­ fter another round of lobbying by individuals and groups.74 This legislation became the basis for the enhanced l­egal status Soviet veterans enjoyed in the final de­cade of Soviet power.75 In 1978, Soviet veterans ­were successful ­because they had an organ­ization willing and able to lobby on their behalf to a po­liti­cal leadership well-­disposed ­toward them in a cultural ecosystem that celebrated their victory. Veterans also succeeded ­because the financial implications of a veterans’ benefit system—­ while still massive—­were much less daunting than they had been in 1945. At war’s end, Soviet society included roughly twenty-­five million World War II veterans but by 1978 that number had dropped to nine million.76 Moreover, by the 1970s the Soviets had developed a significant welfare sector, which made entitlements to special treatment more legitimate than they had been in the mobilizational state of late Stalinism.77 Veterans ­were able to exploit this shift of state interest from warfare to welfare to secure better benefits.78 Veterans moved forward on the ideological front as well. ­Under Marxism-­ Leninism Soviet society was made up of two classes (the proletariat and the collectivized peasantry), one stratum (the intelligent­sia, a group that included all white-­collar and professional groups), and nations, national groups, and nationalities (narodnosti). Within this so­cio­log­ic­al universe, veterans had no place, even though they ­were now recognized by law as a specific status group with well-­defined rights.79 Eventually, the new general secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, found an ideologically consistent explanation for their special status. He accomplished this theoretical feat by mobilizing a residual category of Marxist-­Leninist thought: generations. Generations had long been a concept in Soviet thought, largely as successive cohorts of pro­g ress: as older generations still contaminated with prerevolutionary patterns of thoughts and be­ hav­ior died, new Soviet generations would bring the new Soviet person into

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being.80 Gorbachev used this idea to inscribe veterans into Soviet society, which he now described as made up by the two classes, one stratum, and the nationalities, with the two generations veterans and youth cutting across ­these groups. With this change veterans fi­nally found their place in the official cosmology.81 The Soviet victors w ­ ere thus fi­nally victorious on all fronts: culture, politics, and ideology.

Chinese Veterans and the KMT A parallel story of veterans benefiting from the international po­liti­cal opportunity structure they found themselves in comes from the other side of the iron curtain. Despite losing two wars, first against the Japa­nese, and then against the Communists in the civil war, Nationalist (Kuomintang; KMT) veterans on Taiwan ­were transformed into “honored citizens,” and entered the ­middle and latter stages of their lives in an advantageous position po­liti­cally, and reasonably comfortable eco­nom­ically, their marriage prob­lems notwithstanding. This position, however, was not immediately apparent a­ fter the KMT decamped to the island between 1945 and 1949.82 According to most sources, the KMT continued to treat soldiers poorly and paid l­ittle attention to demobilization policy u ­ ntil 1954.83 As with the other cases, the question we must ask, therefore, is, what po­liti­cal circumstances led to a better outcome for veterans? This could not have been anticipated by the orga­nizational ­factors described in the cases of Australia and the United States. While the veterans’ organ­ization in Taiwan did provide concrete benefits and a sense of solidarity, it was part of the Leninist “transmission b­ elt” approach to vari­ous sectors in society, not a pressure group. That it was led by Chiang Kai-­shek’s son, while ­g reat for patronage purposes, surely suggests that it could not fulfill the same antagonistic role as the RSL or American Legion. On the other hand, the Soviet case, which highlights the role of international variables such as the Cold War and the connections between veterans’ organ­izations in the context of a Leninist regime, is quite instructive. Much like Soviet veterans who gained status ­after the USSR joined the WVF, their Taiwan counter­parts ­were the unintended beneficiaries of the decades-­long po­liti­cal activism of American veterans’ organ­izations and the institutions they helped create. In one of the more ironic twists of history, events orchestrated by Stalin, Mao, and North ­Korea’s leader Kim Il-­sung provided the catalyst that changed the fortunes of KMT veterans, as well as the KMT as a po­liti­cal party. In January 1950, the United States had practically written off the KMT as a ­viable po­liti­ cal force, even though it had a sizeable military, economic, intelligence, and

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diplomatic apparatus on Taiwan since the end of the war. Many Republican politicians, anti-­Communist businessmen, and the military brass, including the Joint Chiefs and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, continued to bolster the position of Chiang Kai-­shek, albeit with reservations. But President Truman, who distrusted and loathed Chiang, was disgusted by corruption in the KMT, calling it “about the rottenest government that ever existed” (war­time aid, he said, was spent on “United States real estate”). On January 5, 1950 he issued a press statement clearly indicating that the United States would not provide military advice or aid; one week ­later, Secretary of State Acheson stated that neither Taiwan nor South K ­ orea was in the United States’ “defense perime84 ter.” Officials privately expressed the view that the Communists would invade in June or July. By May 1950, however, the situation was quite dif­fer­ent. Stalin and Mao had signed a treaty of mutual defense in February, and in April the National Security Council issued Document 68, portraying Communism as global movement coordinated by the USSR that had “designs” on the f­ree world. Civilian and military w ­ ere prepared to ditch their dismal assessment of the KMT’s po­liti­cal per­for­mance in ­favor of a strictly geopo­liti­cal perspective: if the United States controlled Taiwan, it could b­ ottle up Soviet submarines in the South China Sea and control the seaways all the way to the Philippines. According to Hsiao-­ting Lin’s exhaustive study of ­these years, the United States needed “perfect timing and justification” to interfere with Taiwan’s security.85 One month l­ater, Kim Il-­sung provided exactly this pretext, a “God sent” event as far as the Nationalists ­were concerned.86 On June 25, 1950, Kim, in coordination with Stalin and Mao, suddenly attacked deep into the South in the hope of unifying the peninsula that had become divided between spheres of Soviet and US influence ­after Japan withdrew its forces in 1945–46. The rapid Communist advance in ­Korea, occurring less than year ­after the Chinese Communists had taken over the mainland, seemed to prove that fears of a worldwide, coordinated, Communist assault ­were justified. ­Under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council, the United States quickly mobilized over three hundred thousand US troops, along with soldiers, equipment, and other resources from twenty other countries, to provide badly needed assistance to the beleaguered South Korean army. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, hero of World War II and the de facto dictator of Japan during the occupation, was appointed supreme commander of UN forces. Landing troops on Inchon, to the south of Seoul, MacArthur counterattacked, retaking the capital, encircling the North Koreans, and pushing up through North K ­ orea ­toward the Yalu River, which divides China and North ­Korea. Fearing the collapse of its North Korean ally, and wanting to make a big international statement about its po­liti­

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cal power, China attacked UN forces with roughly three hundred thousand troops, pushing them back into South K ­ orea before the UN forces (sans MacArthur, who was fired by Truman in April 1951, and replaced by Gen. Matthew Ridgeway) managed to regroup and counterattack, eventually stabilizing the front along the old Thirty-­Eighth Parallel, where it remains to this day. The Korean War rapidly reversed the fortunes of the KMT regime on Taiwan. In January 1950, the United States was prepared to leave the Nationalists to their fate, but by the end of year it was working to provide substantial military and civilian support to the KMT, effectively turning the island into a US “protectorate,” or a “client state.” By 1957, the United States had spent over $770,000,000 in “economic and technical assistance” alone, in addition to its direct military aid, and by 1968 it delivered, on average per year, roughly $80 million.87 Mao did his part even a­ fter the armistice was signed in 1953. Unable to invade Taiwan ­because of the presence of the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet, he shelled Taiwan’s offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu in early September 1954. This pushed the United States and the KMT even closer together with the signing of the Sino-­American Mutual Defense Treaty in March 1955. The US intervention in Taiwan had a lasting impact on domestic politics and policymaking. Now that his regime, and his place at its top, was secured by the United States, Chiang Kai-­shek pushed hard for dramatic po­liti­cal reform that would legitimize his government domestically and internationally, no easy tasks considering the February 28 Incident and his reputation for corruption.88 In the summer of 1950, Chiang convened the Central Reform Commission, which replaced many KMT party veterans with younger and better-­educated officials recruited from dif­fer­ent strata of Taiwanese society; in order to sustain international support over the long haul, “particularly from the United States,” Chiang permitted l­imited local elections and promoted Taiwan as a “demo­cratic country” even as KMT nominees almost always won. In February 1951, the KMT, pushed by the United States but also well aware of its failure on the mainland to deal with rural in­equality, implemented island-­ wide land reform, which effectively distributed one-­fifth of all the arable land in the country to tenant farmers; landowners w ­ ere compensated with land bonds and stock shares in four privatized government-­owned enterprises. The Land-­to-­the-­Tiller Act of 1953 ­limited the amount of land that could be owned by a landlord. As a result, more than one million Taiwanese, including veterans who had been settled in agriculture, gained property rights and their income nearly doubled between 1949 and 1959.89 Through the joint Chinese-­American Economic Stabilization Board, the United States pushed for reforming the Soviet-­style state-­owned enterprises preferred by the KMT since its tenure on the mainland, which resulted in a more entrepreneurial

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economy—­quite unlike ­Korea, where the United States did not exercise such a dominant role.90 Of par­tic­u­lar concern to the United States was Chiang’s continued control over the military, which remained largely unreformed from the late 1940s u ­ ntil 1951. American advisers in the power­ful Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) took control of the military bud­get, gaining the right to participate in bud­getary meetings dealing with KMT and US funds, as well as in reor­ga­niz­ing the entire force structure and downsizing the military, thereby producing many veterans. Chiang was “infuriated” by this brazen breech of even nominal sovereignty but given that the United States was essentially funding his state, had “no choice but to yield.”91 Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the large staff of US officials in Taiwan, as well as economists, professors, businessmen, agronomists, and financial and management con­sul­tants, promoted the idea that Taiwan should become a showcase “of Chinese development u ­ nder ­free economic institutions.”92 While KMT leaders found this vision appealing (in part ­because of its propaganda value, in part ­because it followed Sun Yatsen’s princi­ple of improving ­people’s livelihood), they did ­little to advance democracy, and the United States did not push it in that direction.93 Even as it allowed for greater local po­liti­cal autonomy, the KMT retained tight control over the internal security apparatus (bolstered by the CIA, which had a large presence in Taiwan from early 1951), showed ­little tolerance for dissent, and true to its original Leninist identity, proved ­adept at infiltrating social groups it considered impor­tant to the economy, po­liti­cal stability, and legitimacy, veterans among them. ­These two strands—­massive American involvement in cash and policy-­ making input, and a new commitment by the KMT to learn its lessons from history—­yielded many benefits for KMT veterans. The key transition years ­were 1955 and 1956. In early 1955, President Eisenhower, on the recommendation of his national security staff and directors of foreign aid and bud­get, authorized (without congressional approval) the transfer of $48 million ($459 million in 2019 dollars) from unspent funds originally designated for military assistance to Vietnam (which could no longer be used since North Vietnam had just fallen to the Communists) to improve the combat effectiveness of Nationalist forces in line with US interests and objectives in the area. In the American view, the KMT army was weakened by the large presence of “over-­ age, physically unfit veterans,” who needed to be replaced by younger and better-­trained troops. With ­these funds, the administration hoped to develop proj­ects that would enable the government to retire roughly eighty thousand soldiers (in the first years) and “move them into useful civilian occupations.”94 Congress also stepped up. According to the papers of Sen. Allen J. Ellender, who chaired the power­ful Senate Agricultural Committee at the time and was

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deeply involved in US foreign aid policy, nearly $2.5 million was to be spent on “health and sanitation” for Nationalist veterans. This included money for the interim treatment of 19,837 soldiers, a veteran hospital (of one thousand beds) and dormitory facilities, the importation of construction materials and medical supplies for a “1,500-­bed tuberculosis hospital,” and “aid to assist the Chinese Government in carry­ing out its retirement program.” The goal was to permanently s­ ettle the veterans in “productive, self-­supporting employment” in the civilian economy as “part and parcel of this ‘GI Bill of Rights’ for the Nationalist Chinese.”95 This language was not mere win­dow dressing or hyperbole. Much like US administrations ­today—­Democrat and Republican—­the Eisenhower administration, via Congress and the International Cooperation Agency, contracted out this proj­ect to the private sector, hiring, in a no-­bid contract worth $1 million, the Chicago-­based management consulting firm of George Fry Associates. Although not specifically stipulated in the contract, this firm was expected to work with the Vocational Assistance Commission for Retired Ser­vicemen (VACRS), which a year e­ arlier had already requested funding from the Military Assistance Advisory Group and civilian agencies on Taiwan but had yet to implement many programs aside from taking over some military hospitals. Fry immediately set about forming a team to work in Taiwan. As lead, he hired Harold Stirling, who had recently retired as deputy administrator of the US Veterans Administration ­after a thirty-­seven-­year c­ areer. Stirling hired other old VA hands, such as Harold Press, who had worked as the director of the program analy­sis staff between 1945 and 1951 and had been involved implementing the GI Bill, as well as Robert Kevan, who was a hospital supervisor. ­Others included a retired major general who served as deputy chief of staff, as well as a specialist in vocational rehabilitation who had directed a state-­level program in this field. It was the largely through the mechanism of this VA-­ dominated consulting team that Taiwan’s veterans came to enjoy their own version of the GI Bill. However, the invisible intermediaries in this transaction ­were American veterans’ organ­izations whose po­liti­cal pressure throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s helped create the VA. How the United States interacted with Chinese authorities in the creation of veterans’ programs was informed by recent experience. Burned by the KMT’s lack of accountability for cash transfers during the Civil War, US agencies insisted that its aid be placed in a separate, walled-­off bud­get to prevent pilfering by other agencies. It also insisted that the KMT follow strict US guidelines about “veteran management,” including the programs it would support, orga­nizational structure, and leadership. No less a power­f ul figure than Chiang Ching-­kuo, Chiang Kai-­shek’s son and po­liti­cal heir, was placed in

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charge of the veterans’ administration from 1956 to 1965.96 He was replaced by Gen. Chao Tsu-yu, a highly capable technocrat who had been involved in VACRS as a key Chiang deputy since the early years, and who served as an alternate member of the KMT’s Central Committee. Like Chiang, he had a long tenure at the helm, serving ­until 1981. Even though the United States gradually wound down its aid programs in the early 1960s, the basic blueprint remained unchanged, largely ­because ­there was mutual agreement, verified by subsequent scholarship, that the program was achieving its objectives.97 Over the de­cades, Taiwan’s veteran administrators became further enveloped in the US alliance system in Asia, establishing relationships with “­brother organ­izations” in the United States (American Legion, AMVETS [American Veterans], Veterans of Foreign Wars), Australia (RSL), and K ­ orea, much like se­nior officers from Taiwan, ­Korea, Japan, and many other countries around the world undergo advanced training in US command and staff colleges. In ­these arrangements, war­time relationships and consideration of who won and who lost ­were simply not impor­tant. ­After the Korean War, Taiwan became, in the parlance of the day, an “island fortress” in the global war against Communism.98 In addition to providing the foundations for the basics of veteran care—­ hospitals, pensions, jobs—­the Cold War also improved the social lives of veterans, but in a rather unexpected way. ­Until the early 1970s, with US backing, the KMT government claimed, and the United Nations concurred, that it, not the PRC, was the sole legitimate government of China. To support this claim, the KMT promoted itself as “demo­cratic” but the protector of “Chinese tradition” as the Communists went about attacking ­family structure, religion, and local kinship institutions as “remnants of feudalism.” If we recall from chapter three, one of the innovations in veteran management (which cannot be attributed to the United States) was the creation of quasi-­k inship or lineage organ­izations among veterans, a unit of social organ­ization frequently found in South China. This sort of “tradition within modernity” arrangement would not have been pos­si­ble in the PRC even if ­there was a community of veterans living in a village. The other hybrid arrangement that benefited veterans in Taiwan was even more ironic. The United States supported the KMT as it did other anti-­ Communist, conservative, or authoritarian po­liti­cal parties in Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, South ­Korea, South Vietnam, and Japan. But it could only shape veteran policy so far; significant “buy in” was required of t­ hese client states. In Taiwan, this came largely in the form of postpurge Leninism, with the formation of a new elite that rather suddenly came to recognize veterans as an impor­tant po­liti­cal constituency. Once this happened, “classic” Leninist

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cooptation tactics kicked in: “demobilized soldiers” ­were transformed into “honored citizens” and their stories w ­ ere incorporated into the official national narrative. The absence of legitimate po­liti­cal opposition—­attributable both to Leninism and US policy—­certainly helped establish and fund this new identity. But what made cooptation even easier, perhaps even smooth, was the personal predicament of veterans themselves. Veterans in Taiwan had left their families ­behind on the mainland and experienced many challenges establishing new ones given the local hatred of the KMT, their poverty, and lack of local networks. Roughly one-­fifth never remarried. From a material perspective, veterans w ­ ere highly dependent on the state, rendering them vulnerable to coercion and reward. More so­cio­log­i­cally, without the counter-­pull of ­family, or other sources of loyalty and obligation such as opposition parties or civic organ­izations, it proved easy to envelop veterans in both KMT institutions and rhe­toric. In the past, this would not have been a harbinger for positive treatment, but ­because the KMT lost much of its sovereignty and was dependent on the United States for protection and funding, it was forced to do better for its veterans, who surely did not care which country was the source of their rising security and fortunes. In the language of path-­dependency, it was the United States that decisively broke the KMT’s long-­standing mismanagement of veterans, a development that did not have a parallel in the PRC even ­after its po­liti­cal patron, the USSR, allowed for the creation of a national veterans’ organ­ization in 1956. During the Cold War the KMT’s embrace of veterans was vital for them to survive and live the rest of their lives in dignity, but it did have a po­liti­cal, economic, and social downside as the KMT demo­cratized in the 1990s and 2000s. Its primary opposition—­the Demo­cratic Progressive Party (DPP)—­ represented non-­Mainlander Taiwanese, ­those who had lived on the island centuries before Chiang Kai-­shek and the KMT decamped ­there hoping to use the island as a temporary base from which to recover the mainland. Given the KMT’s authoritarian politics t­ oward the local population and repression of the DPP before Martial Law was lifted (­after thirty-­eight years) in 1987, it was hardly surprising that the DPP felt ­little to no obligation to support KMT veterans. In 2007, for example, some DPP politicians criticized a proposed expansion of veterans’ benefits by arguing that the p­ eople of Taiwan ­were not responsible for the “feeding” of veterans four de­cades a­ fter they arrived, and that state funds w ­ ere mainly being used to “curry f­avor with veterans—­who side mainly with the KMT—in upcoming elections.”99 In 2016, tens of thousands of veterans announced they would march on the streets of Taipei on September 3, Armed Forces Day, to protest the DPP government’s proposed

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pension reform plan, which would significantly cut their retirement pensions and benefits. One of their leaders accused the government of scapegoating veterans for the government’s poorly managed national pension system.100 In the winter of 2018, as the government’s plan was shifting into higher gear, veterans used chains to pull down a gate and stormed Parliament. “We have spent more than a year protesting on the streets,” one protester said in a video posted on the organ­izing group’s Facebook page, but the DPP government “has completely ignored us, our petitions and protests.” During the protests, a former col­o­nel fell while climbing up a wall, and ­later died in the hospital.101 Two months ­later, during parliamentary discussion over the pension reform, KMT lawmakers denounced the DPP as a “bully government,” jumped on ­tables and tussled with DPP legislators, and demanded an apology from one of them who criticized protesting veterans as “insatiably greedy.”102 None of this had much of an impact. With the DPP in control of the presidency and Parliament, the pension plan passed in June. Over the next de­cade, se­nior officers ­will see their monthly stipend cut by more than 20 ­percent, but veterans of lower ranks w ­ ill see less severe reductions.103 It is pos­si­ble to argue that even with justifiable financial considerations, in moving to cut veterans’ pensions, the DPP followed, or perhaps reasserted, a centuries-­long pattern of Leninist-­style “party-­armies.”104 The veterans whose pensions ­were to be cut w ­ ere widely perceived as the KMT’s, not t­hose belonging to a national state who deserved privileges ­because they had been engaged in an existential war against a foreign e­ nemy. Historically, the DDP was, in fact, on firm ground. Even though they ­were ethnically Chinese, the KMT soldiers who arrived on Taiwan ­were viewed as a foreign occupation force, and their be­hav­ior over de­cades did l­ittle to gain the support of the native Taiwanese the DPP represented. While other civil servants whose pensions ­were also being cut joined the veterans in some protests, other sectors of society ­were not moved to offer support. While gauging public sentiment based on Facebook video clips is methodologically unsound, the publicity surrounding a “citizen reporter’s” rant in the DPP stronghold of Kaohsiung might be at least somewhat indicative of antiveteran feeling. In one (posted February 28, 2016), the ­woman “unleashed a torrent of outrage” at el­derly veterans, maligning them as “Chinese refugees gnawing on the bones of the Taiwanese,” and arguing that “it was unreasonable for the Taiwanese to support them any longer.” She also called attention to the United States’ role in Taiwan’s veteran affairs: “Go back to China . . . ​get the Americans to ship you back ­there.” Other clips viewable online showed her telling “Republic of China refugees to relocate to the [offshore, militarized islands of] Kinmen and Matsu,” asking them if they fought wars “for the Taiwanese ­people” and “how much in

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monthly benefits they w ­ ere receiving from the government.” Even though President Tsai Ing-­wen denounced ­these “expressions of hatred,” and urged tolerance and re­spect, such sentiments made it far easier for her to pass the pension reforms than had veterans not been so closely associated with a po­ liti­cal party, especially one that was both unpop­u­lar and, more importantly, out of power.105 With this change in the politics of veteran privilege, veterans ­were no longer rongmin (“honorable citizens”), but instead cases of geriatric care and spoiled wards of the state. Their low horizontal status, in marked distinction to Australian and American veterans, left them vulnerable when their vertical status was threatened.

Japa­nese Veterans and the LDP Much like in Taiwan, Japan’s willingness to provide considerable benefits to over two million veterans during eco­nom­ically trying times was contingent on domestic and international po­liti­cal developments in the immediate postwar period. Most critically, the fears generated by the success of the Communist Revolution in China in 1949, the Korean War (1950–53), and the ensuing Cold War in Asia and Eu­rope forged a close alliance between the United States and the conservative Liberal Demo­cratic Party (LDP), which has governed Japan almost uninterruptedly for nearly sixty years. Not only did this alliance revitalize the Japa­nese economy as the United States opened its markets to Japa­nese exports and spent billions t­ here as part of the fight against Communism in ­Korea and Vietnam, it provided a highly congenial po­liti­cal environment for right-­wing mobilization. The LDP draws support from, and provides benefits to, conservative interest groups that advocate for a semiwhitewashed version of war responsibility that has made it easier for veterans to escape direct blame for their war­time be­hav­ior and Japan’s defeat. Veterans also benefited from the allied occupation authority’s (Supreme Commander of Allied Powers; SCAP) decision to rule Japan by proxy, using many war­time bureaucratic structures. As a result, the conservative prewar Japa­nese welfare bureaucracy that was responsible for providing war-­related benefits remained largely intact, with only two thousand officials purged.106 While the provision of postwar veterans’ benefits might appear to be a straightforward revival of prewar practices and a good example of path de­ pen­dency, this was far from inevitable: immediately a­ fter the war multiple parties competed for seats in the Diet, and the po­ liti­ cal Left was hardly down-­for-­the-­count. Nevertheless, the US-­LDP alliance, the power of the Japa­ nese bureaucracy, and the rapid decline of the Japa­nese Left ­because of the

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Cold War made Japan’s loss in the war nearly inconsequential ­after the occupation ended in 1952. Thus, undergirding the material benefits provided to veterans, as well as many o ­ thers in the military who suffered b­ ecause of the war (such as ­widows, parents, and orphans), was the arrangement of po­liti­cal power that took shape a­ fter the war. Conservative power also meant that the dominant (but not necessarily the most popu­lar) narrative “frame” regarding veterans was that they w ­ ere as victimized by 1930s militarists as ordinary ­people who suffered firebombing in 1945. Although Japan turned out to be one of t­ hose “uncommon democracies” in which one po­liti­cal party dominates politics for de­cades, at the end of the war it was not clear which party or parties would govern.107 Japan’s devastating losses and its unconditional surrender to the United States completely discredited the military and bolstered the legitimacy of the prewar Left, which had opposed Japan’s rising militarism well before the war and suffered severe repression throughout the 1930s and 1940s.108 ­Because the military had stood at the apex of the po­liti­cal system between 1932 and 1945 and was now removed from power, t­ here was a lot of room for maneuvering among wouldbe politicians who hoped to fill the vacuum. But even as the Japa­nese embraced US-­led democ­r atization policies by forming new po­liti­cal parties (a total of 257 parties fielded prospective lawmakers, although many of ­these ­were small), the early victors in the April 1946 elections to the Diet ­were the prewar conservatives, ironically named the “Liberals” and “Progressives.”109 However, despite continued disarray among the Left, and MacArthur’s determined efforts to strengthen the hand of conservatives, in the April 1947 elections the Socialists emerged as the largest party, forming a co­ali­tion government that lasted ­until February 1948. Their fall opened the door to conservatives, who won successive elections in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A key figure during t­ hese years was Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, a former bureaucrat in the Foreign Ministry who escaped war crime charges. Yoshida brought to power many of his former colleagues—­ conservative pragmatic types who had ­little taste for ideological infighting or engaging in debates over war responsibility. ­These former bureaucrats formed a power­f ul faction in what would soon become the LDP.110 This postwar drift ­toward conservative parties was accompanied by the rapid decline of the Left.111 While some of this change was driven by prewar dynamics—­the Right had been better or­ga­nized than the Left for decades—it was the United States that decisively tipped the balance. For several years ­after the war MacArthur considered the Japa­nese Communists a “manageable threat,” but the panic about Communism in the United States in the late 1940s, and Japan’s Communist Party’s 1950 decision to commit itself to promoting

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“world revolution,” prompted a significant change in his position.112 This rightward lurch (known in the lit­er­a­ture as the “Reverse Course”), during which hundreds of leftist politicians, trade ­unions, educators, and journalists ­were purged, lasted ­until the end of the occupation in 1952.113 Unsurprisingly, the primary beneficiaries in Japan ­were conservative politicians, some of whom had been purged by SCAP immediately a­ fter the war. Declassified archival rec­ords show that throughout the 1950s and 1960s the United States funneled millions of dollars to the LDP, as well as to individual conservative politicians. The goals w ­ ere to “gather intelligence on Japan, make the country a bulwark against Communism in Asia and undermine the Japa­ nese left,” as well as ensure that American military bases would be allowed to remain despite controversey about them.114 ­After the Reverse Course, Japan’s Left and far-­Left parties w ­ ere in “perpetual opposition” to the LDP, regaining power only in the fall of 1993.115 During ­these years, an ideology of centrism evolved within the Yoshida-­ led co­ali­tion. Known as the “Yoshida Doctrine,” it involved several key princi­ ples: a firm alliance with the United States against the Soviet Union; not allowing politics to “get in the way” of high-­speed economic growth; and not revising the US-­authored constitution—­a highly liberal document that renounced war in its preamble and committed Japan to pacifism in international relations in Article 9.116 Without an effective military to deter the Soviet Union or China, the Japanese—­much like the KMT—­became deeply dependent on the presence of US forces in their country, as well as in South ­Korea and on bases in the Pacific. As Japan developed its famous export-­driven economy, Japan’s dependence on the United States grew even deeper. Even by 1955, however, it was still not clear that Yoshida would be able to pursue this course in anything but the short term. His popularity declined a­ fter the end of the occupation, and the Japa­nese Socialist Party—­recently formed out of the two largest left-­wing parties—­seemed on the verge of an electoral breakthrough.117 Alarmed, Japa­nese big business urged Yoshida’s Liberal Party and the Japa­nese Demo­cratic Party to unite to defeat the surging Socialists (in addition, from a campaign finance perspective, it was cheaper for business to support one party as opposed to three or four), which they did.118 By the 1958 elections, the Socialist Party received only 33 ­percent of the popu­lar vote compared with 59 ­percent for the LDP. What prevented any sort of leftist resurgence for nearly four de­cades was straightforward. As socialists and Communists railed against the evils of capitalism, it was ­under the aegis of the US-­supported LDP that the Japa­nese economy took off in the mid-1950s, and with “relatively equitable income distribution” to boot.119 The booming economy created a fertile po­liti­cal base

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for pragmatic, pro-­business, and pro-­U.S. conservative politicians. In almost all subsequent elections, Japa­nese rewarded the party that presided over, or at least did not disturb, high-­speed economic growth. Even when individual politicians split from the LDP to form their own parties, they did not veer t­ oward the Socialists. In addition to being seen as Japan’s “responsible party,” the LDP, once gaining control over key resource-­rich ministries such as Finance and Construction, did what­ever it needed to do to win majorities, mainly by showering voters with funds for large-­scale public works proj­ects (such as roads and bridges) and local ­causes (charities, establishing new businesses, or propping up old ones), and even helping out with f­amily expenses such as gifts for funerals and weddings.120 Despite the fact that many of its leaders w ­ ere recruited from corporations and prestigious government ministries, a g­ reat deal of this spending targeted the rural sector, which happened to be the primary recruiting ground for soldiers during the war and where many veterans returned a­ fter it was over.121 As a core constituency, the LDP protected farmers from foreign competition and provided them with tax breaks—­angering city p­ eople who have to pay higher taxes and higher prices on agricultural products. The LDP has also been the patron of small businesses in the ser­vice sector, manufacturing, and retail, also by way of smaller-­scale public works proj­ects and tax breaks.122 By contrast, the typical voter for the Japa­nese Socialist Party and Communist Party was an urban intellectual (university faculty and students, high school teachers), white-­collar professional, or ­union member.123 This postwar LDP-­dominated po­liti­cal system proved to be highly beneficial to veterans’ interests. In the LDP, veterans found a party willing to open the government purse for jobs that provided good incomes, as well as pensions and disability benefits. Equally impor­tant, the domination of conservatives marginalized t­hose voices on the left who w ­ ere most likely to be critical of Japan’s war­time be­hav­ior and the rationale for providing veterans with generous benefits, material as well as symbolic. As noted by Lee Pennington, “to this day, war-­bereaved families play an impor­tant po­liti­cal role in perpetuating a conservative, honorable interpretation of Japa­nese military fatalities of the Second World War—­a depiction that shapes national dialogues about both the history and memory of that war.”124 In addition to gaining broad support from the rural sector and small businesses thanks to its ability to deliver on bread-­and-­butter issues, the LDP has been a loyal ally of multiple war-­related claimants. This was not a new departure for Japan’s historically dominant conservative parties, but it had been interrupted during the occupation. Like many countries that put in place more expansive welfare policies in the wake of war­time mobilization,125 in Japan the

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1937 Military Aid Law provided pensions for families of disabled soldiers and the war dead (rates w ­ ere graduated according to rank), as well as other benefits such as discounted travel, exemption from government and private elementary and ­middle school tuition fees, burial funds, and more.126 As the war with China dramatically increased rates of fatalities and disability, in 1938 Japan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare—­the “prime mover ­behind war­time social policy”—­was created a­ fter determined lobbying and planning by military officers worried about the health of new recruits.127 In that year the Imperial Gift Foundation Soldiers’ Support Group was formed, a state-­supported umbrella organ­ization designed to help wounded soldiers, their families, and families of the bereaved by “bolstering popu­lar support for ser­vicemen and veterans.”128 Japan’s Ministry of Welfare also established support programs for disabled veterans and their families through the “Wounded Soldiers’ Protection Agency,” which was expanded in 1939 into the “Military Protection Agency” that covered both noninjured soldiers and veterans. While Japan did not experience what Gregory Kasza calls “innovation” in welfare policy during the war years, “existing programs continued to expand” even a­ fter Japan suffered battlefield reversals.129 ­Because of their association with Japa­nese militarism, t­hese organ­izations and the programs they supported ­either self-­ dissolved ­after the war or ­were disbanded by SCAP. On February 1, 1946, on SCAP o ­ rders and with seemingly ­little re­sis­tance, the Japa­nese government ­stopped all military pension payments, infuriating the recipient populations. Even worse from the perspective of war-­related claimants, public opinion turned sharply against war-­related pension privileges, which not only “had robbed other needy ­people of their fair share” but ­were potentially rewarding ­people associated with war crimes.130 Canceling pensions for war-­related losses was just one of many prongs of SCAP’s efforts to stigmatize militarism by reducing the status of military personnel. It did, however, work at cross-­purposes with another fundamental occupation policy—­ democ­ ratization—­ which, in conjunction with the new US-­authored constitution, provided a broad base for social organ­ization, po­ liti­cal activism, and demonstration ­under the right to “freedom of assembly.” Throughout 1946, multiple, and sometimes competing, organ­izations representing the war bereaved w ­ ere formed locally and nationally (such as the Federation of Bereaved War Victims and the Japan League for the Welfare of the War Bereaved). T ­ hese organ­izations conveyed a variety of sometimes conflicting messages internally and to the public: that war ­widows ­were in dire need of financial assistance, that they w ­ ere victims of the militarist regime, and that the war dead and their relatives should be “celebrated” having served “the public good.”131 ­After the occupation, ­these associations sometimes turned to

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lobbying for more politicized and ideological goals, such as state commemoration of the war dead at the Yasukuni Shrine.132 Since Japan’s public purse and access to symbolic recognition w ­ ere controlled by the LDP and the bureaucracy, war-­related organ­izations developed close ties to the more conservative and nationalist forces in Japa­nese politics in a relationship of mutual benefit.133 Veterans ­were active as well, although more cautiously than war ­widows and the bereaved.134 Soon ­after their return they or­ga­nized many “brothers-­ in-­arms associations,” which cultivated camaraderie and sponsored prayer for the souls of their fallen comrades.135 Without public support, in August 1947 disabled veterans established the “All-­Japan Wounded League” and submitted a petition to the prime minister with one million signatures calling for improvements in care.136 Some organ­izations ­were set up by former commanding officers, and o ­ thers by enlisted men or noncommissioned officers (NCOs) from the same unit. In the early years, responding to SCAP fears that they would become enamored of communism or extremist right-­wing parties, as well as to negative public opinion, most veterans eschewed national politics (in contrast to the patterns in the United States, Australia, and Western Eu­rope, where veterans mobilized immediately ­after the war, and indeed while it still raged), preferring instead to focus their activity on youth education, helping war orphans, providing mutual aid, information (in the newspapers they published), and a sense of friendship and camaraderie.137 They w ­ ere not, however, above lobbying the LDP for more assistance for the f­amily members of their dead comrades, ranking this as their most impor­tant “demand” vis-­a-­vis the government, just above job opportunities (24 ­percent to 20 ­percent, in a newspaper’s survey of three thousand veterans).138 The Japan Disabled Veterans Association ( JDVA), established “soon ­after the end of the postwar Occupation,” lobbied for sixty-­one years (dissolving in 2013 due to the death of most veterans), to “increase pension benefits for its members.”139 Po­liti­cal engagement on this scale required a national-­level network, which veterans often joined in conjunction with their local organ­izations (with membership numbers peaking in the early 1960s).140 Research by historian Lee Pennington on the JDVA reveals the thick linkages between disabled veterans and Japa­nese politicians and the relationship between veterans and their counter­parts abroad.141 On September 11, 1952, wounded veterans from twenty-­one of Japan’s forty-­seven prefectures convened at the Tokyo headquarters of the Japan Red Cross Society to discuss the creation of a national association for disabled veterans, and the first formal meeting of the JDVA took place the following month. In November, JDVA members from thirty-­seven prefectures assembled in Tokyo and visited the head offices of vari­ous po­liti­cal parties to announce the creation of their organ­

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ization and spread the word about what it hoped to accomplish. The following day, at a rally at a Tokyo park, the JDVA castigated the government for not reducing the number of panhandling disabled veterans in public spaces, and then proceeded to deliver manifestos to ministries (Welfare, Finance, ­Labor, Transport), the government’s Pension Bureau, and additional po­liti­cal organ­ izations. On November 19, the Ministry of Welfare issued a circular to the governors of all forty-­seven prefectures announcing the establishment of the JDVA.142 In February 1955, the organ­ization became an incorporated foundation whose directors held full responsibility for managing its central endowment and finances. According to Pennington, “advocacy and activism characterized the JDVA’s agenda from the 1950s onwards.” Its greatest legislative victory came in April 1954 when the Diet, pressured by extensive petitioning by JDVA members, reinstated financial payments to veterans with lower-­rated disabilities via a new pension law. The JDVA also engaged in international outreach: in May 1955 its delegates traveled to Rome to attend the eighth General Assembly of the World Veterans Federation as observers, which gave them the opportunity to network with disabled veterans in other countries and learn about benefits abroad. Other accomplishments soon followed: ­free travel on national railways (an imperial welfare benefit that had dis­appeared during the occupation years, and which lasted u ­ ntil August 1963 a­ fter its reinstatement), and the Diet’s approval of the “Special Support Law for Disabled Veterans,” which went into effect in November 1963 and established a wider range of preferential support ser­vices also “based on the spirit of state compensation.”143 The law, “which had been sought by the JDVA since its founding,” provided extensive benefits, including paying for medical treatment expenses (medi­cation, ­etc.), burial fees, assistive devices (such as prostheses and covering repair costs for such items), accommodation at national sanitaria and rest homes, and expanding no-­cost travel on national railways to include nationally run transport ships and ferries ( Japan is an archipelago, ­after all).144 Only a de­cade ­after its founding, Pennington argues, “the JDVA had become a significant po­liti­cal actor whose efforts ­were improving the lives of disabled veterans,” and throughout its history “took a leading role in maximizing the social benefits—­ and increasing the financial payments—­offered by the Pension Law and the ‘Special Support Law for Disabled Veterans,’ in addition to providing counseling and other personal ser­vices.” It also collected substantial po­liti­cal and social capital. On November 26, 1998, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko attended a commemorative event held in Tokyo to honor the forty-­fifth anniversary of the JDVA’s founding and the thirty-­fifth anniversary of the “Special Support Law for Disabled Veterans.” Before a crowd of ten thousand attendees

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that included the prime minister and welfare minister, the emperor “acknowledged the ‘path of suffering’ walked by disabled veterans and their families during and a­ fter the war, as well as the ‘harsh circumstances’ that ­those groups endured both then and now.” This support came in very handy when the JDVA de­cided to build a museum devoted to informing the public about their war­time and postwar travails; the Ministry of Welfare provided substantial funding and logistical support. The museum, which drew on international models in ­England and Germany ­after JDVA members traveled ­there on a fact-­ finding mission arranged by the government, provided graphic displays of disability but was ­silent about Japan’s aggression. Disabled veterans, to be sure, w ­ ere not the only beneficiaries of government largesse. The postwar legislative output emerging from the alliance between Japa­nese war-­related organ­izations (including w ­ idows, the bereaved, ordinary veterans, and the disabled) and the LDP and bureaucracy was impressive, belying the notion that veterans w ­ ere despised and neglected owing to Japan’s defeat and conduct during the war. “As soon as the occupation ended,” the Yoshida cabinet, pushed by t­ hese organ­izations, reinstituted privileges and government aid not only to wounded veterans but also to the war bereaved in the Law for War Invalids and Families of the War Dead and instituted “payments of gratitude” (military pensions) for many regular veterans.145 The LDP also passed a Special Pension Law for Bereaved Families of Former Soldiers, the Law to Aid Wives of Soldiers Killed in Action, the Law to Aid Injured Soldiers, the Repatriated Soldiers Aid Law, and the Law to Aid Families of Soldiers Missing in Action, among o ­ thers (such as atomic bomb victims).146 On top of this material support, not a few LDP prime ministers (as well as Emperor Hirohito), with the support and urging of the war bereaved and veterans’ organ­izations and over the vigorous objections of multiple Asian countries that suffered ­under Japa­nese imperialism, have made pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine to honor Japan’s war dead, despite the presence of the souls of several Class A war criminals enshrined ­there (with government knowledge and support).147 On multiple occasions the Japa­nese government proved willing to endure this tempest to satisfy its core po­liti­cal constituencies. All this legislative and administrative production was facilitated by what has emerged as a central—if not dominant—­narrative about Japa­nese participation in World War II and its aftermath. For many Japa­nese, the entry into the war, against China and then the United States, as well as the war­time be­hav­ ior of its military, was entirely the fault of “renegade militarists”; ordinary “peace loving” Japa­nese citizens had no power to resist, let alone change the course of history.148 Even veterans, on the scene of many crimes during the war, feel as if they w ­ ere taken along by the “­g reat ­will of history” rather than

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their “own decisions.”149 Adding to this sense of victimization, Japa­nese felt persecuted yet again when cities w ­ ere firebombed and Japan became the only country attacked with atomic weapons.150 Since the war, most Japa­nese (in marked contrast to West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s) have been “­eager to brush aside its [Japan’s] war­time past and to concentrate on national reconstruction,” a happier tale in which many can claim to have made a contribution.151 The postwar narrative of the Japa­nese military as warmongers who dragged Japan into a war that “no one e­ lse wanted” played an impor­tant role in promoting Japan as a “desirable partner” for its new ally, the United States.152 On the surface, this narrative would seem to militate against veterans’ ability to claim special status. As noted by Igarashi, postwar Japa­nese society “discounted the suffering of military personnel”—­even ­those who had endured years of privation in Siberian prisoner of war (POW) camps—in f­ avor of “innocent ­women and c­ hildren.”153 Veterans did not help their cause by using “war­time language” in their public discourse in a postwar society ­eager to create more “comforting” memories.154 Nevertheless, the logic of attributing blame to “renegade militarists” opened enough narrative space to let veterans and other military personnel off the hook: they could not be held responsible for losing the war, and war­time atrocities ­were best explained by circumstances not of their choosing. They could join the circle of suffering victims, just not at its center. This narrative did not make a very positive case for generous benefits, but it weakened the argument that they ­were not worthy of any privileges, certainly something that could have been in the cards in the late 1940s and 1950s. What prevented this countervailing framing of war-­related benefits was the complexity of memory in the postwar era, and its politicization. T ­ here was certainly widespread revulsion about the war, and many Japa­nese came to believe that they had been deceived throughout it. Japan’s commitment to its “peace constitution” despite rising threats from China and North K ­ orea cannot be fully explained without noting the deep-­rooted pacifism in Japa­ nese society a­ fter the war. However, postwar Japa­nese society also “celebrated sacrifices, particularly suicide missions” and heroic deaths in combat. While this made it difficult for many Japa­nese POWs who surrendered (especially civilians from Manchuria and ­Korea), ­those veterans who returned in more normal military-­related circumstances could lay claim to having sacrificed for a larger cause.155 This, in combination with shared suffering, was the version of the war­time experience that Japa­nese veteran and bereaved ­family organ­ izations pressed on the public. Veterans as suffering and victimized warriors aligned well with center-­right nationalism in the Liberal Demo­cratic Party and the bureaucracy. For its part,

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the United States—­Japan’s most impor­tant ally in the postwar period—­did not object, even if it generated no small number of diplomatic headaches whenever high-­ranking members of the LDP offended neighboring countries by disputing the ­causes of the war and Japan’s culpability. However, the alternative narrative—­one that blamed flaws in Japa­nese history, society, and culture, as well as American actions prior to the war—­would have implied that Japa­nese could not be reliable partners in the demo­cratic alliance and would have handed ­free ammunition to the LDP’s left-­wing rivals, an unlikely and unappealing prospect during the Cold War. In the politics surrounding benefits in the postwar era in Japan we can see a family-­resemblance similarity to Taiwan: conservative/anti-­Communist states allied with groups of former military personnel working to ensure that veterans emerge with benefits not available to the general population despite war rec­ords that ­were ­either fairly abysmal (Taiwan) or widely condemned as criminal ( Japan). All of this happened with the support of the US government. The cases differed mainly in the length and level of assistance provided by the United States (longer and more extensive in Taiwan, which had more of a “protectorate” status than Japan), as well as the stronger role that civil society organ­izations played in veteran politics in Japan. In Taiwan, the pell-­mell escape from the mainland to a place that was not “home”—in the context of a state in the formation stage—­meant that veterans, who w ­ ere mostly poor, illiterate, and unmarried, became highly dependent on the ruling party, which “­adopted” them to bolster its own claims to legitimacy and benevolence. But ­these differences should not obscure their fundamental similarities: veterans in both Taiwan and Japan w ­ ere “losers” who made out well in the postwar period largely thanks to the conservative po­liti­cal dynamics driven by the emerging Pax Americana in the Pacific within the larger context of the Cold War.

German Veterans and the Traditionsverband Germany provides another in­ter­est­ing case study. ­Here, conservatives had long or­ga­nized veterans as a force of order and nationalism. In 1917, a­ fter the February Revolution in Rus­sia, which to a considerable extent had been made by soldiers, the Left tried to do the same. A veterans’ organ­ization with a social-­ democratic program was founded in May.156 Its platform had two planks: po­ liti­cal reform and social welfare. The organ­ization quickly grew and actively supported the November 1918 revolution, which established the Weimar Republic. The new Germany was a parliamentary welfare state with far-­reaching

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provisions for veterans. Thus, both parts of the po­liti­cal program of the left-­ wing veterans’ movement had been satisfied nearly instantly—­making further organ­ization redundant. “During the Weimar Republic,” writes the pioneer in the history of German veterans, “the demo­cratic left and center, as veterans, w ­ ere for the most part po­liti­cally quiescent.”157 Their demands fulfilled, socialist and demo­cratic veterans saw no need to mobilize. This po­liti­cal passivity should not be overstressed—­there ­were some belated and not very successful attempts to organize—­but it did leave the field open to violent nationalists among veterans. They began to dominate the veterans’ movement in Germany but also elsewhere in Eu­rope.158 Thus, when the National Socialists took power in Germany in 1933, they did so in part in the name of the frontline generation. ­Under the Nazi dictatorship, however, veterans’ benefits decreased u ­ nder a smokescreen of pro-­veteran propa159 ganda. Given that f­ ree debate and in­de­pen­dent organ­ization ­were impossible, moreover, veterans now could do ­little about their decreasing status. What was left of the or­ga­nized movement of Weimar days had become “a docile tool of Hitler’s totalitarian Third Reich,” unable and unwilling to rock the boat of the state sailing t­ oward Armageddon.160 West German veterans ­were able to recapture the high status they had enjoyed in Weimar, although their politics now tended to be regime stabilizing rather than antidemo­cratic. The restoration of Weimar-­style veteran welfare was remarkable given the type of war the Germans had fought, the completeness of defeat, the obliteration of the border between front and home front in the final years of the war, the memories of the destructive role veterans’ organ­izations had played in the first German republic, and the determination of the victors to break German militarism once and for all. And indeed, initially, ­things looked bleak, much as they did in postwar Japan: the occupying powers outlawed veterans’ ­unions, canceled benefits, and directed disabled veterans and o ­ thers in need to the civilian welfare state. By the mid-1950s, however, veterans once again had influential organ­izations and a benefit system modeled in many details on the Weimar model. The GDR was less generous, but ­here, too, veterans ­were integrated well into state and society. As was the case in Japan, they might have been vanquished as soldiers, but as veterans they ­were victorious. This spectacular turnaround in veteran policy was the result of a po­liti­cal pact between or­ga­nized veterans and the po­liti­cal elite of West Germany, who together confronted and eventually unhinged the occupying powers’ attempts to get rid of the privileged status of veterans once and for all. First came the legalization of veterans’ organ­izations representing the major constituencies: war disabled, former prisoners of war, and former professional soldiers insistent

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on recovering their officer pensions. Next came their integration into the legislative pro­cess as part of an extensive and evidently sincere pro­cess of consultation. Fi­nally, as a result of this grassroots involvement of veterans, they ­were granted far-­reaching special privileges in the initial bold pieces of social legislation that founded the West German welfare state a­ fter 1945. With the war still clearly vis­i­ble in the rearview mirror, veterans w ­ ere integrated into postwar society at both the symbolic and the legislative levels.161 This po­liti­cal embrace of former Wehrmacht soldiers became pos­si­ble ­because of a broad consensus among the po­liti­cal elite, which revolved around three issues. First, ­because most of Hitler’s soldiers had been drafted, they could be treated as victims of Nazism rather than its accomplices—­another similarity to Japan. Given that the Federal Republic was antifascist, this positioning greatly helped their cause. Thus, in the German case a­ fter World War II, and similarly to Japan, the dichotomy of volunteer versus conscript worked in exactly the opposite way to how it had in Australia a­ fter World War I. As we have seen, the victorious Australians mobilized the fact that they had gone to war of their own accord, had suffered for the nation out of idealism, and hence should be treated as a privileged part of this nation. The defeated Germans, by contrast, framed their position around the fact that they had been coerced to suffer for the nation in a war lost against overwhelming enemies. Had they all been Nazi volunteers, their suffering in a war of expansion, conquest, and annihilation might have been seen as their just desserts. But b­ ecause they had been drafted by the nation to shed blood on its account, the fact that they had fought for a criminal regime did not ­matter as much as their sacrifices. Second, the veteran issue was part of a wider po­liti­cal prob­lem. The occupying powers’ attempt to break the veterans’ movement and undo veterans’ ­legal status was seen as an expression of a more general attempt to declare the German p­ eople collectively responsible for Nazism. Not surprisingly, this “collective guilt thesis” was highly unpop­u­lar among Germans, and the po­ liti­cal class fought it with all means. Veteran policy was one front of this broader po­liti­cal ­battle. Third, and perhaps most astonishingly from t­oday’s perspective, was the final part of the consensus: an unspoken assumption that soldiering was a dignified pursuit. What­ever Hitler’s war aims, what­ever dirty war his army had fought, serving in the Wehrmacht still meant serving the nation, and therefore veterans still deserved a special status a­ fter the war. What­ever disadvantages civilians suffered—­and given the collapse of the distinction between front and hinterland in the air war and once the Allies pushed into German territory, civilians suffered a lot—­service in the army was still of a dif­fer­ent order

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than participation in the war effort at home. The soldier who lost a leg in a drunken car accident in Rus­sia had a more dignified wound than the w ­ oman who burned her face to rescue a child from the inferno ­after an air raid. Other­ wise, why institute a separate welfare system for veterans? And if ­there was a separate welfare system for war heroes, why not treat the injured w ­ oman as one of them? Such a proposal would have unsettled the gender order too much. Why not then integrate the victim of the car accident into the ordinary welfare system catering to civilians? For veteran advocates, the answer was that ­those who had served the nation in uniform had a dignity civilians lacked. They deserved a special status ­because soldiering was ser­vice of a higher order than anything e­ lse.162 As one Christian Demo­crat politician (a w ­ oman) stressed during parliamentary debate: This sacrifice [of veterans] has nothing to do with a chance accident, whose monetary recompense can be provided by actuarially calculated insurance premiums. We decisively reject settlement and ­simple compensation according to social security princi­ples for war victim benefits. The foundations for the new legislation are entitlement: to sufficient care, on the one hand, and the obligation of the state for support, on the other.163 In sharp contrast to Japan, where conservatives w ­ ere the primary backers of veterans’ benefits, in postwar Germany this tripartite consensus cut across the po­liti­cal divide. On the left, it included many Social Demo­crats, a party whose leaders e­ ither had been incarcerated by the Nazis or led the antifascist fight from exile.164 On the right, it was embraced by the organ­ization of survivors of the Waffen-­SS. Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit (Mutual Aid Society; HIAG) managed to inscribe itself into this victimization narrative by attaching the armed SS as the allegedly “fourth branch” to the “clean” Wehr­ macht. The organ­ization and its members ­were courted by Social Demo­crats (SPD), Christian Demo­crats (CDU) and their Bavarian wing, the Christian Socialists (CSU), and Liberals (FPD) alike. The official reason was that the radical potential of the former Nazis needed to be dissolved by integrating them into the young republic, but the veteran vote was at least as impor­tant an incentive. Only in the 1970s, u ­ nder the impact of increasingly critical public consciousness of the Nazi past, was this pro­cess of po­liti­cal integration of former SS soldiers ­stopped and, eventually, reversed.165 This pro­cess culminated in the 1980s, when HIAG and its associated unit associations found themselves unable to secure venues for their meetings. Strong po­liti­cal forces in local councils now opposed hosting such characters.

15 8 Ch apte r 5

When Hitler’s old guard managed to meet in a pub owned by one of the comrades in the staunchly conservative South Bavarian town of Nesselwang in 1985, they w ­ ere dubbed a “trust fund of homeless rightwingers” by the mainstream press. Bavaria’s minister-­president, a hard man of the Christian Socialist Right, a former Wehrmacht officer frostbitten at the Eastern Front, declared the meeting “clearly cynical t­owards the victims” of “Hitler’s criminal politics.” Local authorities tried all the tricks in the book to prevent the get-­together. Given that Waffen-­SS veterans’ organ­izations ­were registered associations, however, they could not be prevented from exercising their constitutional right to freedom of assembly. Unable to find a ­legal loophole that would allow them to stop the event, bureaucrats scratched their heads in despair. Trade ­unions suggested their members boycott the popu­lar holiday region.166 The comrades met anyway, insisting on their demo­cratic credentials but confronting some five thousand antifascist demonstrators who yelled “Nazis out!” Inside the ­hotel, Hitler’s old elite confirmed to an undercover journalist camouflaged as a Nazi skinhead that they ­were just that: “This shit-­democracy has to go,” said one of them. Sniffing his gas cigarette lighter, he proclaimed loudly to his likeminded audience of beer drinkers: “What is this?” The answer: “A Jew longing for Auschwitz.” The room erupted into laughter.167 Such investigative reporting was extremely damaging in a republic ashamed of the Nazi past, horrified by Holocaust denial (let alone its cele­bration), and keen on maintaining its good relations with Israel and the United States. Eventually, the HIAG dissolved in 1992–93. Only unit associations and local chapters continued a somewhat subterranean existence, suspiciously watched by anybody outside the neo-­Nazi fringe.168 But such marginalization of Waffen-­SS veterans, and the general distrust of veterans of Hitler’s war that paralleled it, came long ­after the veterans’ benefit system had been established on the basis of the postwar pro-­veteran consensus. Of its three pillars, only the first was an empirical fact: the majority of the Wehrmacht’s soldiers ­were indeed drafted, and nobody had asked if they ­were enthusiastic about fighting and ­dying in some godforsaken place in Rus­ sia or North Africa. The second assumption was based on a slight misinterpretation of Allied actions. If they had wanted to hold all Germans to account for the crimes of the Third Reich, civil administrators would have had their pensions canceled as well. When they w ­ ere not, former officers w ­ ere greatly annoyed. What the Allies w ­ ere ­after was militarism, not the German p­ eople, an approach the victors also took in Japan. The third assumption is the psychologically most in­ter­est­ing. Given what had tran­spired between 1939 and 1945, the idea that Nazi soldiers had been engaged in more dignified pursuits than the civilians who kept them supplied required some very determined re-

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interpretation of the past. It required repression of what one historian has called “toxic knowledge” about what had happened.169 This “repression work” was a society-­wide pro­cess, involving many players, from the top of the po­liti­cal system through veterans’ organ­izations all the way to the f­ amily and the individual veteran. It included the state through far-­reaching judicial amnesty in the early 1950s, but also local communities, and families, who had been complicit in what had happened but talked about it only in carefully circumscribed moments. “­After all,” writes one historian in a chilling book about everyday living and ­dying in the Third Reich, “what was the f­ amily ­going to do ­after 1945 with the repatriated ­father who had written to his ­children during the war: ‘You can trust your ­Daddy. He thinks about you all the time and is not shooting immoderately.’ ”170 Concerted efforts of former Wehrmacht generals to make themselves useful to the former enemy-­turned-­ally—­the United States—­were one aspect of the larger movement to sanitize the memory of this war. Selling their expertise in the context of the Cold War against the other totalitarianism (­after all, who knew better than they how to fight the Red Army?), they wrote military history with the genocide left out. Their war had been clean, professional, chivalrous. All crimes had been committed by the SS and ­were reactions to Bolshevik barbarism in the first place. They would have won the war but w ­ ere thwarted by that corporal Hitler and his crazy ideas (as well as by “General Mud” and “General Winter”—­anything, ­really, as long as it was not the Red Army, as amateurs might conclude).171 This view of the war, together with the image of the veteran as victim (which could draw on the real suffering of ­those who had survived the ordeal of this war), however, was neither random nor a product of demo­cratic deliberation. As was the case in Japan, it was embraced and propagated by the new veterans’ organ­izations.172 ­These dual myths—­the “clean Wehrmacht” and the veteran-­as-­victim—­ were so pervasive and central to the postwar accommodation with this past that the mere exhibition of evidence of Wehrmacht crimes caused a major national scandal, even in the 1990s.173 It documented the “murderous march of the Sixth Army into the Soviet Union in the summer and fall of 1941” rather than its suffering in encircled Sta­lin­g rad in 1942–43, and generated an angry reaction from a significant part of the German public. But this was already a very dif­fer­ent republic—­one altered by the impact of the tele­vi­sion miniseries Holocaust (1978), which had brought the worst crimes of Nazism into German living rooms in 1979; one where a broad-­based peace movement uniting churches and l­abor ­unions, social demo­crats and hippies, brought hundreds of thousands of ­people into the streets to protest the deployment of US cruise missiles on German territory in the early 1980s; and one where the Greens

16 0 Ch apte r 5

had established themselves as a more or less respectable party, which would become part of a governing co­ali­tion by 1998. In this republic, not only HIAG veterans found themselves marginalized. The conceptual apparatus informing the German veterans’ movement became increasingly delegitimized. Even seemingly benign terms as “comradeship” w ­ ere now seen as negative by large parts of the public. In this environment, the Crimes of the Wehrmacht Exhibition was a calculated provocation, carefully calibrated to separate the right extreme from the mainstream.174 The exhibition focused on the Sixth Army of Sta­lin­g rad fame. Sta­lin­g rad and the Sixth Army w ­ ere symbols of German victimization, not culpability. The organizers of the exhibition had indeed selected their target carefully: it had been in Sta­lin­g rad where Hitler’s ideological warriors fighting for the living space of the Aryan race had been transformed into a “basically virtuous army of ordinary, wounded, suffering German soldiers.”175 The Führer’s insistence that the encircled men fight to the last transmogrified what u ­ ntil then had been perpetrators, accomplices, or bystanders in a genocidal war into “victims of Nazism.”176 The subsequent suffering of the survivors in Soviet captivity then made them into victims of Stalin.177 As victims of both totalitarianisms—to use a term fash­ion­able at the time—­they deserved sympathy and welfare.178 This positive image was now being unmade, not least by professional historians. The Wehrmacht exhibition was the public version of this historiographical attempt to cure German society of its amnesia about central aspects of World War II. Amnesia about what had ­really happened between 1939 and 1945 was central to postwar West German culture.179 It was already in place, albeit not yet consistently formulated, during the years of occupation and in the early years of the new German republic. The veteran-­as-­victim consensus encapsulated the wider Germany-­as-­victim narrative, which allowed for the building of a demo­cratic polity peopled, governed, and administered by many who ­were implicated in the Nazi regime.180 It also enabled the pro­cess that made German veterans into victorious losers. Turning soldiers from perpetrators into “victims of war” or “victims of totalitarianism” not only made this past bearable by burying large parts of it but also allowed a remarkable return to the Weimar tradition of veteran welfare.181 By the time this cultural construct was deconstructed from the 1970s onward, it had already done its job for Hitler’s veterans: the benefit system for victims of war was well entrenched. Veteran benefits are deeply embedded in both domestic and international po­ liti­cal contexts. Whereas the Australian and US cases are primarily testaments to the power of homegrown veterans’ organ­izations in favorable domestic po­

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liti­cal environments, Taiwan, the USSR, Japan, and Germany highlight the impact of the international context, particularly the Cold War, and orga­ nizational linkages between veterans’ institutions. The international context can inspire veterans’ movements to learn from the success stories of o ­ thers and join them in transnational veterans’ organ­izations. It can motivate ruling parties (on the left and right) to fund veterans’ c­ auses and institutions in other states (such as in Taiwan, whose veterans benefited from the strength of the American veterans’ movement). In the case of the USSR, the Cold War incentivized the regime to try to join the World Veterans Federation, which provided the first opening for veteran mobilization. In Japan and Taiwan, the United States supported the po­liti­cal parties that ­were willing to accommodate veterans’ interests. In Germany, the notion that the Wehrmacht had fought a clean fight against Bolshevism allowed the war against the Soviet Union to be framed as a precursor to the ensuing confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Counterfactually, it is difficult to imagine veterans in t­ hese countries ­doing as well as they did without the context of Cold War superpower competition. At the same time, context, or opportunity, is not cause. In Germany, Japan, and the USSR, but to a lesser extent in Taiwan, veterans’ organ­izations played a significant role taking advantage of what­ever opportunities the Cold War provided them. They mobilized in large numbers and lobbied extensively for their interests, both material and symbolic. They made their presence felt in politics and in the larger culture. We do not take a stand on ­whether this was moral, just, or fair. Instead, we return to our basic, and older, theme—­that “who gets what” in politics is largely a product of successful mobilization, skilled framing, and the exploitation of emerging opportunities—­domestic and international. It is not victory or defeat, not democracy or authoritarianism per se, not simplicity or complexity that best explains veterans’ outcomes. Only by recourse to po­liti­cal processes—­domestic and international—­can we explain how defeated warriors of criminal regimes won privileges and status that ­were denied to at least some of their conquerors. Fi­nally, we think, we might not be so confounded. In the end, it’s politics.

 Conclusion Veterans Past, Pre­sent, and F ­ uture

The Ingredients of Success This comparative study of veterans in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Taiwan, Japan, Germany, and the Soviet Union has asked where and u ­ nder what circumstances have veterans attained an elevated status in postwar socie­ties? Our multicase comparison has demonstrated that many commonsense assumptions about veteran politics cannot be sustained. We have seen that even decisive victory does not guarantee high postwar status but also that devastating defeat does not condemn former soldiers to obscurity; a generous welfare system for returned soldiers does not guarantee their loyalty to the state providing it, but state neglect does not necessarily lead to disloyalty; and only in exceptional circumstances does the participation of large numbers of citizens in brutal warfare lead to brutalization of postwar politics. Nor are positive veteran outcomes tied to the type of po­liti­cal system they return to—­democracies can be as unresponsive as dictatorships, and authoritarian polities can be as accommodating as liberal ones. The ideology of the po­liti­cal party in power also explains ­little. But this falsification of a w ­ hole range of popu­lar assumptions does not mean that veteran politics is random. For one, in all case studies we have observed the emergence of what we have called an “entitlement group”: a collection of ­people with a shared belief that they are distinctively deserving 16 2



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members of the community, in­de­pen­dent of the extent to which ­these sentiments are reciprocated within their social and po­liti­cal environment.1 Twentieth-­century veterans consistently displayed a widespread sense that they deserved special treatment ­after war. In part, this self-­concept was the result of mass suffering and sacrifice, as well as the inherent challenges that veterans face a­ fter demobilization, but in the longer view it was also the product of the entangled nature of citizenship and soldiering since the French Revolution: war­time mobilization to save the nation, empire, or revolution led to a strong sense of having acquired “martial citizenship.”2 Second, we have identified the key ingredients for the po­liti­cal success of veterans in their strug­gle to transform their sense of entitlement into ­actual privileges, thus moving from an “entitlement group” to a “status group” in postwar society. The first is organ­ization. In the cases we examined t­ here was not a single instance where significant postwar status was achieved without the involvement of a veterans’ organ­ization, and t­ here are surely o ­ thers where the same conclusion holds. Just to give one of numerous pos­si­ble examples, Serge Marc Durflinger’s study of blinded veterans in Canada found that the Canadian government “acted fairly on pensions . . . ​mainly as a result of veterans’ advocacy that military pensions, access to retraining facilities, and medical benefits became established as rights and not charity, as permanent and not temporary mea­sures.” In the absence of a “firm, united veterans’ voice,” which found its expression in “pressing veterans’ claims in briefs before parliamentary committees, royal commissions, the Canadian Pension Commission, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other government agencies,” he argues, “the federal government could have more easily delayed or disregarded their demands.”3 In contrast, in the United Kingdom the primary veterans’ organ­ ization did not want to rock the po­liti­cal boat. It avoided aggressive tactics and focused on providing veteran welfare through its own channels. What this paired example of similar regime types suggests is that organ­ization by itself does not guarantee anything. Only where veterans’ organ­izations are united enough to formulate a clear set of demands and are willing and able to vigorously press t­hese in a sustained manner is success likely. Australian veterans ­after World War I and American veterans during and ­after World War II pre­ sent us with clear examples of well-­organized, well-­connected, and well-­ prepared veterans’ associations bending governments to their ­will. When they manage to shape the po­liti­cal arena to their advantage, or­ga­nized veterans can leave a legacy that benefits subsequent generations. ­Whether or not they w ­ ill depends also on the second ingredient: the po­ liti­cal opportunity structure—­that is, the par­tic­u­lar configuration of domestic and international politics when veterans assert their claims to privilege,

16 4 CONCLUSION

irrespective of regime type. As we might anticipate, dictatorships find it easier to resist demands from their citizens than democracies, but even they have provided benefits, or increased already existing ones, in response to veteran activism. The Soviet Union went from outright refusal to make concessions to integrating veterans as an or­ga­nized corporate group. China tried to address some of veterans’ material and process-­oriented demands (such as establishing a new Ministry of Veterans Affairs) without making concessions to their orga­nizational aspirations. Po­liti­cal leaders ­matter in dictatorships and democracies alike. In the USSR, General Secretary Brezhnev, who considered himself among their ranks, had more sympathy for veterans than did Stalin. In the United States, President Roo­se­velt also changed his views on veterans during World War II, President Truman was a member of the American Legion, and ­after the war Gen. Omar Bradley served as head of the Veterans Administration. In Taiwan, President Chiang Ching-­kuo, Chiang Kai-­shek’s son, was quite sympathetic to veterans’ concerns, and in Australia, Prime Minister Billy Hughes was an impor­tant advocate for returned soldiers. Ideology could also play out in a variety of ways, delegitimizing veterans’ claims to status in Marxism but working in their f­ avor when veterans became a “generation.” During the Cold War, veterans in the United States, Japan, Taiwan, and Germany benefited considerably from anti-­ Communist conservative politics, as did Australian veterans from the post–­ World War I Bolshevik scare. Fascism, by contrast, while elevating veterans to symbols of the new order, often did l­ittle to advance their cause beyond such rhe­toric. Veterans’ success depends on recognizing and shaping the po­ liti­cal opportunity structure what­ever it may be and to what­ever extent the po­liti­cal system allows.

Transnationalism This study has shown that the historical lit­er­a­ture on veterans in the twentieth ­century is now far enough evolved to make multicase, analytical comparisons pos­si­ble. Methodologically, we have combined the po­liti­cal scientist’s proclivity to ask analytical questions and find broadly applicable arguments covering many empirical cases with the historian’s interest in contextual analy­ sis thick in empirical detail and heavi­ly reliant on archival and other primary sources. This combination of comparison, history, and midlevel theorizing is a new departure in veteran studies. But where should the field go from h ­ ere? From our vantage point, one of the most fruitful ave­nues for further research w ­ ill focus on the international context of veteran politics, their orga­



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nizational links across countries, and the circulation of ideas between national contexts.4 Our own work delved into this aspect but did not make it the center of analy­sis. For example, the study we cited by the World Veterans Federation to describe the benefit system in Germany can also be analyzed as an artifact of a transnational pro­cess: the attempt by the international veterans’ movement to inform its national constituencies about best practices and thereby aid their po­liti­cal strug­gle.5 More broadly, the Federation served as a driver for the lobbying of national organ­izations for better benefit systems.6 The history of its rival, the communist Federation of Re­sis­tance Fighters, also remains to be written, while other international organ­izations, such as the British Empire Ser­vice League and the Fédération Interalliée des Anciens Combattants (FIDAC) offer further possibilities from the interwar period.7 In this study we detected international influences in several national cases. For example, German veterans ­after World War II cited “the famed ‘Hunger March’ ” of US veterans in the 1930s as a model for the kind of po­liti­cal disruption they could cause should politicians not assent to their wishes.8 Even in the self-­contained Soviet Union, information about what happened abroad sometimes filtered through. The American and French examples played a role in Soviet attempts to set up veterans’ organ­izations—­and in the arguments the po­liti­cal leadership of the country mobilized against such wishes.9 The creation of the Soviet Committee of War Veterans (SKVV) in 1956—­a pivotal moment in the history of the Soviet veterans’ movement—­ was itself a transnational moment: it was a reaction to the rising influence of the international veterans’ movement. Once established, the SKVV took the German example of war memorials as an unlikely inspiration for the kind of war cult that could be built at home. The crucial role of such international links has been explored in two recent studies, which might well form models for ­f uture transnational research. The first approach is to follow an idea through vari­ous national contexts, explore its mutations, and explain why it attained dominance. Ángel Alcalde’s study of the notion of the “fascist veteran” in the post–­World War I years shows in exemplary fashion how such an analy­sis can be done. Most former soldiers of World War I, he argues, neither came home as protofascists nor joined the nascent fascist parties. In fact, most reintegrated into postwar society and became peaceful civilians. But fascist parties—­first in Italy, then elsewhere—­claimed that they represented “the veteran” to gain legitimacy for their own cause. From Italy this frame traveled to other contexts, most notably Germany. The symbolic link between veterans and fascism, or, in the German case, National Socialism, became so dominant that first the victors in World War II and then ­later historians accepted it as a given fact.10

16 6 CONCLUSION

The second approach would be to look at transnational pro­cesses from the perspective of one national context. Julia Eichenberg has shown how crucial it was for Polish veterans to establish links with an international veterans’ organ­ization. Polish veterans are a particularly strange case a­ fter World War I. Except for t­ hose who subsequently fought in the Polish Legion or in the armed forces of the new Polish state, the majority of World War I veterans had not fought for the state from which they now claimed benefits. They ­were veterans of the German, Imperial Rus­sian, or Austro-­Hungarian armies. On the one hand, their claims to postwar status relied on establishing symbolic links, however tenuous, between their war­time ser­vice and the fight for national liberation; on the other hand, they used international examples to argue for better welfare provisions. France in par­tic­u­lar became a touchstone, as many among the po­liti­cal elite of interwar Poland looked to this country not only as a long-­ term ally of Polish in­de­pen­dence but also as the exemplar of the Eu­ro­pean civilization to which they aspired. World War I veterans skillfully deployed their detailed knowledge of veterans’ benefits in France and elsewhere, information they obtained through their early engagement in international veterans’ organ­izations.11 Our own study has combined the “entangled history” approaches of Eichenberg and Alcalde with a more classical comparative method and the e­ arlier lit­er­at­ ure’s insistence on national peculiarities.12 International context, international links, and the transfer of ideas w ­ ere impor­tant, as we have seen again and again throughout this book. But they played themselves out in specific ways in specific domestic configurations. National histories and politics mattered a g­ reat deal, a fact we have encapsulated in the concept path de­pen­den­cy, which emphasizes the significance of vested interests in the status quo. At times, the very absence of links or the willful or ignorant disregard of international best practice was as crucial for what veterans did and did not receive. Thus, as this book has demonstrated, “transnational history” should supplement but not replace both national histories and the comparative approach.

The ­Future of Veteran Studies What questions remain unanswered? Plenty! This book has focused on benefits provided to veterans of massive armies of national or revolutionary states operating in an age of near total warfare. T ­ here is ample room, therefore, to introduce variations on both ­these variables. For example, zooming out, more researchers could focus on how colonial troops have or­ga­nized, such as the Senegalese in the French army, or the large numbers of Indians in the British



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army.13 The connections between veteran politics and empire have begun to interest historians, who sometimes explore how ­these links relate to decolonization, or the preservation of empire, but much more remains to be done.14 Zooming in, subnational governments, local councils, private organ­izations and employers, and even benevolent individuals compensate veterans; in federal systems t­ here is often wide variation among states or provinces. In Australia ­after World War I and the United States ­after World War II, for example, the generous treatment of veterans by national governments was augmented by similar munificence on the part of many states, with mea­sures including preference in state-­level civil ser­vice employment and assistance in establishing farms.15 In the scenarios examined in this book, veterans have looked primarily to the national governments that sent them to war for compensation, recognition, and reward as part of the “citizen’s bargain” with the state, but their lived experience of recognition and assistance has always depended on a much wider field of players. ­There also have been many forms of warfare we have not considered. Tribal conflict, border wars, peacekeeping operations, drone-­based warfare, and wars conducted by nonstate actors all employ fighting men and w ­ omen—­and regrettably, sometimes ­children. Have veterans of ­these sorts of conflicts been able to or­ga­nize and claim benefits? Within a similar warfare type—­border wars, for example—­has t­ here been variation in the benefits veterans have been able to obtain, if they have gained them at all? We also think that ­there is much opportunity in examining connections between difficult types of veteran identity and their ability to or­ga­nize and press for recognition and privileges. Ethnic minorities, w ­ omen, and LGBTQ+ veterans face obstacles that many of the veterans in our study did not, including fewer connections to elite politicians, and considerably less public understanding. Since successful mobilization often requires at least some unity of purpose and identity among veterans, ­will diverse veteran communities be able to see eye-­to-­eye, unite, and press for common benefits? We also suggest that t­here is much work to be done in examining situations where veteran bodies have been divided along other lines. How, for example, did the new states that ­were formed out of the remnants of the Ottoman, Romanov, Hapsburg, and German Empires ­after World War I relate to veterans who had fought in the armies of former imperial overlords, or indeed against ­those armies? How did they treat veterans of World War I who then fought in paramilitary forces that ­were part of the pro­cess of new state formation? As Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman have argued, paramilitary forces operated in the borderlands of the new states, often employed vio­lence against ethnic minorities, and continued to do so u ­ ntil such time as

16 8 CONCLUSION

the new states could establish a mono­poly on the legitimate use of vio­lence. ­Were such forces rewarded for their part in the establishment of new states? ­Were rewards part of the effort of the new states to induce such paramilitary forces to lay down their arms?16 If the call of Robert Gerwarth and John Horne for a global history of paramilitary vio­lence is to be accepted, surely such a proj­ect must include the claims and treatment of paramilitary fighters once they returned to civilian life.17 Established states could also face extraordinarily convoluted veteran situations. We began this book with an i­magined scenario of six veterans from dif­ fer­ent countries requesting assistance from their respective governments. Imagine now, if you ­will, six French veterans approaching the post–­World War II French government, all stating “War was hell; we sacrificed; we deserve compensation and re­spect.” One soldier fought against the Germans in 1940 before being captured; another on the side of the Vichy French regime in the ­Middle East; one with the ­Free French forces ­after escaping to Britain; another (a ­woman) in the French re­sis­tance; the fifth on the German side on the Eastern Front; and the last on behalf of France in 1940, Vichy France in 1941 and 1942, and the Germans in 1944. Such complex but plausible scenarios could be repeated for other countries (such as Italy or the Soviet Union) and merit closer examination. What happened to such fractured collectives of veterans? Did they ever form a cohesive veteran community? On what grounds could they frame their claims on the state and society? Did the state privilege one veteran experience over another or, in the name of the legibility and simplification so beloved of modern state bureaucracies, treat them equally for purposes of postwar national reconciliation, reintegration, and the administration of benefits? The category of veteran has always been fractured, but the wars of the first half of the twentieth ­century generated a number of particularly convoluted, and potentially poisonous, scenarios that deserve closer examination. The range of pos­si­ble sets of circumstances continues to multiply the more one looks at the history of warfare, with historians noting particularities that defy the tidy patterns beloved by social scientists. For example, to what extent could veterans of successful insurgencies, indigenous p­ eoples who fought on the colonizer’s side in anticolonial wars, and veterans of the losing side in civil wars claim privileged status? Could the Algerian man who fought for the French expect much compensation, much less reward, for his sacrifices? Or the Confederate soldier of the US Civil War? Or the veteran of the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam? In answering t­ hese questions, some of the concepts we use in this study might be helpful. For example, in the case of the American Confederate veterans, we might differentiate between their high



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horizontal status, reflected in the erection of monuments and public education about the “lost cause” of the South, and their weak vertical status with regard to benefits from the US federal government. But much research needs to be done about the fortunes of ­these former combatants.

The Practice of Veteran Politics What implications does our study have for veterans’ organ­izations? We think the historical rec­ord is crystal clear: (1) never trust politicians’ rhe­toric about the heroism of military sacrifice; (2) or­ga­nize at all costs and through any means: marshal your arguments and resources, mobilize contacts, fundraise, and lobby; (3) accept incremental change when necessary but never give up on long-­term goals; never rest on your laurels. As we have seen, veterans can trade on all manner of discourses—­they can pre­sent themselves as defenders of the nation, sometimes even its creators. Alternatively, they can frame themselves as victims of circumstance to mobilize feelings of sympathy or regret, or even shame that a veteran can be reduced to penury. As we have seen, too, competent leadership is essential. Veterans need to have a clear strategy, including articulation of goals (“What do we want to achieve?”) and flexible tactics (“How ­will we get ­there?”). Veterans’ organ­ izations need to make sure that they have a positive public image so that in the lobbying efforts public sympathy is on their side. They need to consider new methods of framing and mobilizing veteran communities—­a particularly complex task given more diverse military cultures, new military methods, and the decline of traditional veteran and fraternal organ­izations as a source of identity and activism. For instance, ­will legacy veterans’ organ­izations be able to effectively represent someone who never leaves the country but fights virtually from an air-­conditioned control room through drone operations? ­Will such soldiers’ carpal tunnel syndromes be considered a “war injury” deserving re­spect? W ­ ill their war trauma be recognized? Where ­will they sit compared with t­ hose who went overseas but never encountered the e­ nemy? Fi­nally, veterans’ organ­izations would do well to engage in comparative analy­sis of institutions that experienced substantial decline in their once formidable power—­cautionary tales of what might happen to them in the ­future. Perhaps most relevant is the decline of workers’ leverage in US politics and economy. As Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have shown, the most impor­tant source of ­labor weakness—­seen clearly in workers’ wages and benefits—­has been the slow but steady deterioration of its orga­nizational arm—­unions. While the conservative American Legion remains power­ful despite substantial decline

17 0 CONCLUSION

in membership between 1955 and 1995, its prominent role in American public life does not strike us as sustainable in the medium and long terms.18 In a discussion with one of your authors, an officer in the Pennsylvania Veterans of Foreign Wars was similarly pessimistic, noting declining membership in veterans’ organ­izations and politicians who w ­ ere disconnected culturally from the military and understood only “money and votes,” neither of which veterans could produce in very large quantities.19 On the other side of the policy fence, politicians and civil servants need to be ­under no illusion that generous benefit systems ­will lead to contentment among veterans. T ­ here is no necessary link between veteran welfare and loyalty, nor should t­here be. A world-­class veterans’ affairs policy w ­ ill not stop demands for more. Policy makers should also be aware that what they do and what they refuse to legislate ­will have implications for veterans’ benefit systems down the road: over and over we saw that path de­pen­dency is as impor­ tant as international example. Weaponizing veterans for short-­term po­liti­cal gain or ignoring them ­will have effects on recruitment, retention, and the general staffing of the military but also on what can or cannot be done in the civilian sphere. It is prob­ably fruitless to suggest that politicians take a long-­term perspective, but our study strongly suggests that national traditions in granting (or not) privilege to veterans, once established, are difficult to transform. In a positive feedback loop, exemplified by the GI Bill in the US case, well-­ designed and well-­implemented veterans’ programs can facilitate upward mobility for generations, which veterans pay back by way of higher tax contributions, consumption, and participation in civil society. In a negative loop, miserly veteran benefits can produce long-­term prob­lems for staffing the armed forces (for example, parents discouraging c­ hildren from considering the military as a ­career option), generate widespread frustration with in­equality as hopes for upward mobility are dashed, and increase cynicism about politics when the often-­pretentious po­liti­cal discourse surrounding military ser­vice does not align with tangible benefits. What path politicians choose in the f­ uture is, of course, unknown, but this study makes it clear that if veterans wish for favorable outcomes they ­will have to fight for them. This strug­gle w ­ ill not be easy. Even though veterans t­ oday face roughly similar challenges as t­hose of the age of total war—­Who w ­ ill look ­after them? How ­will they get reestablished in civilian life?—­the changing nature of warfare w ­ ill require significant changes in how mobilization takes place. Unlike American GIs, Australian diggers, British “Tommies,” French poilu, Taiwanese rongmin, and Japa­nese betaranu, who returned from mass armies in massive numbers and constituted substantial voting blocs or patronage targets, con­temporary militaries are smaller and more highly specialized. How veter-



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171

ans of such units pursue their interests in the absence of large numbers but with far superior communication technology at their disposal thanks to the Internet ­will be a fundamental question in the politics of veteran privilege in the twenty-­first ­century. “Privilege,” as Margo Jefferson wrote in the context of the black American m ­ iddle and upper class, “is provisional. Privilege can be denied, withheld, offered grudgingly and summarily withdrawn. . . . ​Keep a close watch.”20

N ote s

Introduction

1. The extent and nature of the challenges facing veterans are widely recognized, and are neatly summarized in Mark D. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again: Amer­i­ ca’s WWII Veterans Come Home (New York: Lexington, 2001). 2. John Ellis, The World War II Databook: The Essential Facts and Figures for All the Combatants (London: Aurum, 1993), 227–28, 253–54; G. F. Krivosheev, Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth ­Century (London: Greenhill Books, 1997), 91; Michael Ellman and S. Maksudov, “Soviet Deaths in the G ­ reat Patriotic War: A Note,” Europe-­ Asia Studies 46, no. 4 (1994): 677. 3. Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popu­lar Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 10, 217; “Ministr Maksim Topilin pozdravil veteranov s Dnem Pobedy v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine” (May 8, 2014), https://­rosmintrud​.­ru​/­social​/­vetaran​-­defence​/­33. 4. United States Census Bureau, “How Do We Know? A Snapshot of Our Nation’s Veterans” ( July 2012), http://­www​.­census​.­gov​/­library​/­visualizations​/­2012​/­comm​ /­veterans​.­html. 5. National Center for Veterans Analy­sis and Statistics, “Veteran Population,” accessed August 9, 2019, https://­www​.­va​.­gov​/­vetdata​/­Veteran​_­Population​.­asp. 6. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, “Bud­get 2020,” https://­www​.­va​.­gov​/­budget​ /­products​.­asp; Fiscal Year 2020 Bud­get of the U.S, Government, 85, https://­www​ .­whitehouse​.­gov​/­wp​-­content​/­uploads​/­2019​/­03​/­budget​-­fy2020​.­pdf. 7. On Af­ghan­i­stan’s veterans, see Felix Ackermann and Michael Galbas (eds.), Back from Af­ghan­is­ tan: The Experiences of Soviet Afghan War Veterans, special issue of Journal of Soviet and Post-­Soviet Politics and Society 1, no. 2 (2015): 1–94. 8. Neil J. Diamant, Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families, and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949–2007 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 356–58; “Zhonguo tuiwu junren yiyou 5700 duo wan,” Chinanews​.­com, accessed December 10, 2018, http://­www​.­chinanews​.­com​/­mil​/­2017​/­03​-­18​/­8177011​.­shtml. 9. “First World War 1914–18,” Australian War Memorial, accessed December 10, 2018, https://­www​.­awm​.­gov​.­au​/­articles​/­atwar​/­first​-­world​-­war; “Second World War, 1939–45,” Australian War Memorial, accessed December 10, 2018, https://­www​.­awm​ .­gov​.­au​/­articles​/­second​-­world​-­war; Australian Government, “Ministerial Statement on Veterans and their Families” (Canberra, 2017), http://­minister​.­dva​.­gov​.­au​/­docs​/­min​ state​.­pdf. 10. See, for example, P. A. Brunt, “The Army and the Land in the Roman Revolution,” in The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 173

17 4 NOTES

TO PAGES 4 –5

240–75; and Stefan Link, Konzepte der Privilegierung römischer Veteranen (Stuttgart: Stei­ ner,1989). On China during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), see Mark Elliot, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). 11. Mass warfare refers to the mobilization of large numbers of citizens rather than professional or standing armies; total war refers to the full mobilization of society for the purposes of waging war. The former does not necessarily imply the latter. 12. A. A. Friedrich, “Veterans,” in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 243–47. 13. On World War I, see Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); Paul Fussell, The ­Great War and Modern Memory (London: Oxford University Press, 1977); David Swift and Oliver Wilkinson (eds.), Veterans of the First World War: Ex-­Servicemen and Ex-­Servicewomen in Post-­War Britain and Ireland (London: Routledge, 2019); Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. The G ­ reat War in Eu­ro­pean Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Jay Winter and Jean-­Louis Robert (eds.), Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Jay Winter (ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World War, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014–16). On World War II see Gerard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, 2nd ed. (London: Pimlico, 2006); Evan Mawdsley, World War II: A New History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Evan Mawdsley, December 1941: Twelve Days That Began a World War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012); Antony Beevor, The Second World War (New York: Back Bay Books, 2012); Lizzie Collingham, The Taste of War: World War II and the ­Battle for Food (London: Penguin, 2013); John Ferris and Evan Mawdsley (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Second World War, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 14. As the historian David Gerber has commented, “­there is no En­glish language synthesis of the history of veterans. . . . ​­There are only studies based on the experiences of individual socie­ties at par­tic­u­lar times.” David Gerber, “Heroes and Misfits: The Troubled Social Reintegration of Disabled Veterans in ‘The Best Years of Our Lives,’ ” American Quarterly 46, no. 4 (1994): 568n2. 15. For an argument for this link, see George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); for an argument against, see Richard Bessel, “The G ­ reat War in German Memory: The Soldiers of the First World War, Demobilization, and Weimar Po­liti­cal Culture,” German History 6, no. 1 (1988): 20–34. France is a particularly egregious case, where a large historiography on the interwar years is not matched by any studies on post–­World War II. For landmarks, see Antoine Prost, Les anciens combattants et la société Française: 1914–1939, 3 vols. (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1977). En­glish summary published as Antoine Prost, In the Wake of War: “Les Anciens Combattants” and French Society 1914–1939, trans. Helen McPhail (Oxford: Berg, 1992). Prost argued that French veterans tended to be demo­cratic rather than fascist, a view now challenged by Chris Millington, From Victory to Vichy: Veterans in Inter-­War France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). 16. Stephen R. Ward (ed.), The War Generation: Veterans of the First World War (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1975); Cristann L. Gibson, “Patterns of Demobilization:

NOTES TO PA GES 5 – 6

175

The US and USSR ­after World War Two” (PhD diss., University of Denver, 1983); Michael Geyer, “Ein Vorbote des Wohlfahrtsstaates: Die Kriegsopferversorgung in Frankreich, Deutschland und Großbritannien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9 (1983): 230–77; David En­glander, “Soldiers and Social Reform in the First and Second World Wars,” Historical Research 67, no. 164 (1994): 318–26; Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). Amy G. Strebe’s master’s thesis on Soviet and American airwomen includes contrasting chapters on demobilization. Amy G. Strebe, “The American ­Women Airforce Ser­vice Pi­lots and Soviet Airwomen of World War II” (master’s thesis, San Jose State University, 2003); Antonia Brok provides a comparison between German and Dutch veterans’ welfare in her PhD thesis: “War, Neutrality and Mobilisation: Securing the Unemployed in Germany and the Netherlands, 1914–1927” (PhD diss., University of Western Australia, 2013). A few edited collections go beyond the usual focus on two cases drawn from Western Eu­rope and North Amer­ i­ca. See David. A. Gerber (ed.), Disabled Veterans in History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); Nathalie Duclos (ed.), L’adieu aux armess? Parcours d’anciens combattants (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2010), now translated as War Veterans in Postwar Situations: Chechnya, Serbia, Turkey, Peru, and Côte d’Ivoire (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Mark Edele and Robert Gerwarth (eds.), “The Limits of Demobilization,” special issue of Journal of Con­temporary History 50, no. 1 (2015). For an attempt at comparing two nonstandard cases (the Soviet Union and Australia), see Martin Crotty and Mark Edele, “Total War and Entitlement: T ­ owards a Global History of Veteran Privilege,” Australian Journal of Politics & History 59, no. 1 (2013): 15–32. ­There are also comparative studies of veterans’ legislation and welfare provision, including United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Study on Rehabilitation of the War Disabled in Selected Countries (New York: United Nations, 1971); and World Veterans Federation, Comparative Report: Legislation Affecting Disabled Veterans and Other War Victims (World Veterans Federation, 1955). Exceptions h ­ ere are edited volumes which often pre­sent multiple cases in parallel, usually without comparing them in any systematic fashion. 17. In addition to examples in note 15 above, see Beate Fieseler, “The Soviet Union’s ‘­Great Patriotic War’ Invalids: The Poverty of a New Status Group,” Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 20, no. 5 (2010): 34–49; and Serge Marc Durflinger, Veterans with a Vision: Canada’s War Blinded in Peace and War (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010). 18. On path de­pen­dency, see, for example, Brian W. Arthur, “Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns, and Lock-in by Historical Events,” Economic Journal 99 (1989): 116–31. On policy based on the legacy of previous policies (more than current conditions), see Peter Hall, “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State: The Case of Economic Policy Making in Britain,” Comparative Politics 25, no. 3 (1993): 275–96. For a summary of current concerns in the research of veterans, see Grace Huxford, Ángel Alcalde, Gary Baines, Olivier Burtin, and Mark Edele, “Writing Veterans’ History: A Roundtable on Twentieth-­Century Conflict and the Veteran,” War & Society 38, no. 2 (2019): 115–38. 19. Diamant, Embattled Glory; Lee K. Pennington, Casualties of History: Wounded Japa­ nese Ser­vicemen and the Second World War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015); Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War; Robert Dale, Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad: Soldiers to Civilians (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015); G. L.

17 6 NOTES

TO PAGES 6 –8

Kristianson, The Politics of Patriotism: The Pressure Group Activities of the Returned Ser­ vicemen’s League (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1966); Stephen Garton, The Cost of War: Australians Return (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996); Marina Larsson, Shattered Anzacs: Living with the Scars of War (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2009); and Martin Crotty, “The Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia, 1916–46,” in Anzac Legacies: Australians and the Aftermath of War, ed. Martin Crotty and Marina Larsson (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010), 166–86. 20. Julia Eichenberg, Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge: Polnische Veteranen des Ersten Weltkriegs und ihre internationalen Kontakte, 1918–1939 (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2011). For more on veterans’ internationalism see Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman (eds.), The ­Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Lisa Pinley Covert, “The GI Bill Abroad: A Postwar Experiment in International Relations,” Diplomatic History 40, no. 2 (2016): 244–68; Ángel Alcalde, War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Eu­rope (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). On the importance of “transnational and global perspectives” for the history of veterans, see also Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas, “Introduction: A World of Veterans,” in War Veterans and the World ­after 1945: Cold War Politics, Decolonization, Memory, ed. Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (London: Routledge, 2018), 3–4. 21. Beth Linker notes that the major belligerents in World War I “engaged in a transnational exchange of knowledge” about rehabilitation but brought to this exchange their “par­tic­u­lar prewar history and culture.” During the war, American medical professionals traveled to Eu­rope to learn about rehabilitation practices, including Germany’s. See War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I Amer­i­ca (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 4, 54. 22. See, for example, Richard S. Fogarty and David Killingray,” Demobilization in British and French Africa at the End of the First World War,” Journal of Con­temporary History 50, no. 1 (2015): 100–123; Jonathan Fennell, “South African Veterans and the Institutionalization of Apartheid in South Africa,” in Álcalde and Núñez Seixas, War Veterans and the World ­after 1945, 53–68; Samuel André-­Bercovici, “Algerian Veterans’ Associations in the Late Colonial Period in Algeria, 1945–1962,” in Álcalde and Núñez Seixas, War Veterans and the World ­after 1945, 117–33; Riina Turtio, “Colonial Soldiers and Postcolonial Politics in Guinea, Ivory Coast and Upper Volta, 1958–1973,” in Álcalde and Núñez Seixas, War Veterans and the World ­after 1945, 134–49; or Gary Baines, “Retracing Memories of War: South African Military Veterans as Tourists in Angola,” in Álcalde and Núñez Seixas, War Veterans and the World a­ fter 1945, 235–49. For Latin Amer­i­ca, see, for example, Leith Passmore, The Wars inside Chile’s Barracks: Remembering Military Ser­vice ­under Pinochet (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017). 23. This partially draws upon Mark Hooge, “Social Movements,” in John T. Ishiyama and Marijke Breuning, 21st ­Century Po­liti­cal Science: A Reference Handbook (Los Angeles: Sage, 2011), 225–32. For t­ hose interested in further reading on this topic, see Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Pro­cesses and Social Movements,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000), 611–39. 24. For a useful review of this concept, see David S. Meyer, “Protest and Po­liti­cal Opportunities,” Annual Review of Sociology 30 (2004): 125–45. 25. The central role of ­family and community in reintegration into civilian life and coping with the military past has been noted for British veterans of World War II and

NOTES TO PA GES 9 – 1 6

177

US veterans of Iraq and Af­ghan­i­stan; see N. Hunt and I. Robbins, “World War II Veterans, Social Support, and Veterans’ Associations,” Aging & ­Mental Health 5, no. 2 (2001): 175–82; Anne Demers, “When Veterans Return: The Role of Community in Reintegration,” Journal of Loss & Trauma 16, no. 2 (2011): 160–79. 26. Two of us made this point first in Crotty and Edele, “Total War and Entitlement.” Some of the hypotheses in this piece have been falsified by our subsequent, larger-­scale, multicase analy­sis presented in this book. Several of the variables identified by Diamant in Embattled Glory (409–10) as critical to veterans’ status also failed the comparative test we employ ­here. 27. On the role of international links, see, for example, Eichenberg, Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge. 28. For a concise description of this method, see Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analy­sis of France, Rus­sia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 36–37. A more elaborate articulation can be found in John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), ch. 8. 29. Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, The GI Bill: A New Deal for Veterans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 12. 1. Victors Victorious

1. Armistice Day in the United Kingdom and France, Armistice and then Veterans Day in the United States, Anzac Day in Australia. 2. On France, see Antoine Prost, Les anciens combattants et la société Française:1914–1939, 3 vols. (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1977); Chris Millington, From Victory to Vichy: Veterans in Inter-­War France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). For sources on Britain, see chapter 2. On Australia and the United States, see the following discussion. 3. “3105.0.65.001—­Australian Historical Population Statistics, 2014,” Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Government, last modified September 18, 2014, http:​//­ www​.­abs​.­gov​.­au. 4. Melanie Oppenheimer, “The Professionalization of Nursing through the 1920s and 1930s: The Impact of War and Voluntarism,” in The First World War, The Universities and the Professions in Australia, ed. Kate Darian-­Smith and James Waghorne (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2019), 96. 5. ­There is a rich historiography regarding Australia’s war history, particularly for World War I. For perhaps the best analy­sis of Australia during the war, see Joan Beaumont, Broken Nation: Australians in the G ­ reat War (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2013). For a much shorter recent summary, see Stephen Garton and Peter Stanley, “The G ­ reat War and Its Aftermath, 1914–1922,” in The Cambridge History of Australia, ed. Stuart Macintyre and Alison Bashford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 39–63. The phrase “gave birth to the nation” (or close variations) was in widespread circulation from the time of the first commemorations and cele­brations of the Gallipoli landings. See, for just a few of many examples, “Birth of the Nation: April 25, 1915—­A Glorious Heritage,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 23, 1916, 10; “Anzacs on the ­Battle Field,” Age, April 26, 1918, 7; “Anzac Day: Tamworth Schools’ Commemoration,” Tamworth Daily Observer, April 24, 1916, 8. All newspapers at National Library of Australia https://­trove​.­nla​.­gov​.­au​/­newspaper​/­.

17 8 NOTES

TO PAGES 1 6 –1 9

6. War Gratuity Act 1920 (Commonwealth), secs. 3–4, Federal Register of Legislation, Australian Government, https://­www​.­legislation​.­gov​.­au​/­Details​/­C1920A00002. 7. “The Basic Wage,” State Library of Victoria, Australian Government, last modified May  17, 2019, https://­guides​.­slv​.­vic​.­gov​.­au​/­whatitcost​/­basicwage; R. Hamilton, The History of the Australian Minimum Wage (Canberra: Fair Work Commission, 2018), 25. 8. For a summary of the benefits available to Australian returned soldiers, see Clem Lloyd and Jacqui Rees, The Last Shilling: A History of Repatriation in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994), 19–168. See also Stephen Garton, The Cost of War: Australians Return (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996), 74–142. 9. Garton, Cost of War, 85, 87. 10. A. P. Skerman (comp.), Repatriation in Australia: A History of Development to 1958 (Melbourne: Repatriation Department, 1961), 327. 11. On the distinctive Australian propensity to erect war memorials that listed survivors as well as the fallen, see K. S. Inglis, Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1998), 181–86. On Anzac Day becoming a public holiday throughout Australia, see “The Anzac Day Tradition,” Australian War Memorial, Australian Government, accessed December 15, 2018, https:​//­ www​.­awm​.­gov​.­au​/­commemoration​/­anzac​-­day​/­traditions. 12. Marilyn Lake, “The Power of Anzac,” in Australia: Two Centuries of War and Peace, ed. M. McKernan and M. Brown (Canberra: Australian War Memorial in Association with Allen and Unwin, 1988), 195. 13. By the time they eventually gave up, numbers of them had nothing to show for their efforts for their country and a de­cade or more of attempting to construct a meaningful postwar existence. That said, the scheme was well intentioned and generous in its conception, governments made a g­ reat many concessions in repeated attempts to keep struggling soldier settlers v­ iable, and if approximately half of the approximately forty thousand soldier settlers eventually failed, half nonetheless succeeded. ­There is now an extensive lit­er­a­ture on Australian soldier settlers. For two of the most detailed studies, see Marilyn Lake, The Limits of Hope: Soldier Settlement in Victoria, 1915–1938 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1987); and Bruce Scates and Melanie Oppenheimer, The Last B ­ attle: Soldier Settlement in Australia 1916–1939 (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press), 2016. 14. Bruce Scates, Rebecca Wheatley, and Laura James, World War One: A History in 100 Stories (Melbourne: Viking, 2015), 26–27. 15. For a fuller discussion of “input f­actors” that supported Australian veteran privilege and how they operated most favorably for Australian veterans of World War I, see Martin Crotty and Mark Edele, “Total War and Entitlement: T ­ owards a Global History of Veteran Privilege,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 59, no. 1 (2013): 15–32. For an analy­sis of dif­fer­ent Australian “returns” and how the experience differed between conflicts, see Garton, Cost of War. ­There is a wide lit­er­a­ture on the my­thol­ogy of Australian soldiers and how they allegedly gave birth to the Australian nation. For one among many, see Martin Crotty, “25 April 1915—­Australian Troops Land at Gallipoli: Trial, Trauma, and ‘The Birth of the Nation,’ ” in Turning Points in Australian History, ed. Martin Crotty and David Andrew Roberts (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009), 100–114. 16. On the Australian home front during World War I, see, for example, Beaumont, Broken Nation, 90–109; Pam McLean, “War and Australian Society,” in Australia’s War

NOTES TO PA GES 1 9 – 2 1

179

1914–18, ed. Joan Beaumont (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1995), 64–92; Marnie Haig-­ Muir, “The Economy at War,” in Beaumont, Australia’s War 1914–18, 93–124; Ernest Scott, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, vol. 11, Australia during the War (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1936). On the volunteer effort in par­tic­ u­lar, see Melanie Oppenheimer, All Work No Pay: Australian Civilian Volunteers in War (Walcha, NSW: Ohio Productions, 2002). 17. For good overviews, see Kate Darian Smith, “War and Australian Society,” in Beaumont, Australia’s War 1939–1945, ed. Joan Beaumont (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1995), 54–81; David Lee, “Politics and Government,” in Beaumont, Australia’s War 1939–1945, 82–106; Michael McKernan, The Strength of a Nation: Six Years of Australians Fighting for the Nation and on the Homefront in WWII (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2006), 208, esp. 358–78. 18. Australian Soldiers’ Repatriation Act 1943, Federal Register of Legislation, Australian Government, https://­www​.­legislation​.­gov​.­au​/­Details​/­C1943A00022. 19. Lloyd and Rees, Last Shilling, 285. 20. For a full discussion of the program of national reconstruction, see Stuart Macintyre, Australia’s Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction in the 1940s (Sydney: NewSouth, 2015). 21. Re-­Establishment and Employment Act 1945, 42. Federal Register of Legislation, Australian Government, https://­www​.­legislation​.­gov​.­au​/­Details​/­C1945A00011. See also Macintyre, Australia’s Boldest Experiment, 296–98. 22. Lloyd and Rees, Last Shilling, 286. 23. Macintyre, Australia’s Boldest Experiment, 327–28. Unlike the American program, which allowed all veterans to undertake almost any training that the educational provider was prepared to accept them for, the Australian benefit was l­imited to veterans who faced par­tic­u­lar challenges, such as war-­related disabilities, an oversupply of ­labor in their previous occupational field, and ­those whose training had been interrupted by war ser­vice, among ­others. ­Women w ­ ere, from the end of 1945, provided with the same allowance as men if single, but this was not increased at marriage, as it was assumed that they ­were dependents of husbands rather than vice versa. 24. Lloyd and Rees, Last Shilling, 291; Macintyre, Australia’s Boldest Experiment, 327; Department of Post-­War Reconstruction, Return Journey: The Story of the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme (Canberra: Department of Post-­War Reconstruction, 1949), 7. Other criteria included ­those veterans who needed refresher courses ­after so long away from their professions, t­hose who had enlisted u ­ nder the age of twenty-­ one, and t­hose who had displayed talents and abilities during their war ser­vice such that they could advance considerably on their prewar employment. 25. Department of Post-­War Reconstruction, Return Journey, 4, 14. 26. Department of Post-­War Reconstruction, Return Journey, 14. 27. Department of Post-­War Reconstruction, Return Journey, 11–12. 28. John Barrett, We ­Were T ­ here: Australian Soldiers of World War II Tell Their Stories (Melbourne: Viking, 1987), 376–67. 29. Hector Gallagher, We Got a Fair Go: A History of the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme 1945–1952 (Melbourne: Hector Gallagher, 2003), 95–97. 30. Gallagher, We Got a Fair Go, 97–98. 31. Macintyre, Australia’s Boldest Experiment, 327. The technical training side of the program did not proceed quite so smoothly, partly b­ ecause of its more decentralized

18 0 NOTES

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and variegated nature, partly ­because of the large numbers involved which far exceeded expectations, and partly ­because the infrastructure was inadequate (329–30). 32. Gallagher, We Got a Fair Go, iii. Ser­vice Rec­ord, National Archives of Australia, B883/NX151225. 33. Barrett, We ­Were ­There, 379. 34. Glenn Altschuler and Stuart Blumin, The GI Bill: A New Deal for Veterans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 28–29. 35. Robert P. Sadlin, War, the American State, and Politics since 1898 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 121. 36. See Studs Terkel, “The Good War”: An Oral History of WWII (New York: New Press, 1997); Paul Fussell, War­time: Understanding and Be­hav­ior in the Second World War (New York: Oxford University Press 1989), 129–43; Bernt Engelmann, Die unfreiwilligen Reisen des Putti Eichelbaum (Berlin: Steidl, 1996). 37. Mark H. Leff, “The Politics of Sacrifice on the American Home Front in World War II,” Journal of American History 77, no. 4 (March 1991): 1296–1318. Leff argues that during World War II many Americans engaged in pitched public b­ attles over who was sacrificing more but w ­ ere at least able to agree that the “boys at the front” had made the most significant sacrifices. 38. Suzanne Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 15–17. Amer­i­ca’s massive mobilization of war industries for the war effort was mirrored by equally massive demobilization once it was over—in the ten days following the surrender of Japan, 1.8 million workers ­were laid off. See Michael D. Gambone, Long Journeys Home: American Veterans of World War II, K ­ orea, and Vietnam (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2017), 102–3. 39. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 176. 40. Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 16. 41. Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 17. 42. Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 17–18. 43. Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 19–20. 44. Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 18. 45. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 71. 46. Mark D. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again: Amer­i­ca’s World War II Veterans Come Home (New York: Lexington, 2001), 169. 47. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again, 179–88. 48. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 150. 49. Sarah Turner and John Bound, “Closing the Gap or Widening the Divide: The Effects of the G.I. Bill and World War II on the Educational Outcomes of Black Americans,” Journal of Economic History 63, no. 1 (March 2003): 148. 50. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 81–83. 51. Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 6–7; Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 150–51. 52. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 71, 183–84; Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 6–7, 101. Further evidence of the GI’s Bill’s generosity can be seen in its low-­threshold eligibility requirements. Veterans only had to serve for ninety days; w ­ hether this was abroad, at home, or outside any theater of operations did not m ­ atter at all. Nor did combat experience. 53. Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 1–2, 38, 46.

NOTES TO PA GES 2 5 – 2 7

181

54. Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 45; Paul Fussell, ­Doing B ­ attle: The Making of a Skeptic (Boston: ­Little, Brown, 1996), 190–210. 55. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Consumption in Postwar Amer­i­ca (New York: Vintage, 2003), 141; Daniel K. Fetter, “How Do Mortgage Subsidies Affect Home Owner­ship? Evidence from the Mid-­Century GI Bills,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 5, no. 2 (2013): 111–47. 56. Indeed, membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored ­People boomed from 50,000 in 1940 to 450,000 in 1946. See Michael D. Gambone, The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American Society (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005), 124; Gambone, Long Journeys Home, 115. 57. For a full account, see Randall Kennedy, “The Courage to Defy Brutality,” The American Prospect, February  25, 2019, https://­prospect​.­org​/­article​/­courage​-­defy​ -­brutality. 58. Olivier Burtin, “Enforcing Conformity: Race in the American Legion, 1940–1960,” in War Veterans and the World a­ fter 1945: Cold War Politics, Decolonization, Memory, ed. Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (London: Routledge, 2018), 70, 76, 71. Also see Lorna Hunter, “The Untold Story of the GI Bill: The Experiences of African-­Americans with Attaining Educational Benefits through the Ser­vicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944” (PhD diss., University of Mas­sa­chu­setts, Boston, 2015). Hunter argues that framers of the GI Bill “intentionally” used language to “exclude Black veterans from obtaining higher education benefits.” She calls the challenges to black veterans seeking higher education “extreme” and often “insurmountable.” For the abstract, see Gradu­ate Doctoral Dissertations, ScholarWorks, University of Mas­sa­chu­setts Boston, accessed August  12, 2018, https://­scholarworks​.­umb​.­edu​/­doctoral​_­dissertations​ /­206​/­. 59. Sarah Turner and John Bound, “Closing the Gap or Widening the Divide,” 145–77; Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 75. 60. Henry A.J. Ramos, The American G.I. Forum: In Pursuit of the Dream, 1948–1983 (Houston: Arte Publico, 1998), 2–4. 61. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, 168. 62. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, 137; Jennifer Brooks. Defining the Peace: World War II, Veterans, Race and the Remaking of the Southern Po­liti­cal Tradition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 17. 63. David H. Onskt, “ ‘First a Negro . . . ​Incidentally a Veteran’: Black World War Two Veterans and the G.I. Bill of Rights in the Deep South, 1944–1948,” Journal of Social History 31, no. 3 (Spring 1998): 519; Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, 68–69. The Veterans Administration had been established by President Hoover in 1930 to provide consolidated and coordinated administration of federal activities as they related to veterans, with the major responsibilities being oversight of health care and pensions. It became the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in 1989. See Suzanne Gordon, Wounds of War: How the VA Delivers Health, Healing, and Hope to the Nation’s Veterans (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 23. 64. Onskt, “First a Negro,” 521–24. Since black veterans lacked collateral, banks considered loans excessively risky. Such prob­lems occurred outside of the South as well. Banks ­were often reluctant to lend to black Americans and housing developments often discriminated against them, so the new suburbs that w ­ ere fueled by GI mortgages tended to remain overwhelmingly white. See Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic, 170–71.

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65. Onskt, “First a Negro,” 532. 66. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 133. 67. Gambone, Long Journeys Home, 119–20. 68. Gambone, Long Journeys Home, 115. 69. Gambone, Long Journeys Home, 118. 70. Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 144–45. 71. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 120. 72. Cohen, Consumers’ Republic, 140. 73. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 198–99. 74. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again, v. 75. Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 111. 76. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 88–89. 77. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 88–89. 78. Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 85. 79. Edward Humes, Over ­Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream (Orlando: Harcourt, 2006), 191, 199. 80. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 125. 81. Audra Jennings, “An Emblem of Distinction: The Politics of Disability Entitlement, 1940–1950,” in Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics: New Perspectives on Veterans in the Modern United States, ed. Stephen Ortiz (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 96, 111. 82. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again, 118–22. 83. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again, 137. 84. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again, 176, 137; Jennings, “An Emblem of Distinction,” 94–95. 85. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again, 176. 86. Cohen, Consumers’ Republic, 139. 87. Presidential Proclamation 3071, Federal Register, vol. 19, no. 198, October 12, 1954. 88. Presidential Proclamation 3071, Federal Register, vol. 19, no. 198, October 12, 1954. 89. Jennings, “Emblem of Distinction,” 94–95. 90. On provisions for Korean War veterans, see Melinda Pash, “ ‘A Veteran Does Not Have to Stay a Veteran Forever’: Congress and the Korean G.I. Bill,” in Ortiz, Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics, 222–40; and Gambone, Long Journeys Home, 115–16. 91. Mark Boulton, “A Price on Patriotism: The Politics and Unintended Consequences of the 1966 G.I. Bill,” in Ortiz, Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics, 241–60. 92. J. Peter Mattila, “G.I. Bill Benefits and Enrollments: How Did Vietnam Veterans Fare?,” Social Science Quarterly 31, no. 3 (December 1978): 536, 544. 93. For a list of its benefits, see “Post-9/11 GI Bill,” Education and Training, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, last modified February 20, 2019, https://­www​.­benefits​ .­va​.­gov​/­g ibill​/­post911​_­g ibill​.­asp. 2. Victors Defeated

1. The classic study is Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and M ­ others: The Po­liti­cal Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1992).

NOTES TO PA GES 3 3 – 3 7

183

2. Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, The GI Bill: A New Deal for Veterans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 15–17; Mark D. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again: American’s World War II Veterans Come Home (New York: Lexington Books, 2001), 7–8. 3. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again, 9. 4. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 18–19. 5. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and ­Mothers, 102, 109. 6. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 21; Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again, 11; Suzanne Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 5–6, 18; Michael J. Bennett, When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern Amer­i­ca (Washington, DC: Barssey’s, 1996), 40–41. 7. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and ­Mothers, 103–4, 109. 8. David M. Kennedy, Over H ­ ere: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 62; Daniel M. Smith, The ­Great Departure: The United States and World War I (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), x, 51, 77–79. 9. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 24; Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again, 14. 10. The Northern states in the Civil War suffered approximately eigh­teen deaths per thousand of population, and in World War II the United States suffered 3.14 deaths per thousand of population. The World War I toll of 1.3 per thousand was rather paltry in comparison. Skopcol, Protecting Soldiers and ­Mothers, 103–4, 109. 11. Kennedy, Over ­Here, 191–203. 12. Kennedy, Over ­Here, 191–203, 218–27, 260–95. For a full-­length study of American memory and remembrance in the interwar period, see Steven Trout, On the Battlefield of Memory: The First World War and American Remembrance, 1919–1941 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010). 13. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 25; Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again, 15. 14. Edward Humes, Over ­There: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream (Orlando: Harcourt, 2006), 14–15; Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 18. See Kenneth Kato, “Veterans Benefits,” in The Encyclopaedia of the United States Congress, ed. Donald C. Bacon, Roger H. Davidson, and Morton Keller (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 4:2038–39. 15. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 26. 16. Humes, Over ­There, 15; Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 27; Kennedy, Over ­Here, 139–41. 17. Rosemary A. Stevens, “The Invention, Stumbling and Reinvention of the Modern U.S. Veterans Health Care System, 1918–1924,” in Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics: New Perspectives on Veterans in the Modern United States, ed. Stephen Ortiz (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 49. 18. See Rosemary Stevens, A Time of Scandal: Charles R. Forbes, Warren G. Harding, and the Making of the Veterans Bureau (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), 109. 19. Jessica L. Adler, Burdens of War: Creating the United States Veterans Health System (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), 3. 20. Adler, Burdens of War, 7. 21. Adler, Burdens of War, 184, 243. 22. Adler, Burdens of War, 243.

18 4 NOTES

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23. See Nancy Gentile Ford, “ ‘Put Fighting Blood in Your Business’: The U.S. War Department and the Reemployment of World War I Soldiers,” in Ortiz, Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics, 119–45. 24. John M. Kinder, “Architecture of Injury: Disabled Veterans, Federal Policy, and the Built Environment in the Early Twentieth ­Century,” in Ortiz, Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics, 79–83. 25. “History of Veterans Day,” Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, last modified July 20, 2015, https://­www​.­va​.­gov​/­opa​ /­vetsday​/­vetdayhistory​.­asp. 26. “Supplement to the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Covering the Second Term of Woodrow Wilson, March 4, 1917, to March 4, 1921” (Washington, DC: Bureau of National Lit­er­a­ture, 1921), 8803. 27. Clem Lloyd and Jaqui Rees, The Last Shilling: A History of Repatriation in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994), 197–200. 28. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 27. 29. The bonus would be paid out to beneficiaries such as wives should the veteran die in the interim. See Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 28; Stephen R. Ortiz, “Rethinking the Bonus March: Federal Bonus Policy, Veteran Organ­izations, and the Origins of a Protest Movement,” in Ortiz, Veterans’ Policies, Veteran’s Politics, 175. 30. Ortiz, “Rethinking the Bonus March,” 177–78; Jennifer D. Keene, Doughboys, the ­Great War and the Remaking of Amer­i­ca (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 181. 31. Ortiz, “Rethinking the Bonus March,” 180–81. 32. Ortiz, “Rethinking the Bonus March,” 192; Stephen Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill: How Veteran Politics ­Shaped the New Deal Era (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 49–50, 56. 33. Keene, Doughboys, 197; Ronald Edsforth, The New Deal: Amer­i­ca’s Response to the ­Great Depression (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000), 69–71. 34. Mario R. DiNunzio, Franklin D. Roo­se­velt and the Third American Revolution (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011), 57–58. 35. Ortiz, “Rethinking the Bonus March,” 178. 36. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 30; Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 67–69; Michael McGeary, Morgan  A. Ford, Susan  R. McCutchen and David  K. Barnes (eds.), A 21st ­Century System for Evaluating Veterans for Disability Benefits (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2007), 100. 37. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 70. 38. Ortiz, “Rethinking the Bonus March,” 178. 39. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 67–70. 40. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 70. 41. Keene, Doughboys, 199; Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 75. 42. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 75; Frank Friedel, Roo­se­velt: A Rendezvous with Destiny (Boston: ­Little, Brown, 1990), 97. 43. Keene, Doughboys, 200; Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 32. 44. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 30. 45. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 30. 46. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 26–29.

NOTES TO PA GES 4 1 – 4 4

185

47. Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 4. 48. As ever, t­ hese casualty figures are imprecise and are open to debate. We have used the figures suggested by Antoine Prost in a thoughtful article that discusses how war losses are calculated and attempts to arrive at defensible totals. See Antoine Prost, “War Losses,” in 1914–1918 Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, last modified October 8, 2014, https://­encyclopedia​.­1914​-­1918​-­online​ .­net​/­article​/­war​_­losses. Prost’s figure is based on a recalculation of the toll arrived at by Jay Winter in The ­Great War and the British P­ eople (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985). 49. Cohen, War Come Home, 4. 50. “The Premier In The Midlands,” Observer (London), 7. 51. Graham Wootton, The Official History of the British Legion (London: Macdonald and Evans, 1956), 61. 52. Cohen, War Come Home, 94. For the full Australian statistics on the number and type of recipients of war pensions (veterans versus dependents) and on the cost of pensions and repatriation schemes, see A. P. Skerman, comp., Repatriation in Australia: A History of Development to 1958 (Melbourne: Repatriation Department, 1961), 327–28. 53. Veterans Affairs Canada—­Canadian Forces Advisory Council, The Origins and Evolution of Veterans Benefits in Canada 1914–2004 (Ottawa: Veterans Affairs Canada, 2004), 8; Lloyd and Rees, Last Shilling, 255. 54. Brian Harding, Keeping Faith: The History of the Royal British Legion (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2001), 108. 55. Graham Wootton, The Politics of Influence: British Ex-­Servicemen, Cabinet Decisions and Cultural Change, 1917–57 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 20–22. 56. Cohen, War Come Home, 20–26; Wootton, Politics of Influence, 109. 57. Cohen, War Come Home, 49. 58. Cohen, War Come Home, 106, 154–55. 59. Cohen, War Come Home, 58. 60. Peter R ­ eese, Homecoming Heroes: An Account of the Reassimilation of British Military Personnel into Civilian Life (London: Leo Cooper, 1992), 96, 100–101. 61. ­Reese, Homecoming Heroes, 84; Cohen, War Come Home, 5. 62. ­Reese, Homecoming Heroes, 123. 63. Cohen, War Come Home, 12. Peter ­Reese has found that disabled veterans did not have enough to live on at even subsistence levels. See Homecoming Heroes, 99. 64. Cohen, War Come Home, 35–38. 65. See, for example, Nicholas Harman, Dunkirk: The Necessary Myth (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980); John Masefield, The Nine Days Won­der (The Operation Dynamo) (London: Heinemann, 1941); John Grehan, Dunkirk: Nine Days that Saved an Army—­A Day by Day Account of the Greatest Evacuation (Barnsley: Frontline Books, 2018). 66. See, for example, A. C. Grayling, Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in WWII a Necessity or a Crime? (London: Bloomsbury, 2006). 67. John Ellis, The World War II Databook: The Essential Facts and Figures for All the Combatants (London: Aurum, 1993), 254.

18 6 NOTES

TO PAGES 4 5 –4 7

68. Kenneth O. Morgan, ­Labour in Power 1945–51 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), 19–21, 41. On the vast cost of the welfare state, see Corelli Barnett, The Lost Victory: British Dreams, British Realities 1945–1950 (London: Macmillan, 1995). 69. Alan Allport, Demobbed: Coming Home a­ fter World War Two (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 220. 70. Wootton, Official History of the British Legion, 261–62; Wootton, Politics of Influence, 237–38. 71. Wootton, Official History of the British Legion, 265; Wootton, Politics of Influence, 238. 72. ­Reese, Homecoming Heroes, 197–98. 73. Wootton, Official History of the British Legion, 274. 74. ­Reese, Homecoming Heroes, 199–200. 75. Allport, Demobbed, 147. 76. Allport, Demobbed, 136–37. 77. Wootton, Official History of the British Legion, 80–82. 78. Wootton, Politics of Influence, 240–41. 79. This judgment is supported by Peter ­Reese in Homecoming Heroes, 209. 80. They ­Shall Not Grow Old, dir. Peter Jackson (London: BBC, 2018). 81. Michael McKernan, Gallipoli: A Short History (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010), 176–77. 82. Allport, Demobbed, 139. 83. On life in the Red Army, see David M. Glantz, Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War, 1941–1943 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005); Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–1945 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006); Roger R ­ eese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought: The Red Army’s Military Effectiveness in World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011); Jochen Hellbeck, Sta­lin­ grad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich (New York: Public Affairs, 2015); Alexander Hill, The Red Army and the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); and Brandon Schechter, The Stuff of Soldiers. A History of the Red Army in World War II through Objects (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019). 84. On vari­ous aspects of the German way of war in the East, consult Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front, 1941–1945: German Troops and the Barbarization of Warfare (New York: St.  Martin’s, 1986) and his Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Christian Streit, Keine Ka­ meraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941–1945 (Bonn: Dietz, 1997); Ben Shepherd, War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Christian Hartmann, Wehrmacht im Ostkrieg: Front und militärisches Hinterland 1941/42, 2nd ed. (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2010); and Jeff Rutherford, Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front: The German Infantry’s War, 1941–1944 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). The definitive study of the German army in the Nazi system is Ben Shepherd, Hitler’s Soldiers: The German Army in the Third Reich (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016). 85. Mark Edele, “Take (No) Prisoners! The Red Army and German POWs, 1941–1943,” Journal of Modern History 88 (2016): 375–76. 86. G. F. Krivosheev, Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth ­Century (London: Greenhill Books, 1997), 85, 87.

NOTES TO PA GES 4 8 – 5 0

187

87. Carol Jacobson, “The Soviet G.I.’s Bill of Rights,” American Review on the Soviet Union 7, no. 1 (1945): 56–63. 88. Joonseo Song, “Rule of Inclusion: The Politics of Postwar Stalinist Care in Magnitogorsk, 1945–1953,” Journal of Social History 43, no. 3 (2010): 663–80. For a critique, see Mark Edele, “Veterans and the Welfare State: World War II in the Soviet Context,” Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 20, no. 5 (2011): 18–33. More generally on the welfare state in late Stalinism, see Maria Cristina Galmarini-­Kabala, The Right to Be Helped: Deviance, Entitlement, and the Soviet Moral Order (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016). 89. Kees Boterbloem, “Soviet GIs or Decembrists? The Reintegration into Postwar Soviet Society of Rus­sian Soldiers, POWs, Partisans, and Civilians Who Lived u ­ nder German Occupation,” War & Society 25, no. 1 (2006): 77–87; Robert Dale, “Rats and Resentment: The Demobilization of the Red Army in Postwar Leningrad, 1945–50,” Journal of Con­temporary History 45, no. 1 (2010): 113–33. 90. State Archive of the Rus­sian Federation (GARF), fond (f.) r-7523, opis (op.) 55, delo (d.). 10, list (l.) 87. 91. Mark Edele, “The Soviet Culture of Victory,” Journal of Con­temporary History 54, no. 4 (2019): 780–98. 92. For a large collection of such supplication letters from all kinds of theoretically privileged citizens, see the holdings of the reception room of the president of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union: GARF, f. 7523, op. 55. 93. Rebecca Manley, To the Tashkent Station: Evacuation and Survival in the Soviet Union at War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 260–62. 94. For examples, see Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popu­lar Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 195–96. 95. Vladimir Kabo, The Road to Australia: Memoirs (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1998), 88. 96. Sheila Fitzpatrick, “The World of Ostap Bender: Soviet Confidence Men in the Stalin Period,” Slavic Review 61, no. 3 (2002): 547–50. 97. This point is emphatically made by Robert Dale, Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad: Soldiers to Civilians (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). The war disabled had a particularly difficult experience: Beate Fieseler, “The Soviet Union’s ‘­Great Patriotic War’ Invalids: The Poverty of a New Status Group,” Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 20, no. 5 (2010): 34–49. 98. GARF f. r-8131, op. 22, d. 5, l. 213ob. 99. Mark Edele, “Soviet Veterans as an Entitlement Group, 1945–1955,” Slavic Review 65, no. 1 (2006): 111–37. 100. Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Rus­sia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Joshua A. Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse: The ­Great War and the Destruction of the Rus­sian Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Laura Engelstein, Rus­sia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914–1921 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Mark Edele, The Soviet Union: A Short History (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2019), chaps. 2 & 3. 101. Joshua Sanborn, “The Genesis of Rus­sian Warlordism: Vio­lence and Governance during the First World War and the Civil War,” Con­temporary Eu­ro­pean History 19, no. 3 (2010): 195–213.

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102. Beate Fieseler, “The Soviet Union’s ‘­Great Patriotic War’ Invalids: The Poverty of a New Status Group,” Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 20, no. 5 (2010): 40–41. 103. Orlando Figes, “The Red Army and Mass Mobilization during the Rus­sian Civil War 1918–1920,” Past & Pre­sent 129 (1990): 168–211; Emily E. Pyle, “Village Social Relations and the Reception of Soldiers’ F ­ amily Aid Policies in Rus­sia, 1912–1921” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1997), 7–8, 14–15, 21–22, 284–349; Joshua Sanborn, Drafting the Rus­sian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905–1925 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 44–45; 50; 103–110. 104. Rasporiazhenie No. 125 of Commissariat of Social Welfare (February 20, 1919), in Antologiia sotsial’noi raboty, vol. 3: Sotsial’naia politika i zakonodatel’stvo v sotsial’noi rabote (Moscow: Svarog’, 1995), 265; Report of I. A. Nagovitsyn at the Second Session of VTsIK, Moscow 1926, repr. Antologiia sotsial’noi raboty, 3:282. 105. A.  F. Zavgorodnii, Deiatel’nost’ gosudarstvennykh organov i obshchestvenno-­ politicheskikh organizatsii po sotsial’noi zashchite voennosluzhashchikh Krasnoi Armii i ikh semei v mezhvoennyi period (1921-­iiun’ 1941 gg) (St. Petersburg: Nestor, 2001), 130–34; data: 134, ­table 14. The 4 ­percent assumes that ­those who received pensions in 1939 ­were all Civil War veterans; it also assumes that ­there ­were not more than the 4.9 million veterans demobilized by January 1924 (see Zavgorodnii, Deiatel’nost’, 111, t­ able 10). Both assumptions are clearly counterfactual (some of the veterans ­were from World War I, and more ­people w ­ ere prob­ably demobilized as new forces ­were drafted), which means that the real share must be significantly lower. 106. Zavgorodnii, Deiatel’nost’, 128–33. 107. Karen Petrone, The ­Great War in Rus­sian Memory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011). 108. For a good summary of the 1912 legislation, see N. Beliavskii, “O pomoshchi voinam i ikh sem’iam,” Russkii Invalid, no. 215 (September 30, 1914), 3; continued in Beliavskii, “O pomoshchi voinam i ikh sem’iam,” no. 216 (October 1, 1914), 3–4. For the census data, see Tsentral’noe statisticheskoe upravlenie SSSR, sektor sotsial’noi statistiki, Itogi perepisi naseleniia 1920g. (Moscow: TsSU, 1928), 172–87, esp. 177, 181. 109. Pyle, “Village Social Relations,” 16, 21, 287–88, 305–25; on the paradoxes of class discrimination, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Rus­sia,” Journal of Modern History 65 (1993): 745–70. 110. Golfo Alexopoulos, Stalin’s Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 2–3, 16, 24–25, 27, 41. A 1927 resolution allowed the reinstatement of their rights, if they demonstrated loyalty and active work for the revolutionary polity. Alexopoulos, Stalin’s Outcasts, 33–34. 111. P. Verzhbilovskii, “V pomoshch’ nizovomu rabotniku sotsial’nogo obespecheniia” (1934), repr. Antologiia sotsial’noi raboty 3:359. 112. J. Arch Getty and Oleg  V. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-­ Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 473–79. 113. Sanborn, Drafting the Rus­sian Nation, 61; Neil J. Diamant, Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949–2007 (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 68–69. 114. Zavgorodnii, Deiatel’nost’, 120–21.

NOTES TO PA GES 5 2 – 5 4

189

115. Law on general military ser­vice, September 1, 1939, in Sbornik zakonov SSSR i ukazov Prezidiuma Verkhovnogo Sovieta SSSR 1938 g.—­iiun’ 1944 g. (Moscow: Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, 1944), 85. 116. Council of P ­ eople’s Commissars (SNK) resolutions of June 16, 1940 (No. 1269) and June 5, 1941 (No. 1474), in SP SSSR 1940 no. 19, st. 465 (641–44) and 1941, no. 15, st. 282 (467–73); A. A. Paderin, “Gosudarstvo na strazhe svoikh zashchitnikov,” Voenno-­ istoricheskii zhurnal 5 (1991): 2–11. 117. Beate Fieseler, “Stimmen aus dem gesellschaftlichen Abseits: Die sowjetrussischen Kriegsinvaliden im ‘Tauwetter’ der Fünfziger Jahre,” Osteuropa 52, no. 7 (2002): 945–62; Fieseler, “Arme Sieger: Die Invaliden des Grossen Vaterländischen Krieges,” Osteuropa 55, no. 4–6 (2005): 207–17; and Fieseler, “The ­Bitter Legacy of the ‘­Great Patriotic War’: Red Army Disabled Soldiers u ­ nder Late Stalinism,” in Late Stalinist Rus­ sia: Society between Reconstruction and Reinvention, ed. Juliane Fürst (London: Routledge, 2006), 46–61; Rachel Green, “ ‘­There ­Will Not Be Orphans among Us’: Soviet Orphanages, Foster Care, and Adoption, 1941–1956” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2006). 118. Edele, Soviet Veterans, chaps. 1–3. 119. Mark Edele, “Veterans and the Welfare State: World War II in the Soviet Context,” Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 20, no. 5 (2011): 24–25. 120. E. S. Seniavskaia, 1941–1945: Frontovoe pokolenie; Istoriko-­psikhologicheskoe issledovanie (Moscow: RAN institut Rossiiskoi istorii, 1995): 91–92. 121. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation I–­II (London: Collins & Harvill, 1974), 16–23, 133–37; Mark Edele, “More than Just Stalinists: The Po­liti­cal Sentiments of Victors 1945–1953,” in Fürst, Late Stalinist Rus­sia, 167–91. 122. Edele, Soviet Veterans, chap. 8; Kees Boterbloem, “Soviet GIs or Decembrists? The Reintegration into Postwar Soviet Society of Rus­sian Soldiers, POWs, Partisans, and Civilians Who Lived u ­ nder German Occupation,” War & Society 25, no. 1 (2006): 77–87. For the context, see G. K. Pikhoia, Sovetskii soiuz: Istoriia vlasti 1945–1991 (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograf, 2000), chap. 1; Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), chaps. 1–2; and Alexander Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 123. For an extensive review of t­ hese protests, see Neil J. Diamant and Kevin J. O’Brien, “Veterans Po­liti­cal Activism in China,” Modern China 41, no. 3 (2015): 278–312; O’Brien and Diamant, “Contentious Veterans: China’s Retired Officers Speak Out,” Armed Forces and Society 41, no. 3 (2015): 563–81. For recent media reports, see Chris Buckley, “Marching across China, Veterans Joins Ranks of Protestors,” New York Times, June 25, 2018. 124. This would include China-­based journalists as well as many po­liti­cal scientists. 125. On t­ hese PLA parades, see Haiyan Lee, “The Charisma of Power and the Military Sublime in Tian­anmen Square,” Journal of Asian Studies 70, no.  2 (May  2011): 397–424. 126. Interview by second author with a division-­level official in a major Chinese city, January 2012. This official spent many years in the internal security field and has access to limited-­circulation party publications such as Cankao Xiaoxi.

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127. See “China to Improve Veterans’ Care a­ fter Protests with New Ministry,” ­Reuters, March 20, 2018. Accessed January 13, 2020, https://­www​.­reuters​.­com​/­article​ /­us​-­china​-­parliament​-­defence​/­china​-­to​-­improve​-­veterans​-­care​-­after​-­protests​-­with​ -­new​-­ministry​-­idUSKCN1GP03B. The article noted that “grievances over military pensions and perceived poor treatment of veterans have been a long-­running issue and have at times led to or­ga­nized protests. More than one thousand veterans also demonstrated outside Defence headquarters in Beijing in 2016, and reports or protests in part of the country surface ­every few months.” 128. Readers interested in a detailed exposition of t­ hese prob­lems should consult Diamant, Embattled Glory. 129. For example, the PRC’s 1954 Constitution was explic­itly modeled on that of the USSR’s, as was its model of rapid industrialization development through extracting agricultural outputs. 130. The lit­er­a­ture on this topic is large. For some examples, see L. Keppie, Colonisation and Veteran Settlement in Italy, 47–14 b.c. (London: British School at Rome, 1983); Robert ­England, Discharged: A Commentary of Civil Reestablishment of Veterans in Canada (Toronto: Macmillan, 1943); James Matthews, “Clock Towers for the Colonized: Demobilization of the Nigerian Military and the Readjustment of Its Veterans to Civilian Life, 1918–1925,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 14, no. 2 (1981): 254–71. 131. Ray Huang, 1587: A Year of No Significance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 160. 132. Huang, 1587, 162. 133. Pamela K. Crossley, Orphan Warriors: Three Manchu Generations and the End of the Qing World (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1990), 51. 134. Crossley, Orphan Warriors, 23, 49, 51, 56. For the notion of the Qing as a military caste, see Edward Rhoads, Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Po­liti­cal Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China 1861–1928 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000). According to Mark Elliot, the compounds w ­ ere conceptualized as “a tiger poised on a hill.” See The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 129–32. 135. See Michael Geyer, “War and the Context of General History in an Age of Total War,” Journal of Military History 57, no. 5 (October 1993): 145–63. On the low status of soldiers prior to conscription in France, see Alan Forrest, “La Patrie en danger: The French Revolution and the first Levée en masse,” in The ­People in Arms, ed. Daniel Moran and Arthur Waldron (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 9, 11. 136. On late Qing militarization, see Nicolas Schillinger, The Body and Military Masculinity in Late Qing and Early Republican China: The Art of Governing Soldiers (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016). 137. Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990); Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Rus­sian Revolution, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 138. See Diamant, Embattled Glory, 67–68. 139. A “township” (xiang) is the administrative level above the village. A township can include anywhere between 5 and 15 villages. 140. “Fujian sheng, Jianyang deng zhuan qu anzhi zhuan ye junren de qingkuang,” Neibu cankao, May 5, 1954, 51. Neibu cankao can only be accessed at the Universities Ser­vice Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

NOTES TO PA GES 5 7 – 6 1

191

141. Diamant, Embattled Glory, 67. 142. Diamant, Embattled Glory, 64. 143. Diamant, Embattled Glory, 67. 144. Shanghai Municipal Archives (SMA), B168-1-633 (1957), 102; Shandong xingzheng gongbao, December 1954, 13; Xu Shurong et al., “Zhengque duidai fuyuan junren de yi lie,” ­People’s Daily, August 6, 1956. 145. Diamant, Embattled Glory, 87. 146. Despite its rural mobilization strategy, the CCP viewed itself as a modernizing, “anti-­feudal” force, and consistently prioritized urban development, as well as the lives of city residents. 147. On ­these veterans’ predicaments, including marital, medical, and in employment, see Diamant and O’Brien, “Veterans Po­liti­cal Activism,” 286–91. 148. See, for instance, Christopher Parker, Fighting for Democracy: Black Veterans and the Strug­g le against White Supremacy in the Postwar South (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2009). 149. Alfred Shuetz, “The Homecomer,” American Journal of Sociology 50, no.  5 (March 1945): 375. 150. Diamant, Embattled Glory, 64–65. 151. Diamant and O’Brien, “Veterans Po­liti­cal Activism,” 14–18. 152. Diamant, Embattled Glory, 224. Should was used to induce local governments to fulfill their responsibilities vis-­à-­vis housing, repairs, rental assistance, provision of public housing and other, more “mundane” benefits they ­were supposed to receive. See SMA B127-1-811 (1955), 5. 153. Jennifer Altehenger argues that policies not connected to specific laws (such as public hygiene) ­were taken less seriously than ­those that w ­ ere. Violating a “law” could be scary; violating a policy might only result in admonishment or less. See ­Legal Lessons: Popularizing Laws in the P­ eople’s Republic of China, 1949–1989 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018), 10. 154. See SMA B168-1-632, 131 155. See, for example, SMA B168-1-628, 101; SMA A71-2-492 (1956), 12; SMA B2-223 (1955), 19. This was not only a Shanghai issue. The same phenomenon was noted in Liaoning Province in the Northeast. See Liaoning sheng zhi: Minzheng zhi (Shenyang: Liaoning kexue jishu chubanshe, 1996), 106. 156. An Interior Ministry report (1956) noted that unauthorized firings and expulsion of “problematic” veterans was “common” around the country. See SMA B127-1820 (1956), 24–25. A report by China’s Commerce Department found that widespread discrimination and ostracism in factories ­were intentional and tactically deployed “to force veterans to leave” on their own accord, since this was much simpler than firing them. See SMA B98-1-98 (1955), 14–15. 157. “Fujian sheng, Jianyang deng zhuan qu,” Neibu cankao, May 5, 1954, 51. 158. Examples include jobs such as working with animal hides or peeling off skin from dogs, cats, and snakes; ditch diggers; ticket sellers; janitors; repairmen; d­ rivers; or serving for years as apprentices to other workers. This prob­lem persisted for years. In Qingpu County in the Shanghai suburbs, a 1960 report noted that assigning veterans to be temporary workers—­some had this status for well over two years—­was “very inappropriate,” both in terms of maintaining their officially high status and getting by on the low salaries attached to ­these positions. See Qingpu Archives A48-2-96, 50.

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159. “Fujian sheng, Jianyang deng zhuan qu,” Neibu cankao, May 5, 1954, 51. 160. See “Renzhen jiancha anzhi fuyuan junren de gongzuo,” ­People’s Daily, ­August 21, 1955; “Piping de fanying,” ­People’s Daily, October 16, 1955; and Li Shumin, “Linshi gong, heshile?” People’s Daily, July 4, 1956. 161. See Diamant, Embattled Glory, 175. 162. Guangdong sheng zhi: Minzheng zhi, 94. Petitioning was also noted in the Liaoning Civil Affairs gazetteer. See Liaoning sheng zhi: minzheng zhi, 106. 163. Officially (although never published in gazetteers), roughly four thousand veterans committed suicide between 1953 and 1957, a figure that prob­ably underestimates the extent of the phenomenon; during the early 1950s the PRC did not have a national system for reporting deaths such as t­ hese. A 1956 report in Neibu cankao noted over two hundred suicides from January to April, with roughly 60 ­percent taking place in Shandong, Sichuan, and Henan Provinces. Reported ­causes included discrimination, abuse, retaliation by officials, being falsely accused, illness, poverty, marriage prob­lems, ­mental illness, and “violations of party discipline.” See “Fuyuan junren zisha shijian erbai duo qi,” Neibu cankao, May 26, 1956. For a broader discussion and individual examples, see Diamant, Embattled, Glory, 260–62. 164. On the complexity of the Soviet war effort, see Alfred J. Rieber, “Civil Wars in the Soviet Union,” Kritika: Explorations in Rus­sian and Eurasian History 4, no. 1 (2003): 129–62; on partisans, see Kenneth Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006); Aleksandr Gogun, Stalinskie commandos: Ukrainskie partizanskie formirovaniia 1941–1944, 2nd  rev. ed. (Moscow: Rosspen, 2012); and Masha Cerovic, Les enfants de Staline: La guerre des partisans soviétique, 1941–1944 (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 2018); on collaboration, see Mark Edele, Stalin’s Defectors: How Red Army Soldiers Became Hitler’s Collaborators, 1941–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 3. Benefits for the Vanquished

1. The definitive history is James M. Diehl, The Thanks of the Fatherland: German Veterans ­after the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993). 2. George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). 3. Richard Bessel, Germany ­after the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Benjamin Ziemann, Front und Heimat: Ländliche Kriegserfahrungen im südlichen Bayern 1914–1923 (Essen: Klartext, 1997); Mark Edele and Robert Gerwarth (eds.), “Special Issue: The Limits of Demobilization,” Journal of Con­temporary History 50, no. 1 (2015). 4. Thomas Weber, Hitler’s First War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 5. See, for example, Erich Maria Remarque, Three Comrades, trans. A. W. Wheen (London: Hutchinson, 1937; first published in exile in 1936). 6. Erich Maria Remarque, The Road Back, trans. A. W. Wheen (New York: Rwawcett Columbine, 1958; German original: 1931), 198. 7. James Diehl, “Germany: Veterans’ Politics u ­ nder Three Flags,” in The War Generation: Veterans of the First World War, ed. Stephen R. Ward (Port Washington: National University Publications, 1975), 150, 151, 156. 8. Erich H. Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Henry Holt, 1994), 214.

NOTES TO PA GES 6 5 – 6 7

193

9. On how “the veteran” became “fascist,” see Ángel Alcalde, War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Eu­rope (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 10. Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 11. Diehl, “Germany,” 156. 12. Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, chap. 2. On the organ­izations, 42. On the promises, expectations, and real­ity of profiting from National Socialist imperialism more generally, see Götz Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat: Raub, Rassenkrieg und nationaler Sozialismus, 2nd rev. ed. (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2006). 13. Nils Löffelbein, Ehrenbürger der Nation: Die Kriegsbeschädigten des Ersten Weltkriegs in Politik und Propaganda des Nationalsozialismus (Essen: Klartext, 2013); Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, chap. 2. 14. Klaus Theweleit, Männerphantasien, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Munich: ­Piper, 2000); Boris Barth, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Disintegration: Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1933 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2003). 15. Norman Naimark, The Rus­sians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995); Elizabeth Heineman, “The Hour of the ­Woman: Memories of Germany’s ‘Crisis Years’ and West German National Identity,” American Historical Review 101, no. 2 (1996): 354–95; Helke Sander and Barbara Johr (eds.), Befreier und BeFreite: Krieg, Vergewaltigungen, Kinder (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005). 16. Jörg Echternkamp, “Wut auf die Wehrmacht? Vom Bild der deutschen Soldaten in der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit,” in Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, ed. Rolf-­ Dieter Müller and Hans-­Erich Volkmann (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999), 1058– 80; Echternkamp, “Arbeit am Mythos: Soldatengenerationen der Wehrmacht im Urteil der west-­und ostdeutschen Nachkriegsgesellschaft,” in Nachkrieg in Deutschland, ed. Klaus Naumann (Hamburg: Hamburger Editionen, 2001), esp. 424–30. 17. Peter Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), chap. 4. 18. Giles Macdonogh, ­After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation (New York: Basic Books, 2007); Filip Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany: Hunger, Mass Vio­lence, and the Strug­g le for Peace, 1945–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). The younger generation eventually learned to appreciate the occupiers, in par­tic­u­lar the gum-­chewing, Lucky Strike smoking, jazz listening, and generally cool GIs. See, for example, Hubert Hingerl, Gusgasga: Die wahrhaftigen aber nicht immer erbaulichen Kindheits-­und Jugenderinnerungen an eine bewegte Zeit (Kempten: Verlag Tobias Dannheimer, 1996). 19. Traugott Wulf horst, “Der ‘Dank des Vaterlandes’—­Sozialpolitik und -­verwaltung zur Integration ehemaliger Wehrmachtsoldaten und ihrer Hinterbliebenen,” in Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität, Rolf-­Dieter Müller and Hans-­Erich Volkmann (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999), 1037. 20. Svenja Goltermann, Die Gesellschaft der Überlebenden: Deutsche Kriegsheimkehrer und ihre Gewalterfahrungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Munich: DVA, 2009); Wulf horst, “Der ‘Dank des Vaterlandes,’ ” 1037–38; Atina Grossmann, Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2007). 21. For the broader context, see Frederick Taylor, Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011).

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22. Wulf horst, “Der ‘Dank des Vaterlandes,’ ”1037–57. 23. Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, chap. 3. 24. Valentin Senger, Der Heimkehrer: Eine Verwunderung über die Nachkriegszeit (Munich: Luchterhand, 1995), 31. 25. Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, 182. On the rearmament debate, see David Clay Large, Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament in the Adenauer Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). 26. On returned POWs, see Frank Biess, Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2006); and Birgit Schwelling, Heimkehr—­Erinnerung—­Integration: Der Verband der Heimkehrer, die ehemaligen Kriegsgefangenen und die westdeutsche Nachkriegsgesellschaft (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010). On c­ areer officers, see Jay Lockenour, Soldiers as Citizens: Former Wehr­ macht Officers in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945–1955 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), and Bert-­Oliver Manig, Die Politik der Ehre: Die Rehabilitierung der Berufssoldaten in der früheren Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2004). 27. Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, 211; Lockenour, Soldiers as Citizens, 45–49. 28. On the scandal, see Manig, Die Politik der Ehre, 412–47. 29. Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, 236. 30. David Clay, “Reckoning without the Past: The HIAG of the Waffen-­SS and the Politics of Rehabilitation in the Bonn Republic, 1950–1961,” Journal of Modern History 59, no. 1 (1987): 79–113, esp. 82–84, 85, 102, 110. Eight p­ ercent is claimed in Karsten Wilke, Die “Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit” (HIAG) 1950–1990: Veteranen der Waffen­SS in der Bundesrepublik (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2011), 78. For the officer corps, see Bernd Wegner, The Waffen-­SS: Organ­ization, Ideology, and Function, trans. Ronald Webster (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990); for the other ranks, see René Rohrkamp, “Weltanschaulich gefestigte Kämpfer”: Die Soldaten der Waffen-­SS 1939–1945; Organisation, Personal, Sozialstrukturen (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010); for ideology and mentalities, see Frederik Müllers, Elite des “Führers?” Mentalitäten im subalternen Führungspersonal von Waffen-­SS und Fallschirmjägertruppe 1944/45 (Berlin: be.bra wissenschaftsverlag, 2012). 31. Wilke, Die “Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit” (HIAG), 289–418. 32. Thomas Kühne, “Zwischen Vernichtungskrieg und Freizeitgesellschaft: Die Veteranenkultur der Bundesrepublik (1945–1995),” in Nachkrieg in Deutschland, 90–113, quotations from 92, 91. For the number of associations, see 93. 33. Valentin Senger, Der Heimkehrer: Eine Verwunderung über die Nachkriegszeit (Munich: Luchterhand, 1995), 31–32. 34. Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, 206; Kühne, “Zwischen Vernichtungskrieg und Freizeitgesellschaft,” 95. 35. “der war einmal / in russland / es bringt ihn keiner / mehr hin / was er dort gesehen / und getan hat / hat er tief in sich / vergraben.” Or, in the ­actual dialect original: dea woaramoe ‘s grigd eam kaana wosa duat gsengn hod a diaf in eam

in russlaund mea hin und daun hod vagrobm

Ernst Jandl, peter und die kuh: gedichte (Munich: Luchterhand, 1996), 40. Jandl spent much of his war in training and saw action against the US military at war’s end. He

NOTES TO PA GES 7 0 – 7 3

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took the first opportunity to defect to the United States to escape the war. See Ernst Jandl, Briefe aus dem Krieg 1943–1946 (Munich: Luchterhand, 2005). 36. On “toxic knowledge,” see Fritzsche, Life and Death, 270. 37. World Veteran 3, no. 23 (1954): 10. The organ­ization admitted was the Association of War Victims, Survivors and Pensioners (VdK). 38. World Veterans Federation, Comparative Report: Legislation Affecting Disabled Veterans and Other War Victims (n.p.: World Veterans Federation, 1955), 4. 39. World Veterans Federation, Comparative Report, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 47, 48. 40. Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, 103. 41. Otto Langenecker, Die Kriegsopferversorgung in Europa nach dem 2. Weltkrieg (Vienna: Self-­published, Otto Langenecker, 1970), 68. 42. On the economic history of West Germany, see Werner Abelshauser, Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1945–1980) (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983). 43. World Veterans Federation, Comparative Report, 52–53, 58. 44. World Veterans Federation, Comparative Report, 63–66 (x ­table VIII). The countries listed ­were Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, ­Great Britain, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Turkey, USA, and Yugo­slavia. 45. Vera Neumann, “Kampf um Anerkennung: Die westdeutsche Kriegsfolgengesellschaft im Spiegel der Versorgungsämter,” in Nachkrieg in Deutschland, ed. Klaus Naumann (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2001), 364. 46. Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, chaps. 4, 5, 6. 47. Robert Gellately, Stalin’s Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 177–78. 48. Roger ­Reese, The Soviet Military Experience: A History of the Soviet Army, 1917–1991 (London: Routledge, 2000), 85. Including lower ranks, about 7.7 ­percent of the officer corps ­were repressed in 1937, and 3.7 ­percent in 1938. Altogether, the army lost 22,705 officers (commanders and po­liti­cal officers) due to repression. See Roger ­Reese, Red Commanders: A Social History of the Soviet Army Officer Corps, 1918–1991 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 121, 127; and Peter Whitewood, The Red Army and the ­Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Soviet Military (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015). 49. Anna M. Cienciala, Natalia S. Lebedeva, and Wojciech Materski (eds.), Katyn: A Crime without Punishment (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). 50. Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, 57. 51. On the initial chaos, see Slaveski, Soviet Occupation of Germany. 52. Mark Edele, “Soviet Liberations and Occupations, 1939–1949,” in The Cambridge History of the Second World War, ed. Richard Bosworth and Joe Maiolo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 2:497. 53. Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, 75. 54. Langenecker, Die Kriegsopferversorgung, 93; Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, 75. 55. Jürgen Danyel, “Die Erinnerung an die Wehrmacht in beiden deutschen Staaten: Vergangenheitspolitik und Gedenkrituale,” in Müller and Volkmann, Die Wehrmacht, 1142. 56. Rüdiger Wenzke, “Das unliebsame Erbe der Wehrmacht und der Auf bau der DDR-­Volksarmee,” in Müller and Volkmann, Die Wehrmacht, 1113–38.

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57. Frank Biess, “ ‘Russenknechte’ und ‘Westagenten,’ Kriegsheimkehrer und die (De)legitimierung von Kriegsgefangenschaftserfahrungen in Ost-­und Westdeutschland nach 1945,” in Naumann, Nachkrieg in Deutschland, 59–89, esp. 82–87. 58. Echternkamp, “Arbeit am Mythos,” 439–40. See also Malte Herwig, Post-­War Lies: Germany and Hitler’s Long Shadow (Melbourne: Scribe, 2014), chap. 4, esp. 128. 59. According to a 1946 report on strategic bombing, “in a period of 10 days starting 9 March, a total of 1,595 sorties delivered 9,373 tons of bombs” against t­ hese four cities, “destroying 31 square miles . . . ​at a cost of 22 airplanes.” It dryly notes that “fifteen square miles of Tokyo’s most densely populated area ­were burned to the ground” and that “in the aggregate some 40 ­percent of the built-up area of the 66 cities attacked was destroyed. Approximately 30 ­percent of the entire urban population of Japan lost their homes and many of their possessions.” See United States Strategic Bombing Survey: Summary Report, Pacific War (Washington, DC, July 1, 1946), 16–17, Chuck Anesi, http://­www​.­anesi​.­com​/­ussbs01​.­htm. 60. According to Yoshikuni Igarashi, the United States helped expedite the repatriation of 2.5 million ­people from China and Manchuria; by the end of 1948, 97.5 ­percent of Japa­nese abroad had been returned (6.3 million). See Homecomings: The Belated Return of Japan’s Lost Soldiers (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 4–5. 61. See Lee K. Pennington, Casualties of History: Wounded Japa­nese Ser­vicemen and the Second World War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 201. 62. Pennington, Casualties of History, 202; cited in Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia, 2006), 66–67; Takemae Eiji, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy, trans. and adapted from the Japa­nese by Robert Ricketts and Sabastian Swann (New York: Continuum, 2002), 108. 63. Eiji, Inside GHQ, 407, 412; Pennington, Casualties of History, 201–2, 197. 64. Eiji, Inside GHQ, 420–21; Pennington, Casualties of History, 202. Eiji notes that the Ministry of Welfare “led the effort to legislate protection for the [civilian] disabled, but it was motivated initially by a perceived social responsibility to maimed war veterans” (420). 65. Eiji, Inside GHQ, 108. Pennington traces the decline in the military prestige to late 1944, when the Japa­nese home islands “began to endure ongoing Allied bombing raids.” See Pennington, Casualties of History, 18. 66. James McClain, Japan: A Modern History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 532. He notes that “every­one seemed to have heard about demobilized ser­vicemen who smuggled home knapsacks stuffed with looted goods or scoundrels who furtively stripped clothing from the dead and stole blankets, some still stained with blood and sputum, from hospitals and sanitariums.” McClain, Japan, 534–35. 67. Igarashi, Homecomings, 26. 68. See David Gerber, “Heroes and Misfits: The Troubled Social Reintegration of Disabled Veterans in ‘The Best Years of Our Lives,’ ” American Quarterly 46, no. 4 (December 1994): 545–74; Igarashi, Homecomings, 23. 69. Even Pennington’s comprehensive account of disabled veterans ends its tale in 1952. 70. John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of WWII (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 58–61; McClain, Japan, 532. Such stories appeared often in the late 1940s press, some of which ­were translated by the occupation authorities. For example, an

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197

article in Shin Nippon attacked the “deplorable attitude of the ­people” ­toward veterans (healthy and disabled): “In deserted street corners one may see men in white clothes [wounded soldiers] to whom p­ eople pay ­little attention.” Some reported on suicides: a veteran who “lost an arm and a leg killed himself in despair over the cost of treatment and the worry of feeding his wife and c­ hildren at home.” See Analy­sis and Research Division, General Headquarters, SCAP, “Publications Analy­sis #91,” January 24, 1947, 2–3, US National Archives, Rec­ords of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Japan, 1945–1949, Archives Unbound. 71. Pennington, Casualties of History, 198, 216, 221–22. He also notes that able-­ bodied veterans did not consider “relief of wounded soldiers” to be an impor­tant issue for the government to tackle. This was based on 1,230 questionnaires returned by veterans to the Hokkoku mainichi shinbun in the spring of 1946. See 211. 72. Igarashi, Homecomings, 5, 100; Aaron William Moore, Writing War: Soldiers Rec­ ord the Japa­nese Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 256; Lori Watt, When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009), 70; Andrew Barshay, The Gods Left First: The Captivity and Repatriation of Japa­nese POWs in Northeast Asia, 1946–1956 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 176. One returning POW felt “completely lost” ­after his return, “crushed” by social indifference to his experience, and found himself “without work, home, or even the most elemental trust of his own society.” 73. Hiroko Storm, “War W ­ idows in Postwar Japan,” Asian Profile 20, no.  2 (April 1992): 128. Among prostitutes and ser­vice ­women, roughly 80 ­percent ­were ­widows (1950), but among ­these the percentage of war ­widows is not clear. Some became mistresses to survive. Storm reports that war w ­ idows “had to suffer from other ­people’s attitude t­ owards them” and w ­ ere treated “like war criminals” (126). Dower notes that many female war orphans resorted to prostitution as well. See Dower, Embracing Defeat, 133–34. However, other w ­ omen pursued it for extra money, to support their parents, and also “out of curiosity.” 74. Analy­sis and Research Division, General Headquarters, SCAP, “Publications Analy­sis #19,” 3. 75. Gregory J. Kasza, One World of Welfare: Japan in Comparative Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 42. 76. Igarashi, Homecomings, 26. 77. See Kent Calder, Crisis and Compensation: Public Policy and Po­liti­cal Stability in Japan, 1949–1986 (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1988), 422, 429. 78. Moore, Writing War, 274. 79. This figure comes from Eiji, Inside GHQ, 558. Publicly accessible Japa­nese Statistical Bureau data produce $279 billion figure, including $98 billion for healthy veterans (1954–2003) and $181.4 billion in pensions for “wounded and sick-­retired soldiers” (1960–2004). The discrepancy is likely owing to the variation in assessed years, since the Statistical Bureau did not include figures from 1953–60. In Japa­nese bureaucratic terminology, “onkyu” (military) pension funds include “normal pensions,” “supplementary pensions,” “pensions for illness and injury,” “pensions for special illness and injury,” “allowances in aid,” and “special pension for survivor of the wounded and sick, and “disability pensions.” See “23-40: 旧軍人恩給年金受給権者状況（昭和２ １年～23年， 昭和２ ４年度～ 平成１５ 年” at www​.­stat​.­go​.­jp​/­data​/­chouki​/­zuhyou​/­23​-­40​.­xls; and “23-42: 戦傷病者，戦没者遺族等援護法給付状況（昭和３５ 年度～ 平成１６ 年度）,

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at www​.­stat​.­go​.­jp​/­data​/­chouki​/­zuhyou​/­23​-­42​.­xls (­These excel files can be downloaded from this website but each title must be entered manually). In 1953 the Japa­nese government provided pensions to 103,000 veterans, but 1,382,000 of them received funds in 1954, and almost two million in 1955. For more information on the resurrection of military pensions ­after the occupation, see Souri Fu Onkyu Kyoku (Prime Minister’s Office Compensation Bureau), Onkyu Kyoku Hyaku Nenshi (Tokyo: Souri Fu Onkyu Kyoku, 1984). 80. Eiji, Inside GHQ, 425. Calder attributes the expansion of pensions between 1952 and 1954 to a short-­lived conservative Reform Party, noting that such parties can have a ­g reat deal of influence during times of crisis. See Calder, Crisis and Compensation, 452. 81. The term compensation or pension does not do justice to the Japa­nese term for the law 恩给法. The ideograph 恩 is associated with kindness, gratitude, and benevolence; 给 means to give or provide; and 法 is law. A more accurate translation, but too unwieldy, would be “Payments of Gratitude Law.” Terminologically it was very dif­ fer­ent than “welfare” or “social assistance” for the ordinary poor. As noted, it was not administered by Japan’s welfare bureaucracy but by the higher-­status Prime Minister’s Office. 82. See the explication of this regulation in “Fukatsu shita gunjin onkyu,” Odawa City News (小田原市报), November 26, 1953, https://­www​.­city​.­odawara​.­kanagawa​.­jp​ /­global​-­image​/­odawaraArch​/­10​/­pdf​/­0044​_­19531126​_­h​.­pdf. 83. Document provided by the Japa­nese National Pension Association Public Relations Department (Nihon kokumin nenkin kyôkai kouhou-bu), “Gunjin onkyu hayawakari.” 84. Watt, When Empire Comes Home, 38. Adding up the numbers of Japa­nese military nationals abroad at the end of World War II yields 3.53 million men. In contrast, the Ministry of Health, L ­ abor and Welfare in Engo Gojû Nenshi (Tokyo: Gyosei, 1997) cites 7.89 million from the two branches at the end of the war. 85. “Fukatsu shita gunjin onkyu,” Odawa City News, November 26, 1953. For data on ­house­hold income and expenditures, see “­Family Income and Expenditure,” Statistics Japan, Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, accessed January 9, 2017, http://­www​.­stat​.­go​.­jp​/­english​/­data​/­. For additional information, see Yukata Matsumura, Japan’s Economic Growth, 1945–60 (Tokyo: Tokyo News Ser­vice, 1961), 526; Akiko Ito, Sengo Nihon no kazoku keizai ni okeru shouhi kouzou no bunseki 12, no. 4 (1961): 379–84. 86. On the close relationship between the Japa­nese military and the countryside, see Richard Smethurst, A Social Basis for Prewar Japa­nese Militarism: The Army and the Rural Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). According to the Japa­ nese Statistical Bureau, circa 1953 the average farming ­house­hold of 6.43 persons earned roughly $70 per month (and spent $65). We divided $70 by three to estimate the income of one adult ($23). 87. See Robert Efird, “Japan’s ‘War Orphans’: Identification and State Responsibility,” Journal of Japa­nese Studies 34, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 381. 88. Storm, “War W ­ idows,” 132. According to the 1952 legislation, spouses, c­ hildren, grandchildren ­under the age of eigh­teen, parents, and grandparents over the age of sixty all qualified for compensation. It awarded ¥10,000 a year to the spouse and ¥5,000 to each bereaved f­ amily member. Each f­ amily also received a single sum payment of

NOTES TO PA GES 7 8 – 8 2

199

¥50,000 as condolence money. The government also provided ¥30,000 for families of paramilitary soldiers who died. 89. Efird, “Japan’s ‘War Orphans,’ ” 379. 90. Lacking a smoking gun about legislative intent, it is likely that the government could not have afforded to cover more veterans. Even at a 30 ­percent coverage rate the government was in the red. 91. See Heiwa kinen tokubetsu (Peace Memorial Foundation), Shiryô shozai chousa kekka houkoku-­sho: Onkyu kekkakusha, sengo kyosei yokuryuusha oyobi kaiga hikiagesha no rouku (Tokyo: Heiwa kinen tokubetsu kikin, 1991). For veterans serving more than three continuous years but less than seven, see “恩給制度の概要,” Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, accessed January 9, 2017, http://­www​.­soumu​.­go​.­jp​ /­main​_­sosiki​/­onkyu​_­toukatsu​/­onkyu​.­htm (in Japa­nese). Payments w ­ ere calculated based on years of ser­vice and the annual salary at the time of retirement. It also included a “basic livelihood guarantee” to all veterans. 92. In Taiwan’s case, most veterans w ­ ere recruited in 1942–43, and would have been excluded anyway ­because they served too ­little time. 93. Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics, 80; Eiji, Inside GHQ, 512. He notes that the 1950 Daily Life Protection Law, the 1952 Law for War Invalids and Families of the War Dead, and the Public Officials Pension Law of 1953 (which gave pensions to veterans), all “disqualified” foreigners from receiving assistance even though they served in the war. 94. Eiji, Inside GHQ, 558. 95. Victor Louzon, “From Japa­nese Soldiers to Chinese Rebels: Colonial Hegemony, War Experience, and Spontaneous Remobilization during the 1947 Taiwanese Rebellion,” Journal of Asian Studies 77, no. 1 (February 2018): 170. 96. Shi-­chi Mike Lan has called this “forced amnesia,” which began to lift only in the mid-1990s in the case of Taiwan. See “(Re-) Writing History of the Second World War: Forgetting and Remembering the Taiwanese-­Native Japa­nese Soldiers in Postwar Taiwan,” positions: east asia cultures critique 21, no. 4 (Fall 2013): 807–8, 813. B ­ ecause they ­were seen as collaborators with Japan, forgetting ­these veterans was a way to “redeem” and “readmit” them as Chinese who ­were anti-­Communist. 97. Louzon, “From Japa­nese Soldiers to Chinese Rebels,” 176. 98. Joshua Fan, China’s Homeless Generation: Voices from the Veterans of the Chinese Civil War, 1940s–1990s (New York: Routledge, 2011), 142. 99. David Cheng Chang, The Hijacked War: The Story of Chinese POWs in the Korean War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020), 357, 363. For an internal CCP document on poor treatment see “Ziyuan jun qian beifu renyuan huiguo hou sixiang hunluan,” Neibu cankao, August 31, 1953. 100. A classic work on Sun as a po­liti­cal leader is Harold Schiffrin, Sun Yat-­Sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). For a more recent treatment, see Marie-­Claire Bergère, Sun Yat-­sen, trans. Janet Lloyd (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). 101. For a review of a variety of elites, see Joseph W. Esherick and Mary Rankin (eds.), Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 102. On warlordism, see Diana Lary, Warlord Soldiers: Chinese Common Soldiers, 1911–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and Edward McCord, The

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Power of the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlordism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 103. The May 4th Movement was a large, student-­led protest against imperialism and warlordism. It resulted from the failure of the Chinese government—­controlled by warlords close to Japan at the time—to regain sovereignty over territories lost to colonial powers during the Versailles Peace Conference, as well as from the failure of western governments to uphold the princi­ple of national self-­determination. More broadly, it refers to the broad intellectual movement challenging the core philosophical positions of Confucianism. See Zhongping Chen, “The May Fourth Movement and Provincial Warlords: A Reexamination,” Modern China 37, no. 2 (2011): 135–69. 104. Hsi-­sheng Ch’i, Nationalist China at War: Military Defeats and Po­liti­cal Collapse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982), 5. 105. For an excellent book covering the conversion of a prominent professor to the Leninist cause, see Maurice Meisner, Li Ta-­Chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967). 106. Ch’i, Nationalist China at War, 8. 107. Ch’i, who is highly critical of the KMT in Nationalist China at War, writes that this arrangement “infest[ed] the ranks of the National Revolutionary Army with nonrevolutionary and counter-­revolutionary military units” (9). 108. In 1933 Chiang called off a campaign in order to divert forces to areas north of the ­Great Wall ­because of Japa­nese incursions. 109. This paragraph draws on Ch’i, Nationalist China at War, 37, 42–43, 60; Yang Tianshi, “Chiang Kai-­shek and the ­Battles of Shanghai and Nanjing,” in The ­Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-­Japanese War of 1937–1945, ed. Mark Peattie, Edward Drea, and Hans van de Ven (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 150–53; Edna Tow, “The G ­ reat Bombing of Chongqing and the Anti-­Japanese War,” in Peattie, Drea, and van de Ven, ­Battle for China, 256–57. 110. See, for example, Hans van de Ven, “The Sino-­Japanese War in History,” in Peattie, Drea, and van de Ven, ­Battle for China, 458. This was proven to be the case by Chiang’s winter offensive in 1939. 111. The KMT also or­ga­nized guerrilla units, but lacking ties to the rural community ­were decimated by 1940 b­ ecause of Japa­nese and Communist attacks or being forced to withdraw. By the end of the war they had “no effective military capacity ­behind Japa­nese lines.” See Yang Kuisong, “Nationalist and Communist Guerilla Warfare in North China,” in Peattie, Drea, and van de Ven, ­Battle for China, 308. 112. Chang Rui-te, “The Nationalist Army on the Eve of War,” in Peattie, Drea, and van de Ven, ­Battle for China, 94–95. He notes that in one area of Anhui Province, among six hundred draftees in 1936, “­every draftee had been traded, replaced, or seized.” 113. Van de Ven, The Sino-­Japanese War in History, 456, cites two million men annually between 1937 and 1941. This figure is from Ronald Spector, “The Sino-­Japanese War in the Context of World History,” in Peattie, Drea, and van de Ven, ­Battle for China, 475. 114. Chang, The Hijacked War, 36–38. The PLA was far better in its treatment of its soldiers. 115. J. Fan, China’s Homeless Generation, 71. 116. Chao Wang, “Reproducing De­pen­den­cy: Blinded Veterans and ­Family Life in in a Rehabilitation Camp during War­time China, 1942–1945,” paper presented at the

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201

Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference, Denver, CO, March 21–24, 2019. Cited with permission. 117. In China it is common to hear that the Communist Party defeated Japan, a position thoroughly rejected by serious scholars in the West and Japan. Japa­nese experts argue, and we agree, that Japan was brought to its knees by the destruction of its homeland by air attacks, submarine torpedoes, and nuclear weapons, not the CCP or the KMT. See Tohmatsu Haruo, “The Strategic Correlation between the Sino-­ Japanese and Pacific Wars,” in Peattie, Drea, and van de Ven, ­Battle for China, 440. He rejects the argument that Chinese forces contributed to victory by preventing the transfer of troops and weapons to the Pacific theater, noting that Japan did not have enough transportation to conduct ­these operations. Essentially, Japa­nese troops ­were stuck in China no m ­ atter what the CCP and KMT did. On the difficulty of KMT veterans establishing a counternarrative to the official CCP version, see Aaron William Moore, Writing War: Soldiers Rec­ord the Japa­nese Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 266. Moore notes that KMT veterans’ narratives ­were completely excluded from memorialization, and even KMT monuments to the War of Re­sis­tance ­were destroyed or converted into pro-­CCP statements. 118. Chiang Kai-­shek executed only four Japa­nese for the atrocities in Nanjing. However, he punished over fifteen thousand Chinese for being “traitors,” and many of ­these w ­ ere executed. Chiang also used Japa­nese military personnel in his fight against the Communists. The relatively cordial interactions led to a surprisingly smooth repatriation pro­cess. See Watt, When Empire Comes Home, 45–46. 119. Moore, Writing War, 248, 251. It was at the Cairo Conference in 1943 when the allies, including Chiang, declared that Japan would be stripped of all its territorial possessions in China, Taiwan, and the Pacific and that territories taken from China would be restored to the Republic of China. See Watt, When Empire Comes Home, 35–36. 120. Jeremy Brown, “From Resisting Communists to Resisting Amer­i­ca: Civil War and Korean War in Southwest China, 1950–51,” in Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the P­ eople’s Republic of China, ed. Jeremy Brown and Paul G. Pickowicz (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 105–29. 121. Watt, When Empire Comes Home, 46–47. 122. Moore, Writing War, 269, 284. 123. J. Fan, China’s Homeless Generation, 27. 124. J. Fan, China’s Homeless Generation, 13. 125. The primary ­causes of this rebellion ­were Governor-­General Chen Yi’s filling key posts in his administration with ­family and cronies, firing many Taiwanese officials, and asserting a mono­poly over all former Japa­nese colonial enterprises and placing mainlanders as their beneficiaries. The death toll has produced estimates from one thousand to ten thousand. 126. For background on this, see Lai Tse-­han, Ramon Myers, and Wei Wou, A Tragic Beginning: The Taiwan Uprising of February 28, 1947 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991); George Kerr, Formosa Betrayed (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1966). 127. Lai, Myers, and Wei, Tragic Beginning, 139; Kerr, Formosa Betrayed, 307. 128. Ming-­sho Ho, “Manufacturing Loyalty: The Po­liti­cal Mobilization of L ­ abor in Taiwan, 1950–1986,” Modern China 36, no. 6 (2010): 566. 129. Another six hundred thousand ­were civilian administrators, ­family members, businessmen, and other elites.

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130. Yu-­Wen Fan, “Becoming a Civilian: Mainland Chinese Soldiers/Veterans and the State in Taiwan, 1949–2001” (PhD diss., New School for Social Research, Department of Sociology, 1995), 45. 131. Fan, “Becoming a Civilian,” 50–51. 132. Fred Riggs, The Consulting Firm, the U.S. Aid Agency and the Chinese Veterans Program (Syracuse, NY: Inter-­University Case Study Program, 1970), 45. 133. Fan, “Becoming a Civilian,” 52. 134. Fan, “Becoming a Civilian,” 59. Veterans ­were also encouraged by VACRS to participate in local elections for the farmers’ association, a critically impor­tant civic organ­ization in rural Taiwan since it implements agricultural policies and issues credit. According to Yu-­Wen Fan, even though veteran-­farmers ­were a minority, “their votes could be decisive when the competition between opposing factions was close” (“Becoming a Civilian,” 182). 135. Riggs, Consulting Firm, 4–5; Yu-­Wen Fan notes that the percentage of veterans with ­mental illness was far higher than average. See “Becoming a Civilian,” 130n35. 136. Fan, “Becoming a Civilian,” 46, 48. 137. See, for example, Jonathan Shays, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New York: Atheneum, 1994). 138. Fan, “Becoming a Civilian,” 49. 139. Fan, “Becoming a Civilian,” 149–51. 140. Fan, “Becoming a Civilian,” 151–52. 141. Ming-­sho Ho, “Manufacturing Loyalty,” 569. 142. Fan, “Becoming a Civilian,” 190. 143. J. Fan, China’s Homeless Generation, 51. 144. J. Fan, China’s Homeless Generation, 54. 145. J. Fan, China’s Homeless Generation, 54–55. 146. J. Fan, China’s Homeless Generation, 77–78. 147. Republic of China (ROC) statistics indicate that 21.2 ­percent of veterans ­were bachelors. See Yang Ruizong, “Taiwan diqu yu dalu diqu tuiwu junren anzhi zhidu bijiao yanjiu” (PhD diss., National Taiwan University, East Asian Studies, 1998), 85. 148. Yu-­Wen Fan, “Becoming a Civilian,” 115–16. 149. J. Fan, China’s Homeless Generation, 64–65, 86–87. 150. The Soviet case was starker than the German one, both ­because of the greater relative losses and ­because no occupation forces provided alternative partners as they did in Germany. See Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popu­lar Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 71–73; and Greta Bucher, ­Women, the Bureaucracy and Daily Life in Postwar Moscow, 1945–1953 (Boulder, CO: East Eu­ro­pean Monographs, 2006). On Germany, see Elizabeth Heineman, “The Hour of the ­Woman: Memories of Germany’s ‘Crisis Years’ and West German National Identity,” American Historical Review 101, no. 2 (1996), 374, 380–81. 4. The Po­liti­cally Weak

1. See blog post, accessed July 16, 2018, http://­sdds​-­gov​-­cn​.­sdds​-­gov​-­cn​.­bbs​.­mc81​ .­net​/­thread​-­1878​-­1​-­2​.­html (in Chinese; site discontinued). 2. Nor are ­there monuments, bridges, or streets with the word veteran in them.

NOTES TO PA GES 9 5 – 9 7

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3. For a study of ­these cultural sites and rituals, respectively, see Kirk Denton, Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013); Chang-­tai Hong, Mao’s New World: Po­liti­cal Culture in the Early ­People’s Republic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010). 4. At the ­Great Hall of the ­People in Beijing in May 2018, Xi said, “Writing Marxism onto the flag of the Chinese Communist Party was totally correct. . . . ​Unceasingly promoting the sinification and modernization of Marxism is totally correct.” He instructed all party members to adopt the reading of Marxist works and the understanding of Marxist theories as a “way of life” and a “spiritual pursuit.” See Christian Shepherd, “No regrets: Xi Says Marxism Is ‘Totally Correct’ for China,” ­Reuters, May 4, 2018. Accessed January 14, 2020, https://­www​.­reuters​.­com​/­article​/­us​-­germany​-­marx​ -­china​/­no​-­regrets​-­xi​-­says​-­marxism​-­still​-­totally​-­correct​-­for​-­china​-­idUSKBN1I50ET. 5. See chapter 3 (Taiwan) for more details on Chiang Kai-­shek’s b­ attles against the CCP in the 1920s. 6. This did not go unnoticed by military personnel at the time. Many wrote to the committee drafting the constitution urging them to incorporate specific clauses about the military and what their benefits would be, to no avail. See Neil J. Diamant and Xiaocai Feng, “The PRC’s First National Critique: The 1954 Campaign to ‘Discuss the Draft Constitution,’ ” China Journal 73 ( January 2015): 1–37. 7. On ­battles between Red Army soldiers and partisans over who should get credit for victory in the USSR, see Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2001), 9, 70, 73. On the status of American combat veterans, see Samuel Stouffer et al., The American Soldier: Combat and Its Aftermath (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1949), 2:309. 8. Some newer and less Euro-­and Anglocentric histories of World War II now acknowledge 1937 as the starting point of this war. See, in par­tic­u­lar, Evan Mawdsley, World War II: A New History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). To take the example of the USSR, the Soviet-­Japanese Border War of 1938–39 was an integral part of World War II, but it is forgotten largely b­ ecause it was fought in Asia rather than in Eu­rope and was overshadowed by ­later events. The Soviet victory in the 1939 ­battle of Khalkhin Gol/Nomonhan, in which tens of thousands w ­ ere killed and wounded on both sides, led to the defeat of the army faction in Tokyo which saw the Soviet Union as the major e­ nemy. Victory kept the Soviet’s eastern front clear during the war in Eu­rope and during the war with Germany. It pushed Tokyo south, confronting the United States instead. For a short summary see Mark Edele, The Soviet Union: A Short History (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2019), chap. 6. 9. For an elaboration of this point, see Neil J. Diamant, “Con­spic­u­ous Silence: Veterans and the Depoliticization of War Memory in China,” Modern Asian Studies 45, no. 2 (2011): 457–61. 10. Shanghai Municipal Archives (SMA) B168-1-628 (1957), 74. 11. See Victor Shih, Wei Shan, and Mingxing Lu, “The Central Committee Past and Pre­sent: A Method for Quantifying Elite Biographies,” in Con­temporary Chinese Politics New Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies, ed. Allen Carlson, Mary Gallagher, Kenneth Lieberthal, and Melanie Manion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 61. 12. For example, China had separate ministries for light and heavy industry, for vari­ ous utilities, and for national resources such as oil and ­water.

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13. For more details on Civil Affairs related to marriage issues, see Neil J. Diamant, “Making Love ‘Legible’ in China: Politics and Society during the Enforcement of Civil Marriage Registration, 1950–1966,” Politics and Society 29, no. 3 ( June 2001): 447–80. 14. See Suzanne Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 60. 15. On this discrimination, see Janet Chen, Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900–1953 (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2012). 16. Qingpu District Archives 48-2-105, 136. 17. Dongcheng District Archives (Beijing) 11-7-201, 2. 18. Qingpu District Archives 48-2-37 (1952), 1. 19. SMA B168-1-600 (1951), 126. 20. This was a major source of resentment among disabled veterans in Weimar Germany. See James Diehl, “Victors or Victims: Disabled Veterans in the Third Reich,” Journal of Modern History 59, no. 4 (December 1987): 719. 21. Qian Feng, the MVA deputy minister, noted that they w ­ ere “starting from scratch and being built from the ground up.” He noted prob­lems such as personnel shortages, poor office conditions, and many overtime hours. See Sarah Zheng, “Chinese Leaders Gather for Back-­to-­Back Meetings a­ fter Military Veterans Protest,” South China Morning Post, July 2, 2018. Like his superior, Qian has no experience dealing with veteran issues, having spent most of his c­ areer in the judiciary, often serving as party secretary of vari­ous courts. See “钱锋,” Ministry of Veterans Affairs of the P ­ eople’s Republic of China, accessed December 12, 2018, http://­www​.­mva​.­gov​.­cn​/­jigou​/­ldjs​ /­ldjj​/­qf​/­201807​/­t20180710​_­11897​.­html (in Chinese). 22. See, for example, Neil J. Diamant and Kevin J. O’Brien, “Veterans Po­liti­cal Activism in China,” Modern China 41, no. 3 (2015): 290. 23. Neil J. Diamant, Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949–2007 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 114–16. 24. SMA B168-1-628, (1956), 31. 25. Many cases h ­ ere can be cited, among them the gains of the civil rights, disability rights, and w ­ omen’s suffrage movements; Aboriginal rights in Canada and Australia; and gay and lesbian rights. On the ­causes of ­these successes, see Charles Epp, The Rights Revolution: L­ awyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). This also works on the conservative side, as witnessed by the absence of gun safety regulation in the United States ­because of the orga­nizational clout of the National ­Rifle Association. 26. Gordon White, “The Politics of Demobilized Soldiers from Liberation to Cultural Revolution,” China Quarterly 82 ( June 1980): 205–6. 27. SMA B168-3-131, (1967), 3–6. 28. For a comprehensive treatment of this war, see Xiaobing Li, A History of the Modern Chinese Army (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007). 29. See June Dreyer, “The Demobilization of PLA Ser­vicemen and Their Integration into Civilian Life,” in Chinese Defense and Foreign Policy, ed. June Dreyer (New York: Paragon House, 1989), 307. In Hebei Province, “military families fell ­behind. Young soldiers could not build a cash nest egg to win a proper bride.” See Edward Friedman, Paul Pickowicz, and Mark Selden, Revolution, Re­sis­tance and Reform in Village China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 247.

NOTES TO PA GES 1 0 2 – 1 0 6

205

30. “Several Million Demobilized Soldiers Resettled,” in Foreign Broadcast Information Ser­vice (FBIS), April 11, 1983, K1. In 1987 officials noted that 80 ­percent of soldiers came from the countryside. See FBIS-­CHI-87-250, December 30, 1987, 19. 31. Gongjun futui zhuanye zhenxiang (Taipei: Ministry of Defense, 1984), Ministry of Justice, Bureau of Investigation Archives (Xindian, Taiwan), 173–74. 32. According to a report on the case, “Many veterans felt that they had lost the best years of their lives and felt cheated and swindled by the government and society. That’s why they said their hearts are now grieving.” Between 1978 and 1981, the young Wuchuan men who did not enlist made good money and built new homes; in contrast, the veterans received 200 to 300 RMB in demobilization money, but their families ­were still hard up ­because they ­were short a young man’s ­labor power. See Gongjun futui, 181. 33. ­These reports first appeared in Ming Bao (September 12, 1981) and caught the eye of western intelligence agencies. See FBIS-­CHI, December 14, 1981, W/1. 34. Antoine Prost, “War Losses” in 1914–1918 Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, last modified October 8, 2014, https://­ encyclopedia​.­1914​-­1918​-­online​.­net​/­article​/­war​_­losses; John Ellis, The World War II Databook: The Essential Facts and Figures for All the Combatants (London: Aurum Press, 1993), 254. 35. Churchill quotes from “War Situation,” June 18, 1940, vol. 362, House of Commons Hansard, UK Parliament, last modified May  11, 2018, https://­hansard​.­parlia​ ment​.­uk​/­Commons​/­1940​-­06​-­18​/­debates​/­34c56c70​-­b324​-­4525​-­8f05​-­37f1895c6596​ /­WarSituation; “War Situation,” August 20, 1940, vol. 364, House of Commons Hansard, UK Parliament, last modified May  11, 2018, https://­hansard​.­parliament​.­uk​ /­C ommons​/­1 940​-­0 8​-­2 0​/­d ebates​/­e be6c652​-­0 e92​-­4 6d7​-­9 78c​-­7 a49003c589e​ /­WarSituation. 36. World War I cost the lives of some 750,000 British soldiers, sailors, and airmen, compared with some 30,633 civilians killed through direct e­ nemy action. See Prost, “War Losses,” https://­encyclopedia​.­1914​-­1918​-­online​.­net​/­article​/­war​_­losses. The differential was narrower in World War II, but Britain’s 305,800 military deaths for Britain and its colonies still far outstripped the civilian death toll of some 60,600. See Ellis, World War II Databook, 254. 37. The standard exposition in this topic is Paul Fussell, The ­Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975). 38. Niall Barr, The Lion and the Poppy: British Veterans, Politics, and Society, 1921–1939 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005), 1–2. 39. Richard Bessel, “Death and Survival in the Second World War,” in The Cambridge History of the Second World War, ed. Michael Geyer and Adam Tooze (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 3:262; Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation (New York: Random House, 1998). 40. Barr, Lion and the Poppy, 12; Mike Hally, “The Deep Roots of the British Legion,” in Veterans of the First World War: Ex-­Servicemen and Ex-­Servicewomen in Post-­War Britain and Ireland, ed. David Swift and Oliver Wilkinson (London: Routledge, 2019), 17–33. 41. Barr, Lion and the Poppy, 12–14.

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42. Minutes, Executive Council of the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers, November 13–14, 1917, February 2–3, 1918, Royal British Legion Head Office, Haig House, London. 43. Barr, Lion and the Poppy, 18–19; Minutes, British Legion Unity Conference, May 14–15, 1921, 18, Royal British Legion Head Office, Haig House, London. 44. Peter R ­ eese, Homecoming Heroes: An Account of the Reassimilation of British Military Personnel into Civilian Life (London: Leo Cooper, 1992), 135. 45. Martin Crotty, “The Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia, 1916–46,” in Anzac Legacies: Australians and the Aftermath of War, ed. Martin Crotty and Marina Larsson (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010), 167. 46. Barr, Lion and the Poppy, 2, 57. 47. Barr, Lion and the Poppy, 2. 48. Verbatim Report, British Legion Annual Conference, 1925, 17, Royal British Legion Head Office, Haig House, London. 49. Barr, Lion and the Poppy, 4–5. 50. Barr, Lion and the Poppy, 20. 51. Barr, Lion and the Poppy, 30; Graham Wootton, The Politics of Influence: British Ex-­servicemen, Cabinet Decisions and Cultural Change, 1917–57 (Oxford: Routledge, 1963), 69. 52. Barr, Lion and the Poppy, 4–5. 53. Barr, Lion and the Poppy, 33–39. 54. For one such example, see Minutes, British Legion Annual Conference, 1926, 23, Royal British Legion Head Office, Haig House, London. See also Wootton, Politics of Influence, 71, 126–27; Graham Wootton, The Official History of the British Legion (London: Macdonald and Evans, 1956), 94. 55. Minutes, British Legion Annual Conference, 1929, 37–49, Royal British Legion Head Office, Haig House, London. 56. Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 53–56. 57. Wootton, Politics of Influence, 151–57. 58. ­Reese, Homecoming Heroes, 128–29. 59. ­Reese, Homecoming Heroes, 154–57. 60. Cohen, War Come Home, 2–3, ­Reese, Homecoming Heroes, 170–72. 61. Cohen, War Come Home, 16; Stuart Macintyre, The Oxford History of Australia, vol. 4, The Succeeding Age, 1901–1942 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1986), 99–121. 62. Angel Alcalde, “The World Veterans Federation: Cold War Politics and Globalization,” in War Veterans and the World ­after 1945: Cold War Politics, Decolonization, Memory, ed. Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (London: Routledge, 2018), 36. 63. Wootton, Official History of the British Legion, 2. 64. Wootton, Politics of Influence, 10–13; ­Reese, Homecoming Heroes, 53–73. 65. Wootton, Official History of the British Legion, 56–57. 66. Wootton, Official History of the British Legion, 67–76. 67. Barr, Lion and the Poppy, 3, 5. 68. Jon Lawrence, “Forging a Peaceable Kingdom: War, Vio­lence and Fear of Brutalization in Post–­First World War Britain,” Journal of Modern History 75, no. 3, (2003): 566–69; David Swift “ ‘A Fighting Man and a Thinking Man’: The British Left, Ex-­

NOTES TO PA GES 1 1 0 – 1 1 4

207

Servicemen and Working-­Class Culture, 1914–24,” in Swift and Wilkinson, Veterans of the First World War, 67; Martin Crotty, “The RSL and Post–­First World War Returned Soldier Vio­lence in Australia,” in Legacies of Vio­lence: Rendering the Unspeakable Past in Modern Australia, ed. Robert Mason (New York: Berghahn, 2017), 185–98. 69. Cohen, War Come Home, 59; R ­ eese, Homecoming Heroes, 148. 70. David Reynolds, The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the ­Great War in the Twentieth ­Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), 211. One Legion commander even likened the Legion to the Italian fascists in its opposition to progressive c­ auses. See Joseph Fronczak, “The Fascist Game: Transnational Po­liti­cal Transmission and the Genesis of the U.S. Modern Right,” Journal of American History 105, no. 3 (December 2018): 563–88. 71. David M. Kennedy, Over ­Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press,1980), 217–18. 72. Stephen Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill: How Veteran Politics S­ haped the New Deal Era (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 17. 73. Kennedy, Over ­Here, 217–18; Michael J. Bennett, When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern Amer­i­ca (Washington, DC: Barssey’s, 1996), 46–47. 74. Jennifer D. Keene, Doughboys, the ­Great War and the Remaking of Amer­i­ca (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 155. 75. Kathleen J. Frydl, The GI Bill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 209, 48. 76. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 13. 77. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 5–6; Bennett, When Dreams Came True, 66. Roo­ se­velt repeated this position in 1935 in his statement to Congress when he vetoed a bill for the cash payment of the Bonus. 78. Keene, Doughboys, 174. 79. Jessica L. Adler, Burdens of War: Creating the United States Veterans Health System (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), 157; Within a year the Veterans’ Bureau was managing forty-­seven of its own hospitals rather than overseeing veteran care in variety of government and private institutions. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 22, 28. 80. Adler, Burdens of War, 255. 81. Adler, Burdens of War, 6. 82. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 26–27; Bennett, When Dreams Came True, 58. 83. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 29–31; Keene, Doughboys, 174–75. 84. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 34. 85. Keene, Doughboys, 179. 86. Keene, Doughboys, 181. 87. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 38. 88. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 39–47, 61. 89. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 45. 90. Stephen R. Ortiz, “Rethinking the Bonus March: Federal Bonus Policy, Veteran Organ­izations, and the Origins of a Protest Movement,” in Veterans’ Policies, Veteran’s Politics: New Perspectives on Veterans in the Modern United States, ed. Stephen Ortiz (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 179, 183; Herbert Hoover, Address of President Hoover at the Twelfth Annual Convention of the American Legion, Boston, Mas­sa­ chu­setts, October 6, 1930 (Washington, DC: US Government Press Office, 1930), 4. 91. The full text of Roo­se­velt’s speech, in which he maintained that veterans did not have any greater claims to benefits than other citizens simply by virtue of having

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worn a uniform, can be found in “Roo­se­velt Puts U.S. Credit First,” Wall Street Journal (October 3, 1933), 1, 7. 92. Frank Friedel, Roo­se­velt: A Rendezvous with Destiny (Boston: L ­ ittle, Brown, 1990), 97. 93. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 32, 38. 94. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 113–14. On Hayes and his staunch anti-­ communism and conservatism, see Thomas B. Littlewood, Soldiers Back Home: The American Legion in Illinois, 1919–1939 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), 85, 95–96, 151. 95. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 113. 96. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 84, 96. 97. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 125–27, 142, 146–49, 168–70. 98. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 167, 173–74. The united front presented by the two main veterans’ organ­izations was not the only reason for the eventual payment of the bonus in cash. Ortiz (167) notes that the liberal spending of the “Second New Deal” made the payment of billions of dollars to veterans more po­liti­cally and publicly acceptable. 99. For perhaps the strongest expression of this position, see Keene, Doughboys, 205, 214. 100. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 89. 101. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March, 198–99. 102. G. Aleksandrov to A. A. Zhdanov (1946), Rus­sian State Archive of Socio-­ Political History (RGASPI) f. 17, op. 125, d. 391, l. 74–76; Pavel Stiller, Die sowjetische Rentenversicherung 1917–1977 (Cologne: Bundesinstitut, 1979); Stiller, Sozialpolitik in der UdSSR 1950–80: Eine Analyse der quantitativen und qualitativen Zusammenhänge (Baden-­ Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1983); Dorena Caroli, “Bolshevism, Stalinism, and Social Welfare (1917–1936),” International Review of Social History 48 (2003): 27–54; and Mark Edele, Stalinist Society, 1928–1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 184–88. 103. Nagovitsyn report, Antologiia sotsial’noi raboty, 3:290; Zavgorodnii, Deiatel’nost’, 23–109; A.  A. Paderin, “Gosudarstvo na strazhe svoikh zashchitnikov,” Voenno-­ istoricheskii zhurnal 5 (1997): 6–7. Percentage is for RSFSR in 1920: Tsentral’noe statisticheskoe upravlenie SSSR, sektor sotsial’noi statistiki, Itogi perepisi naseleniia 1920g. (Moscow: TsSU, 1928), 177. 104. Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popu­lar Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 10. 105. State Archive of the Rus­sian Federation (GARF) f. r-9541, op. 1, d. 49, l. 13; GARF f. r-7523, op. 55, d. 10, l. 86; GARF f. r-9541, op. 1, d. 40, l. 29. 106. Materials on changes to payments with regard to ­orders and medals of the USSR and about the order of the exchange of coupon books and train tickets ( January to June 1947), GARF f. r-7523, op. 39, d. 327; materials for the proj­ect for the ­legal act abolishing ­these privileges ( January to November 1947), GARF f. r-7523, op. 39, d. 335. 107. Excess deaths (civilian and military) are estimated, depending on the source, at twenty-­one to twenty-­seven million, with the upper limit more likely than the lower. See O. M. Verbitskaia, “Liudskie poteri v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: Territoriia i naselenie posle voiny,” in Naselenie Rossii v XX veke: Tom 2. 1940–1959, ed. Iu. A.

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Poliakov (Moscow: Rosspen, 2001), 131–32. The armed forces counted 6.8 million deaths in combat and as a result of accidents, illness, and wounds. The total demographic losses of the military, including MIAs and nonrecovered POWs, number 9.2 million. G. F. Krivosheev and M. F. Filimoshin, “Poteri vooruzhennykh sil SSSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine,” in Poliakov, Naselenie Rossii v XX veke, 27. Depending on which of t­ hese numbers we compare, we arrive at a ratio of civilians to soldiers of 2.3 to 1 at the lower end and 3.9 to 1 at the higher end. 108. Mark Edele, “The Impact of War and the Costs of Superpower Status,” in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Rus­sian History, ed. Simon Dixon, forthcoming 2021. 109. Bernice Q. Madison, Social Welfare in the Soviet Union (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968), 81; Beate Fieseler, “Die Invaliden des ‘Grossen Vaterländischen Krieges’ der Sowjetunion—­Eine politische Sozialgeschichte 1941–1991” (Habilitationsschrift, Bochum: Ruhr-­Universität Bochum, 2003), 21–25; Sheila Fitzpatrick, “The Legacy of the Civil War,” in Party, State, and Society in the Rus­sian Civil War: Explorations in Social History, ed. William Rosenberg, Diane P. Koenker, and Ronald G. Suny, 393. 110. RGASPI f.17, op.125, d.391, l.70–73. 111. Cited in Joseph Fronczak, “The Fascist Game: Transnational Po­liti­cal Transmission and the Genesis of the U.S. Modern Right,” Journal of American History 105, no. 3 (December 2018): 578. 112. RGASPI f.17, op.125, d. 391, l.74–76. 113. Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 129–30; W. Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory: A History of the Rus­sian Civil War 1918–1921 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 466–74; Zavgorodnii, Deiatel’nost’, 110–27. 5. The Po­liti­cally Power­ful

1. See Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Po­liti­cal Arena: Critical Junctures, the ­Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin Amer­i­ca (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001). 2. See, for example, Peter Stanley, “Introduction,” in What Did You Do in the War, ­Daddy? A Visual History of Propaganda Posters—­A Se­lection from the Australian War Memorial (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983); Carmel Shute, “Heroines and Heroes: Sexual My­thol­ogy in Australia 1914–1918,” in Gender and War: Australians at War in the Twentieth ­Century, ed. Marilyn Lake and Joy Damousi (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 23–42; Peter Stanley, The Crying Years: Australia’s G ­ reat War (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2017), 48–49, 157, 164; Michael McKernan, The Australian P­ eople and the ­Great War (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1980), 98–112. 3. Ken Inglis, Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008), 119–20. 4. See, for example, Joan Beaumont, Broken Nation: Australians in the G ­ reat War (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2013), 90–91. 5. ­There was considerable returned soldier vio­lence in Australia, peaking in 1919 and continuing into the early 1920s, with major riots in several Australian urban centers. See Martin Crotty, “The RSL and Post–­First World War Returned Soldier Vio­ lence in Australia,” in Legacies of Vio­lence: Rendering the Unspeakable Past in Modern Australia, ed. Robert Mason (New York: Berghahn, 2017), 185–98.

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6. “Return of Mr Hughes. Enthusiastic Welcome. Soldiers Drag Car Through Streets,” Age, August 25, 1919, 7. 7. “Returned Men’s Wishes. Mr Hughes and Profiteers,” Sydney Morning Herald, August 25, 1919, 8; “Return of Mr Hughes. Enthusiastic Welcome. Soldiers Drag Car Through Streets,” Age, August 25, 1919, 7. 8. “Return of Mr Hughes,” Age, August 25, 1919, 7. Emphasis ours. He also claimed, “But for the men who went out from this country to fight, Australia would have been in chains.” 9. “Return of Mr. Hughes,” Age, August 25, 1919, 7; “Returned Men’s Wishes,” Sydney Morning Herald, August 25, 1919, 8; Terry King, “Telling the Sheep from the Goats: ‘Dinkum Diggers’ and ­Others, World War I,” in An Anzac Muster: War and Society in Australia and New Zealand 1914–18 and 1939–45, ed. Judith Smart and Tony Wood, Monash Publications in History no. 14 (Clayton, Victoria: Dept. of History, Monash University, 1992), 86, 90, 94. 10. “Mr. Hughes. A Fighting Speech. Prob­lems of the ­Future. Tribute to Soldiers. ­Causes of Industrial Unrest,” Sydney Morning Herald, August 26, 1919, 7. 11. “Peace Delegates Return. Mr. Hughes and Sir Joseph Cook. Wonderful Welcome Home. Unpre­ce­dented Scenes of Enthusiasm,” Argus, September 1, 1919, 7. 12. “Peace Delegates Return,” Argus, September 1, 1919, 8. 13. “Peace Delegates Return,” Argus, September 1, 1919, 7. 14. See “Mr. Hughes at Bendigo. Constituents’ ­Great Welcome. Prob­lems of the ­Future. ‘I am for the Soldier’,” Argus, September 2, 1919, 7; “Mr. Hughes in Sydney. Soldiers’ War Welcome. ‘Olive Branch or Sword.’ An Appeal for Unity,” Argus, September 15, 1919, 7; “Mr. Hughes in Brisbane. Scenes of Wild Enthusiasm. Raid on ­Labour Rooms,” Argus, October  22, 1919, 15; W. Farmer Whyte, William Morris Hughes: His Life and Times (Melbourne: Angus and Robertson, 1957), 411. 15. For the early years of the Australian repatriation system in World War I, see Clem Lloyd and Jaqui Rees, The Last Shilling: A History of Repatriation in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994), 63–85. On Hughes’s leadership style, see Stuart Macintyre, The Oxford History of Australia, Volume 4—­The Succeeding Age: 1901– 1942 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1986), 161–62, 168. 16. Crotty, “RSL and Post–­First World War,” 185–98. 17. See Marilyn Lake, “The Power of Anzac,” in Australia: Two Centuries of War and Peace, ed. M. McKernan and M. Browne (Canberra: Australian War Memorial in Association with Allen and Unwin, 1988), 194–222. 18. Colin Hughes, Mr Prime Minister: Australian Prime Ministers 1901–­1972 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1976), 59–60, 62. 19. For a full discussion of t­ hese negotiations, see Martin Crotty, “ ‘What More Do You Want?’: Billy Hughes and Gilbert Dyett in late 1919,” History Australia 16, no. 1 (2019): 52–71. For other accounts of ­these meetings, see L. F. Fitzhardinge, William Morris Hughes: A Po­liti­cal Biography, vol. 2, The ­Little Digger 1914–­1952 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1979), 423; Lloyd and Rees, Last Shilling, 191–96. 20. On the fluctuating orga­nizational fortunes of the RSL in the interwar years, see Martin Crotty, “The Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia, 1916– 1946,” in Anzac Legacies: Australians and the Aftermath of War, ed. Martin Crotty and Marina Larson (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010): 166–86. On its negotiation tactics, see G.  L. Kristianson, The Politics of Patriotism: The Pressure Group

NOTES TO PA GES 1 2 6 – 1 2 9

211

Activities of the Returned Ser­viceman’s League (Canberra: Australia National University Press, 1966), 20–69. 21. Kristianson, Politics of Patriotism, 235. 22. For a fuller discussion of the membership issue and its management, and the rise of the Australian Legion of Ex-­Servicemen, see Crotty, “Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League.” 23. For a full list of gains and achievements in the war years to mid-1944, see “League’s Solid Achievements,” Reveille, July 1, 1944, 3. 24. New South Wales Branch, Annual Report, 1942–43, 10. Report located in New South Wales RSL, ANZAC House, Sydney. 25. Nancy Beck Young, “ ‘Do Something for the Soldier Boys’: Congress, the G.I. Bill of Rights, and the Contours of Liberalism,” in Veteran’s Policies, Veteran’s Politics: New Perspectives on Veterans in the Modern United States, ed. Stephen R. Ortiz (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 217. 26. Young, “ ‘Do Something for the Soldier Boys,’ ” 206–7. 27. Young, “ ‘Do Something for the Soldier Boys,’ ” 200–201, As noted by Mettler, veterans of World War II w ­ ere able to draw on a long American tradition of citizen-­ soldiering in defense of the republic. See Suzanne Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 18. On conservative fears of demobilization, see Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, The GI Bill: A New Deal for Veterans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 43, 47. 28. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 37–38. 29. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Consumption in Postwar Amer­i­ca (New York: Vintage, 2003), 118–19. 30. Robert Saldin, War, the American State, and Politics since 1898 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 104. 31. Robert Francis Saxe, Settling Down: WWII Veterans Challenge to the Postwar Consensus (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 16–17. Several years a­ fter the war, a comparative study of American and Canadian veterans by Robert ­England articulated a similar view: “In Germany ­after World War I, veterans formed the vanguard of the Nazi movement. Mass mobilization left large bodies of men ready to the hand of Hitler, Goering, and their comrades of World War I. What to do with its soldiers was the dilemma faced by Germany, as it must be faced by all militarist states. . . . ​Our veterans have fought for their form of democracy. It is to be hoped that they ­will be able to identify with a shrewdness equal to that of Tom Paine the risks of authoritarianism and the fatal drift ­after war into brutal use of force. Much ­will depend on the veterans, particularly t­hose of World War II.” See Robert E ­ ngland: Twenty Million World War Veterans (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 12. 32. Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 19; Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 29. 33. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 43. 34. Young, “ ‘Do Something for the Soldier Boys,’ ” 207. 35. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 52. 36. Mark D. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again: American’s WWII Veterans Come Home (New York: Lexington Books, 2001), 27; Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 53–57. 37. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again, 25. 38. Margot Canady, “Building a Straight State: Sexuality and Social Citizenship ­under the 1944 G.I. Bill,” Journal of American History 90, no. 3 (December 2003): 939;

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Michael J. Bennett, When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern Amer­ i­ca (Washington, DC: Barssey’s, 1996), 129, 146–47. 39. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 60–64; Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again, 29; Kathleen J. Frydl, The GI Bill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 125. 40. Helmut Norpoth, Unsurpassed: The Popu­lar Appeal of Franklin Roo­se­velt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), chap. 6. American ser­vicemen voted for Roo­se­velt over Dewey by a margin of 59 to 41 ­percent. 41. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 70. 42. Edward Humes, Over ­Here: How the GI Bill Transformed the American Dream (Orlando: Harcourt, 2006), 38; Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again, 30. The frantic search to find Gibson and get him back to Washington is described in dramatic detail in Bennett, When Dreams Came True, 183–92. 43. Altschuler and Blumin, GI Bill, 71. 44. The VA had sixty-­five thousand employees and a bud­get of $177.6 million in 1945, which increased to two hundred thousand employees and a bud­get of over half a billion dollars two years l­ ater. See Michael D. Gambone, The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American Society (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005), 52. 45. David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 150, 191; Robert H. Ferrell (ed.), Truman in the White House: The Diary of Eben A. Ayers (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 49. 46. McCullough, Truman, 160–61; Alonzo L. Hamby, Man of the P­ eople: A Life of Harry S. Truman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 86, 180; Harold F. Gosnell, Truman’s Crises: A Po­liti­cal Biography of Harry S. Truman (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980), 57, 71, 267–68; 47. David A. Nichols, “Eisenhower and African American Civil Rights,” in A Companion to Dwight D. Eisenhower, ed. Chester J. Pach (Malden, MA: Wiley and Sons, 2017), 208; “Eisenhower Lauds G.I. Survivors’ Bill,” New York Times, August 2, 1956, 11. Eisenhower oversaw the extension of the GI Bill to Korean veterans, albeit in slightly reduced terms, and increases in benefits for families of the deceased. He displayed none of the hostility ­toward veterans’ entitlements that Roo­se­velt had. 48. Michael D. Gambone, Long Journeys Home: American Veterans of World War II, ­Korea, and Vietnam (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2017), 36. 49. Andrew E. Hunt, The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans against the War (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 5. It was not, however, the first antiwar veterans’ group. Veterans against the War protested, albeit in a low-­key manner, against US involvement in the Korean War. The group was not established by veterans of the Korean conflict, however. Small veterans’ organ­izations such as the Ad Hoc Committee of Veterans for Peace in Vietnam also protested against US involvement in Vietnam, but it too was formed by veterans of previous wars. See Gambone, Long Journeys Home, 165–66. 50. Thomas A. Rumer, The American Legion: An Official History 1919–1989 (New York: M. Evans, 1990), 397–98, 416; Gerald Nicosia, Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans’ Movement (New York: Three Rivers, 2004), chaps. 1–3. 51. Hunt, Turning, 112–16. 52. Rumer, American Legion, 402–3. 53. “Veterans’ Benefits?,” Winter Soldier 3, no. 8 (October 1973): 6–7; Rumer, American Legion, 430.

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213

54. Vietnam Veterans of Amer­i­ca, “Who We Are: History,” https://­vva​.­org​/­who​ -­we​-­are​/­history​/­, accessed July 31, 2019. For an additional perspective on the divide between generations of veterans, see Nicosia, Home to War. 55. Mark Edele, “Soviet Veterans as an Entitlement Group, 1945–1955,” Slavic Review 65, no. 1 (2006): 111–37; Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popu­lar Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Robert Dale, Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad: Soldiers to Civilians (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). 56. Amir Weiner, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2001); Ethel Dunn, “Disabled Rus­sian War Veterans: Surviving the Collapse of the Soviet Union,” in Disabled Veterans in History, ed. David A. Gerber (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 251–70. 57. Edele, Soviet Veterans, chap. 8; Martin Crotty and Mark Edele, “Total War and Entitlement: T ­ owards a Global History of Veteran Privilege,” Australian Journal of Politics & History 59, no. 1 (2013): 23–31. 58. Ángel Alcalde, “The World Veterans Federation. Cold War Politics and Globalization,” in War Veterans and the world a­ fter 1945: Cold War Politics, Decolonization, Memory, ed. Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (London: Routledge, 2018), 33–49; Edele, Soviet Veterans, 162–63; Ángel Alcalde, “War Veterans, International Politics, and the Early Cold War, 1945–50,” Cold War History (online 2018): DOI: 10.1080​/146​ 82745.2018.1455663. 59. State Archive of the Rus­sian Federation (GARF) f. r-9541, op. 11, dl. 49, l. 8. 60. Edele, Soviet Veterans, 162–74. 61. GARF f. r-9541, op. 1. d. 179, l. 5. 62. Matthew P. Gallagher, The Soviet History of World War II: Myths, Memories, and Realities (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963); Christel Lane, The Rites of Rulers: Ritual in Industrial Society—­the Soviet Case (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Nina Tumarkin, The Living & the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Rus­sia (New York: BasicBooks, 1994); Amir Weiner, “The Making of a Dominant Myth: The Second World War and the Construction of Po­liti­cal Identities within the Soviet Polity,” Rus­sian Review 55 (1996): 638–60; Martin Hoffmann, “Der Zweite Weltkrieg in der offiziellen sowjetischen Erinnerungskultur,” in Krieg Und Erinnerung: Fallstudien Zum 19; Und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Helmut Berding, Klaus Heller, and Winfried Speitkamp (Göttingen: Vandernhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 129–43; Lars Karl, “Von Helden und Menschen. Der Zweite Weltkrieg im sowjetischen Spielfilm (1941–1965),” Osteuropa 1 (2002): 67–82; Denise J. Youngblood, Rus­sian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914–2005 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007); Nikolai Koposov, Pamiat’ strogogo rezhima: Istoriia i politika v Rossii (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2011); Stephen M. Norris, “Memory for Sale: Victory Day 2010 and Rus­sian Remembrance,” Soviet & Post-­Soviet Review 38, no. 2 (2011): 201–29. 63. Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Karl Qualls, From Ruins to Reconstruction: Urban Identity in Soviet Sevastopol ­after World War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009); Vicky Davis, Myth Making in the Soviet Union and Modern Rus­sia: Remembering World War II in Brezhnev’s Hero City (London: I. B. Tauris, 2018).

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64. Stenographic report of the plenary meeting of the Soviet Committee of War Veterans (September 29, 1956), GARF f. r-9541, op. 1, d. 14, l. 11. For another example, see the protocol of the meeting of the section of frontline soldiers within the SKVV, December 20, 1956, GARF f. r-9541, op. 1, d. 40, l.25. 65. Report on letters received by Red Star in July 1946, Rus­sian State Archive of Socio-­Political History (RGASPI) f. 17, op. 125, d. 429, l. 138–62, ­here: 158. 66. Stenographic report of meeting of Presidium of Soviet Committee of War Veterans, February 3, 1958, GARF f. r-8541, op. 1, d. 181, l. 85. 67. Report on proposals on the new constitution received by Red Star newspaper ( July 1, 1977), Rus­sian State Archive of Con­temporary History (RGANI) f. 5, op. 73, d. 122, l. 20. 68. RGANI, f. 5, op. 73, d. 122, l. 31, 36, 46, 47, 53, 57. 69. Brezhnev’s war rec­ord was played up in his war memoirs: Leonid Il’ich Brezhnev, Malaia zemlia: Vozrozhdenie (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1979). 70. “O proekte konstituttsii (Osnovnogo Zakona) Soiuza Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik i itogakh ego vsenarodnogo obsuzhdeniia: Doklad tovarishcha L. I. Brezhneva na sessii Verkhovnogo Sovieta SSSR 4 oktiabria 1977 g.,” Pravda (October 5, 1977), 22. 71. See the discussions in the SKVV Plenum on December 23, 1977 and in the meeting of SKVV section secretaries, June 20, 1978; GARF f. r-9541, op. 1, d. 1484; d. 1518. 72. Reports on letters received by newspapers in 1978: RGANI f. 5, op. 75, d. 250; d. 257. 73. Resolution No. 907 by Central Committee of CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] and Council of Ministers of USSR (November 10, 1978), SP SSSR no. 27, st. 164 (1978), 540–42. 74. Mark Edele, “Collective Action in Soviet Society: The Case of War Veterans,” in Writing the Stalin Era: Sheila Fitzpatrick and Soviet Historiography, ed. Golfo Alexopoulos, Julie Hessler, and Kiril Tomoff (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 117–32. 75. Edele, Soviet Veterans, 205–14. 76. Edele, Soviet Veterans, 217. 77. On the Soviet welfare state, see, for example, Bernice Q. Madison, Social Welfare in the Soviet Union (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968); Mark B. Smith, Property of Communists: The Urban Housing Program from Stalin to Khrushchev (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010); Maria C. Galmarini-­K abala, The Right to Be Helped: Deviance, Entitlement, and the Soviet Moral Order (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016); Claire L. Shaw, Deaf in the USSR: Marginality, Community, and Soviet Identity, 1917–1991 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017). For a summary of the lit­er­a­ture, see Mark Edele, The Soviet Union: A Short History (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2019), chap. 8. 78. Mark Edele, “Veterans and the Welfare State: World War II in the Soviet Context,” Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 20, no. 5 (2011): 18–33. 79. Stalin laid out his sociology in a November 25, 1936 speech on the new constitution, available ­here: “O proekte Konstitutsii Soiuza SSR: Doklad na Chrezvychainom VIII Vsesoiuznom s”ezde Sovetov 25 noiabria 1936 goda,” Marxists Internet Archive, last modified February 2011, https://­www​.­marxists​.­org​/­r usskij​/­stalin​/­t14​/­t14​_­40​ .­htm (in Rus­sian); “On the Draft Constitution of the U.S.S.R: Report Delivered at the

NOTES TO PA GES 1 3 7 – 1 4 0

215

Extraordinary Eighth Congress of Soviet of the U.S.S.R.,” Marxists Internet Archive, accessed November  11, 2018, https://­www​.­marxists​.­org​/­reference​/­archive​/­stalin​ /­works​/­1936​/­11​/­25​.­htm. 80. On generations in Soviet history, see G. F. Achminow, “The Second Soviet Generation,” Prob­lems of Communism 1, no. 1 (1952): 12–15; Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Rus­sia’s Cold War Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 81. Gorbachev’s report to Central Committee Plenum, January 27, 1987, Pravda ( January 28, 1987), 2–3. 82. In the mea­sures we introduced at the beginning, this was more in terms of po­ liti­cal patronage than a power­f ul voice in policy making or memory creation. 83. As noted by Fred Riggs in his comprehensive study of the establishment of the veteran program, “no comprehensive plan existed for the retirement of [combat] ineffectives from the Armed Forces and the prob­lem seemed so vast that l­ittle action was taken ­towards solving it.” See Fred Riggs, The Consulting Firm, the U.S. Aid Agency and the Chinese Veterans Program (Syracuse: Inter-­University Case Study Program, 1970), 4. 84. Hsiao-­ting Lin, Accidental State: Chiang Kai-­shek, the United States and the Making of Taiwan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 128–29. According to Lin, ­these blunt statements ­were “like a death sentence for the Nationalists on Taiwan.” The noninterventionist approach to Taiwan was formalized in National Security Council Document 48/2. On Truman’s distrust and disrespect of Chiang Kai-­shek (of which Chiang was acutely aware), see David Cheng Chang, The Hijacked War: The Story of Chinese POWs in the Korean War (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2020), 82–83. Gen. MacArthur, Chang notes, was “Chiang’s champion” (86). 85. Lin, Accidental State, 170–71. 86. Chang, The Hijacked War, 81. 87. See “Anti-­U.S. Rioters in Taipei Curbed by Chiang Troops,” New York Times, May 25, 1957, 1. In 2017 terms, this is roughly equivalent to $6,700,480,715. Neil H. Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan: A Study of Foreign Aid, Self-­Help, and Development (New York: Praeger, 1966), 38. Between 1951 and 1965, Taiwan’s GDP ­rose from $880 million to $2.4 billion, its population rising from 8.4 million to 12.6 million. Jacoby, who had studied multiple foreign aid programs, noted that the United States financed a “rich” program of economic assistance to “­Free China.” Equally impor­tant, the terms of this funding w ­ ere generous. All payments between 1951 and 1955, for example, ­were “outright grants” and throughout the aid program (1951–1965), 82 ­percent ­were grants (10, 46). 88. Aaron William Moore, Writing War: Soldiers Rec­ord the Japa­nese Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 279. 89. Lin, Accidental State, 180–83. Dennis Fred Simon, “External Incorporation and Internal Reform,” in Contending Approaches to the Po­liti­cal Economy of Taiwan, ed. Edwin Winkler and Susan Greenhalgh (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1988), 139. Simon writes that “the major impetus to implement a comprehensive land reform had come from the United States.” 90. Stephan Haggard, Pathways from the Periphery: The Politics of Growth in the Newly Industrializing Economies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 84–85; Jacoby, in U.S. Aid to Taiwan, writes that “U.S. aid helped to create a booming private sector of

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Taiwan’s economy indirectly,” largely by inducing favorable economic policies on the part of the KMT government (51). Without US aid, “private enterprise would not have become, by 1965, the mainspring in Taiwan’s economy (139). 91. Lin, Accidental State, 189–91; according to Simon (“External Incorporation and Internal Reform”) “most Kuomintang officials resented their degree of dependence on the United States” (139). 92. The large size of the US del­e­ga­tion in Taiwan—130 p­ eople in the mid-1950s—­ was repeatedly raised by skeptics of foreign aid in Congress and was even said to have contributed to an anti–­United States riot in 1957. See Cong. Rec., May 29, 1957, Vol. 103, part 5, 7956. The riot was prompted by the acquittal of a US Army sergeant who murdered a Taiwanese. See “Anti-­U.S. Rioters in Taipei,” New York Times, May 25, 1957, 1; Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan, 170. 93. Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan, 36. 94. Riggs, Consulting Firm, 1–2. 95. Cong. Rec. Vol. 103, part 2, (February 7, 1957), 1695–1696. Allen J. Ellender Collection, MS 00001, Archives and Special Collections, Ellender Memorial Library, Nicholls State University, Thibodaux, LA. for US aid to Taiwan had strong support in the House of Representatives as well. Gerald Ford, Republican of Michigan, argued that the military forces on Taiwan “are an anchor for us, the ­Free World, against any further aggression from China. If economic conditions in Formosa deteriorate, obviously the military potency of t­hose forces ­will be drastically jeapordized.” See Con. Rec., July 2, 1958, Vol. 104, Part 10, 12950. 96. Chiang Ching-­kuo was a member of the KMT’s Central Committee and acting chief of the National Security Bureau. When the US consulting firm arrived on Taiwan in 1955 to assess the program already in place, it found many of the same leadership prob­lems as Civil Affairs on the mainland: the top leaders, ­until the arrival of Chiang Ching-­kuo, often held concurrent jobs, and had not even wanted to be working with veterans in the first place. See Riggs, Consulting Firm, 11–12, 27. 97. Yang Ruizhong, “Taiwan diqu yu dalu diqu tuiwu junren anzhi zhidu bijiao yanjiu,” 71. He writes that “with the change in the international situation [­after the Korean War], Taiwan became a United States ally. It was the US that helped set up Taiwan’s veteran resettlement system and solved the prob­lem of resettling veterans.” Also see Jacoby, U.S. Aid to Taiwan, 171. 98. Cong. Rec. February 7, 1957, Vol. 103, Part 2, 1695. 99. “DPP Lawmakers Oppose Bills Benefiting Veterans,” China Post, December 10, 2007. 100. “Veterans Plan Armed Forces Day Protest of Pension Rule Changes,” China Post, August11, 2016. 101. “Taiwan Military Veterans Clash with Police in Pension Protests,” AFP International Text Wire, February 27, 2018. 102. “Taiwan Lawmakers Brawl over Military Pension Cuts,” AFP International Text Wire, April 20, 2018. 103. “Taiwan Passes Controversial Bill Cutting Veterans’ Pensions,” AFP International Text Wire, June 21, 2018. 104. For roughly a de­cade Taiwan had been downsizing its military (from 450,000 troops to 210,000), resulting in fewer active soldiers contributing to the pension fund.

NOTES TO PA GES 1 4 5 – 1 4 8

217

105. “Tsai Joins Hung, Denounces W ­ oman’s Abuse of Veterans,” China Post, June 11, 2016. 106. Lee Pennington, Casualties of History: Wounded Japa­nese Ser­vicemen and the Second World War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 199. 107. The ­others include Israel’s Mapai Party, Sweden’s Social Demo­cratic Party and Italy’s Christian Demo­cratic Party. See T.J. Pempel (ed.), Uncommon Democracies: The One-­Party Dominant Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990). 108. Mikiso Hane, Modern Japan: A Historical Survey, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001), 304–5. 109. Takemae Eiji, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy, trans. and adapted from the Japa­nese by Robert Ricketts and Sabastian Swann (New York: Continuum, 2002), 265; Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 48. Most members of ­these parties had been politicians in the prewar conservative parties, particularly the Seiyukai and Minseito. 110. Gerald Curtis, The Japa­nese Way of Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 7. In July 1948 the Liberal Party announced that “it was being joined by twenty-­five high-­ranking bureaucrats,” two of whom became prime ministers. 111. Schaller, American Occupation, 49. 112. Eiji, Inside GHQ, 478. 113. Curtis, Japa­nese Way, 8. He calls the move against the Japa­nese Communist Party ( JCP) in 1950 a “frontal assault.” The Japa­nese Communist Party had strong ties to the l­ abor movement but was not universally supported within it. Some ­unions w ­ ere quite supportive of the purge. Dower writes that the Reverse Course “helped establish a domestic conservative hegemony of politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen that remained dominant ­until the end of the ­century.” See John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of WWII (New York: W. W. Norton/ New Press, 1999), 273. 114. See Tim Weiner, “CIA Spent Millions to Support Japa­nese Right in 50’s and 60’s,” New York Times, October 9, 1994. The LDP has denied receiving such funds. The CIA also infiltrated the Japan Socialist Party, which it suspected was receiving funding from the Soviet Union, and placed agents in youth groups, student groups, and l­abor groups. One agent recalled that obstructing the Japa­nese opposition “was the most impor­tant ­thing we could do.” 115. Curtis, Japa­nese Way, 117. 116. Although authored by American ­lawyers, it had a groundswell of support of many Japa­nese citizens, po­liti­cal parties, and professional organ­izations that pushed it in more liberal directions. See Eiji, Inside GHQ, 273; Dower, Embracing Defeat, 374, 356–57, 404. 117. James McClain, Japan: A Modern History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 565. 118. Scholars have long noted that the LDP was less of a unified party than a collection of factions u ­ nder a broad umbrella of conservatism. See Curtis, Japa­nese Way, 2; McClain, Japan, 565. 119. Curtis, Japa­nese Way, 61. 120. McClain, Japan, 568. As noted by Curtis, the LDP’s “determination to win, more than anything ­else, defines the most impor­tant difference between this perennially governing party and its perpetual opposition.” See Japa­nese Way, 43. Other scholars,

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seeking to explain the LDP’s domination well beyond other long-­term dominant parties (such as in Israel and Sweden) point to its “flexible adaptation to change, in par­tic­ u­lar to its ability to broaden its social interest co­ali­tion.” See Michio Muramatsu and Ellis S. Kraus, “The Dominant Party and Social Co­ali­tions in Japan,” in Pempel, Uncommon Democracies, 283. They have accomplished this without alienating its core supporters. 121. In addition to ­these groups t­ here ­were also “streetwise professional politicians,” who often clashed with former bureaucrat politicians. See Curtis, Japa­nese Way, 91. The field of Japa­nese politics is divided over just who rules—­former elite bureaucrats, as argued by the late Chal­mers Johnson, or LDP politicians (Gerald Curtis). In the 1955 elections, for example, 43 ­percent of farmers supported the LDP, compared with just 24 ­percent for the Japa­nese Socialist Party. See Curtis, Japa­nese Way, 121. 122. Curtis, Japa­nese Way, 121. In the 1955 election the LDP had double the support of the Socialist Party among merchants and small business o ­ wners. 123. The L ­ abor Federation’s (Sohyo) influence over the Japa­nese Socialist Party “was so ­g reat that the party came to be referred to as Sohyo’s ‘po­liti­cal bureau.’ ” See Gerald Curtis, The Logic of Japa­nese Politics: Leaders, Institutions, and the Logic of Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 46. 124. Pennington, Casualties of History, 210. 125. On this impor­tant comparative point, see Gregory J. Kasza, One World of Welfare: Japan in Comparative Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), chap. 2. For a useful summary of the reasons why war has had critical impact on welfare provisions, see 44–45. 126. Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia, 2006), 64. 127. Kasza, One World of Welfare, 37. 128. Seraphim, War Memory, 65. 129. Kasza, One World of Welfare, 47. 130. Seraphim, War Memory, 67; Hiroko Storm, “War ­Widows in Postwar Japan,” Asian Profile 20, no. 2 (April 1992): 126. 131. Seraphim, War Memory, 70. 132. For a comprehensive review of t­ hese efforts see James J. Orr, The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i, 2001), Ch.6. 133. Seraphim, War Memory, 81. 134. Moore, Writing War, 252. 135. Victor Louzon, “From Japa­nese Soldiers to Chinese Rebels: Colonial Hegemony, War Experience, and Spontaneous Remobilization during the 1947 Taiwanese Rebellion,” Journal of Asian Studies 77, no. 1 (February 2018): 171. 136. Pennington, Casualties of History, 211–12. Two years ­later the Diet promulgated the Law for the Welfare of Physically Disabled Persons, which deliberately excluded disabled veterans as a category of entitlement. As a result, he argues, “disabled veterans lost the ability to agitate for preferential treatment on the basis that they had acquired their disabilities during the course of military ser­vice (i.e., ser­vice to the state). All ­people with physical disabilities, ex-­military and civilian alike, now received social welfare protections by law,” (217). 137. On this point, see Kasza, One World of Welfare, 51.

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219

138. United States National Archives, College Park, Mary­land, Rec­ord Group 331, box 2275U, “Fukuin Gunjun Dantai” folder; Rec­ord Group 331, box 05897. The survey was conducted by the Hokkoku Mainichi (Kanazawa), April 6, 1946. 139. Pennington, Casualties of History, 14, 16. 140. Moore, Writing War, 273. Pennington notes that 180 disabled veterans formed the “Disabled Veterans’ Welfare Association” at the Tokyo Second National Hospital in early summer 1947 while the national organ­ization was being formed. See Pennington, Casualties of History, 212. 141. The following two paragraphs draw on Lee Pennington, “Scar Wars: Japa­nese Disabled Veterans, Adversity Narratives, and the Shōkeikan,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, Denver, CO, March 21–24, 2019. Cited with permission. 142. Even though the JDVA was a new organ­ization with new bylaws and aims, its name harkened back to the war­time Greater Japan Disabled Veterans Association (Dai Nihon Shōi Gunjinkai). 143. For the full text of the law, see “Senshōbyōsha tokubetsu engo hō (zenbun),” Nishō gekkan 116 (August 1, 1963): 2. 144. See Article 9 in “Senshōbyōsha tokubetsu engo hō (zenbun).” 145. Seraphim, War Memory, 163. 146. Seraphim, War Memory, 80. As noted by scholars of the “bureaucratic dominance” school, many of ­these laws w ­ ere written by relevant ministries, although passed by the LDP-­dominated Diet. In this model, the bureaucracy “rules,” while the LDP “reigns.” 147. Seraphim, War Memory, 227. She writes that “conservative politicians recognized early on that the memory of the war dead generated po­liti­cal capital” (238). Also, see Karel van Wolferen, The Enigma of Japa­nese Power: P­ eople and Politics in a Stateless Nation (New York: Vintage, 1990), 57. He notes that veterans’ organ­izations and the association of war disabled and the war bereaved “continue to be a significant force pressuring the LDP to endorse and participate in controversial symbolic activities extolling the military past.” He also recounts how an LDP politician made a special point of visiting a disabled veteran in a “hamlet recently added to his constituency.” Veterans, however, rarely chose to put themselves up for election in villages. See Soda Cultural Research Institute, “Investigation of Life of Demobilized Soldiers in Agricultural Villages,” September 30, 1946. United States National Archives, College Park, Mary­ land, Rec­ord Group 331, box 05743. 148. Lori Watt, When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009), 204. 149. Moore, Writing War, 254. 150. Watt, When Empire Comes Home, 204. James Orr argues that this sense of victimhood had an international ele­ment to it as well, as it provided the Japa­nese with an “exclusive and seductive claim to leadership of the world antinuclear weapon movement.” See Victims as Heroes, 36. 151. Yoshikuni Igarashi, Homecomings: The Belated Return of Japan’s Lost Soldiers (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 82. 152. Igarashi, Homecomings, 106. 153. Igarashi, Homecomings, 106. 154. Moore, Writing War, 285.

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155. Igarashi, Homecomings, 97. 156. Allan K. Wildman, The End of the Rus­sian Imperial Army, 2 vols. (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1980–1987). 157. James M. Diehl, “Germany: Veterans’ Politics u ­ nder Three Flags,” in The War Generation: Veterans of the First World War, ed. Stephen R. Ward (Port Washington, NY: National University Publications, 1975), 149–50. 158. Diehl, “Germany,” 149–50; Diehl, The Thanks of the Fatherland: German Veterans ­after the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), chap. 1; Ángel Alcalde, War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Eu­rope (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 159. Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, chap. 2. 160. Diehl, “Germany,” 180. 161. This pact, the assumptions driving it, and the pro­cess of the orga­nizational and ­legal development is treated in detail in Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland. Further detail is provided by Jay Lockenour, Soldiers as Citizens: Former Wehrmacht Officers in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945–1955 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001); Bert-­Oliver Manig, Die Politik der Ehre: Die Rehabilitierung der Berufssoldaten in der früheren Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2004); and Birgit Schwelling, Heimkehr—­Erinnerung—­Integration: Der Verband der Heimkehrer, die ehemaligen Kriegsgefangenen und die westdeutsche Nachkriegsgesellschaft (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010). 162. See Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, chaps. 3–6. 163. Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, 121. 164. See Diehl, Thanks of the Fatherland, chaps. 3–6. 165. René Rohrkamp, “Weltanschaulich gefestigte Kämpfer”: Die Soldaten der Waffen­SS 1939–1945; Organisation, Personal, Sozialstrukturen (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010), 109–18; Karsten Wilke, Die “Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit” (HIAG) 1950–1990: Veteranen der Waffen-­SS in der Bundesrepublik (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2011). 166. “Waffen-­SS: Spaziergang mit Mutti,” Der Spiegel (April 29, 1985), 69–73. 167. Gerhard Kromschröder, “Familientreffen der Nazis,” Stern no. 22 (1985), repr. www​.­reporter​-­formum​.­de. Number of protesters from Thomas Kühne, The Rise and Fall of Comradeship: Hitler’s Soldiers, Male Bonding and Mass Vio­lence in the Twentieth ­Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 287n65. 168. Steffen Werther and Madeleine Hurd, “Go East, Old Man: The Ritual Spaces of SS Veterans’ Memory Work,” Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research 6 (2014): 331. 169. Peter Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 270. 170. Fritzsche, Life and Death, 270. 171. Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies, The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-­ Soviet War in American Popu­lar Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). More broadly, see Omer Bartov, Germany’s War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). 172. Thomas Kühne, “Zwischen Vernichtungskrieg und Freizeitgesellschaft: Die Veteranenkultur der Bundesrepublik (1945–1995),” in Nachkrieg in Deutschland, ed. Klaus Naumann (Hamburg: Hamburger Editionen, 2001); Jörg Echternkamp, “Arbeit am Mythos: Soldatengenerationen der Wehrmacht im Urteil der west-­und ostdeutschen Nachkriegsgesellschaft,” in Nachkrieg in Deutschland, ed. Klaus Naumann

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(Hamburg: Hamburger Editionen, 2001), 430–35; Vera Neumann, “Kampf um Anerkennung: Die westdeutsche Kriegsfolgengesellschaft im Spiegel der Versorgungsämter,” in Naumann, Nachkrieg in Deutschland, 364–68. 173. Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann (eds.), Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1995); the exhibition was eventually closed over a controversy on mislabeled photos. The cata­logue of the revamped and revised second exhibition is Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (ed.), Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941–1944—­Ausstellungskatalog (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2002). On the overall debate, see Christian Hartmann, Johannes Hürter, and Ulrike Jureit, Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Bilanz einer Debatte (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2005). 174. Thomas Kühne, The Rise and Fall of Comradeship. Hitler’s Soldiers, Male Bonding and Mass Vio­lence in the Twentieth ­Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), chap. 9. 175. Fritzsche, Life and Death, 282–83. See also Wolfram Wette and Gerd R. Ueberschar (eds.), Sta­lin­grad: Mythos und Wirklichkeit einer Schlacht (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1992); Jürgen Förster (ed.), Sta­lin­grad: Ereignis—­Wirkung—­Symbol (Munich: ­Piper, 1993); Jens Ebert (ed.), Feldpostbriefe aus Sta­lin­grad: November 1942 bis Januar 1943 (Munich: dtv, 2006). 176. ­There ­were individual exceptions to this rule, men who tried to rescue potential victims and resisted the genocidal war as best as they could. See Wolfram Wette (ed.), Retter in Uniform: Handlungspielräume im Vernichtungskrieg der Wehrmacht (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 2003). 177. A. E. Epivanow and Hein Mayer, Die Tragödie der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in Sta­lin­grad von 1942 bis 1956 nach russischen Archivunterlagen (Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1996); Stefan Karner, Im Archipel GUPVI: Kriegsgefangenschaft und Internierung in der Sowjetunion 1941–1956 (Vienna: R. Oldenbourgh, 1995); V. B. Konasov, Sud’by nemetskikh voennoplennykh v SSSR: Diplomaticheskie, pravovye i politicheskie aspekty problemy—­Ocherki, dokumenty (Vologda: Izd-vo Vologodskogo instituta povysheniia kvalifikatsii i perepodgotovki pedagogicheskikh kadrov, 1996); Rüdiger Overmans, “Das Schicksal der deutschen Kriegsgefangenen des Zweiten Weltkrieges,” in Der Zusammenbruch des Deutschen Reiches 1945: Die Folgen des Zweiten Weltkrieges, ed. Rolf-­Dieter Müller (Munich: Deutsche-­Verlags-­Anstalt, 2008), 379–507. 178. Abbott Gleason, Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 179. On the pro­cess by which West German society convinced itself of its victim status, see Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); and his “Deutsche Opfer, Opfer der Deutschen: Kriegsgefangene, Vertriebene, NS-­Verfolgte; Opferausgleich als Identitätspolitik,” in Nachkrieg in Deutschland, 29–58. 180. On the youn­gest cohort, see Malte Herwig, Post-­War Lies: Germany and Hitler’s Long Shadow (Melbourne: Scribe, 2014). 181. Thomas Kühne, “Die Viktimisierungsfalle: Wehrmachtsverbrechen, Geschichtswissenschaft und symbolische Ordnung des Militärs,” in Der Krieg in der Nachkriegszeit: Der Zweite Weltkrieg in Politik und Gesellschaft der Bundesrepublik, ed. Michael Th. Greven and Oliver von Wrochem (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2000), 183–96.

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Conclusion

1. Mark Edele, “Soviet Veterans as an Entitlement Group, 1945–1955,” Slavic Review 65, no. 1 (2006): 111–37; Martin Crotty and Mark Edele, “Total War and Entitlement: T ­ owards a Global History of Veteran Privilege,” Australian Journal of Politics & History 59, no. 1 (2013): 15–32, esp. 15–16 and 16n2. 2. Neil J. Diamant, Embattled Glory: Veterans, Military Families and the Politics of Patriotism in China, 1949–2007 (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 23–27. 3. Serge Marc Durflinger, Veterans with a Vision: Canada’s War Blinded in Peace and War (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010), 113, 10, 135. 4. Transnational advocacy around issues such as h ­ uman rights and environmental protection have been staples of po­liti­cal science and so­cio­log­i­cal research since the 1990s but have not been applied to the case of veterans’ organ­izations. For the classic work on this issue see Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1998). 5. World Veterans Federation, Comparative Report: Legislation Affecting Disabled Veterans and Other War Victims (n.p.: World Veterans Federation, 1955). 6. The history of this organ­ization is still not written. For a first overview, see Ángel Alcalde, “The World Veterans Federation: Cold War Politics and Globalization,” in War Veterans and the World ­after 1945: Cold War Politics, Decolonization, Memory, ed. Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (New York: Routledge, 2018), 33–49. 7. For a starting point, see Václav Šmidrkal, “The International Federation of Re­ sis­tance Fighters: Communist Anti-­fascism, Germany and Eu­rope,” in Alcalde and Núñez Seixas, War Veterans and the World a­ fter 1945, 17–32. 8. James M. Diehl, The Thanks of the Fatherland: German Veterans a­ fter the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 113. 9. Mark Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popu­lar Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 153–58. 10. Ángel Alcalde, War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Eu­rope (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 11. Julia Eichenberg, Kämpfen für Frieden und Fürsorge: Polnische Veteranen des Ersten Weltkriegs und ihre internationalen Kontakte, 1918–1939 (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2011). See also Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman (eds.), The ­Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 12. On transnational and “entangled” histories, see Michael Werner and Bénedict Zimmermann, “Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung: Der Ansatz der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 26, no. 3 (2002): 607–36; Werner and Zimmermann, “Penser l’histoire croisée: Entre empirie et réflexivité,” Annales: Histoire, Science sociales 58, no. 1 (2003): 7–36; Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor, Comparison and History: Eu­rope in Cross-­National Perspective (London: Routledge, 2004); and Akira Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Pre­sent, and ­Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 13. ­There is already substantial work on Senegal, but far less about other countries, such as India. For the former, see Gregory Mann, Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the 20th ­Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).

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14. Richard S. Fogarty and David Killingray, “Demobilization in British and French Africa at the End of the First World War,” Journal of Con­temporary History 50, no. 1 (2015): 100–123; Stephen Garton, “Demobilization and Empire: Empire Nationalism and Soldier Citizenship in Australia ­after the First World War—in Dominion Context,” Journal of Con­temporary History 50, no. 1 (2015): 124–43; Jonathan Fennell, “South African Veterans and the Institutionalization of Apartheid in South Africa,” in Alcalde and Núñez Seixas, (eds.), War Veterans and the World a­ fter 1945, 53–68; Samuel André-­ Bercovici, “Algerian Veterans’ Associations in the Late Colonial Period in Algeria, 1945–1962,” in Alcalde and Núñez Seixas, War Veterans and the World ­after 1945, 117–33; and Riina Turtio, “Colonial Soldiers and Postcolonial Politics in Guinea, Ivory Coast and Upper Volta, 1958–1973,” in Alcalde and Núñez Seixas, War Veterans and the World ­after 1945, 134–49; Anndal Narayanan, “ ‘Ready to Fight’: Veterans of the Algerian War Take the B ­ attle to France, 1958–1974,” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 42 (Spring 2014), Journal of the Western Society for French History (website), http://­hdl​ .­handle​.­net​/­2027​/­spo​.­0642292​.­0042​.­013; and his “ ‘Monsieur le Ministre, ­We’re Waiting for Our Veterans’ Card’: The Strug­gle for Recognition of French Combatants of the Algerian War, 1956–1974,” Perspectives on Eu­rope 42, no. 2 (Fall 2012): 117–21. 15. Michael D. Gambone, The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American Society (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005), 32; Bruce Scates and Melanie Oppenheimer, The Last B ­ attle: Soldier Settlement in Australia, 1916–1939 (Melbourne: CUP, 2016). 16. Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman, “Aftershocks: Vio­lence in Dissolving Empires ­after the First World War,” Con­temporary Eu­ro­pean History 19, no. 3 (2010): 183–94. 17. Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, “The G ­ reat War and Paramilitarism in Eu­ rope, 1917–1923,” Con­temporary Eu­ro­pean History 19, no. 3 (2010): 267–73. 18. According to the po­liti­cal scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, “wages and benefits are more equal (and higher) where ­unions operate, and less educationally advantaged workers, in par­tic­u­lar, have lost ground as the reach of u ­ nions has ebbed.” This decline, they argue, “has abetted rising in­equality in very obvious ways.” See their Winner Take All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the ­Middle Class (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 57. The American Legion, they write, lost more than 40 ­percent of its membership between 1955 and 1995, while fraternal organ­izations and their female partner organ­izations saw their membership rolls decline by more than 60 ­percent in raw numbers and “by nearly three-­quarters as a share of the population” (143). 19. Discussion with Pennsylvania Veterans of Foreign Wars, Fall 2018, Carlisle, PA. 20. Margo Jefferson, Negroland: A Memoir (New York: Pantheon, 2015), 37.

Index

Adjusted Compensation Act (1924, U.S.), 112 Adler, Jessica, 37, 112–13 African American veterans, 26–27, 181n56, 181n58, 181n64 Akihito (emperor), 151–52 Alcade, Ángel, 165 Allied Veterans of Amer­i­ca, 27 Allport, Alan, 46–47 Altschuler, Glenn, 12 American Legion, 23, 26, 27, 30, 38, 40, 111–15, 117, 129–32 American Revolutionary War veterans, 33 American veterans: African Americans as group of, 26–27, 181n56, 181n58, 181n64; benefits ­after Civil War for, 31, 33–34, 168–69, 183n10; benefits a­ fter Revolutionary War for, 33; benefits a­ fter War on Terror for, 31; benefits a­ fter WWI for, 30, 33–41, 111; benefits ­after WWII for, 20, 22–31, 96, 97, 111, 180n52; casualty statistics on, 183n10; holidays in observance of, 30, 37–38, 41, 177n1; homecoming experiences of, 11, 22–23, 26, 58; or­ga­nized protests by, 22, 110, 113, 131, 165; po­liti­cal organ­ization of, 110–15, 121–27; statistics on, 4. See also United States, po­liti­cal history of Anzac Day (Aust.), 17, 177n1, 178n11 Armed Forces Day (Taiwan), 143–44 Armistice Day (France), 177n1 Armistice Day (U.K.), 108, 177n1 Armistice Day (U.S.), 30, 37–38, 177n1 Army Day (China), 53–54 Association of Vocational Rehabilitation for Honored Ser­vicemen (Taiwan), 86 Australian Legion of Ex-­Servicemen, 127 Australian Soldiers’ Repatriation Act (1943), 19, 20, 99

Australian veterans: benefits for, 16–22, 32–33, 42, 178n13, 179nn23–24; holidays in observance of, 17, 177n1; homecoming experiences of, 11, 15–16, 17; medical care for, 38; po­liti­cal organ­ization of, 99, 121–27; RSL, 15, 18, 105–8, 110, 121–27, 137, 142; statistics on, 4 Ayers, Ron, 47 Baoding Military Acad­emy, 83 Barr, Niall, 107, 110 Barrett, John, 22 benefit path de­pen­dency, 5–6, 15, 18, 115, 117, 127, 143, 166, 170 benefits. See veterans’ benefits, overview Ben-­Gurion, David, 99 The Best Days of our Lives (film), 75 Black American veterans, 26–27, 181n56, 181n58, 181n64 blind veterans, 26, 46, 89, 163. See also disabled veterans Blumin, Stuart, 12 Bolsheviks, 37, 50–51, 56, 117–18, 159, 164. See also Soviet Union, po­liti­cal history of Bolton, H. E., 122 Bonus Bill (1924, U.S.), 110, 112–13 Bonus Bill (1936, U.S.), 38–40, 110 “bonus,” for military ser­vice, 16, 38–41, 110–15, 184n29. See also veterans’ benefits, overview Bonus March, 22, 110, 113–14, 184n29 Bradley, Omar, 29, 164 Brezhnev, Leonid, 121, 134, 135–36, 164, 214n69 Britanskii soiuznik (publication), 135 British Empire Ser­vice League, 109, 165 British Legion, 42, 46, 105–10, 117, 129 British Legion Journal, 108 British Limbless Ex-­Servicemen’s Association, 108

225

22 6 I nde x

British veterans: benefits for, 33, 41–47; holidays in observance of, 108, 177n1; homecoming experiences of, 58, 103; po­liti­cal organ­ization of, 103–10 Burtin, Olivier, 26 Canadian veterans, 42, 163 canfei junren (term), 89–90 casualty statistics, 44, 47, 73, 183n10, 201n125, 203n8, 205n36, 208n107. See also suicide CCP (Chinese Communist Party), 55, 57, 58, 59–60, 61, 82–83, 94–103, 191n146, 199n99. See also China, po­liti­cal history of; Chinese veterans Chao Tsu-yu, 142 Chao Wang, 86 Chen Yi, 86–88, 201n125 Chiang Ching-­kuo, 90, 141–42, 164, 216n96 Chiang Kai-­shek, 82–85, 87, 88, 90, 137–41, 143, 201n118. See also KMT (Kuomintang); Taiwan, po­liti­cal history of ­children. See war orphans China, po­liti­cal history of, 73, 81–86, 200n103, 201n119. See also CCP (Chinese Communist Party); Chinese veterans; Taiwan, po­liti­cal history of China Veterans Association, 101–2 Chinese-­American Economic Stabilization Board, 139 Chinese Communist Party. See CCP (Chinese Communist Party) Chinese veterans: benefits for, 33, 53–62, 191n152, 205n32; CCP politics and lack of support for, 94–103; employment and, 60–61, 191n156, 191n158; holidays in observance of, 53–54; homecoming experiences of, 58, 80; or­ga­nized protests by, 53–54, 190n127; po­liti­cal organ­ization of, 101–3, 134; rural resettlement policy for, 57–59, 88, 191n146; statistics on, 4; suicide by, 192n163. See also China, po­liti­cal history of; Taiwan veterans Chippendale, George, 21 Churchill, Winston, 47, 72, 103 citizens’ experiences: ­after WWII, 45, 180nn37–38; in Japan, 73–74, 196n59; in Soviet Union, 48–49; in U.K., 104, 105; in U.S., 29; Wilson on, 37–38. See also war orphans; ­widow benefits Civil Employment Act (1944, U.K.), 46 Civil War (China) veterans, 33, 81–93, 96

Civil War (Soviet Union) veterans, 50–51, 117, 188n105 Civil War (U.S.) veterans, 31, 33–34, 168–69, 183n10 class system, 56, 95–96. See also Marxism Cohen, Deborah, 65, 109, 110 Colcutt, Brian, 21 collective action theory, 7, 96 combat awards, 67–68 combat experiences, 1–2, 15. See also casualty statistics; veterans’ homecoming experiences Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme (CRTS), 20–22 Communist German Demo­cratic Republic (GDR), 67, 72–73, 155. See also German veterans; Germany, po­liti­cal history of Communist Party ( Japan), 146–47 compensation (term), 198n81 Confucianism, 56, 82, 97, 200n103 conscription: in Australia, 18, 121, 125, 126, 156; in China, 56, 85, 88; in France, 190n135; in Israel, 99; in Japan, 87; in Soviet Union, 50; in Taiwan, 89; in U.K., 44, 104; in U.S., 112 Coo­lidge, Calvin, 38, 41, 112 Crimes of the Wehrmacht Exhibition, 160 Curtin, John, 19 Dann, James Newman, 17, 18 Dardanelles campaign, 15–16, 46 death toll. See casualty statistics; suicide defeat and veterans’ benefits, 11–12, 63, 93. See also veterans’ homecoming experiences; victory demobilized soldier (term), 89–90 Demo­cratic Progressive Party (DPP, Taiwan), 143–44 Deng Xiaoping, 102 Department of Post-­War Reconstruction (Aust.), 20–21 Diehl, James, 64–65 disabled soldier (term), 89–90 disabled veterans: with blindness, 26, 46, 89, 163; in Canada, 163; in Israel, 99; in Japan, 149–52, 196n64, 197nn70–71; with m ­ ental illness and PTSD, 76, 77, 192n163, 202n135; in Soviet Union, 117; in Taiwan, 89; in U.K., 41, 108, 109, 185n63; in U.S., 29, 33–34, 39. See also medical care discrimination: against Black American veterans, 26–27, 181n56, 181n58, 181n64; against Chinese veterans, 60–61, 100–101,

I n d e x 191nn155–56, 191n158; class and, 171; against KMT veterans, 199n93, 199n96 Dower, John, 75–76, 197n73, 217n113 Durflinger, Serge Marc, 163 Dyett, Gilbert, 124–25 East German veterans. See German veterans educational provisions: in Australia, 19, 179nn23–24; in U.S., 20, 23–28, 180n52. See also job training Eichenberg, Julia, 166, 167 Eiji Takemae, 74, 196n64 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 30, 130, 140–41, 212n47 Eisinger, Peter K., 8 Ellender, Allen J., 140–41 employment provisions: in Australia, 16, 20; in China, 60–61, 191n156, 191n158; in Soviet Union, 52; in U.K., 44–45; in U.S., 24. See also job training “entitlement group” (term), 50, 162–63 Fan, Joshua, 90–91 Fan Yu-­Wen, 90, 202nn134–35 February 28 Incident (Taiwan), 87–88, 139 Federal Republic of Germany. See German veterans; Germany, po­liti­cal history of Fédération Interalliée des Anciens Combattants (FIDAC), 165 Fédération Mondiale des Anciens Combattant (FMAC). See World Veterans Federation (WVF) Federation of Bereaved War Victims ( Japan), 149 Federation of Re­sis­tance Fighters, 165 FIDAC (Fédération Interalliée des Anciens Combattants), 165 FMAC. See World Veterans Federation (WVF) Formosa. See Taiwan, po­liti­cal history of; Taiwan veterans framing concept, 7, 16, 34, 124, 153 French veterans, 117, 165, 168 fuyuan junren (term), 89–90 GDR. See Communist German Demo­cratic Republic (GDR) gemütlich (term), 69 George, Lloyd, 42 George Fry Associates, 141 Gerber, David, 174n14 German veterans, 42, 43, 55, 64–73, 154–60, 165

227

Germany, po­liti­cal history of, 44, 48, 65–67, 72–73, 154–60 Gerwarth, Robert, 168 GI Bill (1944, U.S.), 20, 23–31, 110, 115, 127–29, 180n52 Gibson, John, 26, 128, 130, 212n42 GMD. See KMT Gold Star Wives, 29 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 121, 136–37 Graves, Robert, 104 ­Great Britain. See British veterans Grieving Hearts Army, 102–3 Hacker, Jacob, 169, 223n18 Haig, Douglas, 107 Harding, Warren, 38, 113 Hayes, Edward A., 114, 208n94 HIAG (Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit), 68–69, 157–58, 160 Hines, Frank, 27 Hirohito (emperor), 152 Hitler, Adolf, 44, 64, 68, 159. See also Nazism holidays. See veterans’ holidays Holocaust, 67, 158. See also Nazism Holocaust (tele­vi­sion series), 159 home loans and home owner­ship, 16, 25, 27, 46, 71, 181n64 Hoover, Herbert, 113, 114, 181n63 Hoover, J. Edgar, 131 horizontal status: of American veterans, 11, 25, 168–69; of Australian veterans, 11, 19; of British veterans, 47; of Chinese veterans, 56, 62; as concept, 8, 49; of Japa­nese veterans, 76; of Soviet Union veterans, 60, 116; of Taiwan veterans, 145. See also vertical status Horne, John, 168 housing: in China, 99, 102; homelessness, 48; loans for home owner­ship, 16, 25, 27, 46, 71, 181n64 Hughes, William “Billy,” 41, 106, 122–26, 164 Hundred Flowers Movement, 101–2 Internal Reference (publication), 57, 60 Israel, 71, 99, 158 Japan, war­time effects on, 73, 87, 145–46, 152–53, 196nn59–60, 201n117, 203n8 Japan Disabled Veterans Association ( JDVA), 150–52, 219n142 Japa­nese colonial territories, 73, 79, 84, 153, 201n119

22 8 I nde x

Japa­nese veterans: benefits and support of, 73–79, 196nn64–65, 197n79, 197nn70–71, 198nn80–81, 199n91; demobilization of, 86, 196n66; po­liti­cal organ­ization of, 55, 145–54; statistics on, 198n84; war orphan and ­widow benefits of, 74, 78, 146, 198n88; ­women and, 197n73 Japan League for the Welfare of the War Bereaved, 149 Jellicoe, John, 107 Jitsugyō no Nihon (publication), 76 job training, 20–22, 27, 43, 86. See also educational provisions; employment provisions Junkuang Weekly (publication), 89 Kasza, Gregory, 149 Kevan, Robert, 141 Khrushchev, Nikita, 133 Kim Il-­sung, 137, 138 KMT (Kuomintang), 54, 75, 79–93; lack of public support for, 95, 143–44, 200n107; po­liti­cal loss of, 96, 137, 200nn111–13; U.S. and, 137–42, 216n90, 216n96. See also China, po­liti­cal history of; Taiwan, po­liti­cal history of; Taiwan veterans Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross (Ritterkreuz) award, 67–68 ­Korea, as Japa­nese colony, 73, 84, 153 Korean veterans in Japan, 79, 87, 153 Korean War, 137–39, 142; veterans of, 4, 30, 80, 131 Ku Klux Klan, 26, 128 Kuomintang. See KMT (Kuomintang) Kyff häuserbund, 66 land grant programs, 4, 55, 56 Land-­to-­the-­Tiller Act (1953), 139 LaPorta, Luke, 25 Law, Bonar, 109 Law for War Invalids and Families of the War Dead (1952, Japan), 77, 152, 199n93 Law to Aid Families of Soldiers Missing in Action ( Japan), 152 Law to Aid Injured Soldiers ( Japan), 152 Law to Aid Wives of Soldiers Killed in Action ( Japan), 152 LDP. See Liberal Demo­cratic Party (LDP, Japan) League of Nations, 84 Lenin, Vladimir, 50 Leninism, 82, 90, 115, 118, 142–43. See also Marxism

Liberal Demo­cratic Party (LDP, Japan), 145–48, 150, 152–54, 217n114, 217n118, 218n121 Livelihood Assistance Law (1947, Japan), 76 loan assistance, 16, 25, 27, 28, 46, 71, 181n64 MacArthur, Douglas, 22, 39, 138, 139, 146 Manchuria, 73, 74, 78, 84, 96, 153, 196n60. See also China, po­liti­cal history of Mao Zedong, 57, 82, 83, 102, 138, 139. See also Chinese veterans marriage and relationships, 91, 202n147, 202n150 martial citizenship, 56, 101, 163 Marxism: in China, 82, 95–96, 203n4; in Soviet Union, 51, 97, 115, 136. See also Leninism mass warfare (term), 174n11 Maurice, Frederick, 107 May 4th Movement (1919, China), 82, 97, 200n103 medical care: in Australia, 38; in Taiwan, 89, 140–41; in U.S., 36–37. See also disabled veterans Memorial Day (U.S.), 41 ­mental illness, 192n163, 202n135. See also PTSD (post-­traumatic stress disorder) Mettler, Suzanne, 98 Mexican American veterans, 26–27 Michiko (empress), 151–52 Military Aid Law (1937, Japan), 148–49 Military Ser­vice Law (1933, China), 85 military victory. See victory Mill, J. S., 10 Ministry of Veteran Affairs (China), 54, 94, 103, 164, 204n21 monuments, veterans, 14, 95, 134, 169, 201n117 Mosse, George, 64 Mutual Aid Society (Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit; HIAG), 68–69, 157–58, 160 National Association for the Advancement of Colored P ­ eople (NAACP, U.S.), 181n56 National Association of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers (U.K.), 106 Nationalist Party (China). See KMT (Kuomintang) National Socialism (Germany). See Nazism National-­Sozialistische Kriegsopferversorgung (NSKOV), 66

I n d e x Nazism, 65–66, 155–60, 165. See also Germany, po­liti­cal history of Newman, John Paul, 167 Nixon, Richard, 132 North ­Korea, 137–39 Nuremberg War Crime T ­ rials, 66–67 nurses, 15, 19, 122 organ­izations. See veterans’ organ­ization orphans. See war orphans Ortiz, Stephen, 40 Owlsey, Alvin, 117 Palmer, G. R., 123 path de­pen­den­cy: as concept, 5–6, 166; in Australia, 15, 18, 127, 170; in Japan, 145; in Soviet Union, 115, 117; in Taiwan, 143 Pennington, Lee, 75, 76, 148, 150, 151, 196n65 pension (term), 198n81 pension systems: in Australia, 16–17, 19, 22, 42; in Canada, 163; in China, 60; in Germany, 71, 73; in Japan, 77, 152, 197n79, 198nn80–81; in Soviet Union, 49–52; in Taiwan, 145; in U.K., 41–46; in U.S., 29, 33–36, 38–41. See also veterans’ benefits, overview; welfare systems ­People’s Daily (publication), 61 ­People’s Liberation Army. See PLA (­People’s Liberation Army) ­People’s Republic of China. See Chinese veterans Pierson, Paul, 169, 223n18 PLA (­People’s Liberation Army), 54, 59, 80, 94, 98, 102, 200n114. See also China, po­liti­cal history of; Chinese veterans Poland, po­liti­cal history of, 48, 68 Polish veterans, 72, 166 po­liti­cal opportunity structure: as concept, 8, 10, 32, 163–64; for American veterans, 128, 130, 131, 132; for Australian veterans, 16; for Chinese veterans, 96; for KMT veterans, 137 po­liti­cal organ­ization. See veterans’ organ­ization Poppy Day (U.K.), 108 post-­traumatic stress disorder. See PTSD (post-­traumatic stress disorder) Potsdam Declaration, 86 POWs (prisoners of war), 44, 48, 68, 71–72, 80, 153, 197n72 Press, Harold, 141 prisoners of war. See POWs

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propaganda, 53–54, 57, 91, 121–22, 159–60, 201n117 prostitution, 56, 60, 91, 98, 197n73 protests, veterans: in China, 53–54, 190n127; in Taiwan, 143–44; in U.S., 22, 110, 113, 131, 165. See also veterans’ organ­ization PTSD (post-­traumatic stress disorder), 76, 77. See also ­mental illness Public Foundation for Peace and Consolation, 78–79 racial discrimination and veterans’ benefits, 26–27, 171, 181n58, 181n64 ­Reese, Peter, 110, 185n63 Re-­Establishment and Employment Act (1945, Aust.), 20 Reichsoffiziersbund (RDO), 66 Remarque, Erich Maria, 64 Repatriated Soldiers Aid Law ( Japan), 152 Republic of China. See Taiwan, po­liti­cal history of Restriction Law (1952, Taiwan), 91 Retired Ser­vicemen Engineering Agency, 88 Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia (RSL), 15, 18, 105–8, 110, 121–27, 137, 142. See also Australian veterans Revolutionary War (U.S.) veterans, 33 Ridgeway, Matthew, 139 Ritterkreuz combat award, 67–68 The Road to Success (publication), 89 rongmin (term), 90, 91, 145, 170 Rongyu junren zhiye xiedaohui, 86 Roo­se­velt, Eleanor, 115 Roo­se­velt, Franklin D., 23, 24, 36–37, 40, 41, 112, 127–29, 130, 164, 207n77 Roo­se­velt, Theodore, 111, 115 rural resettlement policy, 57–59, 88, 191n146 Rus­sia. See Soviet Union, po­liti­cal history of Rus­sian veterans. See Soviet Union veterans Sassoon, Siegfried, 104 Selective Training and Ser­vice Act (1940, U.S.), 23 Ser­vicemen’s Readjustment Act. See GI Bill (1944, U.S.) Sino-­American Mutual Defense Treaty (1955), 139 Sino-­Japanese War (1894–95), 96 Sino-­Japanese War (1937–45), 63, 96, 201n117 SKVV (Soviet Committee of War Veterans), 133–37, 165

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Socialist Party ( Japan), 147 social security programs. See welfare systems Soldatenbund, 66 soldier settlement scheme, 17 Song Jiaoren, 81 Soviet Committee of War Veterans (SKVV), 133–37, 165 Soviet–­Finnish Winter War veterans, 52 Soviet-­Japanese Border War, 203n8 Soviet Union, po­liti­cal history of, 203n8. See also Bolsheviks Soviet Union veterans: benefits for, 33, 47–53, 188n105; casualty statistics of, 208n107; holidays in observance of, 48, 53, 134; po­liti­cal organ­ization of, 115–18, 132–37, 164; postwar gender imbalance of, 91, 202n150; statistics on, 3, 4 Special Pension Law for Bereaved Families of Former Soldiers ( Japan), 152 Stalin, Joseph: on German military, 72, 160; Korean War and, 137–138; veterans’ neglect by, 47–53, 55, 115–18, 121, 132, 164; on veterans’ organ­izations, 73, 117, 133. See also Soviet Union veterans Stevens, Henry L., 114 Stevens, Rosemary, 36 Stirling, Harold, 141 suicide, 61, 192n163, 197n70. See also casualty statistics Sun Yatsen, 81–82, 140 Supreme Commander of Allied Powers (SCAP), 74–77, 145–50 Taiwan, po­liti­cal history of, 73, 84, 137–44. See also China, po­liti­cal history of; KMT (Kuomintang) Taiwan veterans: benefits for, 74–75, 79–80, 86–92, 140–41, 199n92; marriage and, 202n147; po­liti­cal organ­ization of, 55, 137–45; statistics on, 201n129. See also China, po­liti­cal history of; Chinese veterans; KMT (Kuomintang) They ­Shall Not Grow Old (film), 46 Tilly, Charles, 8 Tokushima shinbum (publication), 74 Treaty of Versailles, 107, 200n103 Truman, Harry, 91, 130, 138, 139, 164, 215n84 Tsai Ing-­wen, 145 unemployment: benefits for, 24; war­time effects on, 37, 43, 180n38. See also employment provisions; job training

United Kingdom. See British veterans United Negro, 27 United States, po­liti­cal history of, 137–41, 204n25. See also American veterans U.S. Employment Ser­vice, 37 USSR. See Soviet Union, po­liti­cal history of; Soviet Union veterans VACRS (Vocational Assistance Commission for Retired Ser­vicemen), 88–89, 90, 141, 142, 202n134 VACRS Chronicles (publication), 89 vertical status, 8, 62, 92, 116, 121, 145, 169. See also horizontal status veteran (term), 2, 89–90, 168 Veterans Administration (VA, U.S.), 27, 29, 36–37, 113, 130, 164, 181n63 veterans’ benefits, overview, 1–15, 19–20, 32–33, 61–63, 93, 162, 169–71. See also names of specific nations; pension systems; veterans’ homecoming experiences; veterans’ organ­ization Veterans’ Bureau (U.S.), 36, 37, 40, 112–13, 207n79 Veterans Day (U.S.), 30, 37, 177n1 veterans’ holidays: in Australia, 17, 177n1; in China, 53–54; in Soviet Union, 48, 53, 134; in Taiwan, 143–44; in U.K., 108, 177n1; in U.S., 30, 37–38, 41, 177n1 veterans’ homecoming experiences: overview, 1–4, 9–12, 14–15, 32; in Australia, 11, 15–16, 17; in China, 58, 80; in Japan, 75–76; research and scholarship on, 5–7, 164–69, 174nn14–16, 177n26; in U.K., 58, 103; in U.S., 11, 22–23, 26, 58; Wilson on, 37–38. See also veterans’ benefits, overview; veterans’ organ­ization Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), 23, 27, 30, 39, 40, 105, 111, 129, 130, 131. See also American veterans veterans’ organ­ization: in Australia, 99, 121–27; in China, 101–3, 134; ­factors in success or failure of, 93–94, 118–21, 163–64; in Germany, 154–60; in Japan, 55, 145–54; in Soviet Union, 115–18, 132–37, 164; in Taiwan, 55, 137–45; in U.K., 103–10; in U.S., 110–15, 127–32. See also names of specific organ­izations; protests, veterans; veterans’ benefits, overview; veterans’ homecoming experiences Veterans Preference Act (1944, U.S.), 30 Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (1952, U.S.), 30

I n d e x Veterans’ Vocational Rehabilitation Act (1918, U.S.), 37 Veterans’ Vocational Rehabilitation Act (1943, U.S.), 29, 30 VFW. See Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) victory: meaning of, in China, 95–96; veterans’ benefits and, 10–11, 14–15, 32–33, 61–62, 93, 162. See also defeat and veterans’ benefits; veterans’ homecoming experiences Victory Day (Soviet Union), 48, 53, 134 Vietnam Veterans against the War (VVAW), 131–32 Vietnam War veterans, 4, 31, 102–3, 131–32 Vocational Assistance Commission for Retired Ser­vicemen (VACRS), 88–89, 90, 141, 202n134 war crimes, 64, 66–67, 75, 152 War Department (U.S.), 37 “war gratuity,” 16, 110, 124, 125. See also veterans’ benefits, overview warlordism, 82–83, 97, 200n103 War on Terror veterans, 31 war orphans: prostitution of, 197n73; suffering of, 78, 146; welfare and benefits for, 49, 51, 52, 67, 70, 74, 198n88 War Pensions Act (1921, U.K.), 42 War Risk Insurance Act (1917), 35 Weimar Republic. See Germany, po­liti­cal history of welfare systems, 19, 162; in Germany, 64–65, 68–69, 154–55; in Soviet Union, 48–49, 56; in U.K., 44–45, 46; in U.S., 127. See also pension systems West German veterans. See German veterans Whampoa Military Acad­emy, 83

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­widow benefits, 16, 29, 79, 198n88 Wilson, Woodrow, 35, 37–38, 41, 47, 130 ­women: in Australian military, 15, 19; as Japa­nese ser­vice members and w ­ idows, 197n73; marriage in Taiwan of, 91; prostitution by, 56, 60, 91, 98, 197n73; veterans’ benefits in Australia for, 19–20, 179n23; veterans’ benefits in U.S. for, 27–28, 29; war­time vio­lence against, 64, 66, 75; ­widow benefits, 16, 29, 79, 198n88 Woodward, Isaac, 26 Wootton, Graham, 109 World Veterans Federation (WVF), 70, 109, 133, 137, 151, 161, 165, 195n44 World War I veterans, 176n21; in Australia, 15–18; casualty statistics of, 183n10, 205n36; in Germany, 64–65; in U.K., 33, 41–44; in U.S., 30, 33–41, 111 World War II veterans: in Australia, 18–22; casualty statistics of, 44, 47, 73, 183n10, 205n36; in East and West Germany, 66–73; in Japan, 73–79, 86, 196nn64–66, 197n79, 197nn70–71, 198nn80–81; in Soviet Union, 33, 47–53, 96; in U.K., 33, 44–47; in U.S., 20, 22–31, 96, 97, 111 World War Adjusted Compensation Act (1924, U.S.), 112 WVF. See World Veterans Federation Xi Jinping, 95 Yasukuni Shrine, 150, 152 Yoshida Shigeru, 146, 147, 152 yuanji anzhi (term), 57 Yuan Shikai, 81–82 Zhou Enlai, 83, 102 zhuanye junren (term), 89–90