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

239 Pages·2020·4.658 MB·English

by  Martin Crotty, Neil Jeffrey Diamant, Mark Edele

THE POLITICS OF VETERAN BENEFITS
IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

THE POLITICS OF
VETERAN BENEFITS
IN THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY
A COMPARATIVE HISTORY
Martin Crotty,
Neil J. Diamant,
and Mark Edele
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
Ithaca and London
Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University
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First published 2020 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
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—S ocial conditions—
20th  century.
Classification: LCC UB356 .C76 2020 (print) |
LCC UB356 (ebook) | DDC 362.86/80904— dc23
LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020003586
LC ebook rec ord 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.
Contents
Acknowl edgments vii
Introduction: Veterans
in Comparative Perspective 1
1. Victors Victorious 14
2. Victors Defeated 32
3. Benefits for the Vanquished 63
4. The Po liti cally Weak 93
5. The Po liti cally Power ful 120
Conclusion: Veterans Past, Pre sent,
and Future 162
Notes 173
Index 225

Acknowle dgments
We have all acquired debts of gratitude to o thers
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 Col-
lege’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 dis-
cuss some of the preliminary findings of this book. He also acknowledges
Shuto Sekoguchi for his research assistance, Alex Bates for help with transla-
tion, 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 re-
member 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 acknowl-
edges the assistance of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship
(FT140101100).
We would all like to thank Emily Andrew, se nior editor at Cornell Univer-
sity Press, for her enthusiastic embrace of our proposed book; Michelle Wit-
kowski 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 Uni-
versity of Melbourne, who read the entire manuscript and provided detailed
feedback and advice on further sources, which led to vari ous 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—a nd put
vii
viii Acknowle 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: Towards 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 Rus sian, a German, and a Brit. Each said, in their
respective languages to their respective governments and socie ties: “War was
hell; we sacrificed; we deserve compensation and res pect.” Governments con-
sidered t hese requests. Of these six, however, only three— the American, the
Australian, and the German—r eceived levels of compensation that came close
to restoring what they had lost through their war ser vice. Their Chinese, Rus-
sian, and British counter parts 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 h ere you are just like every one e lse.” What explains such wide
variation in postwar outcomes for veterans? Where and u nder what conditions
did veterans emerge from the largest wars in the twentieth c entury with sig-
nificant material recompense and higher status than their civilian counter parts?
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 land-
scape 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 IntRodUctIon
troops engaged in combat—a distinct minority in all modern forces—s oldiers
also served as aircraft ground crew, postmen, chaplains, mechanics, intelligence
officers, cooks, quartermasters, doctors and medics, trainers, recruiters, trans-
port logisticians, and engineers and in hundreds of other noncombatant
roles. War time ser vice varied considerably in time as well: some soldiers served
from the commencement of hostilities to victory or defeat; others, 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 pre-
emptive 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, return-
ing with wounds physical and m ental, vis i ble and invisible, ranging from light
to severe.
Homecoming and veteran experiences also varied widely. Some returned
to undamaged countries with well-f unctioning government agencies and grate-
ful socie ties. They received financial compensation, preferential access to at
least some employment, cheap homes, subsidized or f ree education and train-
ing, 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 otherw ise smooth life course, or even accelerate
postwar professional success if they managed to acquire useful skills and con-
tacts. T hese were the most fortunate ones. Other veterans returned to home-
lands that had been devastated by war, to socie ties 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 mental
health, loved ones, aspirations, and the purposes and ideals they considered
core to their identity. Some even lost their homelands. Readjustment to peace-
time 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 proc ess. 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, Russ ians, and Brits were not? We were. But there were other, per-
haps more “scholarly,” reasons. First, extensive research on veterans around