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 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 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