Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1 Veterans' Policy and Veteran Organizations, 1917-1929; 2 Rethinking the Bonus March; 3 The "New Deal" for Veterans; 4 The Bonus Re-emerges; 5 "The Pro-Bonus Party"; 6 Veteran Politics and the New Deal's Political Triumph of 1936; Conclusion: GI Bill Legacies; Postscript: A GI Bill for the Twenty-first Century?; Notes; Index; About the Author
Summary
The period between World Wars I and II was a time of turbulent political change, with suffragists, labor radicals, demagogues, and other voices clamoring to be heard. One group of activists that has yet to be closely examined by historians is World War I veterans. Mining the papers of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and the American Legion (AL), Stephen R. Ortiz reveals that veterans actively organized in the years following the war to claim state benefits (such as pensions and bonuses), and strove to articulate a role for themselves as a distinct political bloc during the New Deal era. Bey
