How were US soldiers treated after thay returned home from world war 2?
They were treated much better than the veterans from WWI, that’s for certain (those poor guys were camping out on the capitol mall, protesting for their back pay and benefits, during the depression). For one, the GI Bill made it possible for the veterans to seek higher education and enter a more white collar work force, which inflated the ranks of the middle class. Secondly, they clearly won a war that was actually declared by Congress (unlike the Vietnam War or Iraqi War). So it was easy to celebrate (unlike our premature “mission accomplished” celebration in 2003). Thirdly, because the television set wasn’t quite a standard fixture in each home, the people weren’t exposed to the brutal realities of war, as they were in Vietnam, and as they were not in our current war, due to the reporters being embedded and the CIA infiltrating both the print and television media.
