GI Bills

Background

Although veterans traditionally enjoyed some form of compensation for service, such as a pensions or mustering-out pay, no group of veterans had ever been given such generous recompense for their sacrifices as the returning World War II GIs. The bitter experience of many World War I veterans highlighted the need for an extensive veterans’ benefits package. After World War I, most veterans received a train ticket home, a modest payment, and limited vocational rehabilitation benefits. In 1924, the government promised World War I veterans a one-time payment of roughly $1,000—to be paid after 20 years. For most veterans, such measures did not go far enough to compensate them for the time they had lost. In 1932, the economic hardships wrought by the Great Depression led thousands of veterans to march on Washington demanding early payment of their bonuses. The violent struggles that ensued following the Bonus March gave rise to fears of what might happen if millions of veterans were thrust back into society without guaranteed employment or any kind of financial assistance.

Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944

As early as 1942, the government began planning for the postwar influx of veterans. In the summer of 1943, the National Resources Planning Board advocated a comprehensive package of training and education benefits to help them readjust. More than 600 separate bills entered Congress, promising everything from medical coverage and education benefits to furlough pay. None gathered much momentum until the American Legion intervened. Formed [Page 317]as a veteran advocacy group in 1919 and composed mainly of World War I veterans, Legion members knew better than most the needs of returning veterans. Harry Colmery, a World War I veteran and former Legion national commander, drafted a “Bill of Rights for GI Joe and GI Jane,” which included sweeping provisions for such benefits as unemployment insurance, funding for higher education, employment training, and home loans. After the bill's introduction in Congress on January 1, 1944, the Legion conducted an intensive lobbying and media campaign to gain public and political support. Opponents ranged from educators, who feared a dilution in quality of the nation's college students, to disabled veterans, who feared that their benefits might be curtailed to accommodate the new measures. But the Legion's efforts prevailed, and on June 22, 1944, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 into law. The Legion's efforts ensured that the hardships endured by one generation of veterans would never again be felt so acutely.

...