NN _The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914-1939_

[pynchonoid]

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-German at h-net.msu.edu (May, 2003)

Deborah Cohen. _The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans
in Britain and
Germany, 1914-1939_. Berkeley and London: University
of California
Press, 2001. Xii + 285 pp. Tables, notes,
bibliography, and index.
$50.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-520-22008-0.

Reviewed for H-German by Alon Rachamimov
<rachalon at post.tau.ac.il>,
Department of History, Tel Aviv University

The Social Benefits of Private Philanthropy

Wars seldom end when history textbooks say they do.
This happens not
only because actual fighting continues in many cases
in "minor"
theaters of war or by para-military means (often with
as many
casualties as in the main theater of operation) nor
only because the
issues that led to the commencement of armed conflict
are not
resolved completely or at times even partially by
warfare.  It also
occurs because those who participate in wars--civilian
and military
alike--cannot switch from "war" to "peace" as easily
as governments
can declare a formal cessation of hostilities. Rather,
war
participants carry with them physical, mental, social
and economic
predicaments that make war palpable and present for
many years.
>From the perspective of eighty million veterans of
the Great War,
the war did not end on the eleventh hour of the
eleventh day of the
eleventh month in 1918, but rather continued in
various guises and
forms throughout the interwar period.  In particular,
veterans with
wounds and disabilities carried a physical burden that
threatened
their chances of re-integration into "normal" 
civilian life.  How
these disabled veterans fared in Great Britain and
Germany is the
focus of Deborah Cohen's compassionate and erudite
book, _The War
Come Home_.

Cohen's starting point is a historical conundrum: the
Weimar
Republic provided for its 1.5 million permanently
disabled veterans
like no other state in interwar Europe.  Yet, rather
than being
grateful for the solid economic, professional and
legislative
package offered by the republic, German disabled
veterans harbored
bitterness and deep resentments toward the state and
society.  In
Britain, on the other hand, the state treated its
750,000
permanently disabled veterans parsimoniously, offering
them very
little in terms of professional training and
protective legislation.
Still, British veterans and their organizations became
politically
quiescent to a degree that astonished their
continental colleagues.
Why should that be the case?  Why did the Weimar
Republic attract
such ire despite a multitude of programs for the
disabled, whereas
Britain experienced nothing of this veteran rage
although the state
provided relatively little for its heroes? One obvious
explanation
would seem the different outcome of the war for the
two societies.
However, Cohen makes short shrift of this argument:
German disabled
veterans became incensed well before the war's end,
whereas the apex
of British veteran activism occurred immediately after
winning the
war in 1918-1920.  Rather, argues Cohen, the
difference between the
two reactions lay in the role played by philanthropic
activity in
the two countries.  The British government not only
permitted but
actually encouraged a multitude of private
philanthropic
organizations to become involved in the rehabilitation
of disabled
veterans.  In fact, writes Cohen, "every prominent
initiative for
the long-term treatment of disabled servicemen was in
private hands,
including the country's largest artificial
limb-fitting center at
Roehampton and St. Dunstan's Hostel, which provided
care for the
nation's war-blinded men" (p. 29).  In 1918, 6,000
charities catered
to the disabled veterans and in 1936 more than 500
were still in
existence.  As Cohen illustrates through numerous
examples,
volunteers took charge of occupational programs and
rehabilitation
efforts, while the state limited itself to providing
modest
pensions.  The participation of so many of their
fellow citizens in
their rehabilitation "led veterans to believe that
their fellow
soldiers honored their sacrifices.  Voluntarism
brought about a
reconciliation between disabled veterans and those for
whom they
suffered" (p. 7).

Wartime Germany saw also many charitable endeavors by
concerned and
empathetic citizens.  However, the increasing
regulation of the
German economy and society during World War I, brought
about by the
wish to manage funds more efficiently and justly
(among other
things), led to the clamping down on small charities. 
A decree
issued by the _Bundesrat_ on February 15, 1917
stipulated that all
organizations founded after the outbreak of the war
were to be
regulated (except religious and political
organizations).  All
membership and fund-raising campaigns were forbidden
and local
police forces were instructed to enforce this decree. 
After the
collapse of the Second Reich the Weimar government
tightened the
noose still further and sanctioned the activities of
only six major
philanthropic organizations such as the Catholic
Caritas and the
Protestant Inner Mission.  Other associations were
either starved of
funds or regulated tightly from the center.  As a
result, disabled
veterans had to deal with bureaucracies and
administrators without
what Cohen considers the healing touch of volunteers
and sympathetic
fellow citizens.  Veterans in the Weimar republic did
not feel the
gratitude and recognition they had so desperately
craved, while
German civilians grew angry from the relentless
accusations of
disgruntled veterans. Thus, although it spent around
twenty percent
of its national budget on veterans during the interwar
years (in
comparison to Britain's "measly" seven percent) and
despite giving
veterans a prominent role in the administration of
welfare, the
Weimar Republic never managed to win their loyalty. 
The various
veteran organizations, including the huge
SPD-affiliated _Reichsbund
der Kriegsbeschaedigten_, became anti-State in its
rhetoric even
when the Socialists were in charge of welfare.

Despite making a very strong case for the social
benefits of private
philanthropy, Cohen leaves the reader with the
impression that she
may have overstated her argument.  After all, the
British charities
presented in _The War Come Home_ were big-time
operations with huge
budgets.  Maybe they were not as enormous as the six
organizations
sanctioned by Weimar Germany, but they were
nonetheless armed with
big bureaucracies and regulations.  Cohen herself
provides ample
evidence to the effect that British philanthropists
tolerated little
dissent from the ranks of disabled veterans.  Those
who refused to
play by the rules of a specific philanthropic
organization were
shown the door and left to their own devices. 
Disabled veterans in
Britain were expected to put on happy faces and
exhibit their
gratitude, while keeping resentments bottled up.  As
Cohen
demonstrates in many places, British disabled veterans
were
marginalized and muted, rather than healed and taken
care of; hardly
a blue ribbon for private philanthropy.  In the same
vein, one is
left to wonder what role the big six Weimar
philanthropic
associations played in this story.  They were active
in many places
and on many levels, receiving considerable funds from
the state.
The fact that they were big does not necessarily mean
that they
could not engender a sense of caring on the local
level.  Similarly,
it is not quite clear whether different political
traditions did not
play a role in shaping the behavior of disabled
veterans: whether
the paternalistic tradition in Germany, coupled with
many decades of
military conscription prior to World War I, raised the
expectations
of German soldiers, whereas the more "minimal"
approach of British
governments before World War I and the fact that until
1916 all
soldiers serving in the British army were volunteers
lowered the
hopes of the latter.

_The War Come Home_ tells a gloomy story. It relates
the sad fate of
a multitude of disabled veterans who returned to
societies that did
not quite know what to do with them. It provides
important clues for
understanding the political behavior of millions of
veterans and
suggests another reason why the Weimar Republic
collapsed. Deborah
Cohen has written a valuable study that vividly
presents the social
and political ramifications of modern warfare.  It is
highly
recommended to social historians of interwar Europe.

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