Reviews for The Bonus Army : an American epic
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Here a demonstrator is clubbed and tear-gassed, but there real reforms are won: thus unfolds this memorable story of a now-forgotten episode in 20th-century history. The idea that WWI veterans should receive a bonus for their service took years to build and years more to fulfill. As popular historians Dickson (Sputnik, 2001) and Allen (Code Name Downfall, 1995, etc.) write, part of the delay was a matter of political clout; whereas Civil War vets formed a powerful and populous voting bloc and agitated for pensions, by the time Woodrow Wilson sent troops off to war in Europe, his notion was that soldiers would pay for their own life insurance and "there would be no demand for postwar compensation to those who were not injured during their service." Veterans in Oregon thought otherwise, and soon African-American vets from Virginia and hill-country farmers from Tennessee would join in their call for what was now being called a "bonus" for service. When neither Congress nor presidents would cough up, the vets began to organize nationally, and in 1932 thousands arrived in Washington to protest the Senate's defeat of a bill that would have funds for them. Sure that the leaders were Communists, Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur sent in troops, routing the ethnically mixed protestors and killing some. On hearing the news, Franklin Roosevelt reportedly said to an aide, "This will elect me," and indeed it seemed one of the last straws for the Hoover administration. Ironically, the Bonus Army's leadership was far more inclined to the right than the left, so that even as MacArthur was blustering about the Reds, a group of financiers approached a retired Marine Corps general to lead an army of veterans to stage a coup. The general replied, "If you get these 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have real war right at home." The lesson the New Deal government took home: avoid ticking off discontented veterans, whence the GI Bill. A lively, engaging work of history. Copyright ŠKirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
In 1932, approximately 45,000 veterans of World War I converged on Washington, D.C. In 1924, they had been promised a cash bonus for their service, but it was to be deferred until 1945. With the nation mired deep in the Depression, the so-called Bonus Army demanded immediate payment. For two months, the protestors lived in shantytowns on the outskirts of the city and issued increasingly strident demands. Eventually, troops under the command of Douglas Mac-vArthur dispersed them and destroyed the shantytowns. It was a sad but quickly forgotten episode as the politics of the New Deal and the looming threat of war in Europe and Asia came to dominate national consciousness. Dickson and Allen, who have written numerous books of American history, assert that the long-range importance of the Bonus Army has been grossly underestimated. In this agreeably written and often moving account, they describe a unique gathering of whites, blacks, and urban and rural poor united by a vision of social justice. This is an important reexamination of a still controversial event. --Jay Freeman Copyright 2005 Booklist
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Usually treated as a minor episode during the Great Depression, the Bonus Army (if remembered at all) has served to contrast the leadership styles of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt. In 1932, World War I veterans struggling to survive the Depression organized to seek immediate payment of a bonus they were not to have received until 1945. Prolific authors Dickson (Sputnik: The Shock of the Century) and Allen (Spymaster) provide the drama behind this story and give it context. Though Hoover is usually depicted as sending in Gen. Douglas MacArthur to quash the veterans, while FDR sent Eleanor to hear their concerns, the story is revealed to be a great deal more complex. Both Hoover and FDR opposed the bonus on economic grounds. MacArthur, it turns out, was inclined to see Communist plots behind events and therefore ignored presidential instructions. FDR and the Congress ultimately transformed the Bonus Army protest into one of the most significant pieces of legislation in American history: the GI Bill of Rights. That the Bonus Army was an integrated movement, unlike the military at that time, helps make this a fascinating and readable book. Recommended for all libraries.-William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Choice
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
This notable work deals with one of the most dramatic, telling episodes of the interwar years. Its origins lay in the feeling of US veterans of WW I that while they were fighting abroad, civilian workers were earning excellent wages. The veterans' feelings that they had been unjustly treated led to the demand of a compensatory bonus as an acknowledgment of their service. Turned down in their demands first by a conservative Senate and then by the veto of President Hoover, the disaffected veterans, now battered by the Great Depression, began their so-called march on Washington. How that march was made and how the veterans were housed and fed in Washington is a dramatic story of suffering and optimism. The Hoover administration, seeing class warfare and communist takeover just around the corner, allowed Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur to drive the veterans out of their camps in one of the most shameful incidents in US history. This is a splendid work that can sharpen sensibilities to the vagaries of public policy. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. All public, college, and university libraries. R. D. Ward emeritus, Georgia Southern University
