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Summary
Summary
In the summer of 1932, at the height of the Depression, some forty-five thousand veterans of World War I descended on Washington, D.C., from all over the country to demand the bonus promised them eight years earlier for their wartime service. They lived in shantytowns, white and black together, and for two months they protested and rallied for their cause--an action that would have a profound effect on American history.
President Herbert Hoover, Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, and others feared the protesters would turn violent after the Senate defeated the "bonus bill" that the House had passed. On July 28, 1932, tanks rolled through the streets as MacArthur's troops evicted the bonus marchers: Newspapers and newsreels showed graphic images of American soldiers driving out their former comrades in arms. Democratic candidate, Franklin Roosevelt, in a critical contest with Hoover, upon reading newspaper accounts of the eviction said to an adviser, "This will elect me," though bonus armies would plague him in each of his first three years.
Through seminal research, including interviews with the last surviving witnesses, Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen tell the full and dramatic story of the Bonus Army and of the many celebrated figures involved in it: Evalyn Walsh McLean, the owner of the hope diamond, sided with the marchers; Roy Wilkins saw the model for racial integration here; J. Edgar Hoover built his reputation against the Bonus Army radicals; a young Gore Vidal witnessed the crisis while John dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis wrote about it. Dickson and Allen also recover the voices of ordinary men who dared tilt at powerful injustice, and who ultimately transformed the nation: The march inspired Congress to pass the G. I. Bill of Rights in 1944, one of the most important pieces of social legislation in our history, which in large part created America's middle class. The Bonus Army is an epic story in the saga of our country.
Author Notes
Paul Dickson is the author of Sputnik: The Shock of the Century and numerous books about history, the American language, and baseball. He lives in Garrett Park, Maryland
Thomas B. Allen is the author of The Blue and the Gray; War Games; George Washington, Spymaster; and many other books of military and intelligence history
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Before the Million Man March, the Million Mom March or Martin Luther King, Jr.?s March on Washington, there was the Bonus Expeditionary Force (BEF): 45,000 WWI vets who, in 1932, swarmed Washington, D.C., in freight cars, crank-start jalopies, on motorcycles and even on foot from as far away as Portland, Ore., to demand payment of the bonus promised them at the end of the war. As Dickson and Allen show throughout this empathetic and well-researched volume, the BEF meant different things to a number of groups vying for power in the tumultuous political climate of the early ?30s. Communist organizers saw the veterans as the shock troops of the emerging ?American Soviet Government?; the Hoover administration viewed them as mostly ?ex-convicts, persons with criminal records, radicals, and non-servicemen? trying to strong-arm the government; and corporate America saw them as competition for dwindling government aid money. To most Americans, however, they were underdogs fighting the government and the corporate corruption that, in their minds, was responsible for the Depression. The book moves beyond these broad generalizations to find the personal stories of the march, fleshing out both minor and major players surrounding the BEF. And in describing the use of tanks, bayonets and tear gas to expel the unarmed vets and their families from Washington?as well as the deadly mistreatment of BEF members in government work camps after the march?Dickson and Allen highlight the sacrifices these women and men made on our own soil to win fair treatment for veterans of future wars. Their important and moving work will appeal to both professional historians and casual readers interested in the history of America?s changing attitudes towards its soldiers. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Review
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 ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
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
Choice Review
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
Library Journal Review
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.