From award-winning and bestselling author David Nasaw, a revelatory reexamination of post-World War II America and the nation''s unhealed traumas, exposing the fault lines that characterized the country then and now

The veterans of World War II returned to America with great expectations. After all, the Great Depression was over, the Germans and the Japanese were defeated, and the home front was celebrating victory. After their heroic service overseas, Black service members believed their countrymen would look beyond racial divides, Jewish soldiers hoped antisemitism would be vanquished, and the wounded assumed that America would care for their injuries. More than 75 years later, the enduring image of postwar America is still informed by the hopes and dreams these veterans carried home with them, that their future – and with it, the nation’s – would be brighter than the past. However, as historian David Nasaw makes evident in this masterful recontextualization of these years, the stories of post-World War II America which persist across art, history, and literature, have failed to account for the realities of the veterans’ return as well as the traumas that characterized postwar America– the consequences of which we still live with today.

In <The Wounded Generation<, David&nbsp;Nasaw&nbsp;illustrates how veterans and civilians alike were confronted with the aftershocks of World War II, and how the media and the government failed to prepare America for what lay ahead. News outlets, which had censored the carnage of battle, now had to account for the grief and guilt felt by surviving soldiers; motion pictures and radio programs struggled to portray the true anxieties of homecoming, as husbands, wives, and children were reunited after not just time but trauma. Women who had been welcomed into the workforce lost their jobs to returning soldiers, and were pushed back into the home; doctors, who had no understanding of PTSD, were unprepared for the rise of neuropsychiatric disorders and unable to treat those afflicted. The nation faced enormous challenges transitioning to a peacetime economy; jobs, homes, and cars were in short supply; crime, alcoholism, unemployment, homelessness, and divorce were on the rise.&nbsp;The country took a major step in passing the GI Bill, which provided veterans with tuition, unemployment compensation, low-cost mortgages, and business loans, but&nbsp;Nasaw&nbsp;also reveals the political machinations behind the bill, and how states eager to preserve the status quo disproportionately blocked Black, gay, and female veterans from receiving benefits. The social issues which were laid bare in the immediate post war period &ndash; racism, gender biases, homophobia, lack of affordable housing, no national healthcare system, and severe income inequality&ndash; continue to ravage our nation and its people.

In this richly textured examination, David&nbsp;Nasaw&nbsp;presents a fascinating and complicating tableau of the postwar years. Drawing on a wealth of primary source material, including personal memoirs and oral histories from veterans themselves, he looks beyond the welcome crowds and victory parades, and illuminates a largely hidden story of a country in transition....

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David Nasaw is a historian, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and bestselling author of The Last Million, named a best book of the year by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, and History Today, and, according to The Economist, one of the "six must-read books on the Second World War"; The Patriarch, a New York Times Five Best Non-Fiction Books of the Year; Andrew Carnegie, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and the winner of the New-York Historical Society's American History Book Prize; and The Chief, winner of the Bancroft Prize. He is the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History Emeritus at the CUNY Graduate Center and a past president of the Society of American Historians. In 2023, Nasaw was honored by the New York Public Library as a “Library Lion.” His father served in the Army Medical Corps in Eritrea during World War II.

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From award-winning and bestselling author David Nasaw, a brilliant re-examination of post-World War II America that looks beyond the victory parades and into the veterans’—and nation’s—unhealed traumas

In its duration, geographical reach, and ferocity, World War II was unprecedented, and the effects on those who fought it and their loved ones at home, immeasurable. The heroism of the men and women who won the war may be well documented, but we know too little about the pain and hardships the veterans endured upon their return home. As historian David Nasaw makes evident in his masterful recontextualization of these years, the veterans who came home to America were not the same people as those who had left for war, and the nation to which they returned was not the one they had left behind. Contrary to the prevailing narratives of triumph, here are the largely unacknowledged realities the veterans—and the nation—faced that radically reshaped our understanding of this era as a bridge to today.

The Wounded Generation tells the indelible stories of the veterans and their loved ones as they confronted the aftershocks of World War II. Veterans suffering from recurring nightmares, uncontrollable rages, and social isolation were treated by doctors who had little understanding of PTSD. They were told that they were suffering from nothing more than battle fatigue and that time would cure it. When their symptoms persisted, they were given electro-shock treatments and lobotomies, while the true cause of their distress would remain undiagnosed for decades to come. Women who had begun working outside the home were pressured to revert to their prewar status as housewives dependent on their husbands. Returning veterans and their families were forced to double up with their parents or squeeze into overcrowded, substandard shelters as the country wrestled with a housing crisis. Divorce rates doubled. Alcoholism was rampant. Racial tensions heightened as White southerners resorted to violence to sustain the racial status quo. To ease the veterans’ readjustment to civilian life, Congress passed the GI Bill, but Black veterans were disproportionately denied their benefits, and the consequences of this discrimination would endure long after the war was won.

In this richly textured examination, Nasaw presents a complicated portrait of those who brought the war home with them, among whom were the period’s most influential political and cultural leaders, including John F. Kennedy, Robert Dole, and Henry Kissinger; J. D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut; Harry Belafonte and Jimmy Stewart. Drawing from veterans’ memoirs, oral histories, and government documents, Nasaw illuminates a hidden chapter of American history—one of trauma, resilience, and a country in transition.

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Chapter 1.

The Return of the Wounded

During the first two years of the war, close to one million American service members were returned to civilian life, almost half of them with disability discharges. These men and women, who had engaged in campaigns and battles in the Pacific, North African, Mediterranean, and European theaters of war, had suffered physical wounds and illnesses that would not heal. Not yet veterans, but of no further use to the military, they were transported to regional or specialty hospitals or VA facilities for further treatment or sent home to their families.

Among the first to be repatriated were the more than ten thousand marines who on August 7, 1942, had landed on Guadalcanal in the South Pacific to prevent the Japanese who had invaded the British …