The GI Bill - Cover Page: October ‘99 American History Feature

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The GI Bill

More than 2,250,000 American veterans of WWII received at least part of their college education as a result of legislation known as “the GI Bill.”

By Michael D. Haydock

By the time the last American World War II veteran was graduated in 1956, the United States was richer by 450,000 engineers; 238,000 teachers; 91,000 scientists; 67,000 doctors; 22,000 dentists; and more than a million other college-trained men and women, thanks largely to the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, universally known as “the GI Bill.” This landmark legislation helped steer a country geared to winning a globe-spanning war–with roughly 8 million citizens in uniform in 1945 and 22 million involved in war production–smoothly back into a peacetime economy; led to lasting changes in America’s system of higher education; and turned uncertainty into opportunity for thousands of war veterans.

The idea of aiding veterans grew partially out of economic concerns. With World War II winding down, many foresaw the day when millions of servicemen and -women would begin reentering the job market. Government officials wished to find a way to ensure against anything akin to the 1932 march on Washington, D.C., by 15,000 disgruntled World War I veterans, who were suffering from the ravages of the Great Depression. This “Bonus Army” sought immediate credit for the certificates they had received upon being discharged years earlier. These notes were not scheduled to mature until 1945, but the impoverished men who had risked their lives for their country felt they deserved immediate assistance.

The main inspiration for the GI Bill, however, was a sincere desire to assist returnees. The American Legion, which would become a primary force in guiding the legislation through Congress, declared that “Veterans earned certain rights to which they are entitled. Gratuities do not enter the picture.”

In his “fireside chat” to the nation on July 28, 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made his first mention of the veterans’ benefits that should follow the war and touched on the more practical aspects of the problem. With the suffering of the Depression vivid in his memory, Roosevelt declared that American veterans “must not be demobilized into an environment of inflation and unemployment, to a place on a bread line or on a corner selling apples.” He suggested government-financed education and training as one facet of veterans’ benefits that should be implemented.

The president’s concern was echoed in the halls of Congress, where Republican Representative Hamilton Fish of New York, a staunch conservative and frequent foe of Roosevelt’s, nevertheless agreed that veterans could not “come home and sell apples as they did after the last war, because if that is all they are offered, I believe we would have chaotic and revolutionary conditions in America.”

By November 1943, more than a score of Congressmen were sponsoring bills relating to “veterans’ rights.” The Senate passed its version of the GI Bill in March 1944; the House of Representatives followed suit in May. The compromise bill, ready for the president’s signature soon after the June 6 Allied invasion of Normandy, was finally signed into law at the White House on June 22, 1944, with members of Congress and various veterans groups in attendance.

But with the war not yet over, most future candidates for veterans’ relief went about their business that day, unaware that their futures may have been altered by what was going on in the nation’s capital.

The Keenan twins, for example, were at work in a base hospital in England. The second youngest in a first generation, Irish-American family of a dozen siblings, Ellen and Teresa had trained as nurses before the war and enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps in 1942. Their patients, unaware there were two Miss Keenans working on different shifts, referred to them as “that nurse who never sleeps.”

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