Abstract

This article examines the impact of military veterans on the New Deal era. In 1934 the passage of the Economy Act, which severely cut veteran benefits, triggered a wave of political mobilization that laid the foundations for organized New Deal dissent. The response of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) to the Economy Act situated the organization in the vanguard of "New Deal Dissidents," including Huey P. Long, Father Charles E. Coughlin, and their supporters. In this coalition, military veterans expressed early and crucial "voices of protest." And the politics of veterans' pensions and benefits, in turn, profoundly shaped the New Deal era.

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