Soldier from the War Returning: The Greatest Generation's Troubled Homecoming from World War II [Hardcover]

Thomas Childers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 13, 2009

One of our most enduring national myths surrounds the men and women who fought in the so-called "Good War." The Greatest Generation, we're told by Tom Brokaw and others, fought heroically, then returned to America happy, healthy and well-adjusted. They quickly and cheerfully went on with the business of rebuilding their lives.

In this shocking and hauntingly beautiful book, historian Thomas Childers shatters that myth. He interweaves the intimate story of three families—including his own—with a decades' worth of research to paint an entirely new picture of the war's aftermath. Drawing on government documents, interviews, oral histories and diaries, he reveals that 10,000 veterans a month were being diagnosed with psycho-neurotic disorder (now known as PTSD). Alcoholism, homelessness, and unemployment were rampant, leading to a skyrocketing divorce rate. Many veterans bounced back, but their struggle has been lost in a wave of nostalgia that threatens to undermine a new generation of returning soldiers.

Novelistic in its telling and impeccably researched, Childers's book is a stark reminder that the price of war is unimaginably high. The consequences are human, not just political, and the toll can stretch across generations.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Conventional impressions of WWII's aftermath—wild celebration, triumphal return, ebullient prosperity—hide a grimmer reality, according to this somber history of postwar discontents. University of Pennsylvania historian Childers (In the Shadows of War) uses contemporary statistics and press reports to sketch the hardships returning veterans faced, including unemployment and homelessness; resentment at the years wasted in the war; alienation from family, friends and civilian life in general; and physical and psychological wounds that never healed. He builds his account around biographical narratives of three veterans: an infantryman who lost his legs to an enemy shell; an airman taken prisoner by the Germans; and Childers's father, who spent the war relatively safe in England but whose life and marriage, the author contends, were subtly darkened by the conflict. Childers's beautifully written, novelistic profiles movingly convey his subjects' wartime travails and their twilight struggles with disability and post-traumatic stress. His attempt to blame decades of dysfunction on the war sometimes overreaches; his subjects' failed marriages, business reversals and unfulfilling jobs often seem like the ordinary quiet desperation of men's lives. Still, Childers's absorbing study offers an important corrective to sanitized tributes to the Good War's legacy. Photos. (May 13)
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From Booklist

Childers turns from the moving account of his uncle’s death in action only days before the German surrender in 1945 (Wings of Morning, 1995) to his father’s and two other American veterans’ post–World War II experiences. Examining their adjustments to civilian life, Childers expands their stories by analyzing contemporary popular literature that advised a primarily female readership about how to receive home men who, absent for years, had changed who-knew-how. The social anxieties of this material, reflected in the film The Best Years of Our Lives and borne out in the late 1940s by a divorce-rate spike and a veterans’ protest movement, belie current society’s rather gauzy memory of happy homecomings; and the immediacy of Childers’depiction of his three central characters packs a tremendous emotional wallop. Superficially, the men made successful transitions to civilian life. But alienation and unarticulated anger stalked their resumptions of normal relations with wives and family. Childers’ literary acuity in evoking their travails yields a powerful work of social history that readers will stay with to the last page. --Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (May 13, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618773681
• ISBN-13: 978-0618773688
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #727,433 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

THOMAS CHILDERS is the Sheldon and Lucy Hackney Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of five previous books on the Third Reich and World War II, most recently, Wings of Morning and In the Shadows of War.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary Book, May 27, 2009

By 

Peter Baird "lawyer, writer, editor" (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Soldier from the War Returning: The Greatest Generation's Troubled Homecoming from World War II (Hardcover)

Soldier From The War Returning is a powerfully written and vividly detailed account of how three members of "The Greatest Generation" returned from World War Two and how difficult and painful their homecomings turned out to be, not just for themselves but also for their families and, by implication, for future generations. As Professor Thomas Childers demonstrates with an historian's eye and a humanist's instinct, wars do not end when the last shot is fired. This is a book that must be read by everyone and, most particularly, by those of us whose lives were forever shaped and sometimes shattered by the generational impact of World War Two.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece, a good read, and an important scholarly work, June 26, 2009

By 

DMS (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Soldier from the War Returning: The Greatest Generation's Troubled Homecoming from World War II (Hardcover)

Should be required reading for every child and grand child of a WWII veteran. Emotionally moving, transporting, and cathartic. Despite the heavy subject matter, Childer's prose is somehow uplifting and keeps the pages turning quickly. Highly recommended.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book on a forgotten subject, July 8, 2009

By 

P. J. K. Hendrikx (The Netherlands) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Soldier from the War Returning: The Greatest Generation's Troubled Homecoming from World War II (Hardcover)

With the war over for 65 years now, and the generation that fought in it dying at an alarming rate of old age, the current mood is that only the good things that came from the war are remembered. Be it the 'greatest generation', the camaraderie, the co-operation, the universal sense of purpose and discipline and that everyone did their share. It seems it must have been the best timespace in history, and the community will never be as good as it was back then.
Childres book describes painfully clear that many veterans, either with or without physical wounds, were scarred by the experience of war. They and their families suffered for many years, often up to this day.
This book is highly recommended for everyone who likes the books by Stephen Ambrose, but is willing to look at the more painful side of the war. Also families of veterans will draw strength from the experiences masterfully described in this book.