Victors Victorious

This chapter focuses on Australia after World War I and the United States after World War II, which are considered the best-case scenarios in terms of veteran outcomes as they were generously rewarded by politicians. It highlights Australia and America's soldiers who were widely respected by the societies to which they returned, providing significant boosts to their vertical and horizontal status. It also considers cases where victorious veterans were compensated reasonably well for their wartime service and sacrifice, which challenges the intuitive or commonsensical notion that victory is a predictor of high status and generous rewards for veterans. The chapter talks about veterans who claimed that they had defeated expansionist German militarism, Nazism, Italian fascism, and Japanese aggression. It describes how the states, for which the veterans had fought and survived the war, could be held to the commitments they had made to soldiers.