The Impact of War on Welfare State Development in Germany

The world wars were important ‘pacemakers’ of welfare state development in Germany—first and foremost via special wartime or post-war benefit regimes. Veterans’ pensions and reinsertion after World War I and compensation of various war victims after World War II massively increased social spending for decades. Whenever war did have a significant impact on the core welfare state programmes (i.e. the big social insurance schemes), it was through indirect and long-term rather than direct, short-term dynamics. Labour mobilization via the involvement of trade unions and the significant expansion of wartime social assistance and social services during World War I, for example, paved the way for the expansion of the welfare state in the Weimar Republic (such as unemployment insurance in 1927). Social policy during World War II targeted benefits towards soldiers’ families and ethnic German victims, but it was far from the ‘dictatorship of favours’ Götz Aly describes.

Diverging Paths

10.1093/oso/9780198779599.003.0012 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Dirk Luyten

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Welfare State ◽

Social Protection ◽

National Level ◽

Gain Control ◽

Political Strategy ◽

State Development ◽

Social Reforms ◽

For the Netherlands and Belgium in the twentieth century, occupation is a key concept to understand the impact of the war on welfare state development. The occupation shifted the balance of power between domestic social forces: this was more decisive for welfare state development than the action of the occupier in itself. War and occupation did not result exclusively in more cooperation between social classes: some interest groups saw the war as a window of opportunity to develop strategies resulting in more social conflict. Class cooperation was often part of a political strategy to gain control over social groups or to legitimate social reforms. The world wars changed the scale of organization of social protection, from the local to the national level: after World War II social policy became a mission for the national state. For both countries, war endings had more lasting effects for welfare state development than the occupation itself.

Warfare and Welfare

10.1093/oso/9780198779599.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Keyword(s):

Welfare State ◽

Social Protection ◽

Welfare States ◽

Western World ◽

Social Spending ◽

Long Term Effects ◽

State Development ◽

Post War ◽

This book is concerned with the nexus between warfare and welfare. The relationship between war and welfare states is contested. While some scholars consider war a pacemaker of the welfare state, others have emphasized a sharp trade-off between ‘guns and butter’ and highlighted the negative impacts of war on social protection. However, many of these findings only focus on social spending or are based on studies of individual national cases. From a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective, this book addresses the question of whether and how both world wars have influenced the development of advanced welfare states. Distinguishing between three different phases (war preparation, wartime mobilization, and the post-war period), the volume provides the first systematic comparative analysis of the impact of war on welfare state development in the Western world. The chapters, written by leading scholars in this field, examine both short-term responses to and long-term effects of war in fourteen belligerent, occupied, and neutral countries in the age of mass warfare stretching over the period from c.1860 to 1960. The findings clearly show that war is essential for understanding several aspects of welfare state development and welfare state patterns in advanced democracies.

The Impact of Military Service in World War I on Africans: the Nandi of Kenya

The Journal of Modern African Studies ◽

10.1017/s0022278x0000255x ◽

1978 ◽

Vol 16 (3) ◽

pp. 495-507 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Lewis J. Greenstein

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

World War I ◽

Military Service ◽

The United States ◽

Veterans Administration ◽

World War ◽

Civilian Life ◽

Popular Films ◽

It is widely believed that old soldiers are a problem. At least since the beginning of this century, western governments have been concerned with the issue of ‘helping’ veterans to readjust to civilian life upon their return from campaigning. It is assumed that these men would, if left to their own devices, find it difficult or impossible to ‘pick up from where they had left off’, and might, therefore, become a subversive element in the general population. Hence, one of the largest bureaucracies in the United States is the Veterans Administration which is charged with fitting ex-soldiers back into society. To a certain extent the concerns over whether they would be satisfied after their demobilisation have proved to be justified. The dislocations experienced by returned American servicemen after World War II were illustrated by popular films like ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’. More recently, the American press paid considerable attention to the rôle of the black veterans of Vietnam in the violence which destroyed much of Newark, Detroit, and Watts in the late 1960s.

Social Expenditure and Welfare State Financing

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198828389.013.26 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 452-472

Author(s):

Herbert Obinger

Keyword(s):

Welfare State ◽

Social Spending ◽

Social Expenditure ◽

National Differences ◽

State Financing ◽

The Impact ◽

Western Democracies ◽

Cross National ◽

The Welfare State

This chapter focuses on both the expenditures and the revenues of the welfare state. Using the latest data available, it depicts and analyses major developments in social spending and public revenues in twenty-one advanced Western democracies since 1980. The entry discusses measurement issues, depicts the determinants of cross-national differences in spending and revenue levels identified in the literature, and sheds light on the impact of social spending and taxation on social outcomes, such as income inequality. It is argued that spending and revenue figures, irrespective of several shortcomings, provide important indicators of both the logic and pattern of welfare state development.

Faces of War

Strange Bird ◽

10.12987/yale/9780300215687.003.0014 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Michele K. Troy

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

World War I ◽

The Other ◽

World War ◽

This chapter examines the impact of World War II on Albatross Press. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war against Germany. The onset of aggressions had immediate consequences for Albatross. With British, French, and German allegiances, the firm found itself in an unenviable position on both sides of the war. John Holroyd-Reece and other Albatross leaders were suddenly not just on opposite sides of national lines, but at cross-purposes. In World War I, Holroyd-Reece had fought for the British, and Kurt Enoch and Max Christian Wegner for the Germans; now Holroyd-Reece and Enoch stood on the same side, facing Wegner on the other. This chapter discusses the experiences and challenges faced by Albatross and its leaders as they tried to continue running their business amid the war.

Pamela Ballinger. History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Comparative Studies in Society and History ◽

10.1017/s0010417505220108 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 47 (1) ◽

pp. 226-227

Author(s):

Maura Hametz

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Cold War ◽

World War I ◽

Identity Formation ◽

Collective Memory ◽

World War ◽

The Balkans ◽

Princeton University ◽

The Cold War ◽

Using anthropological, historical, and political science approaches, Pamela Ballinger demonstrates how memory shapes Istrian understandings of Italian identity. World War II and the events of 1945, specifically the creation of the Free Territory of Trieste and the division of the upper Adriatic territory into Allied and Yugoslav administered zones, form the backdrop for the study that concentrates on the crystallization of collective memory for Istrian esuli (exiles who settled in Trieste) and rimasti (those who remained in Yugoslavia). Grounded in the literature re-evaluating the impact of the Cold War, her work skillfully weaves a narrative that uncovers competing visions as well as common tropes in Istrian visions of ‘Italianness’ constructed in the climate of state formation and dissolution since World War I. Ballinger's major contribution is her analysis of the “multi-directionality” of identity formation (p. 45) that has implications far beyond the Istrian case.

The Sources of Business Interest in Social Insurance: Sectoral versus National Differences

World Politics ◽

10.1353/wp.2003.0012 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 55 (2) ◽

pp. 229-258 ◽

Cited By ~ 52

Author(s):

Isabela Mares

Keyword(s):

Social Policy ◽

Welfare State ◽

Social Insurance ◽

Policy Preferences ◽

State Development ◽

Policy Documents ◽

National Differences ◽

Business Interest ◽

Profit Maximizing

When and why have employers supported the development of institutions of social insurance that provide benefits to workers during various employment-related risks? The analysis developed in this article challenges the dominant explanations of welfare state development, which are premised on the assumption that business opposes social insurance. The article examines the conditions under which self-interested, profit-maximizing firms support the introduction of a new social policy, and it specifies the most significant variables explaining the variation in employers' social policy preferences. The model is tested in three political episodes of welfare state development in France and Germany, using policy documents submitted by various employers' associations to bureaucratic and parliamentary commissions.

Myths, narratives and welfare states: the impact of stories on welfare state development

European Journal of Social Work ◽

10.1080/13691457.2021.1978712 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-2

Author(s):

David Anderson

Keyword(s):

Welfare State ◽

Welfare States ◽

State Development ◽

Afterword

10.1093/oso/9780190872311.003.0014 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

E. Douglas Bomberger

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

World War I ◽

Classical Music ◽

Racial Violence ◽

Culture War ◽

World War ◽

Negative Stereotypes ◽

Recording Technology ◽

Rural And Urban ◽

Examining the aftermath of 1917, this section traces the impact of the year’s events on future US musical directions. Recording technology advances made the spread of jazz possible, led to heightened fidelity of sound reproduction in classical music, and eventually altered the entire culture of live performance. Classical music did not disappear, but the advent of jazz presaged the coming dominance of popular music. World War I’s aftermath spawned a culture war between rural and urban Americans, and gains made by African American servicemen encountered a backlash of racial violence and discrimination in the 1920s. The negative stereotypes of the war years hastened German American assimilation. World War II saw different cultural and musical responses, and American classical composers benefited from World War II patriotism in ways their predecessors had not. Finally, the ability of “The Star-Spangled Banner” to unite and divide Americans is an ongoing legacy of World War I.

Reinforcements for the Wage-Earners’ Welfare State?

10.1093/oso/9780198779599.003.0009 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Christopher Lloyd ◽

Tim Battin

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

World War I ◽

Welfare State ◽

Second World War ◽

World War ◽

Social Democratic ◽

Wage Earners ◽

Second World ◽

The Welfare State

The characterization of Australia as a wage-earners’ welfare state (Frank Castles) has encouraged some scholars to argue that the Australian model remained necessarily labourist and incapable of developing in a social democratic direction. This chapter shows that World War I had a far-reaching effect on the scale of Australia’s welfare state, and that World War II profoundly changed both its scale and structure in a more social democratic direction. Australia’s federal system and its written constitution have constrained centralist and socialist initiatives, particularly desired by the Australian Labor Party. When Labor returned to power in October 1941, Australia was in its second world war, and Japan’s aggression was only months away. World War II presented Labor with the constitutional and political scope to change the foundations and reach of the welfare state to the extent no other event is likely to have afforded.