>> c-span, where history unfolds daily. c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> recently, american history tv was at the american historical society's annual meeting in denver, colorado. we spoke with professors come , authors and graduate students about their research. this interview is about 20 minutes. bill: jennifer mittelstadt. what did you mean by your book title? jennifer: i am trained as a scholar of politics. we use the term welfare state to encompass all kinds of

government programs that basically provide social and economic security to people. more broadly, we might think about social welfare as both public and private ways that societies are organized in order to provide social and economic security. so, the rise of the military welfare state considers what it means to have those programs, social, economic support programs in a military context. in the united states, the military has always played some kind of social welfare role, even when that has never been its main function. but, from the revolutionary period up to the present it has had programs which do provide economic and social security for people in the military. bill: in the early days, what did it look like? how did that start? jennifer: basic things like food, shelter and clothing. which, in the early modern period, could lure lots of

people into military service when they might not have access to those things otherwise. but, starting with the revolutionary war, you get the beginning of the recognition of pensions taking different forms. pensions then grow, and it becomes a very big program coming out of the civil war. but, you also see health care. housing will grow for officers and for officers' families. there are a wide variety of programs over the years that sort of accrue to the military and they really blossom in the 20th century when we have a very large -- two times have large armies during world war i and world war ii, then a large standing military after world war ii. this is a period where we see not only the basics of food, shelter and clothing, or

pensions afterwards, we see housing, child care, counseling, we see financial advising and legal counseling, all kinds of things added to those programs. bill: what is driving that? is that the necessity of the veterans, or you mentioned recruiting earlier, is part of that to make it more appealing to join the military? jennifer: i think the short answer is it is both. so, i think early on in plays a -- it plays a very important role in recruiting people. but pensions are operating differently, they are operating as a reward for service after the fact. and to provide stability to a , who after war and demobilization need good reasons in the 18th and 19th century to remain loyal to the country. pensions provide that. in the 20th century, i think it

is fair to say these kinds of programs operate differently, in a depends on whether or not the u.s. is in a period of a draft or a volunteer force. during the draft, you do not have to bore people in because that's lower -- lure people in because you can compel them to join. in that case, the veterans programs that emerge also still function as rewards for those who do their duty. in the volunteer era which starts in 1973, he start to see -- we start to see these benefits and programs operate more for recruitment and retention than they do for reward for service. there is the need to recruit and retain a very large, professionalized group of people in your seeking to reduce turnover. these programs can function to cement the loyalty of people who are in their, to make life once who are in there, to make life once they are in the

military easier to lift. it is a difficult and arduous life. he can support families. and basically encourage people in the time comes to re-up and stay in. bill: a g.i. bill after world war ii. would you consider that a reward? taken advantage mostly by civilians at the time, would you consider that a military will welfare program? jennifer: i would. i would consider it a military welfare program. not on the sense that it served active duty personnel. in my own research, it is more about active duty benefits. but it comes out of military setting, and it is quite certainly a social welfare program. long before i or other scholars were talking about a military welfare state, many scholars had looked at the g.i. bill is a as a really important for a social provision in the united states. i think a lot of people are not aware that when fdr and his cabinet were first considering how to reward american citizens for their massive mobilization in world war ii, they had first considered something that was actually going to be applicable to all citizens.

because so many people had relocated, take in wartime jobs, -- moved, relocated, taken wartime jobs, been deprived of their husbands or sons or fathers. and the first suggestions were more along the lines of a british beverage plan, a kind of universal social welfare program. it was then narrowed down to a veterans program, but even narrowed down, because so many people served, it was actually this incredibly expensive -- expansive program that vaulted millions of veterans into the middle class, and their families as well. bill: how does the growth of military social welfare programs, particularly into the 1960's and 1970's, how does that track with general social wealth of programs? -- social welfare programs? food stamps, medicare, medicaid, social security? jennifer: the history of the relationship between military social programs and civilian

ones changes over time. initially, the military provides one of the first models for social welfare for the united states. civil war pensions are widely considered by historians to be one of the first american models of how you would provide for people in old age or disability. these are government programs for a wide swath of the population. and the g.i. bill sort of works in that same way, as a model of broader social welfare. what does it look like to provide housing subsidies, access to education, low-interest loans? what does that do for a population? of course, these programs are also emerging at the same time that civilian social welfare programs are growing. right after the civil war era pensions reach a huge concentration in the 1890's, the progressive era starts. the civilian welfare state

starts to build and complement the growth of the military welfare state. that changes in the late 20th century. with the switch to the all volunteer force in 1973, that coincides with the beginning of cutbacks and, i guess, retrenchment of civilian social welfare programs. it is actually in the late 20th century when the military social welfare programs become enormous because of the all the launch -- civilian social welfare programs are actually diminishing. not always in costs -- the cost always coincides. but no greater eligibility, no greater access, stricter rules about who will qualify for these programs and who will not. so, the relationship, which had been mutually reinforcing from the late 19th century up through about the 1960's, actually is no longer mutually reinforcing between civilian and military welfare programs.

bill: tell us about the constituency supporting both of those in terms of the viability of civilian social welfare programs and military social welfare programs. people in congress and elsewhere fighting for these programs' existence. jennifer: well, the constituencies are difference. but they have very similar goals. for instance, one of the interesting things that i found was, if you look at civilian social workers and public welfare workers in the postwar united states, but they are -- they really are enormous advocates for expanded civilian social welfare state. it think it brings social and economic security to the country and generally guarantees a peaceful and prosperous society. they are also coming on as consultants to the military in the 1950's and 1960's and explaining to the military that they need to elaborate their own social welfare programs within the military in order to make

america's defense posture more stable, because it will provide for a more stable military environment for those people who are in it. so, sometimes the constituencies are actually quite similar. and, in congress, you can often see people on both sides of the aisle who are in favor of a stable civilian social welfare state, and also a growing military welfare state. they are not always -- and often were not -- at odds. bill: in current terms, or military welfare programs expanding and growing in the way they did in 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's? jennifer: no. they are changing form. there is a longer story there. my own research focuses on the transition to the all phones volunteer forces. this really important moment.

that happens in 1973. my research is on the army, which is the largest of the services, has the most people, and moves quickest to create these programs. the transition from the draft is actually quite traumatic for the -- dramatic for the army. they have relied on the draft for over half the people in the army. it needs to come up with ways it will recruit and retain people. this transition is important because the army realizes or the -- one of the only ways it is going to survive the transition to the volunteer era is by expanding all of these programs, and that means expanding them to all ranks. bill: that is when that starts? jennifer: they realize they will not be able to recruit and retain people below the rank of e-5 if they do not open it to everyone. open toprograms become all ranks. also to all family members.

when family members coming in large numbers they have to offer more programs which directly benefit spouses and children because they look around and see that military family members are outnumbering military personnel by over two to one. so, if they are going to have all of these people in four r careers, they are going to absolutely support their families. not only who qualifies, it means creating new programs. this really happens in the 1970's and 1980's. the 1980's is probably the apogee of programs in the reagan era. these programs grow enormously. after the 1980's, then things change again and it is a different story. bill: the title of your book is the rise of the military welfare state. do you ever find that term sometimes has negative connotations in the public policy arena? jennifer: i think it does. i think that people outside of scholarly endeavors think of welfare as a pejorative term,

and i think they think about it as having a close association with what we might think of as aid to the needy. people who are at the bottom of the income scale and do not have other ways to find support. but, technically speaking, social welfare has everything to do with everything from home loans to tax credits, to social security. it encompasses a wide variety of government activities that promote health and welfare. so, i do think it sometimes has that pejorative sense. and then you do some explaining as a historian and a scholar, which i have done a lot of. both in my teaching, and when i travel around and talk about the book.

you explain and people think, a ha. it is interesting to think about an institution that i thought of only as operating in this military purpose turned the other way around. bill: in terms of the term itself, did you get pushback from members of the military on the title, or at least some consternation on the term military welfare state? jennifer: from military leadership, the answer is no. the army was really welcoming to me. i could not have done the research without the support of the army and its archivists and many of its officers, all of whom agreed to help me dig out and find the stories. i think sometimes they are among a wider military population i got pushback.

but i also got some think use that thank you -- but i also got some thank yous. these programs, which did so much to support soldiers and families, changed form. they were mostly outsourced and privatized. that has made a real difference in the experience of soldiers and their families. they are actually grateful to have someone talk about it and tell that story, because it has not been widely known or told. bill: have any of the programs you have seen in the military and models for similar programs in civilian life? jennifer: absolutely. and they had been since the start. there were real advances made in public health around world war i. those served as models for public health programs outside. i think in recent times people have hoped that military social welfare programs might serve as models for civilian social welfare programs. the one everyone points to his

is military childcare, which is absolutely the gold standard of childcare united states. -- in the united states. many people who have advocated for increased childcare support for all kinds of civilians have pointed to military programs as models. but, the military growth or state in the last years of the 20th century has been an island unto itself and it has been carved out from the rest of the civilian welfare world. bill: what got you interested? jennifer: the topic found me. i did not seek it out. it is sort of a funny story, and i relate this in the book. i was walking down the street in brooklyn some years ago and started eavesdropping on a cell phone conversation. man, who was, the

a very energetic speaker, was trying to convince a woman to join the army. he was a recruiter. he was not talking about any of the things that i, as someone served -- things i thought he would talk about. how the army could help you be all you could be. help you be a skilled warrior. that was sort of the image from the 1990's. instead, he said you'll get childcare for your child, the army will get you out of credit card debt and teacher to money, and you will have health care. and as someone who had been trained to study the history of social welfare programs in my first book on the history of civilian social welfare programs, my ears perked up and i thought, is the military some kind of social welfare institution? i had no idea. i ran into a bank and wrote it on the back of a slip. is the military a welfare state? and i took it from there. bill: we're here at the american

historical association. your talk today, the panel discussion was military history in the modern economy. what did you cover? jennifer: we called it a state of the field discussion. it was a collection of historians, some of whom were trained as military historians and others like me who can't do -- who came to it later in their careers, who all reflected on where military history is right now. how has it changed, as a subfield in recent years, and where does it fit within the larger profession? so, the discussion that we had was really how military history -- which had been sort of feeling a little sidelined and on the fringes for some years in the 1980's and 1990's -- is really growing and changing in the past 10 to 15 years. there is an influx of younger scholars who do not only operational histories, what we might think of as battles, but

war on society. they are coming from the perspective of knowing a lot now about social history, cultural history, economic history, and bringing those questions to bear on traditional military institutions, organizations, wars and conflict. we discussed how the field is really changing and revitalizing. it is not without conflict. there are people who sort of may adhere to a more traditional concept of military history who wonder if historians like me are actually doing military history. on our part, i think there are people in political history and cultural history who are still suspicious of operational histories. but, there's more convergence now than there has been in many years. i think it is a really good sign, both for military history and the profession.

bill: jennifer mittelstadt, history professor at rutgers university, thank you for being with us here on american history tv. thanks. all weekend every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. announcer 2: "american history tv," the cultural services division of the french embassy in new york city hosted a discussion about the 1986 nuclear weapons summit between president ronald reagan and soviet premier mikhail gorbachev. it is widely seen as a quarter -- cold war turning point. this is an hour. >> [indiscernible] you have