Review: James Hatch on David Nasaw’s “The Wounded Generation”
A rare commodity in World War II literature: unvarnished reality
David Nasaw’s The Wounded Generation offers a rare commodity in World War II literature: unvarnished reality. With unsentimental rigor, Nasaw dismantles the hubris, errors, and wishful myths long attached to the “Greatest Generation” and its wartime service.
As a combat veteran now teaching college courses, I approached the book expecting the familiar sentimental gloss. I found none. Instead, Nasaw delivers a rigorously researched, unflinching account grounded in primary sources—one that confronts historical truth rather than offering nostalgic comfort.
Nasaw ranges across every corner of wartime and postwar American society: politicians and troops; hospitals and their overburdened caregivers; families struggling to readjust; factories that absorbed, retrained, or rejected disabled workers; and a convoluted veteran welfare system that often failed those it was meant to serve.
Along the way, deeply uncomfortable truths emerge. Government inefficiency and favoritism were widespread. Black, gay, and women veterans faced discrimination, and were frequently denied the benefits their service and sacrifice had earned.
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I admire Nasaw’s willingness to challenge the sanctioned popular narrative that still protects an idealized image of the war. Only through such honest and sometimes brutal reckoning can we credibly claim to have learned from past failures. This book offers precisely the perspective required to extract meaningful national lessons. Some readers may find its length and breadth excessive, but as a veteran I value that depth; it is through nuance and detail that the human cost becomes impossible to ignore.
