The short version of the story is that after everyone came back from WWI they started drinking, listening to jazz, and basically had one big party. However, after everyone came back from WWII, they went to college, started a family, and bought a nice house in the suburbs. It wasn’t until the next generation that the party started.
Both generations had just gone through a war and were now living in a prosperous economy, so has anyone ever studied why there were such different reactions? If anyone could recommend any books on the subject, I would greatly appreciate it, too.
I’m not saying it’s the only factor but WWII had a much bigger impact on America than WWI did. American participation in WWI lasted for about eighteen months and produced 320,000 casualties. Comparable figures for WWII were forty-four months and 1,076,000 casualties.
There’s also the fact that the folklore as it’s related in the OP is a gross generalization. While I don’t doubt that plenty of people coming back from WWI partied, drank, and listened to jazz, I’m sure a lot of people also bought houses and started families. Likewise, many people coming back from WWII probably partied, drank, and listened to jazz (and other music of the day) too.
Life goes on all the time, and the neat little decade-by-decade cliches we are used to hearing are really just an attempt to weave a national narrative out of a few of the trends/highlights.
This is a very important point to stress. Every period in history has its social, economic and political trends, but those things aren’t the definition of that time and place. It’s easy (and dangerous) to oversimplify the past.
The one huge overwhelming difference is that the 20s were the decade of Prohibition. Driving alcohol underground made it paradoxically more alluring. Even among people who didn’t drink before, having a drink or going to a speakeasy or nightclub became the norm. People who were willing to flout the law against alcohol were also willing to flout pre-war conventions about dress and behavior. In addition, the women’s movement had finally given women the vote and that kicked in a large movement toward women’s equality in other areas. Change was in the air and would have occurred without the war.
Pre-WWI America had been prosperous, as is usually the case when major changes to society are voted through. Pre-WWII America was in Depression. People were looking forward not to change society but to finally embrace normalcy after two decades of deprivation. It took the re-establishment of prosperity to give people the security to rebel. That’s also seemingly paradoxical, but well-established historically.
There had been a tremendous amount of societal change in the meantime. Women had gained the vote, and had gone to work and been sexually independent in large numbers during the war. Electricity and automobility had freed them from much home drudgery.
Meanwhile, the idea of modernism had changed art, music, architecture, journalism, and all sorts of other arts and crafts. And now the idea of nuclear war loomed above all, making cities the most vulnerable places for the first time in history.