Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War

Snapshots of gaiety and celebration - the street parties, the victory speeches - are often how we think of Britain in 1945. But the years following the end of the Second World War were far from a 'golden age' of pride and self-confidence. The country was triumphant but troubled, subject to continued rationing, social disorder, political change and disillusion.
Demobbed is the real story of what happened when millions of ex-servicemen returned home. Most had been absent for years, and the joy of arrival was often clouded with ambivalence, regrets and fears. Returning soldiers faced both practical and psychological problems, from reasserting their place in the family home to rejoining a much-altered labour force. Civilians worried that their homecoming heroes had been barbarised by their experiences and would bring crime and violence back from the battlefield. 'Problem veterans' preoccupied the entire country.
Drawing on their personal letters and diaries, on newspapers, reports, novels and films, Allan Allport's enthralling and affecting account illuminates the darker side of the homecoming experiences of ex-servicemen, their families and society at large.

Alan Allport is a lecturer at Princeton University.