Event

Citizens First & Soldiers Second: The January 1946 Army Mutinies

This is an online event.

This essay examines how U.S. soldiers, believing that the U.S. government violated its promise of rapid demobilization, rose up to protest the War Department’s demobilization reduction in early January 1946. Reflecting a “citizen-first, soldier-second” mentality, American troops engaged in global demonstrations, exercising citizenship rights like petitioning the government for redress, free speech and assembly, and the right to a free press, despite their presence in the armed forces. Therefore, the GI Mutinies of 1946 can be seen as soldiers reclaiming a sense of their citizenship in a republican society that had been reified as a result of their wartime service.

Join the conversation at the Dina G. Malgeri Modern American Society & Culture Seminar. Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and interested members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. Learn more.

Purchasing the $25 seminar subscription gives you advance access to the seminar papers of all seven seminar series for the current academic year. Subscribe at www.masshist.org/research/seminars. Subscribers for the current year may login to view currently available essays.

Register to attend online