The Middle Class Rose, as Did Expectations

Today, the bill continues to be one of the main drawing points recruiters use to entice people into joining the military.

"The GI Bill was one of the most revolutionary pieces of legislation in American history," said Robert Maddox, professor emeritus at Penn State University. "It gave millions of young men and women a chance to obtain an education that would have been unthinkable without it." It also provided veterans with home loans guaranteed by the federal government. Burgeoning home ownership ensued, as did the baby boom and the spread of Levittown-type developments. Suburbia had begun its sprawl.

The war also crept into the corners of society in many more nuanced and less-heralded ways that still reverberate through American life and culture.

Scientists and entrepreneurs developed inventions as sophisticated as radar and as simple as duct tape, which was used to keep water out of ammunition cases. Dispirited that so many military recruits had nutritional deficiencies, President Harry S. Truman in 1946 signed the National School Lunch Act, which has allowed millions of schoolchildren to get free meals. Like the GI Bill, it endures today.

American workers also have the war to thank for having their federal taxes withheld from each paycheck. Previously, taxpayers simply sent the Internal Revenue Service a lump-sum check at the end of the year. But with a costly war brewing, the federal government needed revenue quickly, and so it started the process of withholding taxes all through the year.

By the early 1950s, a new prosperity had set in. Many Americans had become accustomed to televisions and automobiles and came to expect a certain standard of living that would have been unfathomable a decade before, when war was on the horizon.

"With the rising expectations," Goodheart said, "there was no turning back."

Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.