Bonus Army
1930s US veterans' protest movement
The Bonus Army, a group of 43,000 demonstrators—17,000 veterans of U.S. involvement in World War I, their families, and affiliated groups—gathered in Washington, D.C., in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service-bonus certificates. Organizers called the demonstrators the Bonus Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.), to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Forces, while the media referred to them as the "Bonus Army" or as "Bonus Marchers". The demonstrators were led by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant. Many of the war veterans had been out of work during the early years of the Great Depression. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded all U.S. World War I veterans "bonuses" in the form of certificates which they could not redeem until 1945. Each certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment with compound interest. The principal demand of the Bonus Army was the immediate cash payment of their certificates.
The public source identifies “Bonus Army” as 1930s US veterans' protest movement. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bonus, Army and 1930s.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Bonus Army”, the useful work is to connect “1930s US veterans' protest movement” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1932, 1924 and 1945.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Bonus Army”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Bonus Army primary sources, Bonus Army archive and Bonus research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bonus Army”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Bonus Army” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.