How past wars actually helped build Europe’s welfare states

In 2024, the Great Prayer Day (Store Bededag), a public holiday in Denmark, was abolished.

The Danish parliament cancelled the holiday, introduced in the 17th century, to increase tax revenue and fund higher military spending in the wake of the Ukraine war.

The UK has slashed its development budget – amongst other things – for similar reasons. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, regularly warns that social sacrifices must be made in this “cruel world”.

And in the Netherlands, the three-party centre-right governing coalition has locked horns with trade unions and opposition parties over social welfare cuts.

Most European countries are, like the four mentioned here, set to spend 3.5 percent of their budgets or more on defence due to the growing threat of war.

And citizens, even those who support extra defence expenditure, are growing anxious: what does this mean for the welfare state?

In Brussels, a demonstration against militarization will be held on 14 June, under the banner ‘Welfare not Warfare’.

‘Guns or butter’?

But does a direct link really exist between rising defence spending and budgetary cuts in healthcare, benefits or pensions, as many citizens assume? Is it true that European countries must choose between ‘guns or butter’?

Before emotions run high on the issue, it is time perhaps for some reassurance of an historical nature. A great deal of academic research has been conducted on this subject, and almost all of it points in the same direction: in the past, the issue was not so much guns or butter but rather guns and butter.

The reason is that during war preparations or in wartime, countries do not only need weapons but also, crucially, loyal citizens to operate those weapons.

Public support is crucial in democracies. Even autocratic countries cannot do without, as is shown by the electoral quagmire US president Donald Trump has ended up in as a result of his disastrous war against Iran.

This is why in the run-up to war or in wartime, governments usually invest in public support. They try to avoid social spending cuts and raise taxes instead as a source of revenue.

As Shahin Vallée and Joseph de Weck, two of Europe’s smartest think-tankers, wrote last year: “Keeping the peace on the home front is just as important as holding the line in the trenches.”

Anyone interested in the subject Vallée and De Weck call “military Keynesianism” (whereby governments take over and steer the economy in times of war) should definitely read a study published in 2015 at the University of Cambridge, titled Mass Warfare and the Welfare State – Causal Mechanisms and Effects.

The authors conclude that since the late nineteenth century, social spending has never fallen in the face of the threat of war or in wartime, but has risen instead. In western welfare states like the US, Australia, Canada and Europe, they write, war is a crucial factor in explaining when social programmes emerge: “Mass war has influenced the adoption of social welfare policies and has boosted social spending in post-war eras.”

Just before World War I, for instance, countries had to mobilise soldiers and train them. Many, however, were illiterate and in poor health – diseases like tuberculosis were rampant. In response, several countries immediately improved their education and healthcare systems.

For the first time, child labour was restricted because many teenagers were in such poor physical condition that they were unfit for military service. Moreover, soldiers’ families had to be fed. The state took on all these responsibilities.

“You cannot maintain an A1 empire with a C3 population,” British prime minister Lloyd George said in 1917 – and announced revolutionary social and labour law reforms.

‘Wars make states, and states make war’

“War makes states and states make war,” the American sociologist and political scientist Charles Tilly once wrote. In the past, wars were fought by professional armies; nowadays, the whole of society becomes involved.

The ‘masses’ must therefore be kept loyal, fit and content. Even Nazi Germany understood this, and sought to improve the living standard and social security of the Volksgemeinschaft.