Did the families of the fallen soldiers in World War 2 receive any compensation if not why?

Answer 1

I cannot speak to the troops of every combatant nation but US military personnel could face combat comforted with the knowledge that his designated beneficiary or next of kin would be rewarded with $10,000 should the enemy's marksmanship prove to be accurate. A soldier could, in theory, opt out of this "GI Insurance", but this was even more than strongly discouraged and very few men who were new to the army were able to stand the gaff of going up their chain of command, making themselves stand out most unpleasantly as they insisted on their "rights" to successively higher levels of command to try to avoid having this coverage. The actual coverage was provided by private insurance companies and a small deduction was made for the premiums from the soldiers' monthly pay. $10,000 may not sound like much today but that's after seventy years of completely irresponsible leadership in Washington have relentlessly debased the value of the dollar. In 1944 this was enough to buy a nice house or several new cars (if new cars had been available). Additionally American soldiers were paid much better than the troops of any other nation, and after the war if you were killed your remains were returned home at government expense, a departure from all previous military adventures. If the soldier failed to designate a beneficiary of his $10,000 policy when given a chance to do so the benefit was payable to his next of kin. Soldiers were also provided with blank form wills to fill out, so they could enter battle free from nagging worries about such home-front matters.

I'm certain Japanese families received nothing beyond the satisfaction of placing such a costly sacrifice on the altar before their living god, The Emperor. Even before they were dead the Japanese were told to think of their loved ones marooned on bypassed islands beyond the reach of new supplies of food and medicine as "shattered jewels". Some of these jewels embarrassingly did not die for The Emperor and turned up after the war, of course. Something may have been done eventually to compensate the families of killed Japanese military personnel.

The Russians were only too happy to shoot their own soldiers and did not care how many of them they got killed by the enemy right up until the last few months of the war, when they actually had managed to nearly completely deplete the supposedly inexhaustible reservoir of Russian manpower, and had at long last to finally attempt to be a little bit careful about getting their troops slaughtered wholesale. They would have laughed at the notion that any good communist family would expect or accept anything so vulgar as money for such heroic sacrifices in the struggle against fascism.

Why, you ask? People who run governments, even in more "enlightened" "democracies" tend to think they know best, and all you smelly little people are no better than pawns they might have to sacrifice as they stride their way across the pages of history. Soldiers should be grateful just to get paid whatever the all-highest might deign to allow them each month. For instance in the American Revolution the Hessians were not paid at all, and had to depend on what they could plunder from American homes for any compensation. These were not volunteers, of course, but forced into uniform by universal conscription, where ALL young men went into the service. Their tin-pot monarch back home was paid monthly rent for their services, and an indemnity for any who were so unfortunate as to get themselves killed. The British troops alongside of whom they served were paid the magnificent sum of one shilling (twelve pence) per month, from which deductions were made for items of uniform clothing and for flour used to powder the hair. The British troops were mostly "volunteers" who lacked the wisdom to not accept drinks from the recruiting sergeant and after sufficient lubrication had taken "the King's shilling". They were in for life, or until too old to be useful anymore. In times of urgent need the sham of voluntary enlistments might be dispensed with and "press gangs" would roam the land forcing men out of the fields and into the army and navy.

Even though US troops were paid so much as to make them military aristocrats when compared to the troops of all other nations, at the start of WWII privates still received the grand amount of $21 per month (up from $13 per month during the Civil War), before deductions. This was soon more than doubled though. The US Military was determined in WWII to pay well, take care of its wounded, return the bodies of its dead home when possible, and compensate the families, all of which were radical departures from traditional governmental thinking of previous wars, including American ones. It usually took thirty years or more for congress to authorize pensions for disabled vets of previous wars. They were lucky to get a wooden leg.

Answer 2

no