WASHINGTON — Combat veterans of World War II have served in every Congress for the last 70 years, shaping foreign policy and a vision of the United States as the world’s benevolent leader, willing to use its economic and military might as a global force for freedom.

That era is ending, in a quiet fashion befitting the generation that defined it.

On Tuesday, Representative Ralph M. Hall, Republican of Texas, lost his primary bid after more than three decades in office, making him and Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, who is giving up a seat he has held since the Eisenhower administration, the last two veterans of the war to serve in the Capitol. The next Congress will have none.

“It is the passing of an era of some very great leaders who came out of World War II,” said Bob Dole, the former senator from Kansas whose own poignant story as a soldier severely wounded in the war propelled him to a political career that spanned four decades, including the Republican nomination for president in 1996. “I think they had a better appreciation for America, they understood sacrifice, they understood what our role in the world was, and so they were pretty good legislators.”

To veterans’ advocates, the milestone is more than symbolic because it contributes to a perception that members of Congress are not as sensitive to the needs of service members and veterans as they once were.