The War: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick

The tranquil lives of the citizens of Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; and Luverne, Minnesota, are shattered on December 7, 1941, as they are thrust into the greatest cataclysm in history.

Americans mobilize for war at home and overseas. Factories hum around the clock, while in North Africa and Italy, GIs learn how to fight. In Europe, American airmen gamble their lives against preposterous odds on daylight bombing missions.

Americans are shocked by terrible losses on the Pacific atoll of Tarawa, while in Italy Allied forces are stalled for months at Monte Cassino. At home as towns boom, economic transformation leads to confrontation and ugly racial violence.

On June 6, 1944, D-Day, Allied troops take part in the greatest invasion in history, but then bog down in the Norman hedgerows for weeks. While back home dreaded telegrams from the War Department begin arriving at an inconceivable rate.

Victory in Europe seems imminent, but in Holland, the Vosges Mountains, and the Hurtgen Forest, GIs learn painful lessons as old as war itself—that generals make plans, plans go wrong and soldiers die.

Americans are shocked by Hitler’s massive counterattack in the Ardennes Forest - but by mid- March, 1945, they are across the Rhine while the Russians are 50 miles from Berlin. In the Pacific Iwo Jima is secured.

A few weeks after the death of President Roosevelt, Germany surrenders. In August, American planes drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Japanese, too, surrender. Millions return home—to live in a world without war.