Intro
Clip: Season 1 | 5m 35sVideo has Closed Captions
Watch the first few minutes of The War.
Watch the first few minutes of The War.
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Corporate funding is provided by General Motors, Anheuser-Busch, and Bank of America. Major funding is provided by Lilly Endowment, Inc.;PBS; National Endowment for the Humanities; CPB; The Arthur Vining Davis...
Intro
Clip: Season 1 | 5m 35sVideo has Closed Captions
Watch the first few minutes of The War.
From
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How to Watch The War
The War is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, LG TV, and Vizio.
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The War - A Timeline
Explore a multimedia timeline following events from World War II battles, diplomatic actions, and developments on America's homefront, from 1939 - 1945.Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- I don't think there is such a thing as good war.
There are sometimes, necessary wars and I think one might say, just wars and that, I never questioned the necessity of that war and I still do not question that it was something that had to be done.
(somber music) - [Narrator] The greatest cataclysm in history grew out of ancient and ordinary human emotions.
Anger and arrogance and bigotry, victimhood and the lust for power.
And it ended because other human qualities, courage and perseverance and selflessness, faith, leadership and the hunger for freedom, combined with unimaginable brutality to change the course of human events.
The second World War brought out the best and the worst in a generation and blurred the two so that they became at times, almost indistinguishable.
In the killing that engulfed the world, from 1939 to 1945, between 50 and 60 million people died.
So many and in so many different places, that the real number will never be known.
More than 85 million men and women served in uniform, but the overwhelming majority of those who perished were civilians.
Men, women and children, obliterated by the arrhythmic of war.
(somber music) The United States of America was relatively fortunate.
More than 405,000 soldiers and sailors, airmen and marines died.
But that figure represented proportionally fewer military causalities that was suffered by any of the other major combatants.
American cities were not destroyed, American civilians were never really at risk.
But without American Power, without the sacrifice of American lives, the struggles of outcome would have been very different.
The American economy only grew stronger as the fighting went on and by the time it ended, the United States would be the most powerful nation on Earth and a once isolated and insular people, would find themselves at the center of world affairs.
The war touched every family on every street, in every town in America.
Towns like Luverne, Minnesota.
Sacramento, California.
Waterbury, Connecticut.
and Mobile, Alabama.
and nothing would ever be the same again.
- I'm not sure I can speak about why human beings in general go to war, I think that's a pretty large category.
I can only speak about why 18 year olds from Minneapolis go to war.
They'd go to war because it's impossible not to, because a current is established in the society, so swift, flowing toward war that every young man who steps into it is carried downstream.
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Clip: S1 | 8m 41s | Joe Medicine Crow, the last war chief of the Crow Tribe of Montana is profiled in The War. (8m 41s)
Making Of | Ken Burns' Decision
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Preview: S1 | 1m 11s | Ken Burns talks about his decision to make “The War.” (1m 11s)
Making Of | Wynton Marsalis On Music
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Preview: S1 | 1m 22s | Wynton Marsalis talks about making the music for “The War.” (1m 22s)
Making Of | Why WWII Will Be Remembered
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Preview: S1 | 2m 32s | The filmmakers talk about WWII and why it will be remembered. (2m 32s)
Making Of | 'What was it like?'
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Preview: S1 | 46s | Ken Burns talks about what makes WWII so memorable. (46s)
Making Of | An Intimidating Project
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Preview: S1 | 2m 21s | Filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick talk about why “The War” was an intimidating project. (2m 21s)
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Preview: S1 | 1m 51s | The filmmakers talk about adding sound to the amazing archived video. (1m 51s)
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Clip: S1 | 4m 39s | Burnett Miller, Ray Leopold and Sam Hynes talk about joining up during the war. (4m 39s)
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Clip: S1 | 11m 23s | America needed to take Iwo Jima to secure a base for US Bombers. (11m 23s)
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Clip: S1 | 7m 45s | Ray Leopold, Burnett Miller, Dwain Luce and others discuss the horror of the Holocaust. (7m 45s)
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Clip: S1 | 2m 12s | Sam Hines talks about growing up in Minneapolis in 1941and the excitement of the service. (2m 12s)
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Clip: S1 | 1m 50s | Ray Leopold discusses the mixture of food available at meal times. (1m 50s)
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Clip: S1 | 4m 39s | Burnett Miller, Ray Leopold and Sam Hynes talk about why they fought. (4m 39s)
Now PlayingVideo has Closed Captions
Clip: S1 | 5m 35s | Watch the first few minutes of The War. (5m 35s)
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Clip: S1 | 5m 12s | Norah Jones sings 'American Anthem.' (5m 12s)
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Clip: S1 | 12m 43s | WWII brought an end to the chronic unemployment of Mobile, AL. (12m 43s)
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Clip: S1 | 1m 24s | Al McIntosh writes of personal losses the war brought to those in Luverne. (1m 24s)
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Clip: S1 | 1m 26s | Young soldier Daniel Inouye comes face-to-face with the enemy. (1m 26s)
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Clip: S1 | 7m 22s | During the war everything seemed to be rationed or in short supply: (7m 22s)
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Clip: S1 | 2m 47s | Daniel Inouye was preparing to go to church when the attack on Pearl Harbor began. (2m 47s)
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Clip: S1 | 9m 56s | On Tuesday morning, May 25, 1943, tensions explode at the Alabama Dry Dock shipyard. (9m 56s)
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Clip: S1 | 7m 14s | In Sacramento, soon after Order 9066 was issued, signs went up saying "Japs must go." (7m 14s)
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Clip: S1 | 1m 42s | Fighter pilot Quentin Aanenson recalls the first time he knew he'd "killed men." (1m 42s)
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Clip: S1 | 5m 22s | Marines Pete Arias and Bill Lansford land on Iwo Jima. (5m 22s)
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Clip: S1 | 2m 14s | LIFE magazine published the first image of dead American servicemen in the 9/20/43 issue. (2m 14s)
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Clip: S1 | 11m | The four towns featured in THE WAR; Mobile, Sacramento, Waterbury and Luverne. (11m)
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Clip: S1 | 1m 29s | FDR speaks to the country following the attack on Pearl Harbor. (1m 29s)
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Clip: S1 | 2m 13s | On June 6, 1944 a million and a half Allied troops embark on the invasion of France. (2m 13s)
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Clip: S1 | 5m 10s | Al McIntosh writes about D-Day in the Rock County Star Herald. (5m 10s)
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Clip: S1 | 51s | Tom Galloway finds himself on the front lines in the Battle of the Bulge. (51s)
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Clip: S1 | 5m 52s | Babe Ciarlo never revealed his experiences in his letters home. (5m 52s)
African-Americans Troops Training
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Clip: S1 | 4m 10s | The armed forces of the United States remained strictly segregated. (4m 10s)
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Preview: Ep1 | 30s | Watch a preview of Episode One: A Necessary War. (30s)
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship
Support for PBS provided by:
Corporate funding is provided by General Motors, Anheuser-Busch, and Bank of America. Major funding is provided by Lilly Endowment, Inc.;PBS; National Endowment for the Humanities; CPB; The Arthur Vining Davis...