The History of the Twentieth Century

The Hamburg bombing forced the German government to rethink its defense policies. In Québec, Churchill and Roosevelt cut a deal on atom bomb research.

After two years of trying, RAF Bomber Command at last perfected the techniques to inflict mass casualties and devastation on an enemy city. Meanwhile, the US Eighth Air Force struggled to develop their own strategies.

As the war turned against them, the Japanese attempted to create allies among the nations it occupied, declaring the independence of Burma and the Philippines, while the US embraced China as a peer of the main Allied powers, alongside the US, UK, and USSR.

The Japanese come to the reluctant conclusion that they have to abandon Guadalcanal and northeastern New Guinea. US submarine warfare begins to take a toll, and Admiral Yamamoto is killed.

The German offenive failed. Then it was the Soviets' turn.

Adolf Hitler begins his long-delayed 1943 offensive against the USSR, which fizzles in a matter of days.

Warner Brothers was one of the minor studios until they introduced the first talking picture, which made the studio into one of the majors. In the Thirties, Warner Brothers, led by the irascible Jack L. Warner, was known for its glitzy musicals and crime dramas. In the early Forties, the studio released two films that are now regarded as among the best American films ever made: The Maltese Falcon...

The Japanese claimed to be liberating their fellow Asians from Western oppression, but Japanese rule proved to be brutal and murderous.

In early 1943, the remaining residents of the Warsaw Ghetto rose up against the SS. Farther east, the German Army uncovers the mass grave where the Soviet NKVD buried thousands of murdered Polish Army officers.

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the American atom bomb project kicked into high gear. Fearful that the Germans were already working on a bomb and had a head start, the US government built a huge program meant to approach the problem of building an atom bomb from several different angles all at once.

The Allies invade Sicily, which leads to the fall of Benito Mussolini.

Hitler himself said that he had "never been a man of the defensive," but in the aftermath of Stalingrad, he had no choice.

RKO Radio Pictures had a reputation for producing second-rate films. Even so, this was the studio that signed Fred Astaire and Katharine Hepburn; it was the studio that released King Kong and Citizen Kane .

The first in a series looking at the American film industry in the 1930s and 1940s, the heyday of the "studio system."

The fall of Burma to the Japanese put India on the front lines of the war, posing hard questions for the Indian nationalist movement.

The BBC struggles to determine its role in wartime Britain.

Stalingrad falls and Joseph Goebbels tries to spark a program to ramp up the German war effort.

Roosevelt and Churchill met again in early 1943 to discuss the next stage of the war against the Axis, and they chose a provocative venue: Casablanca, a city their armies had only recently taken.

In October and November 1942, the Japanese began their final push to drive the Americans off Guadalcanal.

The Germans began an operation to relieve the siege of Stalingrad, but the Red Army was already prepared with a counter attack.

The battle for Stalingrad raged on for two months, then the situation was suddenly upended by a surprise Soviet offensive that surrounded the city.

The Anglo-American amphibious landings in French North Africa were not only a complex military operation. There was also complex negotiation going on behind the scenes. The Allies did not want to defeat French forces in North Africa; they wanted the French to join them.

In October 1942, Bernard Montgomery began his long-awaited offensive against the Italians and Germans in Egypt. Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the Mediterranean, the Allies were preparing to open a new front in Africa.

The Battle of Stalingrad was a throwback to the kinds of battles fought in the last war. Like Verdun, the Germans were paying a heavy price. Would the gain be worth it?

As Bernard Montgomery plotted an offensive against Axis forces in North Africa from the east, Dwight Eisenhower was plotting one from the west.