The History of the Twentieth Century

Boogie-woogie went mainstream in America during the war, as evidenced by the music of Glenn Miller and the Andrews Sisters.

The Americans were on the offensive in the Southwest Pacific, and after Tarawa, in the Central Pacific. As they advanced, Japanese military leaders scrambled to find a way to stop the Americans.

As soon as Allied leaders chose Normandy as the site of the Operation Overlord invasion, British intelligence set to work convincing the Germans that the invasion would be somewhere else.

The Allied campaign in Italy stalled, and British and American leaders were searching for a way to break the stalemate on the peninsula. Winston Churchill suggested an amphibious invasion behing enemy lines.

The war era (1939-45) saw the beginning of the end of the big band era. Part of this decline was due to two key strikes in the music industry.

The Holocaust should not be viewed as strictly a Nazi project or even a German project. Millions of people across Europe share responsibility for those crimes.

When Hitler learned that the Hungarian government was attempting to make a separate peace with the Allies, he ordered the German military to occupy Hungary, which was also the home of the largest surviving Jewish community in Axis-occupied Europe.

The US tries out a new strategy against Japan, but the American public is shocked by the cost. 

A look at some prominent blues singers, plus Judy Garland and her most famous role, as Dorothy Gale in  The Wizard of Oz.

The Allies hoped their invasion of the Italian mainland would lead to a rapid occupation of Italy, but the Germans put up a defense that slowed their advance to a crawl.

The German Army continued to retreat westward over the winter of 1943-44, abandoning most of Ukraine. Red Army pressure was relentless, not giving the Germans any opportunity to establish a strong defensive line.

The Big Three--Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill--met and conferred together for the first time in November 1943. It was the most important meeting of world leaders since the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, created in 1924 by the merger of three film production companies, quickly rose to become the most successful studio of the era. The record box office for the 1939 film Gone with the Wind represents the studio at its height.

The Japanese "Zero" fighter plane played an important role in Japan's amazing victories early in the Pacific war. But by 1943, the Zero (and its pilots) were falling behind their Allied counterparts.

Continuing from the previous episode, we examine events in multiple theaters in August-September 1943

An eventful period in July-August 1943, when there were major developments on the Eastern Front, in the Mediterranean, and in the Pacific.

The history of Paramount Pictures, one of the oldest and most prominent film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age.

The end of the Battle of Kursk did not mean the end of the Red Army advance. The Germans withdrew, but the Red Army just kept coming.

Hundreds of thousands died in Leningrad during the winter of 1941-42, but with spring came new hope. Composer Dmitri Shostakovich's latest symphony became a patriotic anthem, and not only in the USSR.

As war raged around the globe, the city of Leningrad suffered under a German siege that lasted 872 days.

In this episode, we look at Twentieth Century-Fox, John Ford, Shirley Temple, John Wayne, and Alfred Hitchcock.

Resistance against the Nazis could take many forms.

Some of the biggest successes (and biggest failures) of European resistance movements and their guides in Britain.

In the occupied countries of Europe and Asia, resistance movements developed to oppose Axis occupations. In most cases, the resistance movements were divided between Communist and non-Communist.

The U-boat war was going quite well for the Germans at the beginning of 1943, but by mid-year, the German Navy was on the verge of abandoning the effort.