On June 6, 1944 – observed as “D-Day” - the Allied began a massive invasion of Europe, landing 156,000 British, Canadian and American soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, France. In response, Hitler poured all the remaining strength of his army into the Battle of the Bulge, the last major German offensive of the war.  Meanwhile in the Pacific, heavy casualties sustained in the campaigns at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and fears of the even costlier land invasion of Japan led Truman to authorize the use of a new and devastating weapon – the atomic bomb – on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The Second World War was over, but at a tremendous cost to not only "The Greatest Generation," but the entire world.

With Britain facing Germany in Europe, the United States was the only nation capable of combating Japanese aggression, which by late 1941 included an expansion of its ongoing war with China and the seizure of European colonial holdings in the Far East. On December 7, 1941, 360 Japanese aircraft attacked the major U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii taking the Americans completely by surprise and claiming the lives of more than 2,300 troops. The attack on Pearl Harbor served to unify American public opinion in favor of entering World War II, and on December 8 Congress declared war on Japan. Germany and the other Axis Powers promptly declared war on the United States.  At home, the United States rallied in support of the war through production, war bonds, and rationing - while scores of troops landed in North Africa en route to Italy. 

The instability created in Europe by the First World War (1914-18) set the stage for another international conflict - World War II, which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating. Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan to further his ambitions of world domination. Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, and World War II had begun.  But the United States was yet again, put into a difficult position - should they join the war?  Echoing Woodrow Wilson, President Franklin D. Roosevelt does all he can to "keep us out of war." 

The New Deal was a series of programs and projects instituted during the Great Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that aimed to restore prosperity to Americans. When Roosevelt took office in 1933, he acted swiftly to stabilize the economy and provide jobs and relief to those who were suffering. Over the next eight years, the government instituted a series of experimental New Deal projects and programs, such as the CCC, the WPA, the TVA, the SEC and others, that aimed to restore some measure of dignity and prosperity to many Americans. Roosevelt’s New Deal fundamentally and permanently changed the federal government’s relationship to U.S. citizens.

The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, lasting from 1929 to 1939. It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and employment as failing companies laid off workers. By 1933, when the Great Depression reached its lowest point, some 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half the country’s banks had failed.

The Roaring 20s conjures up images of happy people dancing the Charleston, listening to jazz in Harlem nightclubs, and drinking bathtub gin.  In many ways this was a decade dominated by optimism, as people enjoyed the conveniences that technology brought into their lives.  Yet the 1920s were also marked by some troubling trends and events, and not everybody enjoyed the "Coolidge Prosperity."  There was a resurgence of racism in the Jim Crow South, the trend of nativism flourished, and the country was divided over the role of the Bible in public schools.  It's no wonder that writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis were part of a Lost Generation, looking for some meaning in 20th century modernity.

The war was over and many Americans spent the 1920s in a great mood. Investors flocked to a rising stock market. Companies launched brand-new, cutting-edge products, like radios and washing machines. Exuberant Americans kicked up their heels to jazz music, tried crazy stunts, and supported a black market in liquor after Prohibition. A popular expression of the time asked, “What will they think of next?” Bootleggers, flappers, bathtub gin - life is roaring and the music is hot, and the whole country is dancing to the beat of the Charleston. Well, maybe not the whole country.

At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded.  In Paris the following year, a treaty would be signed, but not all in Europe - or the United States for that matter approved.  Selling his own plan would be President Wilson's demise, as America turned its eyes from international affairs back to the homefront.

On June 26, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat. But not everyone wanted to join. It took a large propaganda effort and a draft to fill the ranks. It worked. The entrance of America’s well-supplied forces into the conflict marked a major turning point in the war and helped the Allies to victory. When the war finally ended, on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives.

During the summer of 1914, the tensions in Europe that had been growing for many years culminated with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian terrorist organization. Within less than a month, two coalitions emerged—the Central Powers and the Allied Powers. As war raged in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson argued that the United States should remain neutral in this conflict.  But that neutrality was short-lived, after a series of events tested the President and a nation. How far can the United States be pushed, before it pushes back?