Professor John Bodnar, author of The 'Good War' in American Memory, discusses America's World War Two. The United States came out of the conflict as a victorious superpower. But this has encouraged a narrative of American exceptionalism which has not lived up to critical scrutiny, with historians revealing a divided and often violent country during the war years.

The music in this episode is from Ida Pinkert's 'Four Songs', played by the Nimrod Ensemble of Berlin as part of the Lebensmelodien project, which seeks to rediscover the lost music of composers affected by the Holocaust (www.lebensmelodien.com).