Key Battles of American History Episodes
Show notes for all the latest episodes of Key Battles of American History.
Show notes for all the latest episodes of Key Battles of American History.
US Presidents in WW2 (Part 1)
In this episode, James begins a two-part series about United States presidents who served in World War 2. In Part One, James tells the amazing story of John F. Kennedy’s service in the Pacific. James also discusses the wartime service of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.
Bonus Episode – Marine Raiders
In this episode, James tells the fascinating history of America’s first Special Forces unit: the Marine Raiders. Formed in 1942, the Raiders played a key role in several Pacific Theater battles, including Guadalcanal, New Georgia, and Bougainville. In 1944, the Raider battalions were disbanded, and their members were reassigned to…
The Legacy of World War II
The Second World War deeply and permanently changed the world. In this final episode of the series, James and Scott discuss just a few of the many changes wrought by the war. After discussing casualties of the Pacific War, we discuss the rise and fall of empires, the ushering in…
Epilogue, Part Two
In this second installment of the “story after the story” miniseries, James and Scott discuss the postwar careers of key US Army Air Force and Marine leaders, as well as Japanese political leaders. Persons mentioned in the episode include Generals Curtis LeMay and Holland Smith, Col. Chesty Puller, and Major…
Epilogue, Part One
This is the first part of a two-episode series in which James and Scott discuss the “story after the story” of the top Japanese and American political and military leaders. In this episode, we discuss the postwar careers of President Truman, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Secretary of War…
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the End of the War
Between December 1942 and July 1945, a team of scientists, working in secret facilities in various parts of the U. S., researched, built, and tested the world’s first atomic bomb. Japan’s failure to surrender, together with the possibility of hundreds of thousands of casualties, motivated President Truman to drop an…
The Beginning of the End
By the summer of 1945, it was clear that Japan was defeated. Historian Craig Symonds writes that Japan was “stripped of her conquests, bombed incessantly from the air by American B-29s, her imports cut to a trickle by American submarines, her navy destroyed, and her industries idle for lack of…
Prisoners of War
During the Pacific War, the Japanese took over 130,000 Allied prisoners of war and held them in camps spread all over the Japanese Empire. Nearly all Allied prisoners were deprived of food and medical care, were regularly beaten, and were worked past the point of exhaustion. Nearly 40,000 died, representing…
Kamikazes
Once again, James and Scott are taking a break from the narrative of key battles to discuss two more important topics. In this episode, we will tell the story of kamikazes, including the origin of the tactic, its expansion into a full-fledged program, and its increasingly devastating effect, most notably…
