The War: A Ken Burns Film

After a haunting overview of the Second World War, an epoch of killing that engulfed the world from 1939 to 1945 and cost at least 50 million lives, the inhabitants of four towns, Mobile in Alabama, Sacramento in California, Waterbury in Connecticut, and Luverne in Minnesota, recall their communities on the eve of the conflict.

On daylight bombing missions American airmen gamble their lives against preposterous odds to bring the war to the heart of Hitler's domain.

In Italy, Allied forces are stalled in the mountains south of Rome, unable to break through the German lines at Monte Cassino. The killing goes on all winter and spring as the enemy manages to fight off repeated Allied attacks. A risky landing at Anzio ends in utter failure; thousands of Allied troops, including Babe Ciarlo of Waterbury, are exposed to enemy fire and unable to advance for months.

In the early hours of June 6, 1944 - D Day - the invasion of France begins. It is the bloodiest day in American history since the Civil War. The Allies succeed in tearing a 45 mile gap in Hitler's vaunted Atlantic Wall. By day's end more than 150,000 men have landed on French soil, and more men and more equipment and supplies were coming ashore every hour.

By September 1944 on the Western Front, American and British troops massed on the German border are desperately short of fuel. Allied commanders gamble on a risky scheme to drop thousands of airborne troops behind enemy lines in Holland, In the Pacific, General MacArthur is poised to invade the Philippines at Leyte. The fighting drags on for more than two months in one of the most brutal and unnecessary campaigns in the Pacific.

After three years of fighting, bad news from the War Department seems endless; Hitler launches a counterattack in the Ardennes forest of Belgium and Luxembourg.