On American Experience: Victory in the Pacific

Description

Filmmaker Austin Hoyt answers questions on his new documentary, American Experience: Victory in the Pacific, which examines the final year of World War II in the Pacific, including the rationale for using the atomic bomb, and features firsthand recollections of both American and Japanese civilians and soldiers. The presentation includes a collage of audio and visual clips from the film.

Audio and video options are available.

Vietnam War and the Presidency: The Presidential Tapes

Description

A series of professors and historians look at the presidential tape recordings of John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Lyndon B. Johnson, focusing on what these tapes reveal about the presidents' decisions and roles during the Vietnam War. The panel also discusses the significance of such recordings in general—to memory, to the press, to historians—and what they reveal about the character of individual presidents.

Audio and video options are available.

Birth of The Modern Arms Race

Description

Professor Priscilla McMillan examines the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, physicist and director of the Manhattan Project. McMillan focuses particularly on his post-World-War-II opposition to development of the hydrogen bomb, the 1954 trial in which his security clearance was revoked, and the context of these events at the beginning of the USSR-U.S. arms race.

The Atomic Bomb: Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Question

Is it possible to discover the true story behind the decision to drop the atomic bomb?

Textbook Excerpt

Textbooks often struggle to portray the U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities in 1945 in a balanced way. Some focus on the cost to American lives of an invasion; others the suffering of Japanese civilians in the wake of the blast. Giving limits of space, textbooks can often only summarize important points of what was a multifaceted debate.

Source Excerpt

As a pivotal event in the history of both World War II and the Cold War, the decision to use atomic weapons generated substantial discussion, deliberation, and debate (some of it highly classified). The documents created by military leaders, politicians, and government agencies during the course of their exchanges tell a rich, complex, and difficult story.

Historian Excerpt

Historians note a great deal of debate surrounding the decision to use the bombs in 1945. Typically, conflict has arisen over the justification for the use of the bombs and about the moral ramifications of the decision. This is a debate that reached the top levels of U.S. policy making and that continued for decades afterwards.

Abstract

Textbooks struggle with the portrayal of the American decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japanese cities in August 1945. Because the subject is both extraordinarily complex and sometimes controversial, textbooks have struck a number of compromises in an attempt to present the story accurately and fairly. Most recently, those compromises involve presenting voices from a variety of perspectives with limited interpretation.

A Patriot's History of the United States, Part Two: Reinterpreting Reagan and the Cold War

Description

Professor Larry Schweikart argues that most popular textbooks today show a liberal, left-wing bias. He reexamines specific periods in U.S. history from a conservative perspective, focusing particularly on the slave market within the U.S. and then on Ronald Reagan's presidency and his role in ending the Cold War.

This lecture continues from A Patriot's History of the United States, Part One: Liberty and Property in the American Past.

A Patriot's History of the United States, Part One: Liberty and Property in the American Past

Description

Professor Larry Schweikart argues that most popular textbooks today show a liberal, left-wing bias. He reexamines specific periods in U.S. history from a conservative perspective, focusing on Ronald Reagan's presidency and the colonization of the original colonies, particularly as documents from the latter discuss property rights.

This lecture continues in A Patriot's History of the United States, Part Two: Reinterpreting Reagan and the Cold War.

9/11 and the War on Terror

Description

Professor and author Noam Chomsky discusses the current "War on Terrorism" in the context of earlier perceptions of terrorism and national threat, including the Cold War and World War II.

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Rosenberg Granddaughter Discusses Her Grandparents Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/21/2008 - 18:27
Description

The granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg discusses a documentary she has created for HBO that explores the question of whether they were really guilty.

Warfare and Technology

Description

Martin van Creveld of Hebrew University examines the intimate relationship between warfare and technological development—including the essential change in the nature of war that the development of nuclear weapons brought about (a new warfare in which victory did not ensure survival) and the U.S.'s emphasis on technological superiority in warfare (regardless of the effectiveness of this approach). This lecture was conducted for "Teaching Military History, Why and How: A History Institute for Teachers," held on September 29–30, 2007. The event was sponsored by the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education and the Cantigny First Division Foundation, and held at the Cantigny First Division Museum in Wheaton, IL.

Audio and video options are available.

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