Behind the Scenes | Why Ken Burns Made 'The War'
After The Civil War, Ken Burns resisted another war film. Veterans' families changed his mind.
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Behind the Scenes | Why Ken Burns Made 'The War'
Clip: Season 1 | 1m 11sVideo has Closed Captions
After The Civil War, Ken Burns resisted another war film. Veterans' families changed his mind.
After the success of The Civil War, Ken Burns was reluctant to make another war film and risk being typecast. But calls kept coming from families of veterans who were just beginning to talk, or who had died leaving letters behind, and from men who had landed at Omaha Beach. Their stories wore down his resolve and led to The War.
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Corporate funding is provided by General Motors, Anheuser-Busch, and Bank of America. Major funding is provided by Lilly Endowment, Inc.;PBS; National Endowment for the Humanities; CPB; The Arthur Vining Davis...
Behind the Scenes | Why Ken Burns Made 'The War'
Clip: Season 1 | 1m 11sVideo has Closed Captions
After the success of The Civil War, Ken Burns was reluctant to make another war film and risk being typecast. But calls kept coming from families of veterans who were just beginning to talk, or who had died leaving letters behind, and from men who had landed at Omaha Beach. Their stories wore down his resolve and led to The War.
From
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The War - A Timeline
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Behind the Scenes | Inside the Edit of 'The War'
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Clip: S1 | 2m 21s | Ken Burns and Lynn Novick on distilling World War II into a 14-and-a-half-hour film. (2m 21s)
Ken Burns Answers: What Was It Like?
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Clip: S1 | 46s | Ken Burns on the single question at the heart of The War: What was it like? (46s)
Behind the Scenes | Why WWII Will Be Remembered
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Clip: S1 | 2m 32s | Ken Burns and Lynn Novick on why World War II, the biggest event in human history, endures. (2m 32s)
Now PlayingBehind the Scenes | Why Ken Burns Made 'The War'
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Clip: S1 | 1m 11s | After The Civil War, Ken Burns resisted another war film. Veterans' families changed his mind. (1m 11s)
Behind the Scenes | Recording Wynton Marsalis' Score
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Clip: S1 | 1m 22s | Wynton Marsalis composed a suite giving each of The War's four towns its own musical voice. (1m 22s)
Behind the Scenes | Building the Sound of War
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Clip: S1 | 1m 51s | The archival combat footage in The War arrived silent. Its sound took more than a year to build. (1m 51s)
Joseph Medicine Crow: Becoming a War Chief
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Clip: Ep5 | 8m 41s | Fighting in WWII Europe, Joseph Medicine Crow completed the four deeds of a Crow war chief. (8m 41s)
Ray Leopold's Front-Line Meal: Chocolate Roast Beef
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Clip: Ep6 | 1m 50s | "We loved every single bite." Ray Leopold remembers his chocolate-covered roast beef. (1m 50s)
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Preview: Ep1 | 30s | Watch a preview of Episode One: A Necessary War. (30s)
The Holocaust: Liberating the Camps
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Clip: Ep7 | 7m 45s | American soldiers bear witness to the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps in 1945. (7m 45s)
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Clip: Ep1 | 2m 12s | For a Minneapolis teenager in 1941, enlisting was a chance to become someone new. (2m 12s)
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Clip: Ep1 | 4m 39s | Three WWII veterans on propaganda, pacifism and the real reasons they went to war. (4m 39s)
Norah Jones Sings 'American Anthem'
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Clip: Ep7 | 5m 12s | Norah Jones sings 'American Anthem at the conclusion of the final episode of 'The War'. (5m 12s)
Episode 1: A Necessary War | Introduction
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Clip: Ep1 | 5m 35s | Between 50 and 60 million people died in World War II. This is how The War begins. (5m 35s)
When Mobile, Alabama, Turned Into an American War Town
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Clip: Ep2 | 12m 43s | WWII turned Mobile, Alabama, into a boomtown as 150,000 newcomers arrived for defense jobs. (12m 43s)
Rationing and Recycling on the Home Front
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Clip: Ep2 | 7m 22s | From sugar to nylons to gasoline, Americans rationed nearly everything to supply the war effort. (7m 22s)
Quentin Aanenson: A Fighter Pilot's Burden
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Clip: Ep4 | 1m 42s | Luverne fighter pilot Quentin Aanenson recalls the first time he knew he had killed men. (1m 42s)
Made Into an Enemy: Executive Order 9066
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Clip: Ep1 | 7m 14s | Executive Order 9066 forced more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes. (7m 14s)
Luverne Mourns a Marine Lost on Saipan
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Clip: Ep4 | 1m 24s | A telegram, a father's walk home and a halted dance: Luverne mourns a Marine killed on Saipan. (1m 24s)
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Clip: Ep6 | 5m 22s | Veterans of Carlson's Raiders, Marines Pete Arias and Bill Lansford face the horror of Iwo Jima. (5m 22s)
Iwo Jima: Eight Square Miles of Rock and Ash
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Clip: Ep6 | 11m 23s | Feb. 19, 1945: Marines storm Iwo Jima, where 21,000 Japanese defenders wait underground. (11m 23s)
How America Heard the News of D-Day
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Clip: Ep4 | 5m 10s | From Luverne to Mobile, Americans pray and wait for word of the D-Day invasion. (5m 10s)
Four American Towns Before Pearl Harbor
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Clip: Ep1 | 11m | Mobile, Sacramento, Waterbury and Luverne: four American towns on the eve of World War II. (11m)
The First Photo of America's WWII Dead
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Clip: Ep4 | 2m 14s | In 1943, LIFE published the first photo of American war dead the public was allowed to see. (2m 14s)
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Clip: Ep1 | 1m 29s | Dec. 8, 1941: Americans gather by their radios as FDR asks Congress to declare war. (1m 29s)
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Clip: Ep5 | 2m 13s | Just after midnight on D-Day, 24,000 Allied paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines in Normandy. (2m 13s)
Daniel Inouye Remembers the Pearl Harbor Attack
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Clip: Ep1 | 2m 47s | Future U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye watched Japanese planes streak overhead on Dec. 7, 1941. (2m 47s)
Daniel Inouye and the Surrendering Soldier
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Clip: Ep5 | 1m 26s | Future Senator Daniel Inouye recalls a surrendering German soldier and a split-second reaction. (1m 26s)
Black Troops in a Segregated Military
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Clip: Ep3 | 4m 10s | Black Americans answered the call to serve in WWII, only to face a strictly segregated military. (4m 10s)
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Clip: Ep6 | 51s | The German offensive strikes out of the Ardennes fog, and Mobile's Tom Galloway is in its path. (51s)
Babe Ciarlo's Letters Home From Anzio
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Clip: Ep3 | 5m 52s | On the Anzio front, Waterbury's Babe Ciarlo wrote home about pork chops, never the fighting. (5m 52s)
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Clip: Ep3 | 9m 56s | May 25, 1943, white workers riot after 12 Black workers are promoted to welder in Mobile, Alabama. (9m 56s)
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Corporate funding is provided by General Motors, Anheuser-Busch, and Bank of America. Major funding is provided by Lilly Endowment, Inc.;PBS; National Endowment for the Humanities; CPB; The Arthur Vining Davis...