War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's

founding right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased

its size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. your host, James Early. Hi everybody.

This is James.

I would like to take a minute to apologize for this episode.

When I recorded this episode, I was not aware of the fact that the

microphone that I'd been using for a long time had broken. But later, when I listened to the

episode, I realized that the audio quality was not up to the standards that we are used to in

this podcast and in all the podcasts I'm involved with.

I apologize for that, but I'm not going to re-record the episode because it would just take too much time.

I don't have the time for that. I've got to focus on future episodes.

So I hope you will forgive me. I hope you'll be able to deal with the fact that the only microphone I was using, unbeknownst to me, was the built-in microphone in the computer, which is not nearly as good as my external mic.

Anyway, thank you for all your support for listening, and please forgive me and try to enjoy the episode in spite of the

somewhat poor quality of the audio. Take care. Welcome to another special episode of

Key Battles of World War I in film. I'm James Early, your host. This is another in our series of episodes in which my friend, Sean McIver, and I will discuss several of the best movies about World War I. And I am super excited about today's episode because we are going to discuss the outstanding, incredible, award-winning 2019 film 1917. Sean, as you know, hopefully by now, but maybe you haven't.

Maybe this is the first one of these you've heard, just in case. I want to let you know that

Sean is a co-host of the excellent podcast, Come and Take It, which is about Texas history,

Texas culture, Texas music, pretty much all things Texas. He's also a major

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