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. Hello and welcome to another episode of Key Battles of World War II in Europe, our 10,000-foot

survey of the Second World War in Europe in the areas around him. I'm your host James Early,

as always, and my co-host, as

always, is Sean McIver. Sean, what did we do last time? For some reason, I can't remember.

I think we ended the war. I, yeah, that's right. We did. We ended the war. Okay, so, but as we

promised our listeners, just because we end the war,

doesn't mean we're done. In fact, far from it. We have 11 more episodes planned. And so what we're

going to do is I promised last time is we've got a four-part mini-series, which will be an epilogue, basically. And so we're going to talk about

Europe in 1945 in the post-war world this time. The next time we're going to talk about what

happened to the key leaders of the war in Europe after the war ended, what happened with their

lives and careers. We're going to talk again about technology,

and then we're going to have a reflective episode, and we talk about how each side won,

or was winning while they were winning. So, looking forward to that. And then after that,

we're going to have some one-off topical episodes that I think you'll really enjoy. But at this episode, as I said, Europe

in 1945 in the post-war world. We're not going to go too far in the future. We're not going to

go deep into the Cold War because eventually we may do a series on the Cold War itself. So I don't

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