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.

Before we get started, I wanted to take a moment to plug a brand new member of the Parthadon

podcast network.

We have a new podcast, and that is the History of North America podcast, hosted by

Mark Bennett. The History of North America podcast is a sweeping historical saga of the United

States, Canada, and Mexico from their deep origins to our present epoch. Join host Mark

Vanette on this exciting and fascinating journey through time,

focusing on the interesting, compelling, wonderful, and tragic stories of North America,

its inhabitants, heroes, villains, leaders, environment, and geography. I strongly urge you

to check out this excellent podcast. There are already many episodes published and ready to listen to,

but each one is relatively short, and so it won't take you too long to get into it. You'll be

glad you did. And now on to the main episode.

Hello and welcome to Key Battles of World War II in Europe, our 10,000-foot survey of the Second World War in Europe and the areas around it.

I'm your host, James Early, as always, and my co-host, as always, is Sean McIver.

Now, in our last episode, we talked about the Balkans.

We saw how the small nations of the Balkans one by one fell into the Axis orbit.

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