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 Key Films at the European Theater of World War II.

This is your host, James Early, as always.

And as promised, this week we are going out on the water.

And this will, I hope, go nicely with our battle episode we did recently on the early Battle of the Atlantic.

Today's film is the 1960 classic St. the Bismarck with an exclamation point in the title.

So, as always, I'm going to give the basics of the film. And then Sean is going to talk a little bit more about cast or history of the film or production or whatever he wants to.

You never know what Sean's going to say, right, Sean?

Yes.

Here, full of surprises.

So, all right.

So I'll go first, as always.

So the length is 97 minutes.

I really think, Sean, this is going to be the shortest film we do the entire

series. Actually, Greyhound is a little shorter. Yeah. I think Greenhound is like 89 minutes.

Yeah. It's, it's less than an hour and a half. I remember that. Doesn't it? I think there's a

rule that Naval World War II movies have to be short, maybe. I don't know. Anyway, so 97 minutes, very, very short,

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