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 at the Second World War in Europe and in the areas around it. I'm your host, James

Early, as always.

And my co-host, as always, is Sean McIra.

Well, in our last episode, we wrapped up our four-part epilogue mini-series on a variety of topics.

And last time specifically we talked about how each side won when they were winning.

It was kind of a review session, kind of an overview of the war hitting the high points

all in one episode.

Now we're going to launch into a series of topical episodes, and, you know, this could go on

forever, and I've increased the number of topics I wanted to discuss as I thought of things,

and some topics Sean and I have talked discuss as I thought of things and some topics

Sean and I have talked about and we've deleted and others we've added so we're going to be doing

I think about seven of these we're going to go through episode 34 this is our 28th one we don't

really stress the numbers that much but what I want to talk about in this episode is the American

Home Front. And again, as I always say, every nation's home front is a very important story.

It's a critical story. But we just don't have time to do an episode on the German Homefront

...