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 films of World War II in Europe and the surrounding areas.

This is your host, James Early, as always.

This week we are talking about a very different kind of film

than any of the others we've talked about thus far. In this film, there is absolutely no combat.

This is a movie about the struggle that soldiers and sailors and airmen, all service personnel, Marines, too, the struggle that they had in returning back to the U.S. after the war and getting readjusted and reintegrated into civilian life.

It's a classic 1946 film called The Best Years of Our Lives.

So, Sean is with me, and Sean's going to give a little bit about the production

and some of the history of the film, as he always does. But before he does, I'll start out

with the basics like I always do. So this is not a short movie. This is one of many movies that

we've talked about that's roughly three hours. To be specific, it's two hours and 50 minutes. And it's

unusually long for 1946. That is actually quite a long movie for the time. Gone with the

wind, I believe, was around three hours long. So that was exceptional for a non, just for a

drama like this. That's just a pretty long movie for the day. Yeah, most of our three-hour

movies come from the 60s or 70s or in a few cases later, like saving Private Ryan. But, yeah, yeah,

I got with the wind was 221 minutes and 230 minutes with an intermission, basically. So, oh, wow. Yeah, so that's,

you know, it's almost as long as gone with the wind, basically.

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