This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

And we continue with our American stories.

Stephen Ambrose was one of America's leading biographers and historians. He passed in 2002,

but his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here on Our American Stories, thanks to those

who run his estate. Our next story is the story of weapons in World War II. Here's Stephen Ambrose.

There were all kinds of ways in what people could go about

killing each other in the Second World War,

or in destroying other weapons,

or in destroying buildings and factories or bridges.

Some of them were new, some of them were of World War I vintage.

Some of them went back, although somewhat improved and designed, to the American Civil War. Some were as old as warfare itself.

As a big generalization on the weaponry of World War II, for the most part, the war was fought with the same weapons that were used in the First World War.

Although there were significant improvements in many areas, but very little of the weaponry that we associate with the Second World War, in fact, originated with that war.

Obviously not rifles or hand grenades or machine guns, but also tanks had come along in the First World War.

There even were the barest beginnings of aircraft carriers in the First World War.

There were bombers in the First World War. There were bombers in the First World War.

There were weapons used in the First World War, you'll see that were not used in the Second World War.

Having said that, there were some tremendous breakthroughs in the Second World War.

Perhaps most dramatic were the coming of the intermediate range ballistic

missile and the atomic bomb and there were some awfully big advances in transportation in the Second World War.

Well, the first thing you did in the Second World War, when you took up a defensive position,

...