Chapters

1. HERBERT HOOVER’S CRISIS (13 minutes, 17seconds). Explores the consequences of government attempts to regulate agricultural production and banking practices in the United States, leading to the Wall Street panic of 1928. Also covers the American Socialist movement, Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, and the Bonus Expedition march on Washington.

2. FDR (16 minutes, 25seconds). Describes the personal and political journey of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the White House, and recounts the early missteps of legislative acts conceived by his "Brain Trust" (such as the National Recovery Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority, etc.).

3. PROLONGING THE DEPRESSION (17 minutes, 21 seconds). Examines the ways that programs designed to alleviate the depression actually worsened it, causing the immediate 40% drop in the value of the dollar The segment also includes passage of the Tydings-McDuffie Act (granting future independence to the Philippines), the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany, the abandonment of the first New Deal in favor of FDR’s Second New Deal (a series of socialist policies to redistribute the nation’s privately-earned assets), the Supreme Court’s rejection of certain New Deal as unconstitutional, the passage of the Social Security Act, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, FDR’s declaration of neutrality toward European conflicts, and the accumulation of power by Germany's Adolf Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini.

4. THE AGE OF THE AGGRESSORS (14 minutes, 50 seconds). Covers the German takeover of the Rhineland (formerly under the dominion of France), Hitler’s rearmament of Germany (in violation of the Versailles Treaty), the Spanish Civil War, FDR’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court with like-minded justices, the labor union shutdown of major American industries, Japan’s atrocities in China, Germany’s invasions of Austria and Czechoslovakia, the pacifistic British response, FDR’s replacement of the Common Law system (America’s sole legal system since the nation’s founding) with a Statutory Law system, the adaptation of Keynesian economics (“spend freely today, pay the bill later”), Italy’s invasion of Albania, the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact between Hitler and Stalin, Germany’s invasion of Poland, and England and France’s declarations of war on Germany.

5. THE DAWN OF WORLD WAR 2 (17 minutes, 33 seconds). Covers the geopolitical division of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union, the Soviet invasions of Finland and the Baltic nations, Germany’s invasions of Norway and Denmark, FDR’s dispatch of naval patrols around Greenland, the German drive to France (invading the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg in the process), the humiliating defeat of British forces at Dunkirk, the surrender of France to the Germans, Japan’s closure of Chinese ports, the enactment of America’s first peacetime military draft, the German bombing raids on London, America’s Lend-Lease policy toward Great Britain, Germany’s attack on former ally Russia, the US naval escalation in Iceland, the Japanese invasion of southern Indochina, FDR’s oil embargo against Japan, the Atlantic Charter meeting between Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, the German naval skirmishes with American warships in the Atlantic, and Japan’s failed negotiations with the United States.

6. AMERICA ENTERS THE WAR (15 minutes, 10 seconds). Covers the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR’s declaration of war, the abandonment of American forces in the Philippines and various Pacific islands, the Japanese invasion of Manila, FDR’s internment of American civilians of Japanese descent, Jimmy Doolittle’s bombing raid on Tokyo, General MacArthur’s evacuation of the Philippines, the Bataan Death March, the Battle of Midway, the beginning of the atomic bomb project, the brutal battle at Guadalcanal, General Eisenhower’s invasion of North Africa, Enrico Fermi’s inducement of the first atomic chain reaction, the Allies’ conference at Casablanca, the Battle of Kassarine Pass (Tunisia), General MacArthur’s victory in New Guinea, Admiral Halsey’s campaign in the Solomon islands, General Patton’s invasion of Sicily, and the ouster of Benito Mussolini.

7. THE ROAD TO VICTORY (21 minutes, 10 seconds). Covers the Allies’ conference in Cairo, FDR and Churchill’s Teheran meeting with Joseph Stalin, the battles of Monte Cassino and Anzio in Italy, the US victory in the Gilbert Islands, FDR’s implementation of direct payroll deductions as a means of seizing income taxes from wage earners, the German defeat at Stalingrad, the American liberation of Rome, the D-Day invasion of Normandy, the American victory at Saipan, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, American victories at Guam and Tinian, the Allied march through France, the liberation of Paris, the Battle of Leyte, the infiltration of FDR’s White House by Stalinist American spies, and the Allied conference at Yalta. The segment concludes with General MacArthur’s triumphant return to the Philippines, the brutal battles at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the massive German surprise assault at Bastogne (the Battle of the Bulge), the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman’s ascension to the presidency, the Soviet invasion of Berlin, the execution of Mussolini, the suicide of Hitler, the German surrender, Truman’s Potsdam Conference with Churchill and Stalin, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrender, and the discovery of the Nazi death camps.