World War II strikes America.
Pulled into war the U.S. must use its industrial might.
To create a war machine that can fight on two fronts.
By doing so,
It sets itself on the road to becoming a superpower.
America prepares for war.
The Great Depression of the 1930s is over.
But coming of war has pushed American industry into overdrive.
In 1941 It joins the Allied in the struggle against the axis power:
Germany, Italy and Japan.
Now every weapon, ration, medical supply is mass-produced
On a scale never seen before in human history.
Sometimes it takes a terrific challenge and a horrific threat to the Republic
To discover how good you can be.
America's entry into war begins with treachery.
December 7, 1941, 320 km north of Hawaii.
The most advanced Japanese fighters of their days.
Head toward the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese Zero was a better fighter.
Than anything the Americans had produced at that time.
The Japanese Zero can fly more than 3,200 km without refueling.
Making it perfect for a surprise attack.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked,
It was one of the most stunning moments in American history.
183 Japanese bombers and fighters
Are heading straight for Hawaii.
Another 170 follow right behind
Japan has built an empire across Korea, Manchuria and Hong Kong.
It wants the whole Pacific Ocean.
But the US fleet in Pearl Harbor stands in its way.
50 km north of Pearl Harbor,
Is Opana Mobile Radar Station.
First contact is made by Radar operator Joe Lockhard.
What's this?
Two blips show something out to sea.
In 1941 Radar Technology is still experimental.
America doesn't realize how important it will become.
If I could reach out and touch you from a greater distance,
I had a tactical strategic advantage.
Radar will evolve into a system essential to the modern world.
Tracking close to 10 million flights around America
And nearly 5 billion passengers around the world every year.
Definitely incoming.
So far, America has kept out of the Second World War.
We had almost our whole fleet in one little harbor.
One little area we are sitting ducks.
But then again, we trusted the Japanese.
At the same time, we were having peace talks with them.
They even gave us a peace medal.
Operator.
Private Joseph McDonald of the 580th Aircraft Warning Division.
Yeah, this is Opana.
It looks like there are a large number of planes
Coming in from the north, three points east.
I think everyone's gone off shift. Hold on.
It's early Sunday morning.
Japan is nearly 6,500 km from Hawaii.
No American expects Pearl Harbor to be attacked.
The surprise attack,
The specialty of American rifle men during the War of Independence.
Is now being used against U.S. troops.
We still got planes coming in.
It looks an awful big flight.
Okay.
Lieutenant Kermit Tyler knows there is a flight of American B-17s due in today.
He assumes that's what's on the screen.
Look, don't worry about it.
What do you think it is, sir?
Nothing.
Radar has been used by the British since 1935,
But the U.S. military doesn't yet take it seriously.
Only five CR-270 mobile radar systems cover the whole of Hawaii.
And they're manned only 3 hours a day.
20 miles.
Radar also has a weakness:
It can't see through Hawaii's mountains.
The low-flying Japanese squadron vanishes from the screen.
With their shift over, there's nothing more the men can do.
McDonald types up his report.
Hey, Bob, take a look at this, will you?
America will pay a high price for neglecting radar.
When did this come in?
At 7:50 a.m., the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
Fire!
Most of the marines and sailors were still in their rack.
They were still asleep.
We had no idea that this was gonna happen.
But we all know that it did.
The Japanese have prepared this attack for a year.
They have rehearsed bombing a model of Pearl Harbor in Japan
Until they reach an 80% hit rate.
All 8 U.S. battleships are put out of action.
1,178 Americans are wounded.
2,403 are killed.
Private McDonald's report finally gets read.
But by then, it's too late.
"A day that will live in infamy."
We were completely unprepared for that, emotionally,
And it turned the country on a dime, overnight.
Antiwar people were down,
Signing up to join the Navy, the Army, or the Marines, whatever was required.
27 hours after the attack, America declares war on Japan.
Three days later, the US is at war with Germany.
It unleashed the wrath of America
And I think it gave us an energy that carried us through the rest of the war.
Once provoked, that massive tiger of engineering was awakened.
We had factories that were sitting underutilized
In Detroit and around the country because of the Great Depression.
We were ready to go on a building spree.
War transforms America as the nation is set to work.
Before the war, there were 3 million unemployed.
Now the country's huge potential is released.
There was no country that had a deeper economic base
And an enormous pool of not just labor,
But of scientists and engineers and technologists.
One of their innovation is the "jeep" or GP.
The general purpose vehicle.
It's made for war: tough, fast and low to the ground.
Its 94 centimeters high. It has a flat hood and a folding windscreen.
And its low profile makes it difficult to line up in an enemy's sights.
It's small, but can carry up to seven men.
Even the front bumper is a seat.
An M1 carbine gun goes just below the windscreen.
There's a shovel and an axe to dig yourself out of trouble.
And jerrycans of fuel to get you home.
If the jeep flips over, you just lift it out.
It only weighs 1050 kilos.,
Light enough to be put in gliders
And dropped behind enemy lines.
What the jeep symbolized in World War II was not cutting-edge technology,
Although it was a four-wheel-drive, so it was very capable,
But what the jeep really showed was the power of American manufacturing.
Designed by Bantam and produced by Willys-Overland and Ford
By the end of the war the U.S. makes 3 jeeps every 4 minutes.
Over the course of the war, we deployed over 600,000 jeeps.
To fly around this open vehicle at top speed
Was just something every American boy wanted to grow up to do.
To this day, I mean, part of the boom in SUVs that we saw was that notion that
You want a vehicle that can go anywhere, that can do anything.
That's a very American spirit and it really started with the Jeep.
Jeeps, tanks and every other weapon of war
Will be produced in record numbers.
But this huge industrial machines is being driven,
By new kind of workers.
World War II
America sets to work.
In this war mass production will be America's greatest weapon.
88,000 tanks.
7333 ships.
20 million rifles and small arms...
And 40 billion bullets produced in 4 years.
43 million men are registered for combat service,
But America needs more manpower.
It was actually the women back in this nation
That were the ones working in the factories,
That were putting the tanks together,
Building the ships, building the airplanes.
You know, so they are actually the ones that logistically, won the war for us.
Women like Peggy Blakey, a migrant farm worker.
Now she works in a munitions factory,
Joining 2 million other women.
The Depression is suddenly over.
Her Factory used to make fireworks.
Now it's pumping out 20-millimeter tracer shells.
Tracer shells leave a trail of burning chemicals containing magnesium.
There're two self correct targeting.
The pressure is on to make them quickly.
But it's high risk.
Just combing your hair could kill you.
Static electricity and gunpowder equal explosion.
But the risk is worth it.
Peggy makes real money.
$32 a week.
"To us, it was just an absolute miracle.
"Before, that, we made nothing.
"Now we'd have money to buy shoes and dress
"And pay rent and get some food on the table."
And she pays taxes.
U.S. tax returns jump from less than 4 million in 1939
To 42 million in 1945.
But World War II will cost the U.S. 300 billion dollars
Twice as much as the federal government had spent since George Washington.
Women's salaries set off a wartime consumer boom.
11,000 supermarkets are built.
Purchases go up 12%.
The precedent of what women accomplished during World War II
Did linger in the memory of the society at large,
And I think was one of those things that energized
The feminist movement a decade or two later.
In World War II, when women entered the workforce,
Once they got a taste of that kind of fulfillment that work can give you,
There was no going back.
But Peggy's job is dangerous.
"I was most worried about the detonators."
Detonators are put into the tip of the shell last.
They explode on impact.
And set off the gun powder in the shell.
Detonators are extremely unstable.
The factory is a giant bomb.
Loaded with tons of explosives.
It would only take a spark to set it off.
"This terrible thunder storm came."
Would all staff report to the cafeteria immediately, please?
"We were in a hurry to go and somebody knocked detonators on the floor.
"We were in the pitch dark.
"Somebody was screaming, don't move, anybody!"
"I just froze right where I was.
"I was afraid to step.
"I was so scared, I crawled on my hand and knees.
"We were in slow motion ...
"Because if we'd stepped on one..."
Making weapons can be as dangerous as using them.
In the first 16 and a half months of the war, 12,000 military are killed,
But 64,000 American workers die in accidents.
Another 6 million are injured.
Peggy is one of the lucky ones.
Having grave the Depression,
They now risk their lives for the war.
That was our finest generation in terms of
People who would sacrifice and give something of themselves.
U.S. factories build 300,000 aircraft.
From bases in Britain.
They will be used for high altitude precision bombing by day,
While the British bomb at night.
This bold new tactic is first tried on August 17, 1942.
Paul Tibbets from Quincy, Illinois,
Is one the best pilot of the B-17 bomber, know as 'the Flying Fortress'.
"My father thought I was crazy not to be a doctor.
"He said, 'If you wanna go kill yourself, go ahead."
The planes are cramped, unheated and unpressurized.
Crews suffer claustrophobia, altitude sickness and frostbite.
Of the 111 men of this mission,
31 will be dead or missing by the end of the war.
the danger binds the men on every crew together.
You know, if you ask anybody that's never been in combat
They will tell you, yeah, sure, you fought for your country,
You fought for your way of life,
You know, but in all reality,
You're fighting for your buddy that's right next to you.
The B-17 bomber is built to just keep going.
It's got 4 engines, not 2.
It can carry 1800 kilos of bombs.
Has a range of 3200 km.
And uses eight 50-caliber machine guns to fight off enemy air attacks.
The B-17 bomber,
It may not have been the greatest aircraft that was ever created,
But it was tough, it was durable, and it found a way to keep going,
Which is pretty much like an American soldier.
You know, tough, durable, and found a way to keep going.
The planes fly high above 3000 meters.
Crews need an oxygen supply to survive.
Tibbets' mission is to bomb the city of Rouen,
The German's biggest marshalling yard in Northern France.
Trains supply the German
Economic and military empire across Europe.
Tibbets' mission is to wipe the yard from the map.
August 17, 1942.
Until now the Allied had only bombed under cover of night.
But to increase the chances of direct hit,
American bombs by day.
The aim is accuracy.
To achieve it, the crew uses an early computer called 'The Norden Bomb Sight'
It's top secret.
They've ordered to destroy it rather than let it fall into enemy hands.
Dial in air speed, wind direction and altitude.
One minute to target.
And the machine calculates where to fly and when to drop the bombs.
Their objective: Destroy the Nazis' economic and industrial base.
The railway yards at Rouen help keep the German war machine running.
45 seconds to target.
American casualties are high.
In 1943 alone, 2/3 of U.S. air crews never came home.
The weather is perfect for the bombing run.
Visibility - virtually infinite.
But at 7,000 meters, the B-17s leave vapor trails,
Arrows in the sky pointing right to the planes.
Okay, It's on.
German antiaircraft fire explodes under the B-17s.
Tibbets must keep his nerves and the plane steady.
The computerized bomb sight zeroes in on the target.
Target in sight, target in sight.
Bombs away!
More than 16,700 kilos of bombs hit the railway yard.
50% of the bombs falls onto the target area.
In 1942, that is precision bombing
And it's a big improvement over night time attacks.
This technology will ultimately lead to today's GPS-guided smart bombs.
With precision bombing hit rate up to 95%.
Tibbets' mission is a success.
"We caught the Germans by surprise.
"They hadn't expected a daytime attack."
But then the shrapnel rips the air.
The Germans open up their big guns.
88-millimeter antiaircraft shells explode around the plane.
Tibbets goes in to a steep climb, swinging away from the flack.
His crew has proved daylight bombing is possible.
"A feeling of elation took hold of us as we winged back across the channel.
"We had braved the enemy in his own skies, and we're alive to tell about it."
All sides bomb industrial targets during the war.
And that means collateral damage.
Is a grim fact of World War II that sees ordinary families
Killed in numbers undreamt of in earlier conflicts.
Paul Tibbets will be famous for another bombing run.
But that's 3 years away.
He will drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
For every B-17 shot down,
American workers produce two more.
By 1943, 10 million Americans have been drafted.
One is 18-years-old Harold Baumgarten, a New Yorker from the Bronx.
He'd been offered a try out at Yankee Stadium.
"But before I could begin playing for the team, I was drafted.
"On July 10, 1943 I entered the US Army."
What they did as 18 or 19-year-old soldiers
Was far and away of greater significance
That anything they ever did in the rest of their lives.
William Dabney convinces his grandmother
To let him sign up at the age of 17.
I just wanted to follow my buddies.
During the Revolutionary War,
1/6 of all of George Washington's soldiers were black man.
And every time, in the course of our first couple of 100 years
That we had a conflict, and called upon all citizens,
Black citizens as well, to serve,
Blacks stepped forward.
Despite the struggle of war, old prejudices remain.
Platoons are segregated.
The Army played a significant role, because, in many ways
The Army was the first place that blacks and whites
Began to have to stand together
And represent the same idea even though they were in segregated barriers.
Attention!
World War II changed the entire world,
But it certainly transformed the American, the black American psyche in a way,
That led to and made possible the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s.
William Dabney volunteers
For the exciting-sounding 'Special service'.
Left, left, left, right, left.
But all the training in the world
Cannot prepare them for the horror that is to come.
June 1944.
Southern England becomes a massive Army camp
Of 3 million allied troops.
Nearly a million and a half tons of equipment
Are shipped and flown from America
The goal is to retake Europe from the Germans.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower takes command
Of the biggest amphibious military operation in history.
Code-named 'Operation Overlord'.
To the world, Normandy landings are better known
As D-Day.
Every material factor of war is cratered for.
The medical core alone stockpiles
Tens of thousands of tons of medical supplies.
Bandages, morphine, surgical instruments,
Bedpans, oxygen tents, and x-ray machines.
They have prosthetic limbs and even eyeballs in 5 sizes and 4 colors.
By 1944, an American combatant
Could draw on 3.5 tons of supplies,
Versus a Japanese combatant, who has just a kilo.
No one had ever produced so much in such a short time.
And this is what really ... shocked both Japanese and Germans.
Blood is so crucial
The US develops a system of blood banks on an industrial scale.
In the six months leading up to D-Day,
Americans donate a pint of blood every two seconds.
The blood is then turned into plasma.
So it can be used on the battlefield.
It is bottled, put in ice and packed in cans.
Ready for D-Day.
June 5th, 1944.
American industry has given the Allied the means to retake Europe.
Over 5.4 million US soldiers will invade Europe in World War II.
40 times the number of US combat troops that originally invaded Iraq.
It's the night before the biggest single amphibious landing
The world has ever seen.
D-Day.
Harold Baumgarten has come a long way since enlisting a year ago.
"Many of us had our head shaved"
"So that our hair could not be grabbed during hand-to-hand combat."
Many of these men have less than 12 hours to live.
"I did not expect to come back alive.
"I wrote such to my sister to get the mail before my parents
"And break the news gently to them when she received the telegram."
You know, we were brought upon good guys and bad guys.
We go back, we talk about our Westerns that way.
You know, Hitler was a clear enemy.
I think when you have a really clear enemy,
You've won the hearts and minds.
There is that commitment of sacrifice.
Eve of battle rituals
Include cutting hair into mohican and applying war paint.
Dog tags are taped together so they don't rattle.
Stealth can make the difference between life and death.
One officer tells his men what they can expect.
"Look to the right of you.
"Look to the left of you.
"There's only going to be one of you left after the first week."
William Dabney now knows what his special service mission is.
He has to drag a barrage balloon ashore while under heavy fire.
It's a tactic designed to block German aircraft from strafing Allied troops.
His chances of survival are slim.
"I will return.
"I will come back to the USA.
"I'm not looking forward to getting shot or killed.
"I'm looking forward to going home."
More than 70,000 American troops
Are about to invade German-held France.
Over 1,000 will die on the first day:
June 6, 1944.
D-Day.
Over 5,000 ships and 10,000 aircraft are involved in the first wave alone.
Five beaches will be stormed.
The most infamous is code-named Omaha Beach'.
Think about Omaha Beach from the standpoint of the young men.
The ramp is about to drop
And the sights and the sounds all around
Provide the context of hell.
The first troops on Omaha Beach
Meet ferocious German resistance.
Rockets launchers, mortars, and 85 machine-gun nests
Tear into the Americans.
There were meant to be 32 tanks with them,
But 27 sink.
The men are left with virtually no cover on the beach.
"Go"
William Dabney is totally exposed.
Tethered to his barrage balloon, he's defenseless.
But when it's shot down, he sees his chance.
Like every other soldier on Omaha Beach, black or white,
Dabney's mission now is to survive.
"There wasn't any segregation there."
Harold Baumgarten is thrown straight into the carnage.
"There were men with guts hanging out of their wounds
"And body parts lying along our path."
Some men are simply overwhelmed.
Get down!
By 9:00 a.m. almost 5,000 men are ashore.
There are more than 2,000 US casualties on Omaha beach alone.
William Dabney survives.
He is later awarded the Legion of Honor.
Operation Overlord is logistical triumph,
But the cost is staggering.
Nearly 126,000 Americans are killed, wounded
Or go missing during the Battle of Normandy.
Harold Baumgarten is hit five times.
After losing blood for over 30 hours,
Baumgarten's life is saved by a plasma transfusion.
Then injections of penicillin and morphine
The very supplies America has mass-produced to keep its men alive.
D-Day is key to Hitler's defeat.
Within a month, the Allied have landed more than 877,000 troops,
112,000 vehicles,
And 520 tons of supplies.
US bombing destroys
German oil reserves and transportation.
American troops lead the drive to Berlin.
Where they'll meet the advancing Red Army.
The Nazis are defeated by Russian and Allied forces.
But in the Pacific American soldiers are still dying fighting the Japanese empire..
America turns to technology once again.
A weapon to end the war.
A weapon to change the world.
The Alamogordo Desert, New Mexico.
July 16, 1945. 5:27 a.m.
In three minutes, technology will change the world forever.
Robert Oppenheimer.
The theoretical physicist who loved poetry as much as science.
The FBI tracks his every move,
Worried that he is a Communist.
Oppenheimer leads the biggest scientific test in history.
The top-secret Manhattan Project.
Theoretically, fission physics could enable enormous amount of explosive energy
To be released from a single device:
The atomic bomb.
The bomb is the most advanced weapon in the world,
But nobody is sure whether it will work
Even many of the people who worked on the bomb itself
Were skeptical that the bomb would actually work.
No one had ever done anything like this.
During the war bombing has escalated enormously.
Whole cities of civilians are now being hit.
The US military hopes a single bomb
Can destroy an entire city.
Wreaking that kind of mass destruction,
That was something new in the history of warfare.
The atomic bomb has put an emphatic punctuation to that decision,
But the decision was way before 19, August of 1945.
If this test works, the terrifying power of the atomic bomb will be unleashed on Japanese,
The enemy will have no choice but unconditional surrender.
Deputy commanding General of the Manhattan Project, Thomas Farrell,
Watches Oppenheimer.
Dr. Oppenheimer grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off.
He scarcely breathed.
He stared directly ahead.
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The temperature generated at the center of the explosion
Is 10,000 times greater than the surface of the sun
The heat turns the desert sand to glass.
The explosion is more massive than even Oppenheimer expects.
"When it went off in the New Mexico dawn,"
"That first atomic bomb, we thought of Alfred Nobel and his hope,"
"His vain hope, that dynamite would put an end to wars."
Even the scientists themselves recognized the gravity of the moment,
And, of course, Oppenheimer famously said,
"I become death, destroyer of the worlds"
Quoting the "Bhagavad Gita"
And recognizing that man had really reached a turning point
Where the power available to us was almost limitless.
When atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
An estimated 120,000 people die instantly.
Over the days, months and years that follows,
Up to 80,000 more slowly die .
A day after the second bomb is dropped,
The Japanese surrender.
America defeats Japan.
But at a terrible price.
Having survived the Depression and World War II,
The greatest generation comes home.
They'd been through it all.
And they wanted one thing,
They wanted a better life for their families than they'd had.
And that's what they dedicated themselves to.
America's distance from battle leaves its infrastructure intact
And its economy vibrant.
It produces twice as much oil as the rest of the world combined.
It has half the world's manufacturing capacity
And 2/3 of its gold stock.
They had no real competition in the world
Because Europe was devastated, Asia was devastated
And America could be the colossus that it became.
World War II transforms the USA in only 4 years.
Americans make twice as much money as they did before the war.
They have 50 million babies in 15 years.
There are 20 million new jobs in 25 years.
America has become a superpower.
A Superpower.