The Ghost Front -
the war

The Ghost Front - (December 1944 - March 1945) By December 1944, Americans have become weary of the war their young men have been fighting for three long years; the stream of newspaper headlines telling of new losses and telegrams bearing bad news from the War Department seem endless and unendurable. In the Pacific, American progress has been slow and costly, with each island more fiercely defended than the last. In Europe, no one is prepared for the massive counterattack Hitler launches on December 16 in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and Luxemburg. Tom Galloway of Mobile, Burnett Miller of Sacramento and Ray Leopold of Waterbury are there, among the Americans caught up in the biggest battle on the Western Front - the Battle of the Bulge. Back home, Katharine Phillips of Mobile and Burt Wilson of Sacramento are shocked to see newspaper headlines showing the Germans on the offensive and begin to wonder, "Are we losing now that we're this close?" Meanwhile, at Santo Tomas Camp in Manila, thousands of internees, including Sascha Weinzheimer of Sacramento, are now starving, desperately trying to hold onto life long enough to be liberated. At Yalta, Allied leaders agree on a plan to end the war that includes massive bombing raids aimed at German oil facilities, defense factories, roads, railways and cities. In March alone, Allied warplanes drop 163,864 tons of bombs on Germany - almost as much as they have dropped in the preceding three years combined. In the Pacific, Allied bombers are ready to batter Japan as well - but first, the air strip on Iwo Jima, an inhospitable volcanic island halfway between Allied air bases on Tinian and the Japanese home islands, needs to be taken. There the Marines, including Ray Pittman of Mobile, face 21,000 determined Japanese defenders, who, with no hope of reinforcement or re-supply, have been ordered to kill as many Americans as possible before being killed themselves. After almost a month of desperate fighting, t

Duration: 1 hour 59 minutes and 45 seconds

Episode Number: 106

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About The War:

This series, directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, explores the history and horror of World War II from an American perspective by following the fortunes of so-called ordinary men and women who become caught up in one of the greatest cataclysms in human history.