A part of the series America in the 20th Century. Anyone who thinks the Civil Rights movement began and ended with Martin Luther King, Jr., will discover a new, eye-opening view of history in this program. It reveals a long-running struggle for racial equality starting with Civil War- and Reconstruction-era events, moving through the blight of Jim Crow and the formation of the NAACP and other groups, and depicting the drama of King's movement in varied,...

"The moving story of a small group of veterans, scientists, and pacifists who forced the U.S. government to take responsibility for the horrors inflicted on the Vietnamese with unexploded munitions and the toxic defoliant Agent Orange"--

This Program from the Combat Studies Institute is designed to give military instructors ideas on presenting "Nuclear Weapons and the Cold War," lesson 12 in "Evolution of Modern Warfare." It offers suggestions for how to present the Cold War context, thinking on nuclear strategy and deterrence, and the post-WWII reorganization of the military and national security apparatus. Panelists show how the existence of nuclear weapons led to questions of whether...

The outbreak of World War II saw two motion picture experts from Germany and the United States battle each other with as much ferocity as any army or navy. Their respective missions: to ignite a public desire to wage and win a global conflict. This Bill Moyers program contains an interview with Fritz Hippler, chief filmmaker for the Nazi Party. Hippler unrepentantly claims to have spoken to the "soul of the masses" through films like The Eternal Jew,...

Americans constantly make moral statements about presidents and foreign policy. Unfortunately, many of these judgments are poorly thought through. A president is either praised for the moral clarity of his statements or judged solely on the results of their actions. Woodrow Wilson showed, however, that good intentions without adequate means can lead to ethically bad consequences. Richard Nixon, on the other hand, is credited with ending the Vietnam...

The Search for Peace in Vietnam, 1964-1968, the newest edition in the Texas A&M University Press Series on Foreign Relations and the Presidency, is a collection of essays that analyze the Vietnam War in terms of its significance to the global arena. Under the guidance of editors Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger, the contributors, representing both communist and capitalist backgrounds, examine whether the Vietnam War was responsible for the transformation...

This program examines the U.S. role as the world peacekeeper in the post-Cold War era. We learn how the U.S., the world's only remaining superpower, is retraining its forces to maintain peace in volatile areas around the globe. Military experts discuss the difficulties that occur when UN forces intervene in the internal disputes of nations. U.S. peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, Somalia, and other trouble spots are used to demonstrate the pitfalls...

A brilliant young historian offers a vital, comprehensive international military history of the Cold War in which he views the decade-long superpower struggles as one of the three great conflicts of the twentieth century alongside the two World Wars, and reveals how bloody the "Long Peace" actually was. In this sweeping, deeply researched book, Paul Thomas Chamberlin boldly argues that the Cold War, long viewed as a mostly peaceful, if tense, diplomatic...

With the rise of political parties came the dawn of political compromise: nominees who were selected not necessarily because they were the best or most obvious candidates for the presidency, but because they were less offensive to some voters than those who might have been the most apparent choices. Their primary qualification for the office often seemed not to be their positive qualities but their relative lack of negative ones. This program explores...