• Utah WW II Stories
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Media Resources

The following World War II video resources are available to K-12 Utah educators and students via eMedia and CollegeMedia.

• America Goes To War: The Homefront
  Shocked into action by the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Americans respond with an exhilarating sense of common purpose and build the most powerful war production machine the world has ever known. 

• * America in the 20th Century. World War II - The Road to War
  World War II: The Road to War provides a powerful overview of events and circumstances that led to worldwide conflagration.

• American Experience. Bataan: Death March & Rescue
  Bataan: Death March and Rescue depicts the saga of thousands of Allied soldiers who faced death capture on the Bataan peninsula in 1941. 

• American Experience. Fly Girls.
  During World War II, more than a thousand women signed up to fly with the U.S. military. But the opportunity to play a critical role in the war effort was abruptly canceled by politics and resentment, and it would be thirty years before women would again break the sex barrier in the skies.

• American Experience. MacArthur
  Douglas MacArthur, liberator of the Philippines, shogun of occupied Japan, mastermind of the Inchon invasion, was an admired national hero when he was suddenly relieved of his command. A portrait of a complex, imposing and fascinating American general.

• American Experience. The Fight
  The rematch between the African American heavyweight Joe Louis and his German opponent Max Schmeling was a historic event freighted with symbolic significance, both a harbinger of the civil rights movement and a prelude to World War II.

• American Experience. The Man Behind Hitler
  Excerpts from the diaries of Joseph Goebbels provide insights into the Nazi Third Reich, World War II in Europe, the Holocaust, fascism, U.S. involvement in foreign wars, political propaganda, censorship, and more.

• American Experience. Victory in the Pacific
  From the U.S. capture of the Mariana Islands through the firebombing of Tokyo and the dropping of the atomic bomb, Victory in the Pacific chronicles the dreadful and unprecedented loss of life and the decisions made by leaders on both sides that finally ended the war.

• American Experience. War Letters
  Based on newly discovered personal correspondence from the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War II to the Gulf War, "War Letters" brings to life vivid eyewitness accounts of famous battles, intimate declarations of love and longing, poignant letters penned just before the sender was killed and heartbreaking "Dear John" letters from home.

• American Valor
  American Valor takes a moving and compelling look at America's military heroes: those brave soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen whose actions have earned them the country's highest military recognition, the Medal of Honor. 

• * America's Military History. America's Black Soldiers
  This program reveals the story of black Americans' long battle for the right to serve as equals in the US military. Facing discrimination, segregation, and sometimes outright hostility and rejection, Blacks nevertheless managed to honorably serve and often heroically fight in such conflicts as the Civil War, the Spanish American War, and World War I. 

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  Berga: Soldiers of Another War
  This is the untold story of 350 imprisoned American GI's captured at the Battle of the Bulge, then classified by the Nazis as Jews. They were shipped off to a satellite concentration camp of Buchenwald called Berga where they were forced to work as slave laborers. Many did not survive.

• Between The Wars
  A vivid and exciting documentary that captures the drama and excitement of the years between the world wars. The era of Lucky Lindy, bootlegging, Babe Ruth, Klan meetings and the meteoric rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party also saw the fall of the stock market and the creation of the massive political machine of FDR.

• D-Day: Down to Earth - Return of the 507th
  D-Day: Down to Earth: Return of the 507th recounts the history of the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment through remarkable battles in World War II and the inspiring culmination of its story 60 years later. 

• Finest Hour: Battle of Britain
  This program offers an intimate perspective on events in 1940, when Hitler had Europe at his mercy and Britain stood alone. FINEST HOUR recalls in personal and vivid detail the story of that dark and dramatic time when the destiny of the world hung in balance.

• Freedom: A History of US
  Freedom is the overarching theme of this sixteen-part series, based on the award winning books by master storyteller Joy Hakim. This is a history of the United States as the unfolding, inspiring story of human liberties aspired to and won.

• Frontline. A Jew Among the Germans
  As a young Jewish boy trying to survive the Holocaust in Poland, Marian Marzynski felt nothing but terror at the sound of the German language. For years, he lived with this fear of the people who had invaded his country and killed much of his family. When the German government announced that it was planning to build a "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe," Marzynski decided it was finally time to go to Berlin himself. 

• * History Happened Here. D-Day & World War II
  Peaceful contemporary scenes of Normandy's idyllic beaches contrast with documentary footage of the carnage of the D-Day landing.

• * History Happened Here. Pearl Harbor & World War II
  Footage of the attack is mixed with chilling details, such as the sounds of trapped men inside the sunken Arizona that were being heard a week later.

• * Isms. Fascism
  Explores the philosophical underpinning of fascism using HItler's Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy as examples.

• Remember World War II Lecture Series
  Lecture series held at the Salt Lake City Public Library. World War II veterans tell their experiences.

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  The Perilous Fight
  World War II was the first war to be recorded extensively on color film - mostly by Americans. For years, much of that color footage remained unseen and unknown. THE PERILOUS FIGHT: AMERICA'S WORLD WAR II IN COLOR brings America's wartime experience - on the battlefield and at home - vividly and intimately to life. 

• The Triumph of Memory
  Non-Jewish resistance fighters were sent to Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Their fate was mingled with that of the millions of Jews who suffered in the camps. As non-Jews they bear witness to the Jewish Holocaust and provide a moving reminder about the actions of the Nazis in Mauthausen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz-Birkenau. 

• The Tuskegee Airmen
  This inspiring World War II story spotlights 450 men who fought on two fronts at once. A group of black American aviators, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, battled the Axis powers in Europe and North Africa and took on racism at home. 

• The World War II Memorial: A Testament to Freedom
  This program follows the process of conceiving and creating the new national World War II Memorial -- from the sculptor's studios to the stone quarries to the construction site itself. 

• Time of Fear
  In World War II, more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans were forced into relocation camps across the US. This film traces the lives of the 16,000 people who were sent to two camps in southeast Arkansas, one of the most racially segregated places in America at that time. 

• Topaz
  Topaz is the story of the thousands of San Francisco Bay Area Japanese who were separated from their property, livelihoods and constitutional rights, removed from their homes and shipped to a windswept stretch of Utah's roughest rangeland.

* Only available in eMedia.