A Tale of Three Cities: How the U.S. Won World War II
Dr. David M. Kennedy, Professor of History, Stanford University. Taking a nation to war is a complex and difficult proposition. Dr. David M. Kennedy will discuss the core premises of American grand strategy in World War II, and their implications for war-fighting, the nature of the victory that was achieved, and the U.S. role in the post-war international order. The general line of argument is to develop the idea that America's war was like that of no other belligerent. The presentation builds from Winston Churchill's observation in August 1945 that "The United States stand at this moment at the summit of the world," and tries to explain how that came to be -- contrary to popular mythology, not just as an incidental effect of the war's progression, but as a result of some quite specific, concrete decisions to fight a particular kind of war, on a particular time-table, with a particular configuration of forces. www.carlisle.army.mil/AHEC/index.cfm
