"To the Best of My Ability"

Season 3 As the international situation deteriorates, FDR faces multiple challenges: readying the country for war across two oceans, facing down the threats from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and attempting to rally political support at home. Americans are not convinced of the foreign threat. Many are still isolationists, seeking to let the world solve its own problems while America stands aloof. Public opinion seems to be changing, but it's a gradual process. Will FDR be able to master these multiple crises? Will the American people rally behind him? Will the nation prepare in time to face one of the gravest threats in its history—or will all of FDR's efforts be too late? Join The National WWII Museum for Season 3 of this limited series podcast as we explore America's road to Pearl Harbor as seen through the eyes of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

New Podcast: Making Masters of the Air 01/25/2024

New Podcast: Making Masters of the Air Click to follow the new podcast by The National WWII Museum: Making Masters of the Air. Masters of the Air is an Apple Original series from executive producers of Band of Brothers and The Pacific, streaming January 26 on Apple TV+. The series follows the men of the 100th Bomb Group (the “Bloody Hundredth”) as they conduct perilous bombing raids over Nazi Germany and grapple with the frigid conditions, lack of oxygen and sheer terror of combat conducted at 25,000 feet in the air. Masters of the Air is based on the best-selling book by Donald Miller, and features a stellar cast led by Academy Award nominee Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Anthony Boyle, Nate Mann, Rafferty Law, Academy Award nominee Barry Keoghan, Josiah Cross, Branden Cook and Ncuti Gatwa. The Making Masters of the Air podcast by The National WWII Museum is co-hosted by Playtone’s Kirk Saduski and Donald Miller, author of the book, Masters of the Air. Listen to the premiere episode featuring an interview with Executive Producer Tom Hanks on Friday, January 26. Masters of the Air is an Apple Original series from executive producers of Band of Brothers and The Pacific. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/29635798

A Day of Infamy 12/03/2021

A Day of Infamy President Franklin D. Roosevelt wins his third term bid for president, but a foreign crisis brews in the Pacific. Contending with an isolationist movement in America, he maneuvers policies and naval fleets in preparation for war, all the while convincing the US public the importance of becoming the “arsenal of democracy.” /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/21342428

An Epidemic of World Lawlessness 11/23/2021

An Epidemic of World Lawlessness In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt inherits a nation amidst The Great Depression, but around the world, fascist powers gain footholds. FDR begins to shape foreign policy through a series of addresses that connect the American people to the president in an unprecedented way, threading the needle between readying the nation for war and appeasing isolationists. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/21223913

33 Months 03/17/2021

33 Months After the attack on Pearl Harbor, suspicions around Japanese American citizens began to grow. In February of 1942, FDR signed executive order 9066, which was used to justify the forced removal of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and incarcerated them in camps in California, Utah, New Mexico, Arkansas, and other states. Despite the lack of any evidence of wrongdoing, these Americans remained incarcerated through March 20, 1946. After 33 months, Japanese Americans could return home. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/18369686

The Temper of the Courts 02/24/2021

The Temper of the Courts In February 1946, a California Court heard arguments challenging the practice of segregating students of Mexican descent into “remedial schools for Mexicans.” Sylvia Mendez would ultimately prevail and the Court deemed the schools unconstitutional, thus ending legal segregation in California, but Sylvia was not permitted to attend the school near her home designated for white children until 1948. This case would later be used to justify the “separate is unequal” ruling of 1954’s Brown v. Board of /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/18075371

A Dangerous, Costly and Heartbreaking Process 02/10/2021

A Dangerous, Costly and Heartbreaking Process On February 12, 1946, Isaac Woodard, a decorated veteran of the Pacific theater, was arrested. What followed was one of the nation’s most heinous hate crimes. Two weeks later, James Stephenson was the victim of an attempted lynching. It wasn’t until figures like Orson Welles and Langston Hughes publicly called out these racist attacks committed by law enforcement that Truman finally began to address the racial injustices and violence, and ultimately the desegregation of the military in 1948. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/17898203

No Specific and Tangible Evidence 01/26/2021

No Specific and Tangible Evidence In a January 25, 1946 telegram, Gen. Douglas MacArthur recommended that Hirohito not face a war crimes trial. The IMT for the Far East, also known as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, tried Japanese military and political leaders on 55 counts. The defendants included former prime ministers, former foreign ministers, and former military commanders. To MacArthur, Hirohito was a valuable symbol of Japanese national unity. As long as he agreed to cooperate, he was useful to American occupation authorities. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/17703197

Strike Wave 01/19/2021

Strike Wave The strike wave of 1945-1946 was a series of large-scale post-war labor strikes in the United States, spanning numerous industries and public utilities. In the year after V-J Day, more than five million American workers were involved in strikes. The strikes lasted on average four times longer than those during the war, and even today remain the largest “job actions” strikes in American labor history. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/17613290

Duck and Cover 01/06/2021

Duck and Cover By January 5, 1946, President Truman had had enough. In a letter to his Secretary of State, James, F. Byrnes, he declared “I’m sick of babying the Soviets.” This blunt statement set off a chain of events known as the Cold War. Fears over a new global war with the USSR cast a pallor over every aspect of American life. State-side, suspicions turned into targeting Jewish, Black, and gay Americans suspected of being involved in the Communist Party, setting the stage for an unprecedented era of domestic sp /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/17446421

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound 12/17/2020

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound After more than 20 years living abroad as an expatriate in Italy, poet and Nazi sympathizer Ezra Pound was charged with 19 counts of treason against the United States. During World War II, Pound broadcast pro-Facist propaganda into the United States. Pound was eventually found mentally unfit to stand trial and while institutionalized, he managed to befriend white supremacists and members of the Ku Klux Klan, including John Kasper. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/17232992

Aliyah Bet 12/02/2020

Aliyah Bet Throughout World War II, persecuted Jews tried to find their way into the British Mandate of Palestine, often deemed illegally by British authorities. On December 14, 1945, the ship Hannah Senesh, carrying 252 refugees, evaded patrols and beached itself at Nahariya in Palestine. This increased regional tensions, which would explode into war in 1948 with the invasion of the newly established State of Israel by its Arab neighbors. Truman was the first US president to be faced with trouble in the Middle East. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/17035625

Doomed Men on Gallows Hang 11/18/2020

Doomed Men on Gallows Hang On November 20, 1945, the IMT of the victorious Allies began war crimes trials in Nuremberg, Germany. The Nazis who perpetrated crimes, such as the Holocaust and the mass murder of POWs and civilians, now had to stand trial for their deeds. Nuremberg was a fitting site: the very city where Adolf Hitler used to stage the Parteitag. The trials were a significant turning point for modern international law—a recognition that “following orders” was not a sufficient excuse for brutal and inhuman behavior. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/16860752

The Threshold of the New World 11/13/2020

The Threshold of the New World The Truman Presidency not only had to deal with the legacy of the recently concluded war, it also had to wrestle with new problems at home and abroad: a dangerous international situation, the spread of Communism and Soviet influence, and the pressing need to form a “more perfect union” at home by ensuring equal rights and justice for all. Would the “man from Missouri” rise to the challenge? Would the United States, and the world, enjoy peace and prosperity, or was World War III in the offing? /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/16790615

The Pool of Armed Might 09/09/2020

The Pool of Armed Might Allied victory had rescued humanity from a dark future, but for President Truman and his administration, the celebrations were short lived. There were still a number of challenges that remained, including the demobilization of millions of men and women, reshaping the economy without putting millions out of work, growing racial tensions at home, and the looming threat of the nation’s burgeoning rivalry with the Soviet Union. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/15889838

Sign Surrender 08/19/2020

Sign Surrender With Japan’s defeat, World War II finally came to an end. The formal end of World War II took place in suitably dramatic fashion, with a surrender ceremony on board the USS Missouri on September 2. “This is the day we have been waiting for since Pearl Harbor,” said President Truman. “This is the day when Fascism finally dies.” Untested and relatively unknown when he became President just over four months ago, Truman had proven himself. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/15677000

A City Vanished 08/05/2020

A City Vanished In the hours after Truman drops the bomb on Hiroshima, news reports begin to surface of “a city vanished.” As he said on many occasions, Truman never regretted the decision—seeing the bomb as the quickest way to bring an end to the bloodiest war in history. Speaking to the American people via radio, Truman described the bomb as “harnessing of the basic power of the universe,” and swore that “we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.” /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/15459728

883 Killed 07/15/2020

883 Killed Even with victory in sight, soldiers, sailors, and airmen continued to die in the Pacific theater. The USS Indianapolis, for example, was torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-58 while transporting parts of the atomic bomb “Little Boy” from San Francisco to Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Three hundred men went down with the ship as she sank. For the other nearly 900 sailors in the water, clinging desperately to their life rafts, the ordeal had just begun. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/15221735

Urgent Summons 07/01/2020

Urgent Summons In July 1945, representatives of the victorious Allies met in the heart of Germany, in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam. It is a new cohort of leaders, while Stalin was still Soviet dictator, the inexperienced Truman and a brand-new British prime minister, Clement Attlee, represented the Anglo-American alliance. Here, in the squalid ruins of a once-great city, the three men lay their plans for their final battle: the conquest of Japan. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/15041987

Charter Into Deeds 06/17/2020

Charter Into Deeds World War II had been so horrible that the victorious powers decided that nothing like it must ever happen again. President Roosevelt’s dream had been to establish a “United Nations” (UN) organization, in which the peace-loving nations of the world would settle disputes and intervene to punish aggression, but it was Truman who saw it through. On June 26, the UN charter was signed in San Francisco. Would it succeed where previous international organizations had failed and keep the world at peace? /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/14860592

Supreme Authority 06/03/2020

Supreme Authority With the war in Europe over, the Allied powers had to turn to the difficult business of governing Germany and the other occupied territories. It was a huge task: to restart a functioning economy for an entire continent, to restore systems of law and government, to bind up the wounds of war. On June 5, 1945, the US, UK, USSR, and France jointly assumed "supreme authority" over German territory. The Third Reich was now dead, and Germany officially passed under the control of the victorious Allies. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/14684195

Death Stand 05/20/2020

Death Stand The war in Europe was over, but fighting raged in the Pacific. “We are only half-through,” Truman declares to the American people. He was right. The Battle of Okinawa (April 1 - June 22) was one of the hardest-fought in the history of the US military. Okinawa is a mass of mountains, jungle, and mud, and the battle generated monstrous casualties on both sides, 93,000 Japanese, 12,000 US, and 140,000 Okinawan civilians. Just days into his presidency, Commander-in-Chief Truman was presiding over a bloodbat /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/14501714

It's All Over 05/06/2020

It's All Over Truman’s first few weeks in office were some of the most tumultuous in Presidential history. As Nazis forces experience blow after blow from Allied forces, fascism in Europe begins to crumble. Before the end of April, both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini are dead. After more than five years of total war, a ceasefire takes effect on May 8, 1945. ”This is a solemn but glorious hour,” Truman declares. “The flags of freedom fly all over Europe." /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/14308289

President Roosevelt is Dead 04/10/2020

President Roosevelt is Dead April 1945: In a war that changed the world, a month that changed the course of the war. /episode/index/show/thebestofmyability/id/13937888

"To the Best of My Ability"

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