Thursday, September 24, 2020, 9:00-11:30 p.m.

As Allied forces rapidly push across Germany from the east and west, American and British troops discover the true horrors of the Nazi's industrialized barbarism - at Buchenwald, Ludwigslust, Dachau, Hadamar, Mauthausen and hundreds of other concentration camps.  Finally, on May 8, with their country in ruins and their fuehrer dead by his own hand, the Nazis surrender.

But to the Marines and soldiers still fighting in the Pacific, "Nazi Germany might as well have been on the moon." When the battle on Okinawa is finally over in June, 92,000 Japanese soldiers and tens of thousands of Okinawan civilians have been killed. As the Americans prepare to move on to Japan itself, more terrible losses seem inevitable. Allied leaders at Potsdam set forth the terms under which they will agree to end the war, but for most of Japan's rulers, unconditional surrender remains unthinkable.  Then, on August 6, 1945, under orders from President Truman, an American plane drops a single atomic bomb on the city of

Hiroshima, obliterating 40,000 men, women and children in an instant; 100,000 more die of burns and radiation within days (another 100,000 will succumb to radiation poisoning over the next five years).Two days later, Russia declares war against Japan. On August 9, a second American atomic bomb destroys the city of Nagasaki, and the rulers of Japan decide at last to give up - and the greatest cataclysm in history comes to an end.

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