The American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, tried to navigate a middle course of doing enough to keep Great Britain in the war and Germany from prevailing but not so much that he would encounter massive resistance from isolationists at home, who argued the country could and should resist involvement in Europe’s conflicts. Meanwhile, the Unit

U.S. commanders expected Kiska, which housed thousands of Japanese troops in its elaborate tunnel system, to be even worse. It turned out not to be. The night before the invasion, Japan’s forces had quietly abandoned the island and escaped. The only casualties were Allied soldiers who tripped mines or accidentally shot one another in the fog. No su

When he launched World War Two, he compelled his enemies to make clear distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Afterwards, precisely because Nazi ideology was so racist, racism became discredited in the West. But the change took time. White supremacy remained a mainstream ideology in American politics at least until the 1960s.