The Second World War was fought in thousands of places, too many for any one accounting. This is the story of four American towns and how their citizens experienced that war. THE WAR, a seven-part series directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, tells the story of the Second World War through the personal accounts of a handful of men and women from four American towns: Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; and the tiny farming town of Luverne, Minnesota.

The series explores the most intimate human dimensions of the greatest cataclysm in history - a worldwide catastrophe that touched the lives of every family on every street in every town in America - and demonstrates that in extraordinary times, there are no ordinary lives.

Throughout the series, the indelible experience of combat is brought vividly to life as veterans describe what it was like to fight and kill and see men die at places like Monte Cassino and Anzio and Omaha Beach, the Hürtgen Forest and the Vosges Mountains and the Ardennes; and on the other side of the world at Guadalcanal and Tarawa and Saipan, Peleliu and the Philippine Sea and Okinawa. (Barnes & Noble)

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

In all of the battle scenes, dramatic historical footage and photographs are combined with extraordinarily realistic sound effects to give the film a terrifying, visceral immediacy. In every episode, veterans’ accounts of battle are interwoven with the poignant recollections of their loved ones back home, who, for four long years, carried on with their lives, contributed to the war effort, and lived in constant fear of telegrams containing news too terrible to bear.

The film honors the bravery, endurance and sacrifice of Americans who lived through what will always be known simply as THE WAR. After a haunting overview of the Second World War, an epoch of killing that engulfed the world from 1939 to 1945 and cost at least 50 million lives, the inhabitants of four towns — Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; and Luverne, Minnesota — recall their communities on the eve of the conflict.

For them, and for most Americans finally beginning to recover from the Great Depression, the events overseas seem impossibly far away. But on December 7, 1941, their tranquil lives are shattered by the shock of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and America is thrust into the greatest cataclysm in history. (Amazon)

Don’t forget to download the Viewer’s Guide (pdf).