Tonight brings us the penultimate episode of Ken Burns'"The War." It took him and his production team six years to make it and, while some of the moments have felt unbearably long--there were moments in last night's episode where the voiceover all but told us things were about to go horribly awry in the German forests and the island of Saipan--it all seems to have gone by very quickly.
Here's the abbreviated synopsis for tonight's episode, The Ghost Front:
(December 1944-March 1945) By December 1944, Americans have become weary of the war their young men have been fighting for three long years; the stream of newspaper headlines telling of new losses and telegrams bearing bad news from the War Department seem endless and unendurable. In the Pacific, American progress has been slow and costly, with each island more fiercely defended than the last. In Europe, no one is prepared for the massive counterattack Hitler launches on December 16 in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and Luxemburg. (Click here for the full episode description.)
KCTS 9 staff and I are reading all your comments, almost as fast as you can post, so keep them coming. Thanks for being a part of public television.
Erin Whitcomb,
Project Manager, The War