LEARN NC

K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

The Perilous Fight: America's World War II in Color

http://www.pbs.org/perilousfight/

Provider: PBS

About this resource

Appropriate grades
6–12
Subjects
science (technology & innovation), social studies (African Americans, psychology, sociology, United States history, women, world history)
Provider
PBS
Special requirements
RealPlayer is required for video portions of the site. Macromedia Flash Player is required to view the timeline. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view the lesson plans.

Legal

Creative Commons License

This catalog record is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. This license applies to the content of this page only and does not apply to the referenced website.

At this PBS companion site to the series The Perilous Fight, read letters and view the first extensively used color formats of photographs and videos chronicling America's experience in World War II.

Get a firsthand look at the Doolittle Raid, Midway, and Pearl Harbor. And see how America went about building an Army for the Second World War and fought what is called the "secret war," an international duel of espionage, counter-espionage, sabotage and subterfuge.

Letters, video, photographs, and maps also accompany chapters that examine:

  • The psychology of war. This component explores the atomic option, disbelief of atrocities (slave labor and concentration camps), letters from the front, the kamikaze threat, and the mental toll.
  • The home front. Topics include American industrialization, isolationism, war financing, censorship, and American migration.
  • Social aspects. Learn how the war affected such groups as African Americans, women, Asian Americans, Jews, and conscientious objectors.

This website also contains an interactive timeline of WWII events and a teacher's guide with two lesson plans that target secondary social studies, history, communication arts, journalism, film study, and psychology.