Curtis LeMay

Former corporate whiz kid Robert McNamara was the controversial Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, during the height of the Vietnam War. Augmented by archival footage and cabinet conversation recordings, Errol Morris gives the conflicted McNamara a platform on which he attempts to confront his and the U.S. government's actions in Southeast Asia in light of the horrors of modern warfare, the end of ideology and the punitive judgment of history.

Documentary of the planning and delivery of the last great bomber attack on the city of Tokyo by the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II.

By spring of 1942, Japan controlled the western Pacific, the Philippines, and large parts of Indochina. America and her allies knew that final victory could only be achieved by unconditional surrender and that would involve occupation of the Japanese homeland. This is the story Operation Downfall, the plan to invade and occupy Japan that would dwarf the D-Day landings in Europe. According to the plan, on X-Day--November 1, 1945--General MacArthur would lead an invasion force onto the beaches of Kyushu, the southern most of the Japanese Islands. Y-Day would follow six months later when the largest beach landing in military history would take Tokyo. Politicians and military strategists knew that Japanese resistance would be ferocious. Plans for the invasion continued throughout 1945 until President Truman made the decision to drop the atom bomb. We trace the invasion plans from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and analyze why Truman chose the bomb over Operation Downfall.

TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.