Part of the decision-making process for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan came from the estimates of extremely high casualties (on both sides) if the Americans were forced to invade mainland Japan in order to force the Japanese to surrender. [BLANK-1], a conflict late in the war in the spring of 1945, highlighted the likelihood of massive casualties if America was forced to invade Japan. In this conflict, 17,000 Japanese soldiers held off an invasion force of 70,000 American troops for a month on an eight-square mile island. Nearly every Japanese soldier died rather than surrender, and inflicted 30,000 casualties on the Americans before the USA was able to secure this island on the outskirts of mainland Japan.

Featuring important American figures like Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, [BLANK-1] in 1925 typified the tension between religion and science of the era. Following this event, Christian Fundamentalism and anti-intellectualism gradually retreated from the forefront of American culture (though they did not disappear) and it became legal to teach the Theory of Evolution in public schools (alongside the Genesis creation story).

A precursor to the Invasion of Italy and the opening up of a second front in Europe, [BLANK-1] occurred in the summer of 1943. It was the invasion of the island of Sicily, which would serve as the Mediterranean base of operations for the Allied Italian invasion.

By the 1920s, [BLANK-1], a uniquely American musical style popularized by the African-American community in New Orleans, had become a national sensation, played and heard by both White and Black Americans. The fast pace and spontaneity of the new genre encouraged listeners to dance along to the music. Some moral critics were skeptical of the musical form due to its African roots and a few even accused Black musicians of this genre of using the music to mesmerize young white women.

In the winter of 1944-1945, Germany engaged in its last offensive of World War II. During this surprise attack, Nazis attempted to encircle Americans on the Western Front in Belgium. The Americans ultimately repelled the German counterattack, known as [BLANK-1], in what turned out to be the deadliest battle in U.S. history. Americans suffered approximately 90,000 casualties.

Radicalism thrived both at home and abroad during the Great Depression. The 1930s was the highpoint of fascism in the United States. [BLANK-1], a world-renowned aviator, shared the pro-fascist, pro-Nazi, and pro-Hitler feelings of some radical American conservatives. He joined the America First Committee (an isolationist and quasi-fascist conservative organization), gave public speeches defending Hitler and the Nazis, and could be seen making public Nazi salutes alongside like-minded American entrepreneur, Henry Ford.

Warren G. Harding’s campaign slogan during the Election of 1920 was [BLANK-1]. After the United States’ involvement in WWI, he sought to keep the country largely out of foreign affairs. He focused on business and staffed federal regulatory agencies with anti-regulatory, pro-business conservatives (a policy that largely contributed to the Great Depression). His administration was typical of the pro-business Republican White House of the 1920s and would go down as one of the most corrupt in American history.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s most serious competition for president during the 1930s came from fellow democrat, Huey Long from Louisiana. Long was a radical populist who favored creating a program in which the federal government would confiscate the assets of the extremely wealthy and redistribute them to the less well-off through government minimum incomes. He called his vision [BLANK-1] and by the mid-1930s, 27,000 clubs sporting the vision’s name sprang up across America. In a folksy comparison, he asked “how many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what’s intended for nine-tenths of the people to eat?” His radical vision, and thus his threat to FDR’s New Deal approach, collapsed when he was assassinated in 1935 over a dispute over Louisiana state politics.

[BLANK-1] was an American Army General who evacuated the Philippines, vowing to return, before its early fall to the Japanese. He was critical of Chester M. Nimitz’s Island-Hopping Strategy in the Pacific and argued that many individual islands could be skipped over and offered no real strategic value. He oversaw the surrender of the Japanese at the war’s end and served as the de facto governor of Japan in the early stages of the peace process. Later, during the Korean War, he would be fired for insubordination when he publicly criticized President Harry S. Truman.

[BLANK-1] was the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied southern France. It occurred in summer, 1944, a few months after D-Day and was designed to link up with the D-Day forces from Normandy.