Department of History

World War II, we have been told all our lives, was our greatest triumph, the moment when the forces of light-the Western democracies and the U.S.S.R.-prevailed over the forces of darkness-the Nazis and the other Axis powers. It was a conflict that began in Europe in September 1939 and ended with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan in August 1945. Or did it?Historian and host Niall Ferguson challenges assumptions and redefines World War II as the central act of an epic struggle between rival empires. The film considers the unparalleded stretch of violence during the 20th century as a single, unrelenting "war of the world" that began with Japan's invasion of Russia in 1904 and continued through the Korean War all the way to an ongoing "Third Worlds's War." The War Of The World presents bold new insight into the most violent century in history.