In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues the presidencies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter did little to inspire American's faith in government. While Ford was a likeable and humble man, his administration achieved few goals and did little to abate the economic crises. His actions made enemies on the right and the left, and further exacerbated divisions within the GOP. Ronald Reagan led a conservative primary challenge in 1976 to Ford and narrowly lost. While Ford won the nomination, Ronald Reagan had positioned himself as the future of the Republican party. Ford ultimately lost to the former Naval Lieutenant and Governor of Georgia Jimmy Carter.

Carter's administration was equally ineffective. Carter had campaigned as a Washington outsider and fiscal conservative. Carter's independent streak made it difficult for him to work with Washington power brokers, and he rejected the agenda of the progressive wing of his party, led by Senator Ted Kennedy. The ongoing economic and energy crisis brought out the moralist in Carter, who acknowledged the suffering but pointed to a deeper "crisis of confidence" in American culture. In the end, his speech fell flat, and his Democratic majority accomplished little, except for further deregulation.

Carter's foreign policy was also viewed as insufficient by many Americans. Though he furthered détente with China and Russia, his handling of the Iranian Hostage Crisis and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan further hurt Carter's reputation. As a result, Americans to this day equate Carter and Democrats as weak on foreign policy and war.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues the Watergate break-in went from a third-rate robbery to a massive intra-governmental cover-up that ultimately took down Richard M. Nixon. Nixon's abuse of power and obstruction of justice caused a constitutional crisis that threatened the rule of law itself. Due to the heroic efforts of reporters, the thorough investigation by the FBI, the placing of principles over party by congressional Republicans, and the impartial conduct of the Supreme Court, justice was finally obtained. Nixon resigned from the presidency, the first president to do so, and was succeeded by Gerald Ford. Nixon's former Vice President, Spiro Agnew, had also resigned due to corruption charges stemming from a decade long bribery scheme that went from Baltimore County all the way into the White House. Nixon's legacy illustrates that Democracy is fragile and requires constant vigilance against the abuse of power and corruption. As a result of Watergate and Vietnam, Americans became extremely disenchanted with the government and politicians, and this distrust remains to this day.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues Richard Nixon was a transitional figure between New Deal Republicans and modern conservatism. Nixon opposed the Great Society, but upheld and attempted to expand New Deal style policies. Nixon's rhetoric began the "emerging conservative majority," through various political strategies that picked up the pieces of the New Deal coalition.

Nixon also supported environmentalism, which attempted to alleviate the substantial damage caused deforestation, over chemical usage, pollution, and toxic dumping. As a result, the Earth Day movement emerged and the Environmental Protection Agency was created in order to address these issues.

Critically, Nixon's anti-communist credentials allowed him to thaw relations between the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. This significantly reduced the tensions of the Cold War and proved peaceful coexistence was possible. However, it gave an added issue for ultra conservative Republicans to rally around, which later contributed to the Reagan Revolution.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues the Vietnam War was a result of Cold War logic, where the U.S. government misinterpreted decolonization movements as communist threats. There was a brief moment where the U.S. could have supported Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese against French colonization, but since NATO needed French support, the U.S. was forced to back the French. This would later lead to Deja Vu, as the French experience in Vietnam would mirror the American experience the following decade.

With French defeat, the US supported the corrupt South Vietnamese regime, which was highly incompetent and oppressive. Inside South Vietnam, a civil war emerged between the National Liberation Front, also called the Viet Cong, and the Army of South Vietnam, called ARVN. At first, ARVN was effective, since it was dependent on American weapons and advisors. With equipment support from the Soviets and Chinese, the NLF beat back ARVN and controlled most of the countryside. Due to the repression of the Diem regime, widespread protests engulfed the country. This resulted in an American supported coup to remove Diem. Unfortunately, his successors were equally corrupt but not as effective, which led successive governments to rise and fall in quick succession.

American involvement in Vietnam increased after the false report of an attack on the USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy, which gave LBJ the cover he needed to expand the war. American troops flooded into the country, which resulted in North Vietnamese troops coming South to work with the NLF to overturn the government. Combat in Vietnam was brutal and American troops suffered greatly. Civilians were also caught in the crossfire, and tens of thousands were killed, due to military commanders' obsession with body count as a measure of effectiveness.

In the end, LBJ was brought down by the war, and Nixon committed treason to win an election and continue the war for another five years, when it could have ended in 1968. Nixon began the gradual withdraw of American troops, but not before invading Cambodia, which destabilized the country and directly led to the Cambodian genocide under Pol Pot. Peace in Vietnam finally occurred in 1973, and South Vietnam was conquered a two years later.

The legacy of the Vietnam war is tragic. American servicemen were disrespected when they came home. The people no longer trusted the government because of their lies about the war. Americans attempted to avoid large scale foreign intervention until the First Iraq War of 1991. Finally, tens of thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians were killed as a result of the war. Many refugees escaped these countries and came to settle in the U.S., where they are valued members of society.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues Lyndon B. Johnson was a tragic figure, as he did more for Civil Rights than any other president since Abraham Lincoln, but instead is chiefly remembered for escalating American involvement in the Vietnam War. As the war abroad and society at home ran out of control, LBJ came under attack from right and left. At the same time, the counter-culture changed the ways many Americans lived, as they experimented with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Combined with the gains of the Civil Rights Movement, the result was a conservative backlash, which resulted in a massive political realignment that we live with to this day.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues JFK saved the world from nuclear holocaust during the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK won a tight election and brought with him a cabinet of the "best and brightest" to run the country. In office, JFK was late to support the Civil Rights Movement, and only did so after violent attacks on peaceful protesters. In addition, JFK was forced to do the Bay of Pigs invasion and commit US advisors to Vietnam due to political calculations. His assassination in 1963 shook the country and many wonder to this day what he would have done during his second term.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues the Long Civil Rights Movement included efforts to bolster Latino, LBGQT, Native, and Women's civil liberties in the face of historic marginalization and oppression.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues the practice of peaceful protest in the face of intimidation and violence allowed black and white activists to make substantial legal gains that partially eroded segregation and disfranchisement.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues African Americans fought against segregation and disfranchisement since their enactment after the end of Reconstruction. Black communities resisted attempts to deprive them of their 14th and 15th amendment rights in the form or organization, protest, and solidarity. Some worked within the system, like Booker T. Washington and Madam C.J. Walker, while others like W.E.B. Du Bois sought to reform the system. The experience of the First World War, the interwar years, the Great Depression, and the Second World War created the New Deal Coalition and reinvigorated the fight for black equality. While Truman's administration furthered this progress, white southern segregationists threatened the Democratic coalition, by illustrating they would bolt the party over civil rights. These actions would presage the ultimate demise of the NDC in 1968. The final straw occurred in 1954 with the Brown v. Board decision that declared segregation in public education illegal. However, Brown II allowed southern states to implement this at their own pace, which opened the door to massive resistance. White southern segregationists pledged their opposition to the ruling and enacted a battery of measures to prevent equality, integration, and justice. Caught in the middle were common children like Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered by white segregationists in Money, Mississippi merely for speaking to a white woman. The atrocity galvanized a generation of civil rights advocates and led to a new phase of the movment.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues Eisenhower's administration was committed to containment and managed to avoid nuclear confrontation, though there were numerous missed opportunities for de-escalation.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues white Americans were drunk on their own success following the Second World War and entered two decades of affluence that expanded consumer culture in the country. Americans bought more luxury items, ate at fast food restaurants, and took new vacations. While consumerism reigned, a culture of conformity took hold, which dissuaded dissent and uniqueness. Gender norms stagnated and women were pressured to be "good" housewives and mothers. Popular magazines emphasized the submissiveness and obedience of women to male authority, while many women were forced out of the work place. At the same time, religious sentiment increased in this era, in order to contrast against theoretical communist atheism and the fear of nuclear holocaust. The 1950s also saw large population changes, as white Americans left the cities and countryside and moved into the ever expanding suburbs along the Sunbelt. As a result, city services decreased with this white flight. This era also saw a massive increase in the birth rate, as 50 million people were born over two decades. American culture changed as well, with the advent of Rock & Roll. While this cultural flourishing influenced a host of musical productions to this day, upper-class Americans worried that it made their children disobedient communists, while the Soviets worried rock made their children capitalists. Americans also embraced atomic culture, which was an obsession with everything atomic bomb related. People bought atomic trinkets, took atomic vacations, and watched movies that glorified or feared the bomb. Despite the affluence of the decade, Americans also worried about the substantial amount of poverty in the country, as well as reports of growing infidelity among married couples. As such, the decade can be seen as an Age of Anxiety. Lastly, Eisenhower's administration embraced a "New Look" foreign policy, which emphasized massive retaliation and covert operations, that led to numerous coups and assassinations across the globe. This is exemplified in the Iranian Coup, which directly led to the Iranian Revolution and the American Embassy hostage crisis two decades later.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues that flashpoints across the globe confirmed the perspective of Americans that there was a global monolithic communist threat to the free world. Americans confronted the Soviets in Berlin and the North Koreans in the Korean War. Despite the Korean War resulting in a stalemate, it confirmed that war could occur without the usage of atomic weapons.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues the Cold War was an ideological conflict between two rival economic systems that led both the United States and the Soviet Union to misunderstand each others intentions and led to world wide misery. With the end of the Second World War, the United States was left as the sole superpower on the world stage. Despite this dominance, Americans were deeply worried about perceived Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Policy analysts like George Kennan attempted to explain Soviet behavior as traditional Russian paranoia and a desire to legitimize repressive rule at home. In reality, it was simply a desire for security after the massive bloodletting from the Nazi invasion. Americans viewed Soviet aggression through the prism of the Munich Conference and adopted a policy of containment, which led to numerous confrontations. The Truman administration, in an attempt to prevent further countries from falling to communism, gave billions of dollars of aid to European countries, which allowed them to rebuild and guaranteed American hegemony on the continent. As Anti-communism spread throughout the United States, it led to numerous witch hunts inside the country that ruined many peoples lives.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues the Holocaust was the result of centuries of anti-Semitism, which led to the horrific industrial-scale, state-sponsored murder of eleven million human beings. From Ancient Assyria to the Pale of Settlement and Dreyfus Affair, Hebrews and Jews suffered persecuted throughout history. This was increased with the rise of nation-states, which were based on linguistic, ethnic, racial, and religious standards. The result was increased Pogroms and repression of Jews from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

With the end of the First World War, many Germans suffered economic privations and social disorder. This led many to embrace the "Stabbed in the Back Theory" and align with the Nazi Party, who promised to avenge Germany and make it racially pure. The Nazis began with propaganda, then informal boycotts, before outright intimidation and violence was used. Dissenters were sent to concentration camps, and sterilization programs stopped tens of thousands from procreating. The Nazis finally enacted the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," outright extermination.

The Einsatzgruppen and foreign auxiliaries conducted numerous open air executions, were over a million Jews were shot. Locals were key to identifying and aiding the Nazi extermination of "undesirables." Open air shootings was too inefficient, as was Gas Vans. The Nazis also employed the "Hunger Plan" to systematically starve occupied countries in order to feed Germany. The result was millions of peoples from the Soviet Union to Greece and the Netherlands, who starved to death as a result. But still, this was too inefficient, so the Nazis implemented the Death Camp. Where millions of "undesirables" were gassed and cremated.

Jews and other peoples were not all passive victims, many fought back. Assassinations of Nazi officials were carried out, Jews rebelled in death camps, and many joined partisan units to fight against Nazi oppression.

In total, six million Jewish and five million other peoples were systemically murdered by the Nazi regime. Some Jews who survived the camps, faced renewed repression by a paranoid Stalin, while others were attacked by Christians who had occupied Jewish homes and businesses in Eastern Europe.

After the war, the Allies were appalled by what they found. It was obvious that many German civilians lied about their knowledge of the genocide, as all the evidence suggested their complicity. Numerous Nazis were tried as war criminals at the Nuremburg and subsequent trials, but many Nazis escaped prosecution. Many Nazi hunters found such individuals and brought them to justice, but countless others escaped. In our era, historians debate if we could have stopped the Holocaust, though many at the time were unwilling to accept it was real and frankly lacked the capacity to directly stop it.

The point, is hate and ethnic nationalism are dangerous things. We must never allow such tragedies to happen again. We must fight against intolerance and ignorance with love and acceptance.

In this lecture, Professor Totten describes the combat of the Second World War from North Africa to the Pacific theater. The Grand Alliance between the Soviets, Great Britain, and the United States was merely a marriage of convenience. Stalin kept pushing for a second front in Europe and was disappointed by delays to the invasion of France. With victories in North Africa and Sicily, the Allies invaded Italy, but progress was slow and costly. As the Allies prepared for D-Day, a massive disinformation campaign ensued in an attempt to divert German strength away from the Allies intended target, Normandy. D-Day was a massive amphibious invasion that cost thousands of lives, but it successfully established a beach head that the Allies used to plunge deep into France. The last German counter offensive in the West, occurred at the Battle of the Bulge and despite high casualties, the Allies hung on and recaptured all lost territory. Finally, the Red Army besieged Berlin and the fall of the city brought about V-E Day.

In the pacific, the Americans fought a holding action against Japanese forces, and embarked on an "island hopping campaign" where they seized some strategic islands, while bypassing others. Fighting was brutal and costly, which led to intense racism from both belligerents. At Guadalcanal, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and elsewhere, fanatical Japanese fighting convinced the civil-military leadership to use an Atomic Bomb to bring the Japanese to heel. Thus, two Atomic Bombs were dropped on Japan, which finally brought about their surrender, though these remain controversial to this day.

The Second World War was the costliest war in human history. It changed the map of Europe, it led to the occupation of Germany and Japan by the Allies, and Eastern Europe by the Soviets. Racial and gender issues came to the forefront in the United States, which helped catapult later protest movements. Lastly, the war led to a wave of decolonization across the globe, as oppressed peoples through off European Imperialism. However, these efforts were often misunderstood by Americans, which led directly to the Vietnam War.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues Americans fought a two-year undeclared war in the Battle of the Atlantic against Nazi Germany, as the U.S. attempted to ship supplies to the allies. With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. entered the conflict, becoming the "arsenal of democracy." As with most wars, women were critical to the war effort, and over 350,000 served in various branches of the armed forces. LGBQT individuals also volunteered in great numbers, serving honorably, despite horrific repression from the civil-military leadership. The Second World War provided African Americans with the opportunity to serve in defense industries, which greatly increased their wealth, though they were still discriminated against and placed into the most menial jobs. Many whites and blacks learned to get along, though race riots did erupt throughout the country in regards to housing and public facilities. African Americans, Japanese-Americans, and Native Americans served honorably in the war, despite the repression they faced at home. Blacks emphasized the "Double V" campaign to beat fascism abroad and racism at home. As a result, the Civil Rights Movement was further bolstered, directly leading to the protest movements of the 1950s. While poor whites and blacks served, Mexicans were encouraged to come to the United States to work on American farms until, though many were later sent back in the 1950s. Lastly, the U.S. embarked on one final piece of New Deal legislation, the G.I. Bill, which gave white veterans low interest loans, technical or college education, and other benefits that built the suburbs and white middle class. However, these benefits were denied to non-white veterans, and when combined with the absence of social security, helps explain the wealth gap between communities to this day.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues German blitzkrieg out-maneuvered and out-fought the Allies in the early days of the war. While British forces managed to evacuate at Dunkirk, much of western Europe fell within a few months in the face of the Nazi onslaught. However, in the Battle of Britain, the Royal Air Force, aided by a few thousand radio operators and ground crews, held off the Nazis as they battled in the skies above the British Isles. Winston Churchill was right when he said this was Britain's finest hour, and showcases the power of people who come together and sacrifice for the common defense. After this failure, Hitler turned his attention East and launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. This would be his greatest miscalculation of the war. Army Group North soon surrounded Leningrad, modern day St. Petersburg, and fought the longest and most destructive siege in human history. Army Group Center moved towards Moscow, but the Russian winter ground the offensive to a halt, before Soviet forces counter attacked and saved the capital of Holy Mother Russia. Finally, Army Group South attacked Stalingrad, which soon became bogged down in the ruins of the city. After a counter-offensive, German forces were surrounded and forced to surrender against Hitler's orders, marking this as the single most important turning point of the Second World War.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues Hitler's ambition dragged the the world into another global war. Hitler legally came to power, due to the miscalculations of conservatives and businessmen who worried about the growth of the communist party in Germany. After being appointed Chancellor, Hitler used a manufactured crisis to consolidate power, using censorship, intimidation, and the abolishment of rival political powers. The Nazis perverted German culture, where Hitler was depicted as a genius, regardless of facts or evidence to the contrary. Dissenters who fought back, were sent to concentration camps, as everyone informed on each other to save themselves. The Nazis also embarked on a rearmament program that led other countries to respond in kind. While the United States reaffirmed its commitment to isolationism, Nazi power grew. The Spanish Civil War broke out in the mid-1930s, which became a proxy war for German and Soviet forces to hone their skills, which would be used to deadly effect in the Second World War. Hitler then moved to unify Austria and Germany in the Anschluss before demanding the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. At the Munich Conference, Great Britain and France approved this measure, hoping to establish "peace in our time." It failed and Hitler demanded the Polish Corridor the next year, as France and Great Britain searched for allies. When British diplomats snubbed the Soviet Union, the USSR signed the Soviet-Nazi Non-Aggression Pact, which enabled Hitler to invade Poland. As a result, Great Britain and France declared war, plunging the European continent into another great war.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues the Treaty of Versailles and the world-wide economic collapse created an environment for communist and fascist dictatorships to rise from the ashes. After a brutal Civil War, the Communist Party took control of Russia and created the Soviet Union, later led by Joseph Stalin. In Italy, the fascist brute, Benito Mussolini, rose to power and embarked on consolidating power through censorship and intimidation. Corporatist and militarist Japan embarked on their a campaign of expansion in Manchuria, that led to the murder of tens of thousands of people, during the Rape of Nanking. Lastly, the inability of the Weimar Republic to bring prosperity to the German people, enabled the rise of a young Austrian born lance Corporal, Adolf Hitler, which had devastating consequences.

In this lecture, Dr. Totten argues the New Deal fundamentally changed the relationship between the federal government and private citizens. Roosevelt's second wave of legislation aimed at providing workers with guarantees to organize and a social safety net for America's most vulnerable citizens. While these programs were very successful, they were also hampered by white southern politicians, who would not extend their benefits to African Americans and other minority groups. After FDR's landslide reelection in 1936, he attempted to remove the Supreme Court as an obstacle to his plans, which culminated in the Court Packing Plan, which greatly hurt him politically. In the aftermath, few new programs would be created and FDR had to keep spending high, as any reduction, led to further recessions. In the end, the New Deal saved America as a liberal capitalist democracy in an era of communism, fascism, and monarchies.