American Experience — Season 29

An account of an incident at a Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Ark., in 1980 that almost caused the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying a nuclear warhead 600 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The near-calamity was kicked off when a socket fell from the wrench of an airman performing maintenance in a Titan II silo and punctured the missile, releasing a stream of highly explosive rocket fuel.

She set out to save a species...us. An intimate portrait of the woman whose groundbreaking books revolutionized our relationship to the natural world.

The dramatic story of the country's first subway.

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, a former soldier deeply influenced by literature and ideas of the radical right, killed 168, and injured 675 others.

A riveting account of the event that helped give rise to the modern American militia movement.

Part 1 of 3. President Woodrow Wilson vowed to keep the U.S. out of World War I after hostilities erupted in Europe in August 1914. It was a promise he kept until 1917, when the Germans resumed "unrestricted submarine warfare"— a policy it had started and then stopped in 1915 — and began sinking U.S. ships. An intercepted telegram also showed Germany trying to convince Japan and Mexico to declare war on America.

Part 2 of 3. America's entry into World War I is recalled, including the breathtaking speed of mobilization and the profound transformations required for America to play a central role in the conflict.

Part 3 of 3. In the fall of 1918: a major American offensive that could bring a swift end to the war, a lost U.S. battalion surrounded by German forces, a deadly flu epidemic on the homefront.

Chart America's entry into the conflict, examining the breathtaking speed of mobilization and the profound transformations required if America was to play a central role in the Great War. In 1917, the U.S. was deeply divided about going to war. Wilson hired former journalist George Creel to lead an unprecedented propaganda campaign to support the war. But for those who resisted the patriotic fervor, the consequences could be severe. Repressive legislation clamped down on free speech and almost any form of dissent. There was rampant vigilantism, and deep racial divisions still existed. Although controversial at first, in the end, more than four million men served in America’s first mass conscripted army, their ranks reflected the teeming racial and socio-economic diversity of 20th-century America. In the summer of 1918, the Americans arrived in France just as the Germans were on the outskirts of Paris. And soon, the wave of death and misery that Wilson had so feared was coming to pass.

Chart the ways in which the bloodiest battle in American history, and the ensuing peace, forever changed a president and a nation. In the fall of 1918, the deadly flu swept through cities at home and at the front. When the tide of war turned, the Germans wanted a cease-fire on Wilson's terms. On November 11, 1918, the war was over, but for Wilson, the last fight remained. He negotiated the terms of the peace treaty and won the world over to his League of Nations, but felled by a stroke, he failed to convince the Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, with tragic consequences. While Wilson had heralded the triumph of American values abroad, many were worried about democracy at home; with citizens persecuted, "aliens" interned, and cities torn apart by race riots. The Great War changed the country forever. African Americans who had fought in the war found ways to continue to push for change. Women's suffrage gained converts, including Wilson. And America stepped onto the world stage.