• Explain the basic strategic military decisions of the war. The emphasis might be on the fact that there were, in a sense, two separate wars that had to be conducted simultaneously and that the European war required delicate political and military coordination with Britain and Russia.
  
  

REFERENCE: H. P. Willmott, The Great Crusade: A New Complete History of the Second World War (1990).

• Describe the social and economic changes brought by the war. Particular attention could be given to war-spawned prosperity after the depression and to the beginnings of the Sunbelt migrations that continued in the postwar era, including the African American exodus to the North and West.
  
  

REFERENCE: John W. Jeffries, Wartime America: The World War II Homefront (1996).

• Examine the major military battles in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and their relation to the political tensions among the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union.
  
  

REFERENCES: Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms (1990); David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear (1999).

• Analyze the events of the war against Japan, including the development and use of the atomic bomb. The emphasis might be on the controversy over why the bomb was used.
  
  

REFERENCES: Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (1975); Ronald Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan (1985).