Without question, 2020 was a remarkable and remarkably miserable year for so many. It had a little bit of everything: disease, fire, political upheaval, social unrest, economic devastation. Oh, and murder hornets.

More than 340,000 Americans died from covid-19. Unemployment reached nearly 15% and hunger in America surged. 

But there's another year in relatively recent human history that surpassed the suffering and significance of 2020.  

1945.

Between April and October that year, an American president died, the US dropped two nuclear bombs, a world war ended, the United Nations was founded and George Orwell published Animal Farm. 

And in the 5 other months that year, 75,000 Americans perished in the Battle of the Bulge. Auschwitz was liberated. US forces took Iwo Jima. The Nuremberg trials began. And the first computational computer came online. 

Major Garrett looks back at 1945, a year that devastated and shaped the world. 

Interviews with historians and authors Jay Winik, A.J. Baime and Michael Kimmage, director of the Harry Truman Library, Kurt Graham, and director of the Franklin Roosevelt Library, Paul Sparrow.

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