A City at War: Chicago

PBS Western Reserve (WNEO 45.1 / WEAO 49.1):

Friday, July 28, at 5 PM

Narrated by renowned journalist Bill Kurtis, this one-hour documentary comprehensively examines Chicago during World War II. 

Just prior to America’s involvement in World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called on the country to become “an arsenal of democracy,” to start producing war materials to help defeat the Axis powers. Through firsthand accounts, declassified films and period images, A CITY AT WAR: CHICAGO explores how the Windy City answered that call, and how a friendship between Roosevelt and Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly helped to set everything in motion. The film reveals how the Chicago metropolitan area was transformed into a well-oiled production machine, with every racial, ethnic, religious and age group mobilizing to support the war effort. 

Highlights include rare footage of FDR’s 1937 “Quarantine Speech,” delivered in Chicago to warn of the coming war; Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi creating the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago, leading to the development of the atomic bomb; the formation of P.K. Wrigley’s All American Girls Baseball League; the capture of a Nazi spy from Chicago; and the mob’s exploitation of servicemen.