Christmas 1941 was not the first time that Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had met in person, nor would it be the last. But the meeting over the first holiday season as allies in the largest war in human history was, perhaps, the most consequential, and, quite possibly, the most important Christmas ever at the White House.
In August of 1918, as the armies of Europe neared exhaustion, American troops of the 28th “Keystone” division were thrown into a nearly forgotten battle that fully represented the horrors of the War to End All Wars.
Of the vaunted ironclad warships of the US Civil War perhaps the mightiest and most terrifying was the confederate ram Tennessee. On August 5, 1864, she would be put to the test in the largest naval engagement of the war, an engagement that defined the divided loyalties of the War of the Rebellion.