The Big Three met at Potsdam, Germany, in the summer of 1945 to discuss the fate of the world after World War II.

For the last several days of its existence, before soldiers of the United States Seventh Army arrived, Dachau was a small, self-enclosed universe of decay and death.

Wartime reshaped life and death in the Dachau concentration camp in fundamental ways.

In June 2004, while spending a weekend in Munich away from dissertation research at the Austrian National Library, I boarded a train in the city’s Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) for a short trip.

Victory in the largest battle of the Pacific War came 82 days after it began, and the costs were high.