Get a funny animated overview of Tolstoy’s epic novel “War & Peace” and the key themes it explores in this web exclusive.

FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

RELATED CONTENT

On April 16, 1953, after the death of Russian Premier Joseph Stalin, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers what is known as his “Cross of Iron” speech before the American Society for Newspaper Editors, contrasting the philosophies of the Soviet Union and the United States.

In a radio interview on October 28, 1943, Dr. Vojta Benes, a former Czechoslovakian senator who had been living in America since escaping his homeland in 1939, is hopeful about lasting peace after the end of World War II.

On November 27, 1995, President Bill Clinton announces the end of years of ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. The leaders of the three warring factions met in Dayton, Ohio, and signed an agreement known as the Dayton Peace Accords, which created two new sovereign states: Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A look at the astronomical life of iconic author, cosmologist and physicist Stephen Hawking.

President Eisenhower talks about his three imperatives for achieving and maintaining peace throughout the world.

On August 4, 1964, as events in the Tonkin Gulf unfold, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara apprised President Lyndon B. Johnson of the situation in a series of phone calls. In the third secretly recorded phone call of the day, McNamara reports that two U.S. destroyers deployed in the Gulf east of Vietnam are under attack. While McNamara did not know it at the time, the information he relayed was later determined to be false.