His new documentary on World War II starts tonight on PBS: "The War." He talked about the similarities between both wars and tried to break a long time myth.

Burns: Every thing sort of becomes draped in this bloodless gallant myth and what I think we have to remember is this is the worst war, it's responsible for the deaths of 60 million people. We understand why people call it the good war because the country was more or less united, our causes were unambiguous. We didn't debate it every night---whether we should be in or whether we shouldn't...

As the decades have come, as we've removed ourselves from it, we've begun to see it as a safe black and white war. It's exactly what's happening on the streets of Baghdad. It was horrible and these young men had experiences common to all wars. I was scared, I was bored, I was hot, I was cold, my officers didn't know what they were doing. I didn't have the right equipment. I saw bad things, I did bad things. I lost good friends.---Now we have a separate military class that suffers its losses apart; alone from the rest of us. We are disconnected. We weren't asked to do anything after 9/11

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This looks like a must see series.