The
following link will show you
the next chapter of my classroom presentation. Now that both Russia and USA
have entered the war, with their maybe not well trained but inmense troops, the
situation changed.
Representants
of all the Allies were having different international meetings and submits: Stalin
and his minister Molotov by Russia, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
and President of USA Franklyn D.Roosevelt (yes, the same one that created “The
New Deal” to fix American economy after the Wall Street Crack of 1929!). As you
can see in the first image of my pdf, sometimes they also invited Charles de
Gaulle, the leader of the French Resistance againts the Nazi occupation of
France. Other important conferences during these years took place in Yalta and
Teherán. Look at the photo, sitting at first row from left to right,
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin:
And, as we
mentioned Churchill... his speeches (both in the Parliament House and through
radio to the general public) were extremely important to maintain British’
moral high and support war effort (remember that prior the entrance of Russia
and USA in the war, UK was during a year the ONLY country officially fighting
the Nazis). Churchill had a very peculiar oratory style, with the following
characteristics:
1.Correct diction.
Use of simple words, easy to understand (and remember) for everyone and, at the
same time, good knowledge of vocabulary and sinonims.
2.Rethorical
questions (for catching public’s attention)
3.Rythm. Repetition
of ideas and main words.
4.Extravagance of
lenguage (emotive metaphores).
5.Encourage of
national feelings and sense of duty.
6.Actio (Voice and
Movements as a way to emphasis his words)
But let’s
go back to the warfront... it is said that you need much more than just
soldiers and weapons. Maybe it’s true! Jasper Maskelyne was a magician that
joined the British army... as a magician! He managed to “created” a full (fake)
army to fool the Nazis (watch the video: Deception at the El Alamein
(6 minutes in English) to discover how). That event gave time to the Allies to
prepare Operation Husky: the landing in Sicily (3 minutes
news-video) as a first step to defeat and liberate Italy from Mussolini
fascism.
The next
step was Operation Overlord, the famous landing on the Normandy beaches. It was
necessary to organise again a distraction scheme to avoid the Nazis to
concentrated troops in the area. Who was the responsable of the successfull
plan this time?... A Spanish spy! Actually, he was a double agent and was
condecorated by both the British and the Germans :) Watch this video
about Garbo, the spy who fooled
the Nazis (official trailer from the BBC documentary, less than 2
minutes).
Operation Overlord (June 6th 1944) remains the largest
ever seaborne invasion, with 5,000 ships, 11,000 aircraft, 50,000 vehicles and
150,000 troops (10,000 soldiers were reported dead at the end of that day) carrying
out the daring mission. The five beaches were secure and the troops were
pushing inland. Watch the Simple History
video (3 minutes in English).
Finally,
France was liberated and Charles De Gaulle entered Paris in a triumphal parade.
But De Gaulle was not the first one in entering Paris, actually... can you
guess who were the allied soldiers that really won the Battle of Paris and free
the city?... Americans? No. British? No. They were Spanish! The 9th Company of
the French "Regiment du Tchad" (also known as Division Leclerc)
was nicknamed La Nueve (videoscribe by Memorias de Pez, 6 minutes in Spanish) because of
the high number of Spanish republicans who, suffering exile after the Civil war, decided to go on the fight
against European facism by joined the Free French Forces (“Legión extranjera”).
It is a VERY interesting story and, of course, next week we’ll back to it with
a special activity. But there is not hurry...
We are
talking a lot about battles and weapons but... how did the war impact soldiers
in the field and the people at home?. For many of the combatants, the homefront and the warfront
were one and the same. Did you know, for example, that
more British civilians were killed by enemy action during World War II than
were members of the Royal Navy (60,595 civilians vs. 50,758 navals)? The war
disrupted life for millions upon millions of people. You'll learn about the
different experiences of the populations of various combatant states in this Crash
Course video, by John Green (14 minutes in English).
Now as
usual, to show that you have really revised all that information (if necessary,
you can also do a quick online search), send the answers to the following
questions to blogeducativo08@gmail.com
before Tuesday, 12 May:
Question 1: Read again the LAST paragraph of the
doc.: Extracts from Winston
Churchill, belonging to the famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech. How
many of the most famous resources of Churchill can you identify? Point them.
Question 2. The
slide nº5 includes a photo of a "Pervitin" tube. What kind of medicament was that? Why was it used during a battle? What do you think about that use? Is it ethically correct in war-times? Why?
Question 3. The slide nº21 mentioned the “Roman massacre of Teotoburg”. Find out what was that
(about 3-4 lines)
Question 4. Write a
summay of the last video (Crash course: civilians and soldiers). It has to be about
10-15 lines long.
That’s all
for this week. If any doubt, just ask me... or join the next Monday teams
class, ok?
