4º British: World War II overview

To sum up all the work of this term, here you have the links to the World War II stages we have studied: 

Stage 1: Road to war

Stage 2: Meanwhile in Germany...

Stage 3: Transition (1941-42)

Stage 4: Victories of the Allies (First part: from 1943 to 1944)

Stage 5: Victories of the Allies (Second part: Berlin and Hiroshima)

4º British: Online World War II lesson. Stage 6: the consequences of the war

This is the last chapter of the war: click on the linkto pdf to see the presentation.

New research speculates that the global death toll may have reached as high as 100 million people, nearly five percent of all humans on Earth at the time.

The war also affected the international relationships. The Anticolonialism spread over the world; most part of the colonies and protectorades started independence movements. Even more, local ethnical groups gained the respect of Europeans thanks to their brave participation on the Allied side, such as the Maori people of New Zealand.

The decolonization process was not always simple and peaceful. The creation of Israel, for example, after the British left the area, created a coexistence conflict that lasts to now a days because... nationalism, mainly. Watch this video by John Green - Crash Course and probably you will understand it a bit better (12 minutes).

There were many other major events as a result of the war. For example, the Nüremberg trials. This animated video by History scope is long (17 minutes, in English) but very well documented and explained. Please, watch it carefully.

The Nüremberg trials showed the importance of international cooperation for the common benefit and peace. United Nations was created October 1945 (trying to fix the mistakes of the previous League of Nations). If you click on the link above, you will visit the official UN website and learn about its history, members and duties. The photo below shows the first meeting of the United Nations Security Council in Palais de Chaillot, 16 September 1948 Paris:

Final questions (as usual, send your answers to blogeducativo08@gmail.com before the next Tuesday):

1. How did the Cold War affect the functioning and purpose of the United Nations?

2. How did the UN evolve over the course of the twentieth century?

4º British: Online World War II lesson. Stage 5: Victories of the Allies (Second part: Berlin and Hiroshima)

The following link will revise the last year of the war: the surrender of Berlin and the Atomic Bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In Europe, the allies start competing to conquer Berlin, for showing their political and military superiority, besides the enormous symbolism of such a victory. The Battle of Berlin took place in April 1945. As mentioned in my class, a very interesting and educative visit is the “Berlin underground”.

On April 30th 1945, when Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin two days before the Soviet took the city. Below, the iconic photo taken by the Russian photographer Yevgueni Jaldéi after the fall of Berlin:

  

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Front, it was necessary to fight every single island. Some episodes were sadly famous, such as the defense that Colonel Kuribayashi prepared in Iwo Jima (see the photo colecction in National Geographic). As told you in the online class last Monday, there are two movies about it, from the two different perspectives; you can watch the official trailers in the following links:

• Flags of our fathers (USA soldiers)
• Letters from Iwo Jima (Japan soldiers)

After years of research, called “The Manhattan project”, a big group of scientist created a powerfull weapon: the atomic bomb.

Above: photo of Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Einstein warned that the Germans were researching an atomic bomb and suggested that the United States do the same. Oppenheimer was the leading scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Finally, on the 6^th August 1945 President Harry Truman ordered to drop off the first atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima. It killed 100,000 people; many more suffered injuries and illnesses for the rest of their lifes. You can watch a BBC-simulation video here (4 minutes). On the 9^th August, he ordered to drop a second bomb over Nagasaki, with similar dramatic results. Japan surrendered several days after that. But, was REALLY necessary to use such a destructive weapon? Even nowadays is still a controversial topic, although it seems to have more political that militar motivations (John Green video: 1’40 minutes only)

The Second World War officially ended on 2nd September, 1945

That’s all. As you attended my class on Teams last Monday, there are not “control questions” about this part :)

4º British: Online World War II lesson. Stage 4: Victories of the Allies (First part: from 1943 to 1944)

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)

In the following document: Extracts from the mostremarkables speeches from Winston Churchill during the II World War you can see remarcked in bold some of those characteristics. Do you want to listen to him? It's only a 3 minutes extract from We shall fight on the beaches (June 4, 1940; House of Parliament, London)

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?

4º British: Online World War II lesson. Stage 3: Transition (1941-42)

The following link will show you the third chapter of my classroom presentation. Because this week you have to finish the monthly work too, this chapter is shorter :)

It is about the official entrance of Russia (after Hitler broke the pact and invaded it!) and USA (after the attack over Pearl Harbour) into the war and how these two fatcs altered the development of the conflict.

The Russian or Eastern front was a terrible and long war scenario, with the infamous and bloodiest one being Stalingrad battle, with around two million casualties and several documented cases of cannibalism. Because the city bore Stalin’s name it was of a high importance for the morale of the Soviet forces to hold it… and for Hitler to conquer it. Can you guess how it finished? Do you remember Napoleon Bonaparte’s mistake? Yes, exactly: the Russians waited for winter to come... then, they trapped the German troops into an exhausting urban warfare, fighting house by house. Look at the drawing (in red, obviously, the Russian Soviet Army; in dark grey, the Germans):

Meanwhile, in the Pacific front, the Japanese government decided to attack Pearl Harbor (Hawaii) because the following reasons:

1. As a revenge: USA cut off US oil exports to Japan in the summer of 1941. Without USA oil supplies (80% of their total!) Japanese navy would be unable to function.
2. Strategy: Japan wanted to create an empire (they called it “an Asian co-prosperity sphere” under the motto “Asia for Asians”). As Europeans powers were busy in the war and not able to defend their Asian colonies, in attacking Pearl Harbor the Japanese hoped to destroy the USA fleet so that the Japanese navy would have total free reign in the Pacific. Indeed, in the hours following the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan also attacked British-held Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaya, and the USA territorial possessions of the Philippines, Guam and Wake Island. 

The saddest thing is that USA known that a Japanese attack was imminent somewhere in the Pacific, but experts had thought the Philippines or some other area of the South Pacific closer to Japan was the likely target. Pearl Harbor was considered too far away and therefore they did not prepared safety steps... Look at the geographical location of Hawaii tn this map:

But there is another sad side on this part of History: the suffering of the North-Americans citizens with Japanese origin. Watch the following video to discover what happened to them (6 minutes in English). Ugly history: Japanese American incarceration Camps.

You can watch two short videos about both episodes here:

Simple History: Battle of Stalingrad (5 minutes)

Simple History: Pearl Harbour (1’20 minutes only!)

The last slide of this part is a photo of the famous Enigma machine, the German encryption device whose working process was dechipered by the British Inteligence at Bletchley Park as part of the Ultra program. There is even a quite recent film about it, if you like this type of cinema: The imitation game (2014).

Now, 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, 5 May (important announcement: also remember that this same week, Thursday 7 May, you MUST send me the monthly work nº7):

Question 1: What was the Operation Barbarrosa? Summarise it in 5-6 lines.

Question 2: Why did Hitler order to invade the Caucasus?

Question 3: Find out the title of a book&film that was inspired in the true story of the Russian sniper Vasily Zaitsev.

Question 4: What is the meaning and historical explanation of the Japanese word “kamikaze”?

Question 5: What was the “Leapfrogging”, also known as “Island hopping strategy”, in the Pacific Front?

Question 6: How did the Enigma machine work? Summarise it in 5-6 lines.

That’s all for this week. If any doubt, just ask me, ok?

4º British: Online World War II lesson. Stage 2: Meanwhile in Germany...

The following link will show you the second chapter of my classroom presentation. This part starts by the Aktion T4, a German euthanasia program (but not volunteer!).

This program existed in Nazi Germany prior to the Holocaust and essentially served as practice for the mass killing of Jews during World War II. The T4 Aktion program killed the physically-mentally-emotionally ill, the disabled and elderly people throughout Germany. In total, over 200,000 people were killed under this program. 

The T4 Aktion program killed members of society who, according to Hitler, were unfit to live. Hitler justified this program by saying that this was a wartime measure that gave mercy to those people whose life wasn't worth living. This program came down to their ability to contribute economically to society: if a person required more government assistance than they created by working, they were marked as someone that would be murdered.

Even in Nazi Germany, a political regime literally and deliberately defined by its inhumanity to other humans, leaders knew that a program that targeted sick, elderly, and disabled people would not be taken well. For this reason, the program remained a secret and was given a codename that gave no clues to its actions. The program started in 1939 (actually started before World War II began). Its official name, T4 Aktion, was created after the street address of the building it was run from, with the name Tiergartenstrasse 4.

As said, the experiments of Aktion T4 were used later to develop the “Final Solution”, that is, the extermination of Jews. This is called by the Jweish people as Shoah or Holocaust.

More than six million Jewish people were killed in a systematized genocide. Five million more people died in the same time frame as a result of Nazi persecution. In addition to the Jews, Roma people (=Romaní, that is, gypsies), homosexuals, political dissidents, Polish people, Slavic people, black people, and many other perceived enemies were imprisoned and killed by the regime.

John Green, from Crash Course European History, has a very well explained video (13 minutes, in English) about this issue.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial has created 3 virtual tours of the Auschwitz-I and Auschwitz-II-Birkenau death Camps. As you can see on my presentation, near those camps there were several German industrial areas (the biggest one belonged to IG-Farben, in red on my map) who were using the prisioners as slave-workers until they were to weak or ill to go on working, so they were finally sent to the crematory.

You can read an interview with Rainer Höss, one the grandchildren of Rudolf Höss, Commander in charge of the Nazi Concentration Camp in Auschwitz from 1940 to 1943. After discovering the secret of his family, Rainer has become an activist for Human Rights. In "Historias de la Historia" you can read a very interesting interview to him (in Spanish).

If you are really interesting in this particular topic, I can reconmend you the following books (for a totally volunteer and independent reading). Primo Levi was a survivor from Auschwitz (his books are available in Avila's public library), meanwhile Laurence Rees is a journalist from BBC (his book has been also transformed into a 5-episode documentary film, available on youtube)

Many people were against this Nazi policy: as you can see on the presentation, several diplomats created passports to save Jews (Germans could not kill someone under the nationality of a neutral country!). And they were also some others, less famous but also very important, such as Adolfo Kaminsky, who as a teenager saved thousands of lives by forging passports to help children flee the Nazis. He spent his life helping others escape atrocities around the world. You can watch his full story in the New York Times documentary The Forger (16 minutes, originally in French with English subtitles).

Now, 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, 28 April:

Question 1: What was the aim purpose of Aktion T4?

Question 2: When did it start?

Question 3: What is Anti-semintism?

Question 4: What is genocide?

Question 5: What was the Wansee conference?

Question 6: What happened in 1943 in the Warsaw guetto?

Question 7: Were there other attempts of rebellion? Where? When?

Question 8: Why was Adolfo Kaminsky choosen for became a forger? What were his proffessional skills?

Question 9: What other people did he help in postwar conflicts?

Question 10: What is his hope for the world?

That’s all for this week. If any doubt, just ask me, ok?

4º British: Online World War II lesson. Stage 1: Road to war

There we go... A deep study of the World War II. Firstly, let’s have a look to the “big numbers”: the following graphic shows the number of deaths in the different conflicts of the 20^th century. The green circles represents militar casualties, meanwhile the orange circles represents civilians. The big orange circle (36 million of civilians) includes all the people killed in the concentration camps.

Remember that Germany was not accepted into the League of Nations until years later... and soon after it was accepted, Hitler reached power and left it. What did the League of Nations them? Nothing. They were in favour of the British Appeasement policy.

The following link will show you the first chapter of my classroom presentation. It is quite big so that’s why I decided to divide into chapters ;) In it, you can see the different steps that Germany and its allies from The Axis took until the official start of the war. One special and dramatic event was the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Besides reading those two links, it would be also necessary to watch the following videos by Khan Academy:

Video 1. Beginning of WWII (both Europe and Pacific front). 8 minutes in English.

Video 2. Victories of the Axis (1939-41). 6 minutes in English.

Now, 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, 21 April:

Question 1: What was the Anschluss or Pan-Germanism?

Question 2: What was the Sudentenland?

Question 3: What was the appeasement policy?

Question 4: What were the members of The Axis?

Question 5: When did the WWII officially start?

Question 6: What was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?

Question 7: What was the Blitzkrieg of Lightning war?

That’s all for this week. If any doubt, just ask me, ok?

4º British: Graphic novels for learning History

As usual, here you have a list of recommendations for your holidays. This year is about graphic novels!. It is only a selection but it includes a wide range of different historical moments and perspectives. Enjoy the reading!

Women

Persépolis, by Marjane Satrapi. Autobiography of a teenager in Teherán, during the difficult years of the Islamic Revolution.

Sally Heathcote, Suffragette, by Mary M. Talbot & Kate Charlesworth. As the growing hunger for change grows within a culture of rigid social mores and class barriers, Sally and thousands like her rise up to break the bonds of oppression at the risk of ostracization and violence. 

Leonor, the Black legend, by Delalande, Mogavino & Gómez. Biography of the brave and powerful Leonor of Aquitania (1122-1204), who brokes the medieval stereotypes fom women and changed History.

Red Rosa, by Kate Evans. A graphic biography of Rosa Luxemburg, a central figure in the early twentieth century socialist movement in Europe, shows how an independent, passionate woman stood fast for her beliefs. 

I World War

¡F***ing War!, by Jacques Tardi. A classic graphic novel about life in the trenches.

Gravrilo Princip, by Henrik Rehr. The story of the man that change the 20th century.

The Harlem Hellfighters, by Max Brooks & Caanan White. It is a fictionalized account of the experiences of the African-American 369th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed the "Hell-fighters" by German soldiers.

II World War

Berlin: City of Stones, by Jason Lutes. A good inter-war novel set in the later years of the Weimar Republic. It covers the lives of several people in Berlin in 1928-1929, with as a backdrop the rise of Nazism. 

Normandy, a graphic novel of the D-Day, by Wayne Vansant.

Maus, by Art Spiegelman. The story of a survivor from the concentration camps.

Los surcos del azar, by Paco Roca. The Story of “La Nueve”, the international Regiment, mainly formed by Spanish Republicans, that first enter in Paris,  on the 24th August 1944.

History of Spain

La balada del Norte, by Alfonso Zapico. The story of several characters Turing the difficult times of the II Republic and the rebellion in Asturias.

La guerra civil española, by José Pablo García & Paul Preston

El otro mar, by Alfonso Zapico. Biography of Vasco Núñez de Balboa, one of the explorers/conquerors of America, around the year 1500.

1212. Las Navas de Tolosa, by Jesús Cano de la Iglesia

Las Meninas, by Javier Olivares & Santiago García

Pablo Picasso, by Birmant & Oubrerie

El Cid, by Antonio Hernández Palacios

Post-War conflicts

CHE: a revolutionary life, by Jon Lee Anderson & José Hernández

Pyongyang, by Guy Deslise. The author had the opportunity of visiting North Korea. Altough controlled and chaperoned by his translator and a guide, among the statues and propaganda of Korean leaders (the world's only Communist dynasty), Delisle was able to observe more than was intended of the culture and lives of the few North Koreans he encountered. 

A Chinese Life, by Philippe Otie & Li Kunwu. The creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the rise and reign of Chairman Mao Zedong, and his sweeping, often cataclysmic vision for the most populated country on the planet.

Waltz with Bashir: A Lebanon War, by Ari Folman.

Best enemies, by Jean-Pierre Filiu & David B. A story of USA & Middle East relationships (1783-1953)

Such a lovely little war: Saigon 1961-1963, by Marcelino Truong. This Franco-Vietnamese author recounts his childhood in Saigon (now Ho Chi Mihn City). It is a gentle introduction to the beginning of the Vietnam War seen by a child of a bi-cultural marriage.

The Photographer, by Emmanuel Guibert & Didier Lefèvre. It recounts the journey of a reporter through Afghanistan while accompanying Doctors Without Borders in a country torn apart by a war pitting Russians against an Afghan resistance supported by the US and other countries.

Safe Area Gorazde, by Joe Sacco. The author, a master of graphic reportage, managed to convey the nuances of politics combined with a deep understanding of what Bosnians were going through in The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95. Other main titles of Joe Sacco are Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza, both about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Gaza strip.

Miscelánea

Democracy, by Alecos Papadatos, Abraham Kawa & Annii Donna. The story of how democracy started in Ancient Athens, from the perspective of one of its citizens.

Dubliner, by Alfonso Zapico. The tumultuous life of James Joyce, one of the most famous writers of the 20th century.

Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, by Guy Delisle. Travelogue about life in the Holy City that serves as a cultural roadmap of the city's complexities and relevance while offering insight into the human impact of conflicts on both sides of the wall.

4º British: The Battle of Britain

"There will come the battle for our land – for all that Britain is, and all the Britain means. That will be the struggle. In that supreme emergency we shall not hesitate to take every step, even the most drastic, to call forth from our people the last ounce and the last inch of effort of which they are capable.".

Winston Churchill.

First broadcast on BBC as Prime Minister. London, May 19, 1940

What was the secret to winning the Battle of Britain?. Now you can learn many things about that in this BBC education guide. You will find it very useful. 

Enjoy the reading!

4º British: The impact of the II World War on Maori

By the time the Second World War ended in 1945 the 28th (Maori) Battalion had become one of the most celebrated and decorated units in the New Zealand forces. The pinnacle of its achievement was the Victoria Cross won by Te Moananui-a-Kiwa Ngarimu in 1943. 

“We will lose some of the most promising of our young leaders [...] but we will gain the respect of our Pakeha (Europeans) brothers and the future of our race as a component and respected part of the New Zealand people will be less precarious”.

Sir Apirana Ngata, Maori leader, 1940.

Now you can learn many more things about the performance of both communities (Maori and European descendants) by visiting the complete NZHistory website. Enjoy!

Photo: A Maori platton performing their famous “haka” during the militar campaing in Egypt, 1941