Explore primary sources outlining the outcomes of the Treaty of Versailles. Students will have discussions on the fairness of the Treaty of Versailles and whether or not there is truly a fair resolution to war.
Signing the Treaty of Versailles meant Germany agreed to limitations on their military, territory losses and devastating financial reparations.
Talk with students briefly about the ending of World War I, how it ended soon after the U.S. got involved. Explain how the major powers came together at the Paris Peace Conference in order to negotiate a settlement and reparations. Note that there was no seat at the table for Germany, but for all of the main countries who fought against Germany during WWI. If possible, remind students about what the major players wanted to come out of the treaty–land, money, security.
Ask the students to read the first paragraph on the first page of the US Army resource to get their bearings for the task at hand. Then ask students to examine closely the documents on page 2 and 3.
Prompt students that all the text, captions, and images are of great value to understanding the effect of the treaty on the German state.
Ask students to take notes on the geographic and population losses of both Germany and Austria. What trend do they notice? How might this make the country and its people feel? Give students 15 minutes for this exercise.
Ask students to pair up with one another and share what they discovered through their examination of these documents. What did they find to be the most interesting element? What was the most confusing?
Have small groups share with the class, teasing out their confusion and helping them understand more clearly what the treaty meant. Give 10 minutes for the pairing and sharing.
Then, ask them to examine the document on page 5. Ask in an open discussion, what do they notice here? Is the reaction what they might have expected?
Finally, have the students reflect on one or all of the following questions in writing:
This lesson meets the following Academic Standards required by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Before you teach, use our teacher primer to freshen up on your content knowledge.
Read a poem written by Cantor Joseph Cysner about his experience during one of the first organized deportations of Jewish residents. Students will gain an understanding of the significance memory has on teaching history.
Forced deportations of Jewish residents from Nazi Germany was one of many attempts by Hitler to rid Germany of their “Jewish problem.”
Prepare students what they will be reading the work of a victim.
Elie Wiesel famously speaks of the importance of memory and writing down one’s story. Offer the following quote from Wiesel to your students:
“History is a bridge. We are naturally afraid of our memories. We try to forget, and in truth, some things we must forget a little bit, simply in order to function. And yet…if we truly allow ourselves to forget, history may well return to us.”
Give students a few minutes to consider the quote before asking them what it means to them. Specifically pursue the question of how history is a bridge?
Read through the poem The Memoirs of Cantor Joseph Cysner edited and published by Key Documents of German-Jewish History.
Before moving on to the Output section, ask students what they think is happening during the poem, what is the context?
Have students pick a line or two from this poem that resonates the most with them. Tell students to write down the answers to the questions below on a piece of paper as they focus on their selection.
Give students 1o minutes to create their answers; then ask for volunteers to share what they wrote down.
Finally, return to the quote by Elie Wiesel about memory.
How does the existence of this poem bridge the reader to history?
This lesson meets the following Academic Standards required by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Before you teach, use our teacher primer to freshen up on your content knowledge.
Students will learn about the rise of the Nazi party. The resource will have them read through excerpts from the Nazi Party’s political party platform. Discussion will evolve into the danger nationalism poses in creating an “us versus them” narrative.
Hitler sought to push his political agenda to strengthen Germany as a nation- at the cost of other cultures and races in the state.
Begin by asking students, What is the difference between patriotism and nationalism?
After giving them a few minutes to come up with their definitions, you can share the official definitions provided by Dictionary.com.
Patriotism: Devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country; national loyalty.
Nationalism: The policy of doctrine asserting the interests of one’s own nation viewed as separate from the interests of other nations or the common interests of all nations. In short, nationalism is a kind of excessive, aggressive patriotism.
Explain to students that political parties and candidates create platforms that help translate their ideas and goals into actions. Tell the class that during this lesson they will read through the National Socialist German Workers’ Party Platform to read through provisions that Hitler proposed to the party.
Direct students to the Facing History and Ourselves source titled, National Socialist German Workers’ Party Platform and read through it together as a class. After you go through the platform, ask the class what their initial thoughts are. Does any one provision stick out to them?
Ask students to get together in small groups of two or three. Give 10-15 minutes for groups to go over the following questions:
Read the quote below by a German Nationalist in 1810 to help you answer the remaining questions:
“A state without a Volk (a people who share a language and culture) is nothing, a soulless artifice; a Volk without a state is nothing, a bodiless airy phantom, like the Gypsies* and the Jews. Only state and Volk together could forma Reich (great empire), and such a Reich cannot be preserved without Volkdom.” -Taken from Facing History and Ourselves.
Go over the questions as a class, collect answers to the main themes to use in future discussions about nationalism and propaganda.
This lesson meets the following Academic Standards required by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Before you teach, use our teacher primer to freshen up on your content knowledge.
Read through excerpts from some of Adolf Hitler’s written works from before and after his appointment as chancellor. Students will gain an understanding for the rhetoric used and how it was put into the context of a problem to be solved in Germany.
Hitler’s desire for “racial purity” and the removal of Jews from Germany was at the core of his actions.
Ask students what they know about Adolf Hitler. Has anyone heard of any of the books he has written?
Explain to students that the first two excerpts come from Hitler’s books, both published before he took office. The first, Mein Kampf, was written while he was in jail after a failed attempt to overthrow the government. His second book, Zweites Buch, was written on his thoughts on foreign policy but was not published in his lifetime. The last came from a speech he gave in the Reichstag after he became chancellor.
Direct students to the document, Nazi Ideology from Echoes & Reflections to read excerpts from three of Hitler’s writings. Prep students by informing them that much of what they will read of Hitler’s words are disturbing and hateful. We are reading them to learn how destructive and wrong these beliefs are.
Have students pair up in groups of two to try to understand and rewrite each excerpt. Give students 10-12 minutes for these rewrites.
Ask the students to share their summaries with the class. Did everyone get the same general take-aways for each one? Open the class into a discussion asking the following questions:
Record some of the students’ answers to be used in other discussions about propaganda and Nazi ideology.
This lesson meets the following Academic Standards required by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Before you teach, use our teacher primer to freshen up on your content knowledge.
Explore the power that propaganda can have on young people, especially when it is presented as part of everyday culture.
The Holocaust and its lasting damage were perpetrated by indoctrinating the most vulnerable.
Ask students to define propaganda as they understand it. Explore the similarities and differences between what each individual understands and then compare the class definition to the one provided by Echoes & Reflections: “False or partly false information intended to shape people’s opinion and action that fulfills the propagandist’s intent.”
Direct students to the resource “Heil Hitler!”: Lessons of Daily Life by Facing History and Ourselves. Have students read the excerpt from Erika Mann and prep their reading with the following prompts; encourage them to highlight or underline sections of the story that help answer these questions:
Divide the class into groups of three to five. Ask the students to think about messages that they hear today.
First, as a group, they should write down as many messages as they can think of that they hear echoing in their world. These may come from advertisements, from their life in their town, from school, etc.
Then, ask them to consider whether the messages they hear or see are propaganda by answering the following questions:
This lesson meets the following Academic Standards required by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Before you teach, use our teacher primer to freshen up on your content knowledge.
This lesson focuses on the power and influence of propaganda in the Third Reich through use of a multimedia source.
When people are given messages repeatedly with no dissenting views to oppose them, they can become more receptive to those messages.
Ask students what they already know about propaganda. What is it? What purpose does it serve? How is it similar and different from other efforts to persuade people?
Watch the 6 minute video – The Power of Nazi Propaganda with students. Replay the video if necessary
While they watch the movie, have students answer the following questions:
Divide the class into groups of three to five to discuss the questions below. Have one person in the group be responsible for taking notes and writing down their answers. Pull up the images of Nazi propaganda below for the groups to look over while in their groups. These images come from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
If time permits, reconvene as a class to go over the answers the groups came up with. Have students add to their notes with responses from their classmates.
This lesson meets the following Academic Standards required by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Before you teach, use our teacher primer to freshen up on your content knowledge.
Explore an interactive map and tap into first-hand accounts from various sites of massacre across Eastern Europe, a space that came to be known as the Bloodlands.
Mobile killing squads massacred over one million Jews in the first years of the war and were aided by the neighbors of the victims.
Explain to students that one of the tactics used by the Nazi regime in their attempt to mass murder was the use of Mobile Killing Units, or the Einsatzgruppen. Under the cover of war, these groups marched into territories where they targeted and killed over half a million people, primarily Jews.
Navigate the Yahud-in Unum map. The map is dotted with red and blue marks, each indicating a site of a massacre committed by the SS. It is recommended that you and your class familiarize yourself with navigating the map–zooming, dragging, clicking in and out of the sites.
Then, select a single country to focus on as a class. Centering attention in this way helps generate a sense of greater accomplishment at the end of the lesson.
After selecting a country, refer to the map of SS movements. Note which SS groups would have been in the country and when–how long has this community been suffering from war? What might be their level of fear, hunger, or desperation when the SS show up?
Now, divide the class into groups of 3.
Each group must:
As the groups present, collect their answers to the major questions. These lessons can then become touchstones for continued discussion and inquiry about the Holocaust, about intolerance and about exploring the past.
This lesson meets the following Academic Standards required by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Before you teach, use our teacher primer to freshen up on your content knowledge.
Examine the dismissive language used by world leaders who attended the Evian Conference in 1938 and decided not to expand their aid to refugees seeking asylum from Nazi persecution.
Countries with a great deal of power sometimes do what is in their best interest rather than what is right or ethical.
Review the timeline from Echoes & Reflections between 1933 and 1938 to get a better picture of the context in which the Evian Conference occurred. What was the Evian Conference? Where was it? Who attended?
Highlight some of the major moments of persecution that Jews already witnessed at the hands of Nazis, like the boycott of Jewish businesses, the Nuremberg Laws or the expulsion of Jews from professional services.
If need be, review the basic concept of the Evian conference. If time permits, students can read this short summary from Facing History and Ourselves. Then, divide the class into five groups, assigning each group to one of the countries represented in the reading here.
Ask the groups to read their quotes very carefully. It will seem to be accomplished easily, they should read these quotes with great acuity and attention to detail.
Ask all the groups to consider the following set of questions and record their group answers:
Each group should then present what they found in closely reading the quotations from their country. Take note of the themes that emerge–words like ‘impossible’ or ‘incapable’ will continue to come up. Ask how it is that countries like the USA are ‘incapable’ of something?
Then prompt the final question:
This could be answered immediately, or, if time permits, groups could reconvene and come up with specific arguments about why the decision was defensible or justifiable. Possibly leave the class with a question about what motivated these countries to act to participate in WWII? If it wasn’t the plight of Jews, what was the reason these countries entered the war?
This lesson meets the following Academic Standards required by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Before you teach, use our teacher primer to freshen up on your content knowledge.
