Homework & Classwork - For Tuesday, read the Overview of the Russian Revolution and answer the assigned questions The questions for the Overview of the Russian Revolution are on the class web page and here. On Wednesday, you will have quiz on the full notes on the Russian Revolution.
Classwork for Friday - Look at the source material below about the Interwar Years and answer the assigned questions.
Biography - Emmeline Pankhurst - Fighting for Women's Right to Vote
Emmeline Pankhurst was born in 1858 England to a family that was involved in liberal and radical politics. She was one of ten children in her family. One of her earliest memories was of her father remarking, “What a pity she wasn’t born a lad.” Pankhurst became interested in the cause of women getting the right to vote after attending a public meeting on the issue when she was 14. In 1878, she married Richard Pankhurst, who was 24 years older but supported her political activism in the Women’s Franchise League (An early organization for winning women the right to vote). Together they had five children before he died in 1898.
After Richard’s death, Pankhurst went to work to support her family by becoming the Registrar of Births and Deaths in Manchester. This brought her into close contact with many working class women and Pankhurst became fully aware of the hard lives of the women in the working class. In 1900, she became part of the School Board for the City of Manchester, through which she saw many of the problems in the working class schools. These experiences convinced Pankhurst that winning the right to vote was the only way for women to improve their conditions.
In 1903, Pankhurst formed the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) as a more radical organization to fight for women’s right to vote. In organizing the WSPU, Pankhurst said the slogan would be “Deeds, not words”. Pankhurst’s oldest daughters were also leaders in the WSPU. The WSPU began by holding “Women’s Parliaments” in London that coincided with the official meetings of Parliament. The WSPU had a strategy of targeting political parties with protests to force them to put issue of women’s voting rights on the Parliamentary agenda. One British Newspaper wrote about one of these meetings using the diminutive term "suffragette" (instead of the standard "suffragist") to describe the more militant members of the WSPU. Pankhurst and her supporters seized upon the term and adopted it to separate themselves from the more moderate groups.
The slogan of “Deeds, not words” began to have meeting in 1908 after a large rally of 500,000 activists in London was ignored by Parliamentary leaders. Following the rally, a group of young WSPU members protested this by throwing rocks and breaking windows in Prime Minister’s house. While Pankhurst did not tell her supporters to do this, she did not object to the tactic of breaking windows. After this, members of the WSPU would engage in more acts of destruction to draw attention to their cause including using a hatchet to carve “Votes for Women” in the Prime Minister’s carriage and even cases of arson.
Pankhurst was arrested the first time in 1908 when she tried to deliver a petition to the Prime Minster in Parliament. At her trial, she famously said, “We are not here because we are law-breakers; we are here in our effort to become law-makers.” She spent six weeks in prison which brought recognition to her cause and made it a useful tool for getting public attention and support. Shortly after being released, she was arrested again after striking a policeman. In total she would be arrested seven more times. Pankhurst and many of the WSPU members who were arrested went on hunger strikes to protest their imprisonment. The prison authorities responded to these protests by force-feeding the women by using steel gags to hold their mouth open and feeding them through a tube. This policy caused public outrage and police began to worry about the health of the WSPU members in prison – especially the fear of the public backlash if a WSPU member should die in prison. The police switched to a policy of “cat and mouse” where they would arrest and then release WSPU members before they became too weak from not eating.
When World War One began the Suffragettes movement was divided about how to respond to the war. Pankhurst considered the treat from Germany greater a more pressing concern and made an agreement with the government for the WSPU to suspend all action during the war. She began to use her influence and spoke for women to support the war effort. She also established a home for war orphans (children born to women whose boy friends were killed in the war) and even adopted four children herself.
In 1918, as the war was ending, British Parliament passed the Representation of the People Act which allowed women over 30 to vote. Instead of joining an existing party, Pankhurst started the Women's Party to act on behalf of issues that concern women. However, she chose not to run for Parliament herself so that one of her daughters could campaign for a seat. Her daughter lost by a close margin and shortly after that the Women’s Party was disolved . Then 1926 she surprised people by joining the Conservative Party and running for Parliament – but was not elected. She died in 1928.
Source # 1 - Video clip on the reasons Suffragettes were regarded as terrorists - click here
Source # 2 - Video clip on the death of Suffragette Emily Davison - click here
Source # 3 - Video describing the impact of the Great Depression on Belgium - click here
Source # 4 - Video on how the Great Depression created political turmoil - click here
Biography - John Maynard Keynes - Economist of the Twentieth Century
John Maynard Keynes was born in 1883 to an academic family in England. His father was a lecturer at the University of Cambridge who supported Keynes’ academic advancements. Keynes attended Eton College where he mixed with many upper class students, who go onto be leaders in the British government. He then went on to study at Cambridge University where he was a top student and studied under the economist Alfred Marshall
In 1905 he passed the civil service exam and began to work in the India Office and he used this position to write a book on the Indian Economy. He left in 1908 to return to Cambridge and became the editor of the University’s economics journal. When World War One broke out in 1914, he rejoined the civil service and began to work as an advisor to the British Treasury in managing the country’s war finances.
In 1919, he was sent to Paris Peace Conference to work on calculating the amount of compensation that Germany would told to pay Britain as war damages. Through this work, Keynes realized that Germany would be unable to pay the reparations demanded by the Allies. He advocated that the war debts of all the countries be reduced so as to help the economies of the warring countries recover from the war. This was opposed by all the Allied governments. In protest, Keynes resigned his position and wrote his book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, in which he wrote, “If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long that final war between the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the late German war will fade to nothing.” The book was read around the world and gained Keynes a reputation as a leading economist. However, British officials were not impressed by the book and he did not have another official position in the government again until the Second World War.
During the 1920’s, Keynes worked as an academic economist at Cambridge, investing and making a personal fortune in financial markets and writing articles that were critical of the government’s economic policies. However, as his Russian ballerina wife said, he was “more than just an economist”. During this time he was involved in the Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists, an avid art collector and even a manager of the Cambridge university theater.
The stock market crash in 1929 and Great Depression had a huge impact on Keynes, who lost much of his personal fortune in the crash. The failure of the global economy forced Keynes to rethink many of idea of a self-regulating market that he had learned from Marshall. Keynes began to argue that a capitalist economy was prone to crisis and that the government needed to actively manage the economy. Keynes was criticized by many of his fellow liberal economists for changing his position on the role of government in the economy. He responded to this with, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
Keynes writings drew the attention of American President Franklin Roosevelt who began to correspond with Keynes about the economy. In 1934, Keynes travelled to the United States to meet with Roosevelt about ways to confront the Depression. Then in 1936, Keynes wrote the book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money that presented a fully theory of how the economy works. This book had a huge impact and Keynes’ ideas would go on to become the basis for economic policy in Europe and the United States throughout much of the rest of the twentieth century.
When World War Two began, Keynes returned to work for the British government with trying to figure out how Britain would be able to pay for the war. Then in 1944, as the war was drawing to a close, Keynes lead the British delegation at the Bretton Woods Conference to organize the system for the post-war global economy. Determined to avoid the problems of the Treaty of Versailles, Keynes worked at the conference to establish a globally managed capitalist system could prevent wars and promote peace. Keynes’ work lead to the creation of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and later the World Trade Organization, all of which continue to play a major role in stabilizing the global economic system. After the conference, Keynes remarked that “the brotherhood of man will have become more than a phrase.” Keynes died two years later in 1946.
Source # 5 - Video on Roosevelt and the New Deal - click here
Source # 6 - Video clip from the show Top Gear on the first car with modern controls and steering - click here
TopGear - In search of the first car with... by KarlyBello
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
January 26, 2016 - Interwar Years
Homework - Read the Class Notes on the Interwar Years for the Next Class. There will be a quiz.
Sunday, January 24, 2016
January 25, 2016 - Treaty of Versailles
In addition, you should look at the following source materials and answer the assigned questions. These sources cover the same material that will be on the quiz.
The question sheet is available here and on the class web page.
Source # 1 - Video on the Woodrow Wilson and the Allies at the Paris Peace Conference - click here
Source # 2 - Graphic showing a comparison of killed and wounded in the war.
Source # 3 - Graph showing the cost of the war for different countries.
Source # 4- Maps of Europe Before World War One and After World War One
Source # 5 - Video on the conditions in Germany and Austria after the war - click here
Source # 6 - Video about the Political Turmoil in Germany after the war - click here
Source # 7 - Two pictures. The one of the left is a German postcard from the start of the war showing soldiers what to expect when they returned after the war. The one on the right is a painting by Otto Dix that shows the life of a war cripple living on the street.
Source # 6 - Video about the Political Turmoil in Germany after the war - click here
Source # 7 - Two pictures. The one of the left is a German postcard from the start of the war showing soldiers what to expect when they returned after the war. The one on the right is a painting by Otto Dix that shows the life of a war cripple living on the street.
Source # 9 - Clip from the Movie Testament of Youth based on the book by Vera Brittain. In this scene, Vera speaks of her experiences in the war and need to not punish Germany after the war - click here
Source # 10 - Video clip on the Treaty of Versailles - click here
Thursday, January 7, 2016
January 7, 2016 - Home Front & Total War
Homework - Use the source material listed below to answer the questions on the assignment sheet. These sources will be the focus of class discussion in the next class - the question sheet is available here.
Source # 1 - Video Clip about the role of women on the Home Front - click here
Biography - Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittain was born in England in 1893 to a wealthy family. Her father owned a paper factory. Brittain had a close relationship with her brother, Edward, who was a year younger. In 1914, she attended Oxford University as a student and became interested in the women’s suffrage movement, which was fighting to win women the right to vote.
When the war began in 1914, Brittian described it in her diary as ‘the most thrilling day of her life”. Brittain’s brother Edward volunteered to be an officer in the British army – men from wealthy families typically were automatically made into officers. In 1915, Vera became engaged to Roland Leighton, one of her brother’s closest friends, who was serving on the Western Front. It was during this time that Brittain decided to leave her studies at Oxford and volunteer to become an army nurse. Her work as a nurse opened Brittain’s eyes to the horror of the war. She described this when she wrote to Leighton, “I have only one wish in life now and that is for the ending of the war. I wonder how much really all you have seen and done has changed you. Personally, after seeing some of the dreadful things I have to see here, I feel I shall never be the same person again, and wonder if, when the war does end, I shall have forgotten how to laugh.” In December of that year, while she was working as a nurse in a military hospital in London, she learned that Roland Lieghton had been killed by a German sniper. Six months later, in July 1916, she learned that her brother had been wounded in the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
Brittain was sent to the island of Malta to work as a nurse, but decided to return to England in June 1917 to care for a friend of her brother who had been blinded in the fighting. However, the friend died two weeks after her return. She then went to work as a nurse in a battlefield hospital in France where she cared for both wounded British soldiers and wounded German prisoners. During this time she wrote about the brutal and inhuman absurdity that she was caring for people were trying to kill her own friends and family. After several months in France, she had to return to England to take care of her sick parents and work in hospital there. In June 1918, she learned that her brother Edward was killed fighting in Italy. In the course of the war, she had lost her brother and all of her male friends. She continued to work as a nurse until 1919, when she returned to Oxford University to study history.
After the war, Brittain dedicated herself for working for peace. She wrote a book, Testament of Youth about her wartime experiences and the deaths of her brother, fiance, and their friends. She wrote to show that the war was not” glamour or glory, but abysmal grief and purposeless waste.” The book was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, and in the autumn of 1934 Brittain embarked on a successful lecture-tour of the United States. In 1937, as another world war threatened the work, Brittain became a pacifist who wrote and spoke out against war. After the war, she continued to write and work for peace until she died in 1966.
Source # 2 - Video clips from the movie Testament of Youth.
Note - you have to be logged into your Bedford Schools Google account to watch the videos
Video Clip # 1 - In this clip, Vera Brittain learns about the death of Roland Leighton - click here
Video Clip # 2 - In this clip, Vera Brittain is working as a nurse at a battlefield hospital - click here
Source # 3- Video about the sinking of the passenger ship the Lusitania by a German Submarine (U-Boat) - click here
Source # 4 - Propaganda posters from World War One. Propaganda is is a form of communication that is designed to affect the attitude of a population toward some cause. During World War One, all of the countries in the war used propaganda posters to recruit men to fight in the war and to keep the population working to support the war.
British Propaganda Poster
French Propaganda Poster
German Propaganda Poster
Source # 5 - Video about the propaganda used during the war - click here
Source # 1 - Video Clip about the role of women on the Home Front - click here
Biography - Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittain was born in England in 1893 to a wealthy family. Her father owned a paper factory. Brittain had a close relationship with her brother, Edward, who was a year younger. In 1914, she attended Oxford University as a student and became interested in the women’s suffrage movement, which was fighting to win women the right to vote.
When the war began in 1914, Brittian described it in her diary as ‘the most thrilling day of her life”. Brittain’s brother Edward volunteered to be an officer in the British army – men from wealthy families typically were automatically made into officers. In 1915, Vera became engaged to Roland Leighton, one of her brother’s closest friends, who was serving on the Western Front. It was during this time that Brittain decided to leave her studies at Oxford and volunteer to become an army nurse. Her work as a nurse opened Brittain’s eyes to the horror of the war. She described this when she wrote to Leighton, “I have only one wish in life now and that is for the ending of the war. I wonder how much really all you have seen and done has changed you. Personally, after seeing some of the dreadful things I have to see here, I feel I shall never be the same person again, and wonder if, when the war does end, I shall have forgotten how to laugh.” In December of that year, while she was working as a nurse in a military hospital in London, she learned that Roland Lieghton had been killed by a German sniper. Six months later, in July 1916, she learned that her brother had been wounded in the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
Brittain was sent to the island of Malta to work as a nurse, but decided to return to England in June 1917 to care for a friend of her brother who had been blinded in the fighting. However, the friend died two weeks after her return. She then went to work as a nurse in a battlefield hospital in France where she cared for both wounded British soldiers and wounded German prisoners. During this time she wrote about the brutal and inhuman absurdity that she was caring for people were trying to kill her own friends and family. After several months in France, she had to return to England to take care of her sick parents and work in hospital there. In June 1918, she learned that her brother Edward was killed fighting in Italy. In the course of the war, she had lost her brother and all of her male friends. She continued to work as a nurse until 1919, when she returned to Oxford University to study history.
After the war, Brittain dedicated herself for working for peace. She wrote a book, Testament of Youth about her wartime experiences and the deaths of her brother, fiance, and their friends. She wrote to show that the war was not” glamour or glory, but abysmal grief and purposeless waste.” The book was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, and in the autumn of 1934 Brittain embarked on a successful lecture-tour of the United States. In 1937, as another world war threatened the work, Brittain became a pacifist who wrote and spoke out against war. After the war, she continued to write and work for peace until she died in 1966.
Source # 2 - Video clips from the movie Testament of Youth.
Note - you have to be logged into your Bedford Schools Google account to watch the videos
Video Clip # 1 - In this clip, Vera Brittain learns about the death of Roland Leighton - click here
Video Clip # 2 - In this clip, Vera Brittain is working as a nurse at a battlefield hospital - click here
Source # 3- Video about the sinking of the passenger ship the Lusitania by a German Submarine (U-Boat) - click here
Source # 4 - Propaganda posters from World War One. Propaganda is is a form of communication that is designed to affect the attitude of a population toward some cause. During World War One, all of the countries in the war used propaganda posters to recruit men to fight in the war and to keep the population working to support the war.
British Propaganda Poster
German Propaganda Poster
Source # 5 - Video about the propaganda used during the war - click here
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
January 5, 2016 - Simulation of Fighting on the Western Front
Over the Top - A simulation of a soldier fighting in the trenches. - click here
(Note: the low-graphics version is the same game only has no narration or animation)
Trench Warfare - A Simulation of a commander - click here
(Note - this program uses Flash and will not work on your ipad)
Monday, January 4, 2016
Mid Year Exam Information
Mid Year Exam Essay Questions: On the exam you will be answering both of the following questions:
These are open essay questions. There is no one correct answer for these essays. Instead, you will be graded based on what you put in your answer – the more specific and detailed your essay the better.
These questions are designed to help you think about how the events and people covered in the course are connected to the larger ideas of the "modern world" - the general theme of the class. At the start of the year, the class discussed the question, “What does the term ‘modern’ mean in the phrase ‘modern world’?" The course is now at the start of twentieth century which was when many of the core ideas of the modern world had been developed. The class has studied many of the people and events that led to the formation of "modern world". The two questions you will answer for the exam will have you reflect on this history and evaluate it through the perspective of the idea of the term "modern world".
1. Considering the whole period of history the class has covered this year, from the period prior to the French Revolution to the start of World War One, what do you consider to be the three most important specific events (for example the Tennis Court Oath, invention of steam engine or Frano-Prussian War) in the development of the "modern world"?
2. Considering the whole period of history the class has covered this year, from the prior to the French Revolution to the start of World War One, who do you consider to be the three most important people in the development of the "modern world?
In your essay, you will need to make clear the characteristics that you associate with the "modern world".
Essay Format
Your exam essays should be clearly structured and written in a very direct style. Specifically:
•The first paragraph should be only one sentence – your thesis.
•You should have three supporting paragraphs that start with a topic sentence that clearly ties them to the thesis.
•You should not have a conclusion – it is unnecessary.
How to Study for Mid Year
Read through notes to refresh memory – if you do not have the notes, you can find them on the web page.
Review quizzes – the exam will have different questions, but names, events and ideas are the same.
Look back at Source or DBQ questions and tests.
Big Point – Review a little at a time. Put in 20 minutes each day over the course of two weeks. Think about reviewing a packet a day. Make note of what you have the most trouble with – review that again the night before the exam. Do not plan on one cram session the night before the exam.
These are open essay questions. There is no one correct answer for these essays. Instead, you will be graded based on what you put in your answer – the more specific and detailed your essay the better.
These questions are designed to help you think about how the events and people covered in the course are connected to the larger ideas of the "modern world" - the general theme of the class. At the start of the year, the class discussed the question, “What does the term ‘modern’ mean in the phrase ‘modern world’?" The course is now at the start of twentieth century which was when many of the core ideas of the modern world had been developed. The class has studied many of the people and events that led to the formation of "modern world". The two questions you will answer for the exam will have you reflect on this history and evaluate it through the perspective of the idea of the term "modern world".
1. Considering the whole period of history the class has covered this year, from the period prior to the French Revolution to the start of World War One, what do you consider to be the three most important specific events (for example the Tennis Court Oath, invention of steam engine or Frano-Prussian War) in the development of the "modern world"?
2. Considering the whole period of history the class has covered this year, from the prior to the French Revolution to the start of World War One, who do you consider to be the three most important people in the development of the "modern world?
In your essay, you will need to make clear the characteristics that you associate with the "modern world".
Essay Format
Your exam essays should be clearly structured and written in a very direct style. Specifically:
•The first paragraph should be only one sentence – your thesis.
•You should have three supporting paragraphs that start with a topic sentence that clearly ties them to the thesis.
•You should not have a conclusion – it is unnecessary.
How to Study for Mid Year
Read through notes to refresh memory – if you do not have the notes, you can find them on the web page.
Review quizzes – the exam will have different questions, but names, events and ideas are the same.
Look back at Source or DBQ questions and tests.
Big Point – Review a little at a time. Put in 20 minutes each day over the course of two weeks. Think about reviewing a packet a day. Make note of what you have the most trouble with – review that again the night before the exam. Do not plan on one cram session the night before the exam.
Saturday, January 2, 2016
January 4, 2016 - Fighting on the Western Front
Homework - Use the source material listed below to answer the questions on the assignment sheet. These sources will be the focus of class discussion in the next class - the question sheet is available here.
Source # 1 - Interactive Diagram of a World War One Trench - click here
Biography - Eric Maria Remarque
Erich Maria Remarque was born in Germany in 1898 to a working class family. His father worked as an independent printer and bookbinder. Remarque was studying to be a teacher when he was drafted into the German Army in 1916. Remarque served in a military engineering unit building and repairing fortification on the frontline. He was wounded in an artillery attack in July 1917 and spent most of the rest of the war in a military hospital recovering from his wounds. The war ended a few days before Remarque returned to active service in 1918.
Following the war, like many soldiers, Remarque tried to return to society and build a life for himself. And like many former soldiers, Remarque had difficulty with this readjustment. During this time, he worked as a teacher, accountant, and even a tombstone salesman, before he settled on being a writer. His personal life was also chaotic with his first marriage ending in divorce.
In 1928, Remarque wrote All Quiet on the Western Front based on his own wartime experiences. The simple and blunt language underlined the horrific reality of war described in the book. In the introduction to the book, Remarque wrote, “I will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have survived shells, were destroyed by the war.” The describes a group of school friends who all enlist in the army at the start of the war and how over the course of the war they are all either killed or wounded in the fighting. All Quiet was first published in 1929 and became an instant best-seller, selling more than 1 million copies in Germany alone and being translated into 23 languages. The next year, Hollywood produced a film version of the novel that was released to an international audience.
The success of All Quiet made Remarque an international figure and a wealthy man. The book also brought Remarque into conflict with the emerging Nazi Party. The anti-war theme of novel went against the Nazis attempts to rewrite and glorify the history of the German army in First World War. Nazis invented a story that Remarque was a Jew, interrupted the screening of the film in Berlin and publicly burned Remarque’s books because, in the eyes of the Nazis, the books “betrayed the soldiers of World War One”. When Hitler took over Germany, the Nazis attempted to have Remarque arrested. Remarque fled to Switzerland and eventually to the United States – where he became a citizen in 1947. Over the course of the rest of his life, he only returned to Germany for short visits. He died in Switzerland in 1970.
Source # 2 - Video Clip of the opening scene to the movie All Quiet On the Western Front that shows German and French soldiers fighting in the trenches - click here
Note - You need to be logged into you Bedford Google Account to watch the video
Biography - Otto Dix
Otto Dix was born in Germany in 1891 to a working class family. His father was an iron worker and his mother was a seamstress. As a child he was introduced to art by his cousin who was a painter, who helped him get an apprenticeship to be a painter. In 1910, Dix went to the city of Dresden to attend art school.
When the war began in 1914, Dix was caught up in the excitement of the war and volunteered to serve in the German army. Dix commanded a machine gun unit on the Western Front and fought against the British in the Battle of the Somme. Dix was wounded several times in the war; the last time was in August 1918 when he was nearly killed from being shot in the neck. A medic was able to stop the bleeding and saved his life. The war ended while Dix was recovering in the hospital.
During the war, Dix kept a diary and a sketchbook with which he chronicled his experience. They would provide material for a major work of fifty prints called simply, The War. Dix was profoundly affected by the war. He described a recurring nightmare in which he crawled through bombed out houses. His experience with war and its aftermath became a dominant theme in the art he produced after 1914.
Dix returned to Dresden after the war and tried to go back to studying art, the memories of the war soon crept into his work. Dix was haunted by the brutality of war and he tried to capture this in his painting. He painted desolate battle fields that were carved with military trenches and strewn with bodies. Dix’s painting showed soldiers as mutilated, wounded, suffering or mad. In 1924, Dix published fifty of his pictures in a book called simply “The War”. Two years later, in 1926, he became a professor of art in Dresden.
When Adolf Hitler and the Nazis hated Dix’s art which they considered “Degenerate” and because it did not glorify German soldiers. When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Dix lost his job as a professor and many of his painting were destroyed. However, at the end of World War Two, Dix was forced to join the Nazi army. He was captured by the French and spent the end of the war as a prisoner. After the war, he returned to Germany and worked as painter until he died in 1969.
Source # 3 - Drawing by Otto Dix
Drawing of Battlefield
Drawing of Machine Gun Team Advancing
Drawing of Soldiers During an Attack
Drawing of Soldiers In a Trench
Drawing of Soldiers Carrying a Wounded Soldier
Drawing of Soldiers During Role Call After a Battle
Source # 4 - Excerpt from the graphic novel It was the War of the Trenches by Jacques Tardi - click here
Note - You need to be logged into you Bedford Google Account to access the excerpt
Biography - Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 in England to a working class family. His father was a railroad station master. Owen became interested in poetry as a child and passed the exams to attend university. However, he was unable to get a scholarship and his family was too poor to pay for his studies. Instead, Owen worked as a teacher in both England and France before the war. It was during this time that he worked on developing his poetry.
In 1915, Owen enlisted in the British Army. After military training, he was sent to fight on the Western Front as an officer. In the fighting, Owen suffered several traumatic brain injuries from falling into a shell hole and by being blown high in the air by an explosion. He was diagnosed with “shell-shock” (the term used at the time for post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD) and was sent back to Britain to recover at the Craiglockhart War Hospital. It was here that met Siegfried Sassoon, another British soldier who was a well-known poet. During their treatment, Sassoon gave Owen guidance and encouragement to bring his war experiences into his poetry. It was during this time that Owen found his true poetic voice. Most the poems for which he is now remembered were written during this time period. The poem, Dulce et Decorum est is one of Owen’s most famous poems. The title is in Latin and means, “It is sweet and honorable” and it refers to a poem by famous Roman poet Horace, who said it was “to die for one’s country”. Many people in England who supported the war used this saying to describe the young men killed in the war. Owen said that this view of the war was a lie. In the poem he described how dying in war was horrific and meaningless.
In October 1918, Owen returned to military service on the Western Front to be part of the British attack to break the final German defenses, called the Hindenburg Line. He bravely led his soldiers in the attacks and was awarded the Military Cross. He was killed in battle on November 4, 1918 –exactly one week before the Armistice ended the fighting.
Source # 5 - Video about the use of poison gas and Wilfred Owen's Poem Dulce et Decorum Est - click here
Source # 6 - Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen - the name of the poem translates as "It is sweet and honorable" which is use in the phase at the end of the poem and concludes with the Latin for "to die for one’s country”
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares (2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots (4)
Of tired, outstripped (5) Five-Nines (6) that dropped behind.
Gas! (7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets (8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime (9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes (10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, (11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud (12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest (13)
To children ardent (14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
2. Flares - rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front lines
3. Distant rest - a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer
4. Hoots - the noise made by the shells rushing through the air
5. Outstripped - outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle
6. Five-Nines - 5.9 caliber explosive shells
7. Gas! - poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned
8. Helmets - the early name for gas masks
9. Lime - a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue
10. Panes - the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks
11. Guttering - Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man
12. Cud - normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew usually green and bubbling. Here a similar looking material was coming from the soldier's mouth
13. High zest - enthusiasm, eagerness
14. ardent – desiring
Source # 1 - Interactive Diagram of a World War One Trench - click here
Biography - Eric Maria Remarque
Erich Maria Remarque was born in Germany in 1898 to a working class family. His father worked as an independent printer and bookbinder. Remarque was studying to be a teacher when he was drafted into the German Army in 1916. Remarque served in a military engineering unit building and repairing fortification on the frontline. He was wounded in an artillery attack in July 1917 and spent most of the rest of the war in a military hospital recovering from his wounds. The war ended a few days before Remarque returned to active service in 1918.
Following the war, like many soldiers, Remarque tried to return to society and build a life for himself. And like many former soldiers, Remarque had difficulty with this readjustment. During this time, he worked as a teacher, accountant, and even a tombstone salesman, before he settled on being a writer. His personal life was also chaotic with his first marriage ending in divorce.
In 1928, Remarque wrote All Quiet on the Western Front based on his own wartime experiences. The simple and blunt language underlined the horrific reality of war described in the book. In the introduction to the book, Remarque wrote, “I will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have survived shells, were destroyed by the war.” The describes a group of school friends who all enlist in the army at the start of the war and how over the course of the war they are all either killed or wounded in the fighting. All Quiet was first published in 1929 and became an instant best-seller, selling more than 1 million copies in Germany alone and being translated into 23 languages. The next year, Hollywood produced a film version of the novel that was released to an international audience.
The success of All Quiet made Remarque an international figure and a wealthy man. The book also brought Remarque into conflict with the emerging Nazi Party. The anti-war theme of novel went against the Nazis attempts to rewrite and glorify the history of the German army in First World War. Nazis invented a story that Remarque was a Jew, interrupted the screening of the film in Berlin and publicly burned Remarque’s books because, in the eyes of the Nazis, the books “betrayed the soldiers of World War One”. When Hitler took over Germany, the Nazis attempted to have Remarque arrested. Remarque fled to Switzerland and eventually to the United States – where he became a citizen in 1947. Over the course of the rest of his life, he only returned to Germany for short visits. He died in Switzerland in 1970.
Source # 2 - Video Clip of the opening scene to the movie All Quiet On the Western Front that shows German and French soldiers fighting in the trenches - click here
Note - You need to be logged into you Bedford Google Account to watch the video
Biography - Otto Dix
Otto Dix was born in Germany in 1891 to a working class family. His father was an iron worker and his mother was a seamstress. As a child he was introduced to art by his cousin who was a painter, who helped him get an apprenticeship to be a painter. In 1910, Dix went to the city of Dresden to attend art school.
When the war began in 1914, Dix was caught up in the excitement of the war and volunteered to serve in the German army. Dix commanded a machine gun unit on the Western Front and fought against the British in the Battle of the Somme. Dix was wounded several times in the war; the last time was in August 1918 when he was nearly killed from being shot in the neck. A medic was able to stop the bleeding and saved his life. The war ended while Dix was recovering in the hospital.
During the war, Dix kept a diary and a sketchbook with which he chronicled his experience. They would provide material for a major work of fifty prints called simply, The War. Dix was profoundly affected by the war. He described a recurring nightmare in which he crawled through bombed out houses. His experience with war and its aftermath became a dominant theme in the art he produced after 1914.
Dix returned to Dresden after the war and tried to go back to studying art, the memories of the war soon crept into his work. Dix was haunted by the brutality of war and he tried to capture this in his painting. He painted desolate battle fields that were carved with military trenches and strewn with bodies. Dix’s painting showed soldiers as mutilated, wounded, suffering or mad. In 1924, Dix published fifty of his pictures in a book called simply “The War”. Two years later, in 1926, he became a professor of art in Dresden.
When Adolf Hitler and the Nazis hated Dix’s art which they considered “Degenerate” and because it did not glorify German soldiers. When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Dix lost his job as a professor and many of his painting were destroyed. However, at the end of World War Two, Dix was forced to join the Nazi army. He was captured by the French and spent the end of the war as a prisoner. After the war, he returned to Germany and worked as painter until he died in 1969.
Source # 3 - Drawing by Otto Dix
Drawing of Battlefield
Drawing of Machine Gun Team Advancing
Drawing of Soldiers During an Attack
Drawing of Soldiers In a Trench
Drawing of Soldiers Carrying a Wounded Soldier
Drawing of Soldiers During Role Call After a Battle
Source # 4 - Excerpt from the graphic novel It was the War of the Trenches by Jacques Tardi - click here
Note - You need to be logged into you Bedford Google Account to access the excerpt
Biography - Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 in England to a working class family. His father was a railroad station master. Owen became interested in poetry as a child and passed the exams to attend university. However, he was unable to get a scholarship and his family was too poor to pay for his studies. Instead, Owen worked as a teacher in both England and France before the war. It was during this time that he worked on developing his poetry.
In 1915, Owen enlisted in the British Army. After military training, he was sent to fight on the Western Front as an officer. In the fighting, Owen suffered several traumatic brain injuries from falling into a shell hole and by being blown high in the air by an explosion. He was diagnosed with “shell-shock” (the term used at the time for post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD) and was sent back to Britain to recover at the Craiglockhart War Hospital. It was here that met Siegfried Sassoon, another British soldier who was a well-known poet. During their treatment, Sassoon gave Owen guidance and encouragement to bring his war experiences into his poetry. It was during this time that Owen found his true poetic voice. Most the poems for which he is now remembered were written during this time period. The poem, Dulce et Decorum est is one of Owen’s most famous poems. The title is in Latin and means, “It is sweet and honorable” and it refers to a poem by famous Roman poet Horace, who said it was “to die for one’s country”. Many people in England who supported the war used this saying to describe the young men killed in the war. Owen said that this view of the war was a lie. In the poem he described how dying in war was horrific and meaningless.
In October 1918, Owen returned to military service on the Western Front to be part of the British attack to break the final German defenses, called the Hindenburg Line. He bravely led his soldiers in the attacks and was awarded the Military Cross. He was killed in battle on November 4, 1918 –exactly one week before the Armistice ended the fighting.
Source # 5 - Video about the use of poison gas and Wilfred Owen's Poem Dulce et Decorum Est - click here
Source # 6 - Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen - the name of the poem translates as "It is sweet and honorable" which is use in the phase at the end of the poem and concludes with the Latin for "to die for one’s country”
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares (2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots (4)
Of tired, outstripped (5) Five-Nines (6) that dropped behind.
Gas! (7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets (8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime (9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes (10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, (11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud (12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest (13)
To children ardent (14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
2. Flares - rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front lines
3. Distant rest - a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer
4. Hoots - the noise made by the shells rushing through the air
5. Outstripped - outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle
6. Five-Nines - 5.9 caliber explosive shells
7. Gas! - poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned
8. Helmets - the early name for gas masks
9. Lime - a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue
10. Panes - the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks
11. Guttering - Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man
12. Cud - normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew usually green and bubbling. Here a similar looking material was coming from the soldier's mouth
13. High zest - enthusiasm, eagerness
14. ardent – desiring
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