The BIG STORY OF YEAR 9: increasing interconnectedness brings both benefits and costs

WHY WAS THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY THE MOST VIOLENT IN HUMAN HISTORY?

INTRODUCTION - LONG WAR 1914-1990: The title of this second chapter of the unit is purposefully provocative. By the end of this phase  of learning you will decide whether the name given by some historians to the short twentieth century between 1914-1990 is appropriate.

The idea of the 'Long War' was first noted by Texan historian  Phillip Bobbit to describe a process of generation following the destruction of the Imperial monarchies of European in the wake of the First World War. Subsequently the period between 1917 to 1990 saw rivalry between 3 competing ideologies and world views; liberal democracy would succeed and and defeat  fascism and communism. The Second World War (1939-45)  saw the defeat of fascism and the Korean, Vietnam and Cold War brought the end of the USSR and decline of communism in 1990.  

Is this an appropriate name to call the period?
How important was the end of Imperial Monarchy and decline of empire in causing conflict in the period to 1945?
If the period between 1945-1990 was one dominated by conflict between liberal democracy and communism why was it relatively more peaceful than the period between 1917-45?

Once you have finished studying this unit you will be asked to decide whether this is an appropriate name and you will need to justify your answer.
e. THE PARIS CONFERENCES 1919
  1. DQ's: What did the conference hope to achieve?
  2. Why did the conference create problems for the future?
ACTIVITY 1: WHAT CHALLENGES EXISTED AT THE END OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR?
And how should these be addressed by the Great Powers at the end of the conflict?
What decisions would need to be made and who should be the ones to makes them?
​ Discuss the diagram below in groups and feedback your ideas as a class. Try using language to help you categorize the problems into political, social and economic ones.
ACTIVITY 2: NEGOTIATING THE PEACE. The armistice that brought the war to an end was signed by the Germans and went into effect on the 11th November 1918. The war had brought catastrophe to the continent of Europe and political states that had existed in 1914 had collapsed or been overthrown in 1917 and 1918. The Russian royal family was murdered by the Bolsheviks, the Austrian Empire had disintegrated with their defeat in a flowering of new nations in central and southern Europe in August 1918 and the German Emperor had abdicated and been replaced by a fledgling democracy in November. It would be the new democratic government of Germany led by Frederick Ebert that would need to negotiate the full terms of the peace treaty that would need to formally end the war and reorganize continent of Europe. In this simulation you will play the role of one of 4 countries at the conference. Britain, France and the USA and defeated Germany. Read the section of the textbook that deals with your country and imagine how you will represent them at the conference. Once you have done this you will now negotiate there terms of the treaty with the other countries. Your teacher will have something to tell one of you once before the negotiations can begin!
f. GROWTH OF CONSUMER SOCIETIES AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION 1900-1939
  1. DQ's: In what ways did the 1920’s represent the benefits of interconnectedness?
  2. In what ways did the great depression show the fragility of interconnectedness?
INTRODUCTION: What is consumerism and a consumer culture?: The rise of prosperity of the United States in 1920 led to the emergence of American Consumerism in the period in history known as the Roaring Twenties. Consumerism is the theory that it is economically attractive to encourage the attainment of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.
ACTIVITY 1: HOW HAD A CONSUMER SOCIETY DEVELOPED IN THE DECADES LEADING UP TO THE 1920's? List as many gadgets that your family own as you can in 1 minute. Then your teacher will show you how many of these were accessible to consumers by the 1920's.
A 1920's Advertisement - what similarities and differences are there with advertising today?
g. THE RISE OF DICTATORS AND AUTHORITARIAN STATES 1920'S -1930'S
  1. DQ'S: Why was the depression important in the rise of authoritarian regimes?
  2. Why did authoritarian regimes use terror and violence against their own people?
  3. How did these states cause WWII?
ACTIVITY 1: HOW DID STALIN TREAT HIS OWN PEOPLE? A TIME MAGAZINE NEWS SPECIAL EDITION!

​You are going to write a magazine article on Joseph Stalin in the early 1950's (he died in 1953). In small groups you will produce a magazine article using a desktop publishing package based on the information you will research and the interview that you will conduct with him! Use of illustrations and headlines should be encouraged. Your teacher will ask you to write your article from one of two perspectives.  Perspective 1 will be an unsympathetic and harrowing account of life in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin and emphasis the terrible nature of the Soviet Union. It should emphasize the treachery in his rise to power, the extreme nature of the social and economic policies and the millions of deaths that occurred under his rule. The second perspective will emphasis the genius of Stalin, his tireless work in dragging the USSR from a peasant economy into the industrial age, his heroism during the Second World War including the sacrifices made by the Soviet people during the Second World War. Your article must be around 500 words.

In the lead up to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Stalin specialized in the humdrum nuts and bolts of revolutionary activity, risking arrest every day by helping organize workers, distributing illegal literature, and robbing trains to support the cause, while Lenin and other Russian revolutionaries lived safely abroad and wrote articles about the plight of the Russian working class.

Although Lenin valued his loyalty, and appointed him after the Revolution to various low-priority leadership positions in the new Soviet government. In 1922, Stalin was appointed to another such post, as General Secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee. Stalin understood that "cadres are everything": if you control the personnel, you control the organization. He shrewdly used his new position to consolidate power in exactly this way-by controlling all appointments, setting agendas, and moving around Party staff in such a way that eventually everyone who counted for anything owed their position to him.

After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin methodically went about destroying all the old leaders of the Party. At first, these people were removed from their posts and exiled abroad. Later, when he realized that their sharp tongues and pens were still capable of hurting him even from far away, Stalin switched tactics, culminating in a vast reign of terror and spectacular show trials in the 1930s during which the early leaders of the Soviet Union were one by one unmasked as "enemies of the people" and shot. 

The  purges, or "repressions" as they are known in Russia, extended far beyond the Party elite, reaching down into every local Party cell and nearly all of the intellectual professions, since anyone with a higher education was suspected of being a potential counterrevolutionary. 
For additional written sources on Joseph Stalin and a short overview of his rule of the Soviet Union (1928-1953) you can also research from pages  108-113 of the Green SHP textbook.
ACTIVITY 2: INTERVIEWING JOSEPH STALIN: 
PHOTO GALLERY: You can use any of the below images in your article (remember you will need to caption them as well using the perspective you have been given.)
FINALLY: As you are in the News Media, there are of course deadlines. You will need your article ready for the Printers by the end of the lesson. Therefore your team of 4 will need to get their best foot forward, spend no more than 30 minutes on the research phase and make sure that you have at least 20 minutes to write your article up as a group!It must be proof read by every member of the group to ensure for quality of written communication and absence of grammatical and spelling errors. You must have the article in your teachers hand by end of the lesson!
Some of the following words may be useful in your article: post, anti, soviet, great, lenin, long, live, young, pro, late, beloved, russian, engels, pre, dear, trotsky, suspicious, dead, communist, georgian, paranoid, wise, cautious, conquest, wily, ruthless, convincing, day, kamenev, victorious, angry, mao, bloody, brutal, nazi, comrade, eden, thirties, genial, challenging, roosevelt, crafty, offending, zinoviev, bless, truman, triumphant, tyrannical, mighty, cynical, wicked, likely, infallible, benevolent, infuriated, out, monstrous, informed, shrewd, murderous
ACTIVITY TWO: WHY DID MUSSOLINI INVADE ETHIOPIA IN 1935? You are going to complete a personal enquiry on this topic using a variety of primary and secondary sources to explain why the Italian Fascist dictator invaded one of the world's poorest countries in the mid 1930's. What does this tell you about the nature of Mussolini's rule over the people of Italy in the 1930's and what was it like to live under a Fascist dictatorship?
h. THE SECOND WORLD WAR 1939-1945
  1. DQ's: Why was WWII the deadliest in human history?
  2. Why were civilians’ victims?
  3. What were the different fronts of the war like?
  4. Why did the Allies win the war?
HOW IMPORTANT WERE THE DICTATORSHIPS IN CAUSING  THE SECOND WORLD WAR?
ACTIVITY 2: WHAT WAS THE TURNING POINT EVENT OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR? In this activity you will consider the idea of turning points in history. When does the balance shift in a historical process? During an event like a war what are the factors that cause a swing in the likely outcome of an event? For this activity students will need some coins, counters or 
i. POST-WAR ORGANIZATIONS AND, DECOLONIZATION AND THE NUCLEAR AGE
  1. DQ's: What international organisations came out of WWII and are we safer now?
  2. What was the impact of entering the ‘nuclear age’?
  3. What sorts of conflict have existed since 1945 and why have these tended to be less deadly?

Which countries have nuclear weapons?

As the UN discusses the prevention of nuclear proliferation, which countries have nuclear weapons and how were they developed?