HISTORY TOPIC PLANNER IN E.E. 2008/9 JIM BUSHBY

Year 1 of a 2 year course following the IGCSE course in Twentieth Century European History.

AIM:
Students in history will ask and answer the basic questions of “What happened?”, “Why did it happen?” and discuss topics giving reasons.
In doing so they will understand chronology of events; analyse sources and discuss their value; will compare events; will assess long and short term reasons and consequences of events; will understand how events are seen in context on an international scale; will assess success or failure of certain events.
Students will learn to empathise through a variety of tasks including role play, debate and group work. They will be encouraged to give balanced arguments being supported by evidence.

Topic 1: GERMANY 1918-1945

Key Question: Was the Weimar Republic doomed from the start?
Focus points:
i) how did Germany emerge from the end of the first World War?
ii) what was the impact of the Treaty of Versailles on the Republic?
iii) to what extent did the Republic recover after 1923?
iv) what were the achievements of the Republic?
v) why did it fail in 1933?

Specific Content:
understanding the Weimar constitution and its impact on Germany; analysing the successes and failures of the republic through its treatment of the opposition from left and right wings, and its handling of the economic and social problems; assessing the impact of Stresemann from 1923; understanding what impact the depression had on Germany in the 1930´s and assessing whether its failure was inevitable.

Key Question: Why was Hitler able to dominate Germany by 1934?
Focus points:
i) what did the Nazi Party stand for in the 1920´s?
ii) why did they not succeed before 1930?
iii) why was Hitler able to come to power in 1933?
iv) how did Hitler consolidate his power by 1934?

Specific content:
analysing the rise and failure of the Nazis before 1933 eg the failure of the Munich putsch and decline during the German recovery; what did the Nazis learn from their earlier failures; assessing the long and short term reasons for Hitler coming to power and establishing the relative importance of each; assessing if he was helped into power or was it through his own skill; studying the immediate impact the Nazis had on Germany through legislation eg, the Enabling Law, through treatment of opposition eg the Night of the Long Knives and how successfully they had achieved their revolution by 1934.

Key Question: How effectively did the Nazis control Germany 1933-45?
Focus Points:
i) how much opposition was there in Germany to the Nazi regime?
ii) how effectively did the Nazis deal with their opposition?
iii) how did they control the people through media and propaganda?
iv) why did the Nazis persecute certain groups in Germany?
v) was Nazi Germany a totalitarian state?

Specific content:
understanding how the Nazis dealt with opposition groups like the communists, the Jews and how successfully; understanding the importance of the role of Himmler and Goebbels and others in the Nazi state; analysis of what sort of state Germany was with the Nazis leading to a final assessment “Hitler on Trial”.

Key Question: What was it like to live in Nazi Germany?
Focus Points:
i) how did the Nazis control the youth and how did they react?
ii) how successful was Nazi policy towards women and the family?
iii) did people benefit from Nazi rule?

Specific content
assessment of how successful the Nazis carried out their revolution on the German people; the role of the police state; the role of propaganda, Nazi education and youth groups; assessment of who suffered and who benefited from the Nazis; what was life like for certain sections of society eg, women, the youth.


Topic 2: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 1918-1939

Key Question: To what extent was the League of Nations a success?
Focus points:
i) how successful was the League in the 1920´s?
ii) how successful was the League in the 1930´s?
iii) did the weakness in the League´s organisation make its failure inevitable?
iv) what impact did the Depression have on the success of the League?

Specific content:
making comparisons between the 1920´s and 1930´s; understanding the aims of the League and how far it achieved those aims; studying specific events like the Depression, the Manchurian crisis and the invasion of Abyssinia and then ascertaining their impact on the failure of the League.

Key Question: Why had international peace collapsed by 1939?Focus points:
i) what were the consequences of the peace treaties of 1919-23?
ii) what were the consequences of the failure of the League in 1930´s?
iii) what were the long-term and short-term causes of the outbreak of war in 1939?
iv) how far was Hitler responsible for the war?

Specific content:
The impact of Hitler´s increasingly militaristic foreign policy eg. The Rhineland in 1936, the Anschluss and the crises in Czechoslovakia and Poland; the Nazi-Soviet pact; the foreign policy of Japan and Italy; what role did appeasement play and could it be justified; analysing the short and long term- causes of the war and what consequences they had in international relations.


Assessment

There will be exams in November, February and the real IGCSE exam will be taken by 9th graders in May. The February exam will be taken as a mock exam upon which applications to IB courses will be assessed.
At the end of the course we will put Hitler “on trial”; students will in groups prosecute and defend Hitler for his role leading upto the war and what happened in Germany to see if blame can entirely be laid on him or whether there were other factors involved.

Source Material
Modern World History, Ben Walsh (John Murray)- coursebook
Germany 1918-1945, Radway ( Hodder Twentieth Century History)
Hitler´s Germany, Brooman (Longman)
Germany 1918-1945, Grey and Little (Cambridge History Project)
Twentieth Century Modern World History, Mc Aleavy (Cambridge History Project)
Twentieth Century, DeMarco and Radway (Hodder and Stoughton)
Video film: BBC´s A Warning From History (4 part series on Nazi Germany)