Here is my recommended song for this post.

So for the past two months we have been doing a whole unit on World War 2, in humanities. We read a novel, made a website, interviewed a veteran and did in-class studies on some of the key events and battles.

Now I am quite a history nerd when it comes to WWII. It is my favourite conflict to research and learn about. So I’m sure you could see that I would have really enjoyed doing this unit. Your correct, this unit was my favourite of the year.

 

We started off by going over the causes of the war and the beginning of the Nazi empire that blossomed in Germany. We then were assigned a task for spring break. We could pick between three books that we had to read over the course of the two week vacation. I picked Unbroken By: Laura Hillenbrand.

I went away for spring break, down to Hawaii. So I brought a copy with me. It took me two days of solid reading to finish the 500 page book. I, being the speed reader I am, finished the book by not putting it down except to eat, sleep and the occasional view point or gift store.

When we returned from the break we were tasked with writing a book review for the books we read.

We went through a critique process and had a final product which was then turned into a blog post.

 

Now amongst all of that we were doing in-class studies on the Evacuation of Dunkirk, Battle of Britain and Operation Barbarossa, to name a few. As well as doing research and writing paragraphs for our website, Perspectives of War.

For the website we were split up into groups, each was assigned a country. My group was assigned France but the other countries were; Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada, Britain, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and USA.

For the website we had to include various things that described our countries perspective on WWII. My personal research  in previous years was centered around the conflict on the western front. Most specifically in France, Belgium and later Germany. I was particularly interested in the resistance movements in France at the time as well as D-Day and other key battles that resulted in France’s liberation.

We began by researching 6 topics; Before the war, Joining the war, Military Technology, Timeline, Significant Battles, the French Resistance Movement and German occupation.

After doing some research we began writing paragraphs to go into our website pages. I wrote paragraphs on D-Day, Battle of France, Liberation of Paris and German Occupation.

After we finished all of the paragraphs we started to put things into the website. Spencer was the main person that added and moved things around online. Mimi and I gathered the photos and other resources to be put in,

Then after a week of editing and compiling things into the website we met and interviewed a WWII veteran. His name was Helmut Lemke and he fought for the German infantry on the eastern front near the end of the war. He spoke to us for over an hour and explained his life before, during and after the war. He grew up in eastern Germany and escaped from the area during the time of the Berlin Wall. It was really interesting to hear a perspective from a German soldier compared to an allied soldier. I found it a very informative experience.

We recorded Helmut’s interview and we were then tasked with taking a segment and turning it into a podcast. I found what he said about the Hitler youth quite interesting as I’m apart of Scouting, which is something that turned out to be a little more similar than I thought it was. So, I decided to make my podcast about that.

We also included it into our website as an addition to the multiple perspectives of the war. After finishing the podcast we went through a week and a half of peer critique, editing and mock presentations. This all was building up our final thing with this project (other than this blog post).

We were going to present to a history teacher who now works with the school district.  So, as you can guess, she really knew her stuff when it comes to WWII. Her name was Kathleen Barter.

The way the presentation would go is each country would get their turn to do a brief summary of their country pages and highlighting some key facts.

My group decided to divy up each page so, I would do the intro and the page on liberation. Mimi would do the page that covered everything leading up to occupation and Spencer would go over the page on German occupation.

We did a mock presentation beforehand and then it was the final day.

 

France was the last country to present and I was really proud of how well my group did. I was happy with what we created and enjoyed doing it.

Mrs. Barter also really liked our pages and she liked a lot of the other country’s pages as well.

 

Overall I really enjoyed this unit and the end product we had to complete for it. I thought it was a really unique way to address the idea of persepctive during wartime and it opened a lot to me, who usually just sees the allied side of the story when I see movies or read books. I learned some things about the war I didn’t know but also added and deepened my knowledge of some of the events. The next area I want to focus on, in my personal study, is the pacific theatre. I want to learn about the different battles, key contributors and some interesting things that happened.