Teaching GCSE History: Germany 1919 - 1945

>>ADDED October 2011 NEW SMART TASK
>>ADDED September 2011 NEW SMART TASK SEE BELOW

Although few of you will find this a difficult topic to resource, you may welcome the variety of interesting approaches whether it is the enquiry into the Gestapo or the ground-breaking lessons on Battalion101; why did they shoot?  Short smart tasks allow students to explain certain paradoxes. Why did Hitler turn on his former chum Rohm?  Why was Hitler able to reverse the fortunes of the Nazi party so quickly after their disappointment in the November 1932 elections?

Whether you are teaching this as part of a Modern World course or a SHP depth study you will find some interesting approaches which I hope will spark off even better ideas.

Outstanding Lessons

• How much did the Gestapo really control people's lives in Hitler's Germany? An evidence based enquiry of historical interpretations.
• What were the main threats facing the Weimar Republic? Students analyse a 1924 election poster to get a few clues.
• Triumph of Will: Documentary or propaganda? How do you read the film?
• Battalion 101; Why did they shoot? A fascinating enquiry into Nazi control

Smart Tasks

• NEW OCTOBER 2011 Smart Task: Working out what the posters tell us about who voted Nazi? Students have to work collaboratively, against the clock to analyse a range of posters produced by the Nazi party in order to work out why people voted for Hitler. How far do the posters really explain the voters' motives? What other evidence would they use? Fully resourced with PowerPoint and teaching notes.
• NEW SEPTEMBER 2011 How successful was Nazi policy towards women and families?  Thinking skills spectrum activity that focus students’ on the demands of a typical exam question.  They make judgements about the value and weighting of 16 pieces of evidence, placing them on a continuum and taking into account change over time. The most able go on to consider how paradoxical or contradictory the policy seemed to be.
• NEW JANUARY 2011 Weighing up the evidence for who caused the Reichstag Fire.  Stimulating starter, followed by simple task in which students weigh every individual piece of evidence for each of the three main theories as part of preparation for a role play of the trial scene.
• NEW JANUARY 2011 Was the Weimar Republic doomed from the start? A glass half empty? Fun lesson in which half the class plays the optimist and half the pessimist. They think through ideas on the cards provided before selecting the three most clinching arguments for both sides. Task ends with creative activity coming up with suitable sub-headings for parts of chapters dealing with 1918-23 and 1924-29.
• The Treaty of Versailles: could it possibly be to blame for the Weimar  Republic's defeat nearly 14 years later?   Students analyse a 1931 election poster and have to argue for and against the Treaty of Versailles being responsible for Weimar's downfall. (5.1.10)
• Why was Rohm murdered?   A history mystery involving card sort and use of sources.
• Germany 1933-34: Revision Quickie Pupils identify the factors that played their part in establishing Nazi dictatorship when presented with an equation.

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Teaching Germany 1919-45

>>New Resource on Hitler Youth (October 2010)
This is part of Hodder Education's new resources. To find out more click here

Teachers of this extremely popular topic will not be short of ideas and resources. Rather than repeating the well-worn approaches, I have gone for a slightly unusual tack with each. The lesson on Weimar asks students to interpret a 1924 election campaign poster - written in German!! The living graph lesson on Hitler's rise asks students to look for patterns as does the forthcoming  lesson on early unrest in the Weimar Republic. For more able students, you will find that the lesson on the Gestapo really makes students think about the nature of evidence and the way sources can be interpreted differently. The lesson on Battalion 101 has proved remarkably successful in encouraging students to consider the motivation of those who carried out Hitler's orders. Students are surprised by what they discover.

You will see that I have included as a downloadable resource what I call the 4 strikes approach to teaching this topic. Students encounter different variations of the specification's questions on four different occasions. It could be in the lesson or for homework, it could be in an end of module past question test. It will almost certainly be in either the Year 10 examination or the Y11 mock and may well be revisited in revision sessions.

Here is a helpful Reichstag Fire Roleplay developed by John Clare and then by Russell Tarr.

Up next

• How can we explain the rise of Hitler using a Living Graph?
•  What can we work out about patterns of opposition to Weimar from the maps?
•  Weimar Art. Role playing a Nazi art censor.
  
  If you would like to preview sample activities and resources from these lessons, then email us and we will forward some draft material prior to formal publication here.

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