In this final contextualization activity, you will use you contextualization skills to understand the historical context that led to a global economic depression. By investigating the context for the Great Depression, you will deepen your understanding of how both capitalism and globalization played a role in it. In addition, you’ll begin to see how interconnected our world was in the early twentieth century and how this interconnection could be both positive and negative. You will also analyze how these events still impact the world today and the lessons that can be learned from studying the origins and context of this historical event.

In this activity, you will use the event cards to complete the Contextualization Tool, which is included in the Contextualization – The Great Depression worksheet. Then, you’ll use the information from your completed tools and evidence from the article “Global Great Depression” to write a mini-essay that includes a contextualization paragraph and answers this prompt:

What was it about the economic and political situation of the early twentieth century that allowed for the global disaster that was the Great Depression?

First, read the following excerpt from Louis Adamic’s My America, published in 1938.

The Doorbell Rang: 1932

…At about a quarter to eight one cold morning in mid-January 1932, while we were at breakfast, the doorbell rang…I was confronted by two children: a girl, as we learned afterward, of ten and a boy of eight. Not very adequate for the season and weather, their clothing was patched but clean. They carried school books.

“Excuse me, Mister,” said the girl in a voice that sounded older than she looked, “but we have no eats in our house and my mother said I should take my brother before we go to school and ring a doorbell in some house”—she swallowed heavily and took a deep breath—”and ask you to give us something to eat.”

…

[Adamic invited the children inside and gave them some food. While they were eating, Adamic asked them a few questions about their situation.]

“We used to live on the fourth floor upstairs and we had three rooms and a kitchen and bath, now we have only one room downstairs, in back.” “Why did you move downstairs?” …

“My father … he lost his job when the panic came. That was two years ago, I was eight and Jimmie was six. My father he tried to get work, but he couldn’t, the Depression was so bad. But he called it the panic.” …

“Where is your father now?”

“We don’t know. He went away four months ago, right after Labor Day, and he never came back, so we had to move downstairs. The landlord didn’t want to throw us out, so he told my mother to move in downstairs.” …

I went to the school [the children attended] and learned from the girl’s teacher that, while such cases were not yet numerous in that neighborhood, they were increasing. Some children rang doorbells, others brought slips of paper from their mothers, asking teachers to please “get the school” to provide shoes for them; they were unable to do so themselves. The school had no funds for such emergencies; so some of the teachers bought shoes for these pupils out of their own pockets.

Source: Adamic, Louis. My America. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1938 (pp. 279–280).

Your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Contextualization – The Great Depression worksheet. Remember to follow all the worksheet’s directions. You should be a pro at completing the Contextualization Tool, so your teacher may have you complete the tool on your own. Start by writing the dates and location for the global Great Depression and then divide the event cards into broad and narrow context and place them on the funnel. Then, answer the remaining questions on the tool.

Finally, use your descriptions of broad and narrow context on the tool and information from the “Global Great Depression” article to individually write a three-paragraph mini-essay that answers this prompt:

What was it about the economic and political situation of the early twentieth century that allowed for the global disaster that was the Great Depression?

• Paragraph 1 should be an introduction to the essay that includes the broad context and your thesis statement (either at the start or the end of the paragraph).
• Paragraph 2 should focus on the narrow context and include evidence that explains why the economic and political conditions of the early twentieth century led to a global depression.
• Paragraph 3 should be the conclusion with an analysis of how understanding context improves the ability to interpret the Great Depression.

Your teacher will collect your completed worksheets and mini-essays to assess your understanding of this topic and your contextualization skills.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, few realized how far-reaching the collapse would be. The global economy built in the long nineteenth century made the world interdependent. When economies started to collapse, they took the rest of the world down with them. Many Western nations responded to the crash by closing off their economies and falling into isolationism. European empires looked to their colonies for resources, exploiting colonial subjects in an attempt to help lift Europe from financial ruin. All over the world, the Great Depression helped make the state more powerful. In some places, authoritarians came to power.

This lesson focuses on the struggle between totalitarianism and liberal internationalism in the lead up to the Second World War. The Great Depression was one of the defining events in this struggle. This article is meant to provide you with evidence to respond to the Unit Problem about the causes of World War II. It will also allow you to examine how dramatic transformations in production and distribution can have serious consequences for human communities around the world.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. Why did the Great Depression spread from the United States to so many other parts of the world so quickly?
2. How did governments react to the crisis?
3. Why was the crisis so devastating for Latin America and for European colonies in Africa and Asia?
4. In what ways did some states grow more powerful during the crisis?
5. What ended the Great Depression?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. There has been a global economic crisis in your lifetime. The Great Recession of 2008 is now more than ten years behind us, and it was not as devastating as the Great Depression, but its effects still linger. Can you draw any comparison between our more recent economic crisis and the crisis in the 1930s?
2. The Great Depression was a collapse of international networks and global production and distribution. What are some ways that these collapses reshaped communities?

During the 1920s, politicians, scientists, veterans, activists, and every-day citizens sought to increase international connections with the goal of ending war and making the world a better place. The League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, scientific conferences, trade unions, and Interpol were just some of the results of these attempts. This video overviews these changes, as well as the long history of internationalism before the twentieth century. But the internationalism of the 1920s quickly fell apart during the 1930s as the League of Nations failed to curb increasing nationalism and authoritarianism.

This video provides evidence at the global level to respond to the Unit Problem: How were the horrors of the Second World War possible? The failure of internationalism in the interwar years is important evidence for understanding the causes of the Second World War. The video will help you analyze how nations attempted to build networks and connect communities across borders. As you read, keep an eye out for the reasons that these attempts failed.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. What was the Kellogg-Briand Pact?
2. What were some attempts at internationalism during the 1920s?
3. What are some examples of internationalism before the twentieth century?
4. Why did the League of Nations fail?
5. What does this video suggest is the legacy of the Kellogg-Briand Pact?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. How does the failure of internationalism provide evidence to challenge or support the networks frame narrative?
2. Can you think of any current examples of internationalism succeeding or failing?

3x5 note cards or cut up paper

This sourcing collection, along with the Quick-Sourcing Tool, gives you an opportunity to practice a quicker kind of sourcing than you do in the sourcing practice progression. The tool and the process for using it—specifically designed for unpacking document collections—will help you be successful when responding to DBQs.

Note: If you are unfamiliar with the Quick-Sourcing Tool or the process for using it, we recommend reviewing the Quick-Sourcing Introduction activity in Lesson 1.2.

The Quick-Sourcing Tool can be used any time you encounter a set of sources and are trying to respond to a prompt or question, as opposed to the deeper analysis you do when using the HAPPY tool that is part of the sourcing progression.

First, take out or download the sourcing collection and review the guiding question that appears on the first page. Then, take out or download the Quick-Sourcing Tool and review the directions. For Part 1, you’ll write a quick summary of each source in terms of how it relates to the guiding question (we recommend using one note card or scrap of paper for each source).

For Part 2, which uses the first four letters of the acronym from the HAPPY tool, you only have to respond to one of these four questions. You should always include the historical significance or “why” (the “Y” in “HAPPY”) for any of the four questions you choose to respond to.

In Part 3, you’ll gather the evidence you found in each document and add it to your note cards so you can include it in a response later. Once each document is analyzed, look at your note cards and try to categorize the cards. There might be a group of documents that support the claim you want to make in your response, and another group that will help you consider counterclaims, for example.

To wrap up, try to respond to the guiding question.

Internationalism was a movement about global unity. It was particularly strong in the period after the First World War, although there were small groups of internationalists before the war, and internationalism still exists today. In the 1910s and 1920s, when internationalism was at its peak, the many internationalist movements were not united. From the Olympic games to calls for a global commonwealth to global communist workers’ movements, many people were talking about how the world would work—or could work—if we thought of all the world’s people as being united in a common cause. In these sources, people give their visions of what this could be and push for internationalism of many kinds—or criticize the international movements they find lacking.

The primary source excerpts in this collection will help you assess the extent to which internationalism was successful in its goal of unifying the world and maintaining peace in the first half of the twentieth century. You will also evaluate the consequences of internationalism and should be able to make some comparisons to our world today. In addition, you’ll work on your sourcing skills using the Quick-Sourcing Tool.

We recommend using the accompanying Quick Sourcing activity (above) to help you analyze these sources.

This video examines fascism’s defining characteristics. Fascism rose most prominently in Italy and Germany between the two world wars. Benito Mussolini rose to power as a fascist in the 1920s. His movement violently seized power and defined the Italian nation in racial terms. This example was soon followed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, which seized power in Germany in the 1930s. Utilizing extreme forms of nationalism, these leaders pushed their citizens to expel or murder those deemed an enemy of the state. The video compares this pattern with the example of the KKK in the United States.

Fascist leaders took advantage of global economic crises and the failures of internationalism, both of which you have encountered. Fascist ideologies led to the Second World War and to some of history’s greatest atrocities. This video is intended to provide you with another piece of evidence to respond to the Unit Problem about the causes of World War II. However, as it addresses the KKK as well as recent trends in fascism, this video should also help you consider what conflicts of the mid-twentieth century remain unresolved.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. Where does the word “fascism” comes from?
2. The video argues that defining fascism as a form of political behavior is an important distinction. Why is this?
3. What are some of the methods that fascists use to gain power?
4. Why was internationalism a threat to the fascist agenda?
5. Why is total war the only kind of war for fascists?
6. How are authoritarianism and populism distinct from fascism, even if they share some characteristics, according to the video?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. This video provides a comprehensive definition and three examples of fascism. Do you think you have encountered any examples earlier in this course which have anything in common with fascism? For example, how does the nineteenth-century system of imperialism compare to fascist methods?
2. This video deals with some heavy topics. But one of its messages is that some of the problems presented by fascism in the twentieth century remain unresolved in the twenty-first century. Do you see any of those problems in current events? If so, where and how? If not, make a case that fascism is not an appropriate term to use to describe world events today.

This article explores some of the theories that try to explain the rise of twentieth-century fascism. Nationalism and Social Darwinism rose to prominence during the late nineteenth century and laid the ideological foundations for the racist and exclusionary policies of fascism. In addition to ideological and social roots, fascism’s rise is also rooted in both local and global political and economic developments after World War I. The Treaty of Versailles disappointed both Italy and Japan and crippled the German economy. The Great Depression was one of many such social and economic disruptions that helped open doors for fascist control in some places.

This article is intended to provide you with the theoretical underpinnings of fascism. Where did fascists get their ideas from? By addressing this question, this article provides evidence to respond to the Unit Problem. It will help you understand how fascist ideology and behavior made possible the horrific crimes committed during the Second World War. As you read, pay attention to how ideologies from the long nineteenth century helped produce fascism.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. Why, according to the author, did people start to reject the ideology behind nineteenth-century liberalism?
2. How did some nineteenth-century thinkers use science to promote racist beliefs?
3. How did the end of World War I create new tensions that helped fascists come to power?
4. According to the author, in what ways are fascism and socialism both similar and very different?
5. How did fascists use the Great Depression?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. How did imperialism help create some of the ideological trends that this article mentions?
2. Do fascist histories challenge the communities frame narrative of this course? Why or why not?

In this activity, you are going to analyze a political party platform. This will help you learn how to deconstruct and closely examine the messages that politicians, advertisers, and other influencers use.

You are going to look at a political party platform and try to interpret what its statements really mean. First, take out the Political Party Platform worksheet and look at all the statements. You’ll probably notice that they are difficult to interpret; therefore, your first task is to rewrite the statements to in your own words. Don’t worry—you don’t have to do them all; you’ll work in groups and split up the task. Your teacher will tell you which statements your group should rewrite to make them easier to understand.

Once all groups have finished their rewrites, you’ll discuss them as a class. Then, your teacher will mix up your groups, and you’ll be assigned different statements. For each of those, you’ll write a justification for how and why each one might be seen as desirable for a country. Be prepared to share your ideas with the class.

Now, your teacher will tell you more about the political party that put forth this platform, and you’ll dig into how and why seemingly positive statements can morph into something less positive.

Your teacher will end this activity in one of two ways. Either you’ll think about how this political party might be seen as similar to some of those that exist in the world today, or, as a class, you’ll construct a large causal map, starting with the Treaty of Versailles. This will help you see how sometimes historical events unfold over a long period of time, and how hard it can be to predict the consequences of something that might not seem like such a big deal in the moment.