Historian Trevor Getz provides a global overview of World War II, and adds an intimate dimension to the narrative by including his grandfather’s experience of the war. Getz introduces the most important campaigns and major political shifts in the war, starting as early as China in 1931 and Ethiopia in 1935, to the U.S. dropping two atom bombs on Japan in 1945. This article includes the changes in fortune for the major alliances, and the ways in which the fate of the war was changed by factors ranging from economic might to operational mistakes, random contingency to courageous defiance.

This article introduces you to the complex and global events of the Second World War, but it does so through a personal story. It will help you respond to the Unit 7 Problem about the conflicts and aftermath of World War II. Getz weaves together his grandfather’s story into a global story and gives a sense of the complexity of his grandfather’s recollections of the war. What are the pros and cons of explaining a global conflict through one human history? What makes Getz’s account an effective example of weaving together the personal and the universal?

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. When did World War II start, and why is the date somewhat unclear? What do you think is the most appropriate date to use?
2. In Europe, what forces dominated the early years of World War II?
3. When and why did the US join World War II?
4. How and why did the Soviet Union enter the Second World War?
5. What was the big ideological difference between Britain and the Soviet Union? How did they find common ground?
6. What factors shifted the tide of the war around 1942? 

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. How would this article be different without including Getz’s grandfather in the narrative? Do you think you would still understand and remember the major developments in World War II in the way that you do now? Does this personal story help you deepen your understanding of the war? Why or why not?
2. Consider your friends and family members, and how you might weave the narrative of a grandparent, or someone whose life story you know very well, into historical events on the grandest scale. How does it help you understand and appreciate history when you successfully weave together the personal and the global or universal?

We all know about the Second World War. It was the most destructive war in human history, and it continues to shape our world. John Green examines the origins of the war in Germany. World War II was characterized by a new mechanized warfare as the German blitzkrieg swept across most of Europe in nine months. But this early success stalled after the Battle of Britain and especially with Germany’s invasion of Russia. When Japan attacked the United States, the Axis powers were faced with a powerful global alliance with lots of manpower and resources.

This video serves as an overview of some of the major events of the Second World War. Examining why the Axis powers lost the war should help you respond to the second part of the Unit Problem. It should also help you evaluate how conflicts were resolved and which conflicts continued after the war. In particular, this video will allow you to apply the production and distribution frame in understanding what allowed the Allied alliance to overcome the early success of the Axis powers.

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. When does John Green say that World War II started?
2. Why did Germany conquer Europe so quickly?
3. Why were places like Argentina important to the war effort?
4. How does John Green explain Germany’s decision to invade Russia and Japan’s choice to bomb Pearl Harbor?
5. Why were so many civilians killed in this war?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. How did the advances in human technology and organization during the long nineteenth century enable the slaughter of millions of soldiers and civilians during the Second World War?

Plaek Phibunsongkhram (1897-1964) governed Thailand from 1938 to 1944 and again from 1948 to 1957. He helped to turn the kingdom into a state with a constitution, but during the Second World War he ruled as an authoritarian nationalist allied with Japan. Removed at the war’s end, he later returned to power as an ally of the United States during the Cold War.

In Unit 7, we ask how the horrors of the Second World War were possible. Some of the answers may have to do with the situation in particular countries you have learned about such as Germany, Japan, and Italy. But you have already seen that the move towards authoritarianism and even fascism was more global. Thailand may be an unexpected place to study the growth of an authoritarian leadership, but this biography can help you to compare, and contrast the situation there to the nation-states you know better.

Read 1: Observe

As you read this graphic biography for the first time, review the Read 1: Observe section of your Three Close Reads for Graphic Bios Tool. Be sure to record one question in the thought bubble on the top-right. You don’t need to write anything else down. However, if you’d like to record your observations, feel free to do so on scrap paper.

Read 2: Understand

On the tool, summarize the main idea of the comic and provide two pieces of evidence that helped you understand the creator’s main idea. You can do this only in writing or you can get creative with some art. Some of the evidence you find may come in the form of text (words). But other evidence will come in the form of art (images). You should read the text looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the main idea, and key supporting details. You should also spend some time looking at the images and the way in which the page is designed. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What country did Plaek Phibunsongkhram lead, and in what years?
2. What did he change the country’s name to, and what did the new name mean? Why was this name change ironic?
3. What evidence does the author provide that Phibunsongkhram was an authoritarian ruler?
4. Why did he create Pad Thai? Why was this creation ironic?
5. What happened to Phibunsonghram after the war?
6. Authoritarian and fascist governments are all about order and following rules and governmental control. How does the artist use art and design to contribute to the message that Phibunsongkhram was an authoritarian leader?

Read 3: Connect

In this read, you should use the graphic biography as evidence to support, extend, or challenge claims made in this unit of the course. On the bottom of the tool, record what you learned about this person’s life and how it relates to what you’re learning.

1. How does this biography of Phibunsongkhram support, extend, or challenge what you have learned about the fascism and authoritarianism leading up to the Second World War?

To Be Continued…

On the second page of the tool, your teacher might ask you to extend the graphic biography to a second page. This is where you can draw and write what you think might come next. Here, you can become a co-creator of this graphic biography!

War and money go hand-in-hand. World War II was a total war, which required the full economic effort of the societies involved in it. This article details how the Axis and Allied powers mobilized their combined economies to fund and supply history’s deadliest conflict. It turns out, war is a money maker. The war brought great profit to many businesses operating in the nations and the colonies controlled by the mighty allied war machine.

One of the most important parts of the second World War was economic. This article is intended to give you evidence to respond to the Unit Problem (How were the horrors of the Second World War possible?) using the production and distribution frame narrative in particular.

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. How does the author define a “total war economy”?
2. What was Japan’s motivation for conquering and colonizing in Asia?
3. Why did the Soviet Union have an advantage in directing resources toward a total war economy?
4. How did the outbreak of war affect the American economy?
5. Japan and Britain are both small island nations. Why did the British not have to invade and conquer in order to supply its war effort?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. Using the production and distribution frame narrative, explain how the Industrial Revolution helped the Allies win the war.
2. What developments during the long nineteenth century gave the Allied powers an advantage in this twentieth-century conflict?

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.

This collection explores how World War II affected the populations in the Allied and Axis power countries. We will glimpse some of the destruction and terror of war through photographs and firsthand testimony, as well as through the cultural aspects of war, like propaganda, artwork, cartoons, and political essays.

The primary source excerpts in this collection will help you assess the changes and continuities in how governments waged war from 1914 to 1945. This will help you analyze the causes of global conflict in this era, which will also help you evaluate conflicts 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.

In this activity, you will evaluate the causes of World War II. In doing so, you’ll see once again that there can be multiple causes for a single historical event. Some of these causes might occur long before the actual event takes place, while others are more immediate. You’ll see again how historians often disagree on the most important causes for an event, and how they often focus on particular causes to shape people’s understanding of those events. This will continue to sharpen your causation skills, enabling you to look at different accounts in history and make your own viable historical explanations and causal arguments to explain historical events from your own perspectives.

In this final activity in the causation progression, you will complete the Causation Tool, create a causal map, and write a multi-paragraph response to a causal prompt.

First, your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Causation – World War II worksheet, which includes the Causation Tool, along with the articles “The Second World War” and “Economics in the Second World War.” Review these two articles and pull out any information that will help you complete the Causation Tool as well as details that will help you write a response that answers this causal prompt:

What were two of the most significant causes AND what were two of the most significant consequences of World War II?

Next, use your list of causes and consequences from reviewing the articles to complete the Causation Tool, following all of the directions. Then, categorize your causes by time (long term, intermediate term, and short term); then, by type using the tool’s legend; and role (necessary, relevant, triggering event).

Now, use your causes and consequences from the tool to create a causal map. Remember that you did this for revolutions in Unit 2 and the 1857 Indian Uprising in Unit 5. Your causal maps should have World War II in the center circle/box with the causes leading to the war as well as any consequences that stemmed from this war.

Once everyone has completed their causal maps, return to the causal prompt and individually write a multi-paragraph response to the prompt. Remember that you can use your completed tools, the articles, and your causal maps to help you compose your paragraphs. Make sure to explain your reasoning for why the causes and consequences you chose are the most significant ones and remember to use the acronym ADE to help determine historical significance. Your teacher will collect your worksheet and paragraphs at the end of class and use them to assess your understanding of this historical event and the historical thinking practice of causation.