This activity builds on the Who Am I activity and asks you to think about your sense of responsibility (duty) to your community at the local, national, and global scale. In addition, you are asked about your compassion for members of your communities. By looking at our levels of responsibility and compassion in relation to communities at various scales, you will begin to see how interconnected we all are but also how humans can sometimes be passionate about their local community or nation while also being critical or judgmental of others outside of these communities. This can lead people both to value their community or nation over all others (nationalism) and turn away from their fellow humans.

Contextualization, scale
You will use your scale-switching skills to look at communities across different spatial scales. First, you’ll zoom in on your local community and then zoom out to your nation, and finally switch to one of the largest scales—the world—to see how your sense of responsibility or duty tends to decrease as you zoom out. In addition, you will think about how this relates to historical events such as genocide and how developing our sense of empathy, or compassion, might help to prevent these events from occurring in the future.

Take out the Responsibility and Compassion Worksheet and look at the image of the boxes. As you review the boxes, your teacher will ask you a series of questions about them. Once you’re done discussing these as a class, answer the additional questions on the worksheet on your own.

Finally, think about how the idea of belonging to a nation and being willing to fight and die for it is a relatively modern idea. People living before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thought of themselves in a much more local way. Their sense of community was much smaller. Why do you think that might have been the case and what led to changes in the ways we view our obligation to our national community? Do you think there are any negative aspects to having a strong sense of being a part of a national community?

Over 70 million people died during World War II. This video explores the meaning behind the numbers, to reveal the staggering toll of this global conflict. Millions of soldiers were slaughtered in the war, but civilians were targeted and killed in equal number. While the Soviet Union and China suffered astonishing numbers of casualties, millions of civilians were murdered in the Holocaust and Japanese war atrocities. In terms of total number of deaths, the Second World War is the deadliest in history. Since 1945, wars have become less deadly and less common, resulting in what some call the “Long Peace.”

This video explores the statistics of World War II casualties and should help you understand the cost of the conflict at a variety of scales. The era problem focuses on the challenges of switching scales, and this video highlights how doing so can dramatically shift perspective. This video will also help you contextualize World War II in the broader arc of world history to understand how it relates to past conflicts, and also, what it might tell us about the future.

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 general profile up people who make up military deaths as opposed to civilian deaths?
2. Where did the most Nazis die?
3. What country lost the most casualties as a percentage of its population?
4. Who lost the most soldiers and civilians in the war and why?
5. Which side purposely targeted civilians during World War II? Give some examples?
6. Was World War II the deadliest war in history?
7. What does this video mean by “The Long Peace”?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. The video concludes that, since World War II, large conflicts have been less common and less deadly. How do you explain this trend?
2. Do you think World War II was the most devastating event in world history? Why or why not?

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 Era 7 Problem about the different scales at which human history is told, from the universal to the personal. 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 telling 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?

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 economies to fund and supply history’s deadliest conflict. For some, war is a money maker, but for others it required great sacrifice. While many people had to ration their food, the war brought great profit to many businesses operating in the nations and the colonies controlled by the mighty allied war machine.

This article builds on what you’ve learned so far in this lesson about World War II, but it focuses specifically on economic history. This information will really help you evaluate the production and distribution frame narrative. You may note that you already looked at a similar connection between war and economics for the First World War, and you will continue to build on this knowledge in the next lesson, as you look at the economic and political history after the war.

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 economic 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 patterns of industrialization 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?

World War II was a devastating war, but historians debate many aspects of it. When did it start? What caused it? And what do the atrocities of the war tell us about human progress? John Green tackles many of these issues, taking a close look at how things like food, racism, industry, and technology played a role in creating this “total war.”

You’ve already learned some things about World War II, and this video will build on what you’ve learned. It’s important to have a solid understanding of World War II in order to fully understand other articles in this lesson that deal with the Holocaust, nuclear weapons, and other major changes. This video will give you a sense of how World War II affected different parts of the world, which will help you think through the Era 7 Problem: Do we talk about a single human history or many human histories? It’s also useful to get you thinking about whether innovation, science, and technology are always tied to progress.

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 different dates do historians argue mark the start of World War II and why?
2. What was the Blitzkrieg, and what did it enable the Nazis to do?
3. Why was 1941 such a significant year in the conflict?
4. According to John Green, how did the supply of food in different places contribute to World War II?
5. John Green claims that the Soviet Union under Stalin was undemocratic. What is the significance of this point for the way we interpret this conflict?
6. What factors made World War II a total war?

Evaluating and Corroborating 

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. John Green argues that World War II atrocities like the Holocaust were possible because of technologies we associate with “Western progress” like state record-keeping and advanced industry. Do you think innovations in science and technology have generally resulted in improving or hurting human societies? Use evidence from this video and other material from this era to support your claim.

The Holocaust was the horrific murder of millions of Jews and other persecuted groups in Nazi-occupied areas of Europe during the Second World War. Fascist ideas applied to age-old hatreds convinced many people—including ordinary Europeans—to commit horrendous acts. The Nazis justified such extreme violence using the promise of empire, a pure race, and imagined victimhood. The result was a tragedy of unprecedented scale.

So far, this lesson has given you a sense of the magnitude and scale of World War II. In this article, you’ll confront the atrocities of the Holocaust specifically. You’ll learn about the context, motivations, and justifications of the Holocaust, which will prepare you for an even closer examination in the article, “Causes, Scale, and Consequence of the Holocaust” in this lesson. Perhaps most importantly, this is history you can use today, as it pushes you to really think about how ordinary people participate in horrible acts and points out patterns in how this comes to happen.

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. In what ways did the Nazis kill their victims?
2. What ideas did the Nazis use to create hostility towards Jewish people?
3. What are some early ways in which the Nazis restricted Jewish rights?
4. Why were Jewish pregnant women, children, and mothers particularly targeted for gassing?
5. According to the author, many enslaved Jews worked in private companies and were killed by people who knew them. Why is this point important?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. The author argues that, “We need to be on the lookout for when we, too, become “used to” the casual oppression of others, when our everyday compassion for people different from us disappears.” Can you think of examples from your own life or from your society of people getting “used to” bad treatment of others? Are there ways in which we can act to avoid repeating this kind of atrocity?

Historians use primary sources such as letters, diaries, testimony, and official documents as evidence for constructing accounts of the past. Taken individually, these sources can give us a sense of how individuals experience an event or trend, including atrocities like the Holocaust. Collectively, they help us to understand the scale and shape of these historic episodes.

How can we comprehend murder and tyranny on such a scale as the Holocaust? The big, global and national outlines you have read give you some frameworks for understanding the mass-murder of European Jews, Roma, people with disabilities, homosexuals, and political opponents of the Nazi regime. The primary sources in this collection, however, give you evidence to understand what happened, why, and how it was experienced by different individuals. Together, evidence at these two scales can help you to better comprehend that the Holocaust was world-historical event and something that individual humans experienced.

Note: These questions can be used on their own, or with the Sourcing Tool.

Step 1: Summarize

Your teacher will choose one or both of the following questions to think about as you read this collection (you do not need to answer these just yet!):

• What kinds of people wrote these sources, and what kinds of sources are they? How might we use sources that are so different in form and authorship together to understand the Holocaust?
• What do these sources, collectively, tell us about the Holocaust?

At the end of Step 1, you should be able to provide an answer to the following question:

1. What are some things that each source tells us about individual experiences of the Holocaust?

Step 2: Sourcing

In this step, consider the author’s background, the place where the document was created, why it was created, who it was created for, and how all of this impacts the author’s perspective. By the end of this read, you should be able to answer the following questions.

1. What, if anything, do you know about the person who wrote this?
2. Where was the document created?
3. Who was this created for?
4. Given the information available, what do you think the author’s purpose was in creating the document?
5. How does what you know about the author and audience impact your understanding of the document?

Step 3: Analyze

In this final step, consider the significance of the sources you read, and how they support, extend, or challenge your thinking about the questions you thought about as you read. Then, write a response to the question or questions you thought about as you read the sources.

1. What do these sources, together, tell us about the Holocaust, and how does this support, extend, or challenge what you have already learned?

It’s often hard to grasp how the horrors of the Holocaust could have happened, and also hard to decide who was responsible for those atrocities. This activity is meant to help you think about where responsibilities lies when these types of events occur. While it’s shocking to think that this type of behavior would ever be repeated, there are still atrocities being committed in the world today. As thoughtful citizens of the world, you might one day have to decide who should be held responsible acts or event such as these. This activity is meant to help you think through how responsibility should be assigned.

Note: This activity was adapted from PBS Newshour Extra’s Lesson Plan, “The Holocaust: Assessing Responsibility and Conscience,” written by Paul Wieser and Syd Golston.

Start by getting into groups as assigned by your teacher and taking out the Assessing and Defining Responsibility Statements worksheet. Each statement on the worksheet is hypothetical, but aligns to the experiences of different citizens in Nazi Germany. After reading the statements, your group needs to determine just how responsible each person was for what happened between 1933 and 1945. You may disagree on how much responsibility each person should have, but you have to come to a group consensus on each of the points. Once you’re done, be prepared to share with your class the top three items you disagreed on and why.

One way to think about people who are involved in these types of events is to assess their responsibility by categorizing them in particular ways. One method of doing this is by using the following five categories:

1. Perpetrators
2. Collaborators
3. Bystanders
4. Resisters
5. Rescuers

Discuss each of these terms in small groups and decide what each one means. Next, read the following paragraph about the Armenian Genocide, which you learned about in an earlier lesson. After you finish reading, identify a person or group that fits with each of the roles listed above for this genocide. Be prepared to discuss your ideas as a class so you can make sure you understand what each one means.

The Ottoman government issued orders to forcibly relocate Armenian communities from border areas and military fronts during World War I. The Armenian soldiers had their weapons taken away and were sent to labor camps. Following orders from government and military officials, Ottoman soldiers took these Armenians to remote locations and shot them. Some Turkish officials in Istanbul attempted to warn their Armenian friends of the danger of remaining in the Ottoman Empire. One official quietly told his friend, “A new storm is about to break upon the Armenians so I hope that you will save yourself.” (Suny, 246) Some fled to Europe and the Americas with the help of friends, who offered safe places to stay and safe passage out of the country. As the violence ramped up, Ottoman soldiers forced whole families to march away from their homes leaving everything behind. Their houses and possessions were later sold to the highest bidder. Many Turks who had lived in the same communities with Armenians for generations were upset with this but were too fearful to do anything about it. Some Armenians rebelled against the slaughtering of their people by taking up arms to fight back. In Europe and America, organizations were formed to provide aid to the Armenians. Some ambassadors in Istanbul tried to convince the Turkish (Ottoman) officials to stop the violence. But nothing seemed to work. The American ambassador to Istanbul, Henry Morgenthau Sr., described the events as “a campaign of race extermination.”

Then, discuss the following questions as a class about each of the categories.

1. How do you think perpetrators were able to rise to such high levels of power during this time period?
2. Most of the guards in concentration camps did not start out as overly aggressive or mean. Why did they help collaborate to commit such atrocities?
3. Why did so many people stand by and allow these atrocities to happen?
4. What are the characteristics of a person who is willing to take a risk and resist?
5. What inspires rescuers to risk their lives and those of their families to help other people?

Once you’ve had a chance to discuss these roles as a class, go back and look at your original answers and see if you would revise any of your assigned responsibility levels based on the additional thought you’ve given. Be sure to share your reasoning with the class if you decided to make any changes.

Nuclear fission wasn’t just a simple scientific discovery; it was the basis for the most destructive weapons humankind has ever used. During World War II, the United States used these deadly weapons to attack Japanese cities, ending World War II. Though the disastrous effects of these atomic bombs were clear, historians still debate why these lethal weapons were used and if they forced the Japanese to surrender and end the war.

In this lesson, you’ve learned about World War II from many angles, including the horrific effects of the Holocaust. This article builds on this knowledge but focuses on nuclear weapons, specifically the American use of nuclear weapons in Japan at the end of World War II. This background will be especially important as you learn about the Cold War in the next lesson, but it’ll also help you understand other articles in this lesson.

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. Where was nuclear fission discovered? How did it get into the hands of the American military?
2. What was the Potsdam Declaration?
3. According to Peter Zimmerman, Japanese cities were being bombed every week, with about as many people dying every week as died as a result of the nuclear bomb attack on Hiroshima. What claim does this evidence support?
4. Why did the Japanese surrender, according to Tsuyoshi Hasegawa?
5. What ‘race’ did the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, China, France, and India participate in after the Second World War?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa argues that the Soviet Union played a considerable role in Japan’s surrender, more so than American use of nuclear weapons. Do you find the author’s argument convincing? Why or why not? Use evidence from materials from this Era to support your claim.

The traditional story of the two world wars goes like this: The First World War begins and ends in about four years, there’s a gap of about twenty years, and then the Second World War begins and ends in six years. But what if it makes more sense to study the two world wars and the period in between as a single, connected, 30-year conflict? This article explores some arguments for that view.

This article explores ideas of continuity and change by asking a provocative question: is it worth changing the way we study the period from 1914 to 1945 to look for the things that tie together the two world wars, rather than studying each separately? What might we gain by doing so?

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, according to the author, was nationalism an important thread connecting the two world wars?
2. How were empires and colonialism continuities connecting the two world wars?
3. How did the treatment of Germany following the First World War help lead to the Second World War?

Evaluating and Corroborating

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

1. Do you agree with the author’s assertion that we should treat the period 1914-1945 as a “continuous war”? Why or why not?
2. What is the usefulness of breaking out of the normal view of World War I and World War II as two separate wars? How does viewing them as one war help us to understand this period better? How does it limit us?

In this activity, you’ll use your knowledge of claim testing to write supporting statements for claims. Claim testing is a skill that will not only help you decide what to believe, but can help you develop the capacity to convince others of particular arguments. By working on backing claims with supports, you’ll become more skilled at writing argumentative essays and using evidence to support your assertions.

In this claim-testing activity, you are given four claims about global conflict. You are asked to work with these claims in three different ways:

1. Find supporting statements for those claims.
2. Evaluate the strength of the supporting statements provided for those claims.
3. Provide statements that refute (argue against) the claims.

Get into small table groups. Each group should have a complete set of Claim Cards in the middle of their table. Listen for your teacher’s directions for when to start.

Round 1

1. Grab one Claim Card from the center of the table.
2. On the card, write down a statement that supports the claim. You can use prior knowledge or course materials for this.
3. Pass your Claim Card to the person to your right.
4. Write down a statement that supports the claim on the card that you now have. It can’t be the same as any of the supports already written on the card.
5. Repeat the process until each group member has written a supporting statement on each card.
6. Put the Claim Cards back in the center of the table.

Round 2

1. Grab one Claim Card from the pile and stand up.
2. Find at least three other students who have the same claim as you and get into a group with them (if there are more than six people in your group, let your teacher know).
3. Look at all the supporting statements that were written for your claim. Decide which supporting statements are strongest (that is, they best support the claim).
4. Write the strongest supporting statements on the whiteboard so everyone can see them.

Round 3

1. With the same group you were in for Round 2, consider any historical exceptions to your claim. What can you offer to refute the claim?
2. Add at least one refuting statement, what we often refer to as a counterclaim, on the board so everyone can see it.
3. Write both your strongest supporting statements and the exception to the claim as an exit ticket—be sure to explain your reasoning for choosing your supporting statements and refutations. Your teacher may also have you share your statements and counterclaim with the class.