Zoot Suit Riots Lesson - Reading like an Historian
This lesson focuses on sourcing in document analysis though it engages students in a home front lesson that may have resonance to today's social climate
Japanese Internment - Why were Japanese Americans interned during World War II - Reading like an historian
Students investigate a series of primary documents to address the question: Why were Japanese Americans interned during World War II? This lesson offers much more than that, it first has student answer the questions after watching a newsreel, then has then go through documents in stages, tracking how their answer changes as they look through more resources
The New York World’s Fair, 1939-40 | Six hours of color film
Although there may not be a place in any specific lesson for this material, teachers could show this to students during class changes to let them know that the people of the past lived in a color world. This is not a documentary or produced film, is a amatuer footage of the World's Fair. It is interesting to note that this film was made just as World War II was beginning in Europe.
The Pearl Harbor Archive - Map of FIrst Hand Accounts
More evidence that raw historical data is being sliced, diced and presented in interesting ways for students to build their own understandings of history. This is a map of Pearl Harbor with the location of first hand accounts marked. Have students click through the map and learn about what happened on December 7th from the people who were there
Featured Source Performance Assessment: Civil Rights During WWII - Emerging America
This performance task requires students to compare text, sound files, and images to deepen their understanding of the efforts by African Americans to advance the Double V Campaign (victory over racism at war and at home) during WWII. A timeline helps students sequence and visualize the relative length of time between events.
A Rude Awakening: The Reaction of Japanese Americans to Executive Order 9066
In this lesson students will closely examine the impact of Executive Order 9066 signed by President Franklin Roosevelt due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan. WWII impacted the people living in the United States in multiple ways. There were social and cultural unrest as people’s lives and routines were interrupted and uprooted, many to never be the same again.
The Atomic Bomb Decision - HSI: Historical Scene Investigation
This primary document lesson has students pursue the question of whether the dropping of the bomb was inevitable. This is a twist on the usual, "Why was the bomb used?" lesson and provides students with a set of primary source documents to direct their analysis though they are selected to provide an open spectrum of possibilities. This is a lesson that has students "doing history"
Undue Certainty - Sam Wineberg
Sam Wineberg's criticism of Howard Zinn is unique in that it focuses on the historical process and not the product. Teachers using Zinn, especially the chapter on World War II, should read this essay to leverage the most out of the ability of "People's History" to teach historical literacy.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: State of the Union Message to Congress
Although this speech comes from the end of World War II, FDR's "2nd Bill of RIghts" can be used by teachers to have students explore the Bill of RIghts. What rights should be included? What shouldn't? Can students see how this is connected with the Marshall Plan?
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made
This is the reason for the Marshall Plan
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
The U.S. and Japan have very different memories of World War II.
This may help teachers show students that history leaves and breathes in many different forms around the world.
As we may think - Life Magazine, 1945
Vannevar Bush's Atlantic article excerpted and re-published by Life Magazine in September of 1945. The predictive power of this article may have more of an impact in this format scanned directly from the magazine with the advertisements intact.
As We May Think - The Atlantic
Historians love to look for turning points or single examples of moments of time in which history takes a definitive turn - here is one of them. Students and teachers on the early 21st century can gain a better appreciation of the information revolution they are living through by reading of its prediction just after World War II. Dr. Vannevar Bush was the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II, directing the activities of some six thousand American scientists to help in the war effort. In this article he forecasts the information revolution
This WWII women's dorm was the hippest spot in town
This photo essay can serve as a means to have students explore the social change that comes to The United States through World War II. It includes photos from Arlington Farms in 1943, a housing development built outside Washington, DC to house thousands of government workers.
When Dr. Seuss Took On Adolf Hitler - The Atlantic
Students with fond memories of every March 2 between Kindergarten and 4th grade will be intrigued to see this side of Dr. Suess. Teachers can easily include these in their presentations or for analysis as instructional material. It might even be worthwhile including these cartoons without mentioning their author to see if students make the connection first.
We're gonna have to slap that dirty litle jap - YouTube
This Carson Robison song demonstrates the extreme of racist propaganda in World War II. This 2:40 song can serve as a intro to a class or in a presentation.
Legendary photographer Ansel Adams visited a Japanese internment camp in 1943, here’s what he saw - The Washington Post
In 1943, Ansel Adams set out to document life inside the Japanese-American internment camp at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California. It was a departure for Adams, who at the time was known as a landscape photographer and not for social-documentary work. When Adams offered this collection of images to the Library of Congress, he said, “The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment….All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use.”
Eisenhower D - Day failure message just in case
Orson Welles' War of the Worlds panic myth: The infamous radio broadcast did not cause a nationwide hysteria.
Great lesson for WWII in US History class - set the context of Munich appeasement and fear of world war, then tell the story of the broadcast and the panic. Students job? - find out if reports of the panic were valid - how would you check? End with the media fight between radio and newspapers. What are implications for the internet?
Related material can also be found at the National Archives collection of letters written to the FCC after the broadcast (https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2003/fall/war-of-worlds.html). In this National Archive articles it states that "Of the 1,770 people who wrote to the main CBS station about the broadcast, 1,086 were complimentary. In addition, 91 percent of the letters received by the Mercury Theatre staff were positive. And roughly 40 percent of the letters sent to the FCC were supportive of the broadcast."
Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945 | Open Culture
The seven minute video that shows the borders of Europe changing throughout World War II may be a nice add-on to another lesson or just window dressing as students come in the room. Yet taking a look at just the spring of 1940 alone should give student a sense of how quickly the war changing in those months.
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144 years of marriage and divorce in one chart
Not only does this chart explain the baby boom after World War II, but it shows another perspective on how bad the 70s were. It might take a little work to notice it - but look closely at the steep increase of divorces in the 1970s. Another discussion could be prompted by entertaining explanations of the increase of divorces in the 1940s as well
The Fallen of World War II - Data-driven documentary about war & peace
17 minutes video and interactive tool that explore civilian and military deaths in World War II. With colored icons on a black background and straightforward narration, this video compares and contrasts deaths across countries and time during World War II. Could be used as a homework assignment with an online forum for reactions.
World War II in Photos - The Atlantic
Why not have students review these photos and tie them to themes you provide or have them generate their own themes? Have them choose just 10 from the 900 and explain why their subset best exemplifies the war.
This series of entries was published weekly on TheAtlantic.com from June 19 through October 30, 2011, running every Sunday morning for 20 weeks. In this collection of 900 photos spread over 20 essays, I tried to explore the events of the war, the lives of the people fighting at the front and working back home, and the effects of the trauma on everyday activity.
The myth of the good war | Geoffrey Wheatcroft | The Guardian
Teachers looking for secondary source readings for students would be well-served by considering this essay that compares our impressions of the first and second world war - this shows history in the making. The thesis of the article is : Our year of remembrance has exaggerated the tragic futility of the first world war and preserved the dangerous idea that the second was noble and heroic
World War II in Color: The Italian Campaign and the Road to Rome | LIFE.com
As much as the pictures alone show students the brutality and destruction of war, the fact that the pictures are in color gives students an immediacy of connection with them. As we live our lives in "living color" seeing these pictures helps one understand that those people of the past whose live we study in history lived through their own lives in the present also and "in living color".
The Godfather - Vannevar Bush
The Manhattan Project, Silicon Valley, The World Wide Web. Wherever you look in the information age, Vannevar Bush was there first. This Wired article provides biographic information. Although most students and teachers see technology growth in radio, radar, and atomic weapons in World War II, the most personal computer began in the 40s also
As We May Think - Vannevar Bush - The Atlantic
As WWII came to an end, Vannevar Bush wondered where scientists would direct their research now that the war was over. His suggestion is that they target their efforts on a system that could store, retrieve and communicate research information. His idea of a "memex" in 1945 predicts the modern cell phone. Doug Englebart came across this article and sparked his interest in "Augmenting Human Intellect"
The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties
of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was
apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades.
He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he
runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves
it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the
two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he
inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining
it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the
elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow,
he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity
and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his
own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials
available to him.
This is a description of what happens on the internet every day. Amazing foresight though he did not predict that this same device could be used to look at pictures of cats
There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task
of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.
The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's
record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were
erected.
This is how we can make students modern historians - they make the links through the material and tell us why.
Japanese American Internment during World War II - Primary Source Set | Teacher Resources - Library of Congress
Library of Congress collection of images and other materials, including analysis tools and guides for teachers
Japan Protests U.S. Stamp On A-Bombs - New York Times
What the USA looks like to Germany in 1944
Lots of detail in this view of American through the eyes of German Propaganda in 1944. Though need more citing information to certify authenticity.