Information for teachers

Introduction

The lesson starts with traditional teaching materials: historical maps and a warm-up dialogue between the teacher and pupils.

Analysis of the source materials – group work

Pupils are given sets of primary sources: photos of ruined cities, maps showing migrations, population diagrams, and charts showing economic developments. They are also assigned a country on which they will focus (each pupil, pair, group/row can be assigned one country, or the teacher may want to focus on the pupils’ home countries, or on two selected countries).

The teacher then presents a lecture on the consequences of WWII, the main points of which are: 1. Political changes: borders and governments. 2. Population changes: deaths, migrations, baby-boom. 3. Economic consequences – from ruins to development.

While listening, the pupils should select the sources relevant to the developments in “their” country that correspond with the teacher’s lecture. As homework, they will be asked to present the consequences of WWII for their chosen country, using the sources as illustrations and presenting arguments in support of their statements.

The scheme of the teacher’s lecture: War led to many deaths, especially among the young men, but also (in the countries that had experienced occupation) among the civilian population of all ages, and especially among the Jews. The dead could not be resurrected, but we can observe a so-called “baby-boom” in many countries, when in the years following the war there was an increased number of newborn babies. These babies not only changed the lives of their individual families but also impacted the economy (e.g. a lot more baby clothes, diapers, toys etc. were needed), social life (maternity leave, daycare facilities, school buildings and school supplies) and culture (music, TV programs for kids, fashion etc.). After the economic disaster that the war brought to many places in Europe, post-war reconstruction began. The economic boom lasted for many years (this is a matter of separate analysis but is worth mentioning in the context of the consequences of the war). Border changes led to huge migrations of people. Many people were uprooted and had to find new identities. Street and city names were changed, and there were certain issues with incorporating the new territories into the country’s administration, economy, and transportation, or with overcoming the losses caused by the war. Questions arose as to what to reconstruct and what to leave, what to commemorate (see also a lesson “Remembrance and Memorialization of World War II in Different Countries”) and what to forget.

Teacher’s comment: A lot of historical research is based on narrative documents, such as diaries, memoirs, stories published in newspapers and magazines. Even official reports tell us some “stories”. But sometimes historians rely on “raw” data: numbers, factual statements, documentary photographs. These do not in themselves tell stories, but historians work hard to reveal what stories they can tell us, how they explain the past. Researchers illustrate the numbers with the help of charts and diagrams, and factual statements on maps. We should always keep in mind that – just as in the case of border changes – there are human experiences behind statistics and statements. In this lesson you will analyze various types of statistical sources and look for human stories hidden behind objects, symbols and numbers.

The class works in three groups. Each group has a working package with tasks, questions and sources (in the form of paper copies or links). The tasks are aimed at guiding the pupils to “read like a historian” (according to the methodology developed by Sam Wineburg), but referring to various types of source, not only textual sources. The pupils will then use their analysis of the sources to justify their contentions – in essence, the conclusions of their analysis become their arguments. A teacher may use this work as an opportunity to practice argumentative writing. The thesis is provided in the package. Pupils may discuss it in the work group and during the whole-class presentation, and then in their homework present it in their individual writing assignments (based on the recommendation of Chauncey Monte-Sano on developing argumentative writing)

Brainstorm on other potential long-term consequences of the post-WWII mass migration flows. Provide at least three such consequences and justify your claims.

[Most sources represent the point of view of the country where they were created. Migrations on maps are represented by arrows that point in the direction of the migration; the size of the arrows can also be significant. The arrows can tell us about geographical aspects and about the scale of the migration. They show that post-war migrations were huge in scale, and dynamic.]

Group B
Populations: demographic statistics

[The pyramids for this group are placed at the end of the lesson plan. They were generated from the site populationpyramid.net. This site provides data on numerous countries of the world, starting from 1950, so a teacher might generate pyramid(s) corresponding to the local interests of the class.]

The smallest ratio of men to women in the age group 20-30 (approx.) during the war years reflects the number of soldiers who lost their lives in the war. This “narrow” group moves up the pyramid as time passes and the survivors become the older generations. Baby-boomers, on the contrary, are the “wide” generation, just below the one “lost” in the war. They also move up as time passes.

Group C
Economy: GDP statistics

Answers to questions:
1. 1944. 2. Germany 1946, Italy and The Netherlands 1945. 3. Until 1948. 4. Until 1956, but the pre-war situation was better than in the Netherlands. 5. They did not experience an economic crisis during the war and boomed afterwards. 6. The reconstruction was much faster in the West, with real dynamics not visible in the Soviet bloc. 7. Crisis deeper, reconstruction slower, overall economic situation poorer even many years after the war, no economic boom.

Summary

Are there any consequences of the war that can be observed around us even today? Brainstorming.

Presentation of the findings of each group, focusing on the summarizing points underlined in each group’s tasks.

It is important to explain that the analyzed data do not capture all the consequences of WWII, and that in fact the war had consequences everywhere, in each aspect of human life, and for many, many years. In fact, in accordance with the “butterfly effect”, every single small event has its historical impact, and a huge event like WWII even more so.

The elements presented in various sources were not separate but on the contrary, they were interconnected and happening all together. Moreover, there were other elements too, and most likely we will not be able to capture, understand and explain all the consequences of WWII.

Additional task
Using the sources analyzed by Group A-C answer the questions:

1. Why did many Eastern European Displaced Persons choose to settle down in the United States after World War II? [because the economy was booming there and the USA was welcoming immigrants, because the situation was very bad in their home countries, because their home towns were not in their home countries anymore, because they wanted to avoid living under Soviet domination and communist rule, while the Americans offered democracy and freedom]
2. Should we use the provided indicators of GDP per Capita despite the fact that they do not take into consideration border changes and migrations? [Yes, because there is no better data available in many cases.]

Human stories behind the statistics

This section uses poetry (see above for selected poems) to help us consider the individual, emotional dimension of the consequences of the war.

Even if there is no time (or wish) to analyze poetry, it is still good to look for the human dimension in some way. Pupils could be asked to discuss at home what consequences of the war were experienced by their families (or neighbors), and to note down one such example and consider whether it corresponds with the large-scale consequences discussed during the lesson. A teacher may initiate this homework by bringing his/her family experiences [e.g. my grandparents used to live in a place that was in Poland before the war; that place subsequently became part of Soviet Ukraine, so they migrated to Lower Silesia (formerly German but after the war part of Poland); they settled down easily enough in their new place, and spoke proudly of the improvement in their everyday living conditions; they were critical towards the communist regime’s attempts to impose the Marxist doctrine, and especially critical of the promotion of atheism and discrimination against the Catholic church, but at the same time they appreciated the egalitarian nature of higher education in communist-ruled Poland: this made it possible for their children to go to university, which would have been more or less impossible in the old days for poor farmers from a remote village].

The poems move from general to individual, and from very rational to emotional. They return to the idea discussed in the warm-up, in which the pupils were interpreting border changes on the maps and considering their implications for individual inhabitants of the chosen cities, revealing the human faces and human fates behind “cold” historical processes and their visualization.

Answers: 1B, 2C, 3D (death), 4E, 5A

[The selection of poems follows. More poetry (or prose) can be added.]