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Post It & Forget About It
The Great Cold War Debate
Nov 8th
Imagine you were looking at your TV listings magazine in 1949 and you saw this entry.
8:45 pm – The Great Debate: Who Caused the Cold War?
An exclusive live debate between United State President Truman,Soviet leader Stalin and British Politician Winston Churchhill. All three have agreed to be interviewed lived and give their views on the current political situation.
You have to imagine because no event like this ever happened:
- The year 1949 saw some of the tensest moments of the Cold War, so the leaders would never have gathered together.
- None of them would really have agreed to be interviewed live on TV
- There were hardly any TVs and no listings magazines!
But let’s imagine anyway. What questions would you ask Truman, Stalin and Churchill if you were presenting the debate? We have 3 case studies which will help you to develop your own views. Look at the Big Question section to see exact details of what you have to do. When you are clear in your own mind, click on the case studies to begin your investigation.
When Iron Crumbles: Berlin and the Wall
Nov 6th
This unit, designed for use with high school and community college students, uses primary materials, literature, and interactive lesson plans to present the city of Berlin (Germany) as a case study of some of the 20th century’s most significant events.
- In lesson 1, students take a pre-test, view a video about the Berlin Wall, and discuss the kinds of conflict that impacted the city.
- In lesson 2, students interpret the materials contained in a time-capsule handout, focusing on the relationships among economics, culture, and politics in metropolitan Berlin.
- In lesson 3, students read documents representing U.S. and Soviet positions on the joint occupation of Germany and Berlin.
- Lesson 4 has students use information on resource cards to answer game questions the division of Germany into two separate states and about differences between the “two Germanys”–the Federal Republic of Germany in the West and the German Democratic Republic in the east (the Soviet zone).
- In lesson 5, students study materials on the exodus of East Germans to West Germany. These materials are designed to help students consider how the governments responded to the immigration and to understand the dilemmas faced by the East German refugees.
- Lesson 6 has students perform a “readers’ theater” on the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. (Readers’ Theater is a dramatization technique that includes performance and reading aloud, and is used to bring a text to life).
- In lesson 7, students apply what they learned from Readers’ Theater, 1961 to Readers’ theater, 1989-1990 using a series of handouts that allow them to create their own readers’ theater for the events that occurred in 1989 (the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall) and 1990 (the year of the reunification of Germany). A 55-item bibliography is included in an appendix. (DB)