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ABOUT THE TEACHER'S GUIDE RESOURCES
This video series is not a war story of battles, soldiers and troop movements, although some of these are included. Rather, the series captures the people in their roles, lives, feelings, thoughts, ambitions, hopes and experiences. The series invites you to view the Great War as a human experience and to sense how humans in different nations, walks of life, social positions and genders reacted to and tried to cope with what was occurring in their lives. Viewing this video series may well affect your thoughts and feelings about what occurred during this war and about the war's impact on people then and today.
In addition to the narrator's story, the videos contain the words of many people whose statements make sense both in the era of the war and today. These statements--from such sources as personal letters, diaries, reports and conversations--were selected because they capture a particular feeling, a particular perspective or attitude, a particular moment or a particular person. The student activities contain selected statements that should be carefully considered in the context of the particular video, the particular person or persons involved and the entire war.
This teacher's guide and the accompanying resource materials were designed to provide the context and guidance to help both teachers and students understand what the Great War was like and what it meant to those affected by it.
ABOUT THE VIDEOS
Each of the eight, 60-minute videos combines actual film footage from the period with live-action documentary, photographs and other primary documents. It also includes quotes from and interviews with people associated firsthand with this conflict and present-day historians. These videos collectively form the public television series THE GREAT WAR.
Each video is divided into chapters portraying a single event, perspective or condition linked to the themes of that video. Each chapter can be viewed apart from the other chapter should you desire to do so.
To facilitate the locating of specific chapters, segments, themes, events, or people in the videos, PBS VIDEO has prepared a special set of PBS VIDEOindextapes for educators. These tapes have been enhanced with a time clock reference that is visible on your screen. The time clock appears as a series of number (e.g. 45:32) and refers to the minute and second at which a reference will appear. For instance, the reference given above will appear 45 minutes and 32 seconds into a particular episode. To find the reference, you need only to fast forward the correct episode until the number 45:32 appears on the screen.
The printed PBS VIDEOindex contained in this educational package includes an additional number, followed by a backslash (/). This first number refers to the episode, or volume in which the reference can be found. For example, in the index you will find a reference to Jay Winter, historian and co-writer of the series, discussing the Russian Revolution. That number will appear in the printed PBS VIDEOindexas 5/49:24. This indicates that Winter's discussion is in the fifth episode (volume), at time clock reference 49:24. To locate the reference on the tape, place volume five in the VCR and fast forward or fast scan until you see the numbers 49:24 appear on your screen. At that point in the tape you can hear Winter discuss the Russian Revolution.
MAJOR STUDENT LEARNING EXPECTATIONS
Students who watch this video series and make use of the materials in the curriculum package should be able to accomplish the following:
- Identify the attitudes, policies, actions
and conditions that set this war apart from previous wars.
- Determine the extent to which the
words "violence," "atrocity," "slaughter," "stalemate" and "horror" are appropriate descriptors of the events of this war.
- Recognize the implications of the fact that this war was as much a war by and against civilians as it was by and against the armed forces of the combatant nations.
- Assess the roles and effects of new weapons of warfare and the strategies
of the warring nations in their efforts
to win the war.
- Identify ways that the war affected both military personnel and civilians, both during and after the war.
- Determine how the personalities, biases, beliefs and emotional dispositions of the leaders of the warring nations affected the war effort--and might have affected efforts to avoid the war or to settle on an earlier peace.
- Understand the extent to which the
war sheltered no social class and brought about greater levels of social integration, interaction and cooperation than had ever existed in any of the combatant nations.
- Explain how the way the war was managed led both soldiers and civilians to demand changes in the values and actions of their leaders.
- Explain the meaning of the label "The Lost Generation" in the context of the war and the lives of the people after the war.
- Explain why scholars claim that the Great War set the violent 20th century in motion.
- Explain how the art and literature of the prewar and during-the-war periods reflected the thoughts and emotions of their creators and the mood of the public.
- Explain the concept of "total war," and describe the actions taken and conditions that existed during the Great War that justify historians' claims that it was such a war.
- Describe the immediate and long-term effects of the Great War for each combatant nation and for selected subgroups within each nation or empire.
- Describe current situations in the world that may have their origins in the Great War or in conditions affected by the war.
- Identify specific ways that postwar events and conditions were (and may still be) similar to events or conditions prior to or during the Great War.
BACKGROUND TO THE GREAT WAR
Even more than the year 1901, the beginning of the Great War--as it was called in its time--in July 1914 marks the emergence of this century. The Great War brought an end to the way of life of the 1800s and inaugurated what we consider to be the modern age. The world continues to be shaped by what happened during and after this war. The magnitude of violence, death and psychological and emotional stress--as well as their intensity, continuation and democratization--during this war set it apart from all previous wars and established the tone for the violence that characterizes the 20th century. No one who experienced this war directly or indirectly was unchanged. No nation, social class or society emerged unchanged or was better off for having been involved.
In the summer of 1914, nearly everyone expected a short war with everything being settled "by Christmas." In the next four years, however, 70 million men participated in military duty and there were over 30 million military casualties, including 9 million dead; over 3 million widows and 10 million orphans had to adjust to their losses. Over 9 million civilians also died. In addition to the violence, horrors, suffering and atrocities on the battlefront and the deliberate war against civilians, this war also led to the genocide of the Armenians, the first genocide of this century.
The Great War was the first massive and constant total war fought by both sides. Anyone and everyone on the opposing side was considered an enemy and a legitimate target for attack--not only people in uniform, but also civilians of all ages, genders, backgrounds and abilities. To press the war effort, new weapons were introduced, such as poison gases, flame throwers, tanks, hand grenades, long-range artillery and military air craft; old weapons were made more deadly, such as the machine gun, the submarine and mines; and new tactics, such as unrestricted submarine warfare, were introduced. Traditional tactics and ways of waging war--such as massed attacks across open fields, the charge of the cavalry and the wearing of brightly colored uniforms--meant virtual slaughter on the battlefield and became obsolete.
The violence and death accompanying this war were unequaled in human history. Only World War II surpassed it in the intensity, extent and severity of the violence and destruction. No prior war had ever directly touched or adversely affected the personal lives of so many individuals, nations and ethnic groups--both during the war and for decades afterward. Without the Great War, World War II may not have occurred; it surely would not have occurred for the reasons and in the manner and time that it did.
THE GREAT WAR series covers the period from the last decades of the 1800s to the end of 1919 and beyond. Because this war was a world war, the series makes reference to people, places or actions on five continents; however, it focuses primarily on the conditions, actions and events in Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Turkey and the U.S. The narrative tells only some of the countless stories that could be told of this era and this conflict. In many ways, the video represents an 8-hour snapshot that--like all snapshots--exposes only part of what is there to capture, to experience and to reconstruct. Snapshots cannot convey all the contexts, thoughts and feelings of all the people involved in or affected by what the picture contains.
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