Ideas for a "War Years" History Class

[Familia]

Ds is interested in WWII primarily. I thought to do a focus on modern wars/WWII for our last history cycle. Any ideas or resources that you can lend? I like to cover History TWTM way generally.

Thanks!

Edited January 12, 2012 by secretgarden

[Familia]

Bumping

[In The Great White North]

for our last history cycle

 

So, it's for an 18 year old boy?

 

For background tactics and strategy, The West Point Military History Series WWII books:

 

http://www.squareonepublishers.com/titles_wwII_EandM.html

 

They are available used and may even be available through ILL.

 

Hollywood has produced a ton of good WWII movies (in no particular order,) some of which were books first:

 

Midway

Victory

Saving Pvt Ryan

Schindler's List

The Scarlett and the Black

Where Eagles Dare

Patton

The Longest Day

Guns of Navarone

Bridge over the River Kwai

Tora! Tora! Tora!

Dirty Dozen

Stalag 17

MacArthur

Casablanca

The Eagle has Landed

The Great Escape

Judgment at Nuremburg

[Familia]

Thanks for the link and the film ideas.

DS will be 16 or 17 when he does this.

Is the whole idea too "un-wtm-ish" ?

[In The Great White North]

No, the West Point series is like nothing so much as Herodotus with maps :D

[Josie]

If you can swing it--can't get much better than this!

http://www.hillsdale.edu/seminars/offcampus/hs_studyabroad/churchill.asp

 

This looks awesome. I can't find the cost anywhere on the web site. Do you know how much it is?

[Yolanda in Mass]

My son did a WWI focused study in his senior year and we used the Teaching Co's. excellent course on WWII. I've provided the link below. I also second John Keegan books. The Teaching Co. course highly recommends it and we used it. It's excellent.

 

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=810

 

Yolanda

[Photo Ninja]

My ds had quite an interest in WWII, and found some non-book materials he enjoyed. Other people will probably give you the book and movie lists, so I will give a different idea. BTW, he did read mountains of books on the subject, but those are the more obvious resources you probably already know about.

 

Buy some mp3s of old radio shows from that time period. They are very inexpensive, but give a realistic portrait of life during WWII era. We all, especially ds, enjoyed the shows themselves, but perhaps the commercials provided the best look at life in the U.S. during the era. We bought radio shows from OTRCAT, http://www.otrcat.com/wwii-c-121.html?osCsid=dctbtd111ag6fk59goa81uh851 We all enjoyed listening to the shows, discussing and analyzing them. There was a lot of propaganda used, if your ds is interested in identifying those techniques. The radio shows my ds liked best were Burns and Allen, Bob Hope, and Jack Benny. Bob Hope and Jack Benny shows from WWII included jokes and monologues that don't make a lot of sense unless one understands the political and world events of the era. Plus they are entertaining shows by themselves. Burns and Allen shows often focused comedic episodes around issue confronting daily life in the U.S., like lack of tires, no coffee on the shelves at the grocery store, food coupons, air raid wardens, etc. Commercials encouraged victory gardens, explanations of coupons, purchasing war bonds, accepting food and other item shortages, support via accepting rationing, supporting "our boys", etc. The radio shows provide a very interesting look at life on the home front during WWII that can not be gained as easily through reading a book. Other radio shows are recordings of then-live news broadcasts. That is an excellent way to study history, as these reporters were describing events as they occurred. Check out the World War II collection.

 

Another cd set my ds liked was Word and Music of World War II http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/1851634/a/Words+And+Music+Of+World+War+II.htm This was very interesting because it tells about WWII in Europe and the U.S. through portions of news broadcasts, speeches and music of the era, and it explains the relevance of the songs and how they reflected the views of the time period. It was definitely worth listening to. One track that was particularly interesting was "Edward Murrow Broadcasts His Experiences On A Bomb Raid Over Berlin", a poignant, descriptive personal account. Again, this perspective is not the same if read in a book.

[Julie in MN]

I'm a big fan of Albert Marrin's book on WWI. He goes thru each branch of the military and how it was developing at the time. He of course explains what led to the first world war, and that of course leads into the second. The propoganda issue comes up, as well. I feel it's a great resource, if you can fit it in, or even to read excerpts from.

 

Julie