The War to End All Wars That Didn’t End All Wars

Posted on by Benjamin Dinh Posted in Humanities 9Tagged , , , ,

World War 1, First World War, The Great War. All of these names are used to label arguably the biggest event of humanity leading up to it. World War 1 took place between 1914-1918, with repercussions lasting late into the 20th century. The last project for PLP 9 was about WWI. This project has been one of the most enjoyable projects for me and I am delighted to tell you why.

The driving question for this project was “how can exploring stories and text help us understand the impact of WWI on Canada’s identity?” Each student would research a soldier from WWI, as well as researching an event, topic, or piece of equipment in WWI. But before we can get to that we needed to learn why WWI started. 

Many people associate the start of WWI with the assassination of ArchDuke Franz Ferdinand. This is a legitimate reason for the start of WWI, but it is actually much deeper than one reason. It is actually very complicated. The first milestone was actually to learn about the complicated beginning to WWI.

Prior to 1914 Germany was viewed as the European powerhouse. they were top in manufacturing and economics, as well as seen as the educational powerhouse. Many people, NOT just Germans, were open and willing to the idea of a German ruled Europe, or rather a German commonwealth. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire was crumbling. Balkan nations like Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro saw this as an opportunity to gain more land previously controlled by the Ottomans. While the Balkan wars were happening, relations between Serbia and Austria-Hungary were not very great. Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia, an area with many Serbians living there. This didn’t sit well with the Serbians as many Balkan nations had just gained freedom from the Ottomans, and a great hatred was formed between the two nations. Meanwhile Germany was trying to challenge Britain even more. they began building a navy to combat the revered British Navy. This made tensions even worse between the two countries, and would ultimately ruin the Germans as a third of the German Defense budget was don’t on it, meaning they couldn’t support a double front war. Back in Serbia, which had gained twice as much land in the Balkan wars, was seen as a “Russian satellite” by the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. This led to the founding of the “Black Hand”, a group dedicated to protecting Serbia’s independence through terrorist methods. Soon enough, Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be assassinated by a Serbian citizen, and the tensions broke.

This first milestone was a good way for us to see the different relations between the countries involved. A lot of this project was researching and finding information, so this was kind of a test in researching and then figuring out the different events, relations, and people that caused WWI. It was practice in finding identity, and seeing how a nations identity could change over the years.

The Big Four (David Lloyd George, Vittorio Orlando, Georges Clemenceau, and Woodrow Wilson of England, Italy, France, and USA

Milestone two was very fun for me. I learned a lot about my own family and a lot about WWI. For milestone two we had to research a Canadian Soldier in WWI. I actually went and contacted my grandmother to see if we had relatives who fought in WWI. Her cousin in law had already done research about our family and he had a lot fo information and documents. It turns out I had two relatives who fought on the front lines in WWI. Thanks to the documents my grandmas cousin in law had collected, I was able to track down what battles they fought in, where they are buried, and even the exact day they enlisted, went to battle, died, and were discharged. Instead of doing just one soldier, I decided to do both brothers, and tell both of their stories. Sadly, their stories are very different and I wanted to show how two people who grew up together had completely different outcomes from the war. After I collected all the info I needed, I began to write my page about them. The final pages would eventually be added to a book my class was making about WWI. I have always wanted to research my family history, and this assignment let me do it for school, which was really cool. 

While we were doing all this we were also reading a book about WWI. Our class was split into three groups, each group reading a different book. My group was reading “Generals Die in Bed” by Charles Yale Harrison. This book really tries to focus on the horrors of WWI and trench warfare, as well as the feelings towards the generals. Much of the book is focused on our characters comrades dying around him and their mutual hatred for the officers. This book showed one more perspective from WWI and was also a really fun and interesting read.

Now for the biggest part of this project. Making a page on a certain topic in WWI, was also really fun for me. My topic was the Treaty of Versailles. I think this was a great topic for me to talk about because it not only connects itself to another of my interests (WWII), but I’ve also always wanted to learn what happened at the Paris Peace negotiations and at the signing of the treaty itself. I was actually really fascinated with how dominating and demoralizing the French and British wanted to be against the Germans. I had never heard of President Woodrow Wilson and his 14 points. I am really happy that I got the chance to learn about such an important event and the aftermath of the decisions made at these events. 

This project was really fun for me. I have always wanted to do a project on WWI or WWII and I was really happy to learn a lot about WWI, and my family history! This project was a great way to end off grade 9 for me. I learned a lot about one of my interests and I really think this project helped me with my literary and writing skills. Writing 6 pages about these topics forced me to be concise and really pick which certain things to talk about. All in all, this was a great end project for grade 9 and I can’t wait for grade 10!

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