In WWII there was the allies and axis powers but every country and every soldier has a different perspective from the rest. Every country no matter how small played a vital role in WWII that resulted in the world we live in today.
For this project we created a website called Perspectives of WWII! Each group learned about one country’s perspective that was involved with the Second World War.
Our driving question for this project was: How do we view and understand war, depending on who we are?
Throughout this project I learned about many battles and important dates in WWII, how to cite websites and books, how to create a website, and what it was really like to be apart of the war.
We also read a novel on the topic of perspectives of WWII that you can check out here
When being assigned our country groups we filled our top 3 choices on an online google form. The country I got was Canada “my home and nation land” and my group members were Ethan and Michael.
For the website we had a list of topics to research:
#1. Your Country post WWI (before the Second World War)
includes: Location, language, leaders/political parties, population, military, prevalent religions, historical turning points, and more
#2. 1939 The War Begins
Includes: Who was your country allied with? Why did your country enter the war? What were their goals? What were the turning points? And Significant battles.
#3. Military/Technology
#4. Timeline of WWII for this country
includes: years in bold with bullet points. visuals. Entry to war, significant battles, political leaders coming into power, the war coming to an end.
#5. Helmut Podcast –
includes: 5 min each or if done in group 8 minutes per webpage.
#6. Details of Significant Battles
Includes: Years, number of troops, number of casualties, location of battle, countries involved. Tell your battle from the perspective of your country.
#7. Soldier Details
Includes: What did your soldier look like on the battle field? What type of training did these soldiers endure? Where were the training camps? Conscription, social aspects of soldier life, pros and cons of soldier attire, etc.
#8. Your Choice!
Includes: Make this page your own! Add some interesting details that are unique to your country that have not been covered in previous sections.
As you can see that is a lot of research so we split up who would do what and created a shared google docs.
I took on: #4. Timeline of WWII for this country, #6. Details of Significant Battles and part of #1. Your Country post WWI
We had about a month to finish all our research
As a class we were very lucky to get the experience to interview an WWII German Soldier named Helmut Lemke.
We each created questions to ask him.
What was the most important thing you learned from being apart of the war?
How did you change as a person before and after the war?
What was the worst experience you went through during the war?
If you could go back and change one thing what would it be?
He answered are questions and also told his stories at the battlefront. Two things that really resonated with me was how he said, “In WWII there was no winners or losers”, which is something that I have always thought about. I also found it interesting when he said, “You are always surrounded by death”. I found this interesting because it made me realize how real and insane War is.
Once we had the peices of the website completed it was time to put them on. Our website was created with an app called Weebly. We all had a lot of trouble with this app on our iPads but on computers it worked better. Some of the struggles we went through was not being able to have everyone work on the website at the same time, work being deleted for no reason (I experienced this when my timeline disappeared) and getting logged out. Even though we did experience struggles I would use weebly again and we managed to all complete our country pages by the deadline.
Throughout creating this website and doing worksheets on WWII I learned that every battle was significant in some way. We view and understand war differently depending how it has affected us and the people around us. Even if you weren’t apart of WWII it has affected where you live, your rights, and your freedom.