Hello, Internet.
So we’ve been learning about the Second World War, and more specifically, about the perspectives of different countries involved in said war. In order to do this, we broke into small groups, had each group research one country, and then compiled all the information on a website. At the end of the unit we presented this website, and what we had learned about each country, to not only each other but also Kathleen Barter, a district administrator for our school district.
My group decided to look at the perspective of the Soviet Union , and in particular, Soviet Russia.
At the time of World War II, Russia was under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Stalin knew some of what Hitler was planning before the war began, and was able to prepare somewhat. Unfortunately, Russia was very poor and didn’t have a very strong army, and ended up having one of the highest number of casualties of any country in the war.
Russia fought on the side of the Allied Powers, which included countries such as France and Britain, and against the Axis Powers, which included Germany, Italy, and Japan. The German invasion of Stalingrad, a city which the Russians successfully defended, is considered one of the turning points of the war.
Besides the website, we did a couple of other things as part of this unit. One of those things was to read a book related to the war and then write a book review of said book. The other was to create a short podcast with some audio we recorded when we got the chance to talk to a man who actually was a German citizen and soldier in World War II: Helmut Lemke.
Our class with Helmut
I decided to create my podcast around a story Helmut told about stealing potatoes, which was one of my favourite stories he told, as it was extremely interesting and unique, not extremely violent or disturbing as far as war stories go, and involved my favourite food.
My first draft of this podcast included just Helmut telling the story, but I revised it to include an intro that I recorded, which explained a little bit about who Helmut was and why we were talking to him. This is my final draft:
Toodles!
I like the aesthetic of the blog post, how you include a bunch of different links and some great photos. I like how you keep it short and to the point, although there are a couple things that weren’t included such as the MLA formatting and you could maybe go more in depth about what we did to make the website. Also maybe your first draft of your podcast. Overall I think it’s really good and I like how you focus a lot on Russia, adding a couple more pictures and drafts might be good but your use of links is great.