Textbook Organization

In my opinion, the way that our textbook organizes the WWII section is very confusing. It splits all of the countries into different sections and then within those sections organizes the events chronologically. If I were writing this chapter, I would have just organized the whole war chronologically instead of splitting up the individual countries and events. This way, readers of the chapter wouldn't have to jump around to different sections trying to find what happened in a certain year, and instead could just look at it in order. I also think that the Holocaust was not talked about enough. The book dedicated something like one or two pages to the description of it, however it does not go into any detail on the effects that this event had on the world. I would have split WWII and the Holocaust into two different chapters.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words; a Phrase is Worth a Thousand Pictures

Extra Credit Op:

Check out the cache of photos at the College of New Jersey's Teaching American Political History site. Unfortunately there's no working search function (or at least no search function that works when I try it), but if you follow the links to the images you can scroll through chronologically. Most of the images from 1938-1945 are related to WWII and the Holocaust.

You can select one of the photos I've linked above (I overlinked – you've got options), but I encourage you to scroll through and find one that really grabs you, gets your emotions going – for good or ill. Once you've found a photo, do some research. Find out what it's depicting, why it was a picture worth taking and remains a picture worth keeping. Post a link to the image here (or you can get fancy and embed the photo directly in the blog) and write a paragraph explaining the history behind the image and why it matters.

Textbook Organization

Because our Modern World History textbook deals with History from the 16th century to the the 21rst century, its section on World War II is organized by region rather than by chronological order to more fully deal with and explain the causes of the war. This works for most of the chapter; however, it leads to confusion in a few areas. Pages 696 to 703 deal with the war in Europe; pages 703 to 707 deal with the war in Asia. However, the end of the war is only described on page 703, and isn't even mentioned on 707. Pages 707 to 712 deal with the home front and other issues, and after 712, the effects of the war are described.

I would have included the home front section in the section describing the war in Europe, and the parts of that section dealing with Japan in the section regarding the war in Asia. Then, I would have put the section about Asia before the section regarding Europe. One other area where the textbook gets a little jumbled is the dates. It mentions many dates in the text and puts a few of them in random timelines scattered throughout the book. I would have compiled a timeline of every date mentioned in the reading and put this timeline at the end of the chapter, and then, I would have compiled a timeline of the important dates, and put this at the beginning of the chapter. I would have entitled the chapter "World War II: History Repeating Itself?"

My Textbook

If I were to create my own textbook, I would do it differently than the textbook we use right now. The textbook organizes the facts by country and individual chronological order. This makes seeing what was happening in different countries at the same time very hard. When someones wants to see what happened in two different places across the globe, the have to flip to different chapters of the textbook and write down the order on a timeline (which we did many times this year). In my textbook, I would organize the facts by chronological order of the whole world. This way people could understand what was happening in any country at a particular point in time. We would not have to spend extra time making timelines during class in order to get the idea of how different ideas were spreading across the globe at the same time.

Another change that I would have in my textbook is two different chapters regarding World War II and the Holocaust. The Holocaust wasn’t mentioned enough for what it truly was-the attempt to wipe out an entire group of people. Our book did not include many details and only had 2 pages on the Holocaust, when it changed the world in an unforgettable way. To make it stand out more and make it more significant in our mind, I would devote a whole chapter to talking about the details of the Holocaust. This of course would make the textbook even more boring to read because there was so much detail. My solution to this would be to make the textbook more fun to read (add funny pictures or something else) so that students would enjoy reading the textbook.

Facing Decisions of War

I think NBC aired this piece on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bomb because, despite whether or not it was the right thing to do, it was still a momentous event in history that requires ample reflection. I do not condone the use of the atom bombs in 1945, however back in WWII, the circumstances called for a new rulebook. The threat of the Nazis made all moral codes appear obsolete in the decisions of warfare. In the eyes of the US Government, the bombs were a realistic counterattack to the horrors initiated by the Nazis. The Nazis killed millions, versus the bombs killed less than five hundred thousand.

The only aspect of this video that scared me was hearing an elementary school girl say that every time she hears a plane fly overhead she fears it will drop a bomb. I find it surprising that she would still fear such an attack when the war is long past. Does this imply that her teacher did not explain that the threat of another bombing died with the war's end? I can only hope that this kind of fear will not morph into a desire for revenge, or justification for strengthening nuclear warfare capabilities.

Textbook Organization

While I don't think that the organization of the chapter is completely nonsensical, I do believe that it would have made more sense to me to put more of it into chronological order. I like how it starts out by dividing into the major countries that participated in World War II and then explains how these important leaders rose to power and the different policies of each countries. This provides a clear background as to what exactly was happening in each country at the time, and because these events were not directly linked, it makes more sense to divide them by country rather than chronological order. But although the textbook starts off in a way that provides a strong basis for understanding the events that followed, I do not like how they start mentioning events like the Kristallnacht in the middle of this background section. It makes sense to talk about Nazi views on race, but it does not make sense to randomly include this specific event.
The textbook then mentions the lead up to World War II and divides it into events that occurred in Asia and events that occurred in Europe. Up to 1939, I think that it is fine to divide up the events that occurred in each of these regions, since they still were fairly independent of each other and thus can be compared side by side. But as soon as they both start trying to find a way to deal with the Soviet Union, it no longer makes sense to split them up, because they have the same goals. The Holocaust is also completely left out until the end, while I think it would make more sense in the section about the build-up to the war, since that is the time when it started.
Right after this, it goes into World War II, and Europe and Asia are still split up. This starts to become very confusing because many of the events become linked with each other and end up overlapping in various sections. The whole section on World War II should be in chronological order. So, I like the main sections the textbook is divided into, but within these sections, the information would be more easily understood if it was organized chronologically.
My title for this chapter would be "New Leaders, New World Orders, and a New World War"

Pride in Destruction

The people of the US were assembled in an immense crowd that acclaimed Japan's surrender in WWII. It was something to celebrate at the time because the US could have been in the place of Japan and completely destroyed. What I find heinous is the ignorance of the US civilians (at the time) on what exactly dropping the atomic bomb did to Japan. All they did was celebrate and take pride in the victory of the US. Had something like that happened to the US, civilians would not act so gratified about their actions. The bombing extremely affected the people's lives and still significantly has an impact on people now. I believe NBC decided to air this piece in 1995 because they wanted to show the US's rationale and explanation as to why the bomb was dropped since so many people are questioning and finding what the US did was very inconsiderate and what not.