Nationalism and the Aftermath of World War I

About This Lesson

In this lesson, students will begin to examine how the facets of human behavior they have learned about in previous lessons—including stereotypes, prejudice, and antisemitism—influenced people and events in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. They will start with a brief review of World War I and an examination of the relationship between war and national pride. Then they will consider how Germany’s surrender in 1919 and the terms imposed on the nation by the Allied powers and the Treaty of Versailles shocked Germans, who felt alienated, angered, and humiliated by the conditions of the treaty, and how this contributed to conditions that would provide fertile ground for the rise of the Nazi Party in the decade that followed.

Course Essential Question

How can learning about the choices people made during past episodes of injustice, mass violence, or genocide help guide our choices today?

Guiding Questions

• How does war affect people’s feelings of pride in and loyalty toward their country?
• How did World War I end for Germany, and how did Germans respond to the war’s aftermath?

Learning Objectives

• Students will distinguish between patriotism and nationalism and consider the ways in which war can intensify people’s loyalty to their country and resentment toward others whom they perceive as a threat.
• Students will be able to explain why the Treaty of Versailles shocked and upset many Germans.

Lesson Plan

Day 1 

Activity 1: Explore the Beginning of World War I

Pass out the reading The Beginning of World War I. The text introduces some important factors that helped lead to the war (and continued to affect Europe and the rest of the world after the war), and it describes the event that ignited the fighting. 

Project or pass out the map World War I in Europe and the Middle East. 

Then read The Beginning of World War I aloud with the class, pausing so that students can locate the following places on the map: Great Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, France, Serbia, and Sarajevo.

After you finish reading, ask students to use the information to write working definitions for militarism, nation, and military alliance in their journals. Then discuss how each of those factors (militarism, nations, and alliances) contributed to the outbreak of World War I. 

Activity 2: Analyze a Map of World War I

Remind students that in the last two lessons, they learned about the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire coupled with the violence and atrocities that the Ottoman Turks committed against the Armenian people during the Hamidian massacres and World War I. They also examined some of the ways that members of the international community responded to the reports of mass deportations and murders of Armenian men, women, and children in the region.

Using the map World War I in Europe and the Middle East, lead students through an quick review using the following questions. Consider inviting them to the front of the room to point to places on the map that support their thinking.

• What information does the map provide about the two sides that fought the war? What was each side called? What countries and empires were part of each side?
• What information does the map provide about the nations that were formerly part of the Ottoman Empire?
• What else does the map suggest about the story of World War I?

Activity 3: Analyze Statistics, Eyewitness Accounts, Art, and Literature

Use statistics to help students get a sense of the brutality of World War I by having them analyze the reading The Brutal Realities of World War I. Use a teaching strategy like 3-2-1 or S-I-T to help frame students’ analyses of the information. You can supplement this reading by providing firsthand accounts of the battlefield, paintings by soldiers and observers, and literary responses to the war to offer other avenues for learning about the profound impact of the war on the bodies and minds of those who experienced it. The following resources provide a sampling of these kinds of responses to the war:

• Image: John Singer Sargent, Gassed, 1917
• Image: Otto Dix, Wounded Soldier, 1924
• Reading: Disillusion on the Battlefield

You can have students analyze and discuss these resources using the Jigsaw strategy. Use the following question to focus their analysis:

• What does this text or image suggest about the impact, physical and emotional, that World War I had on this work’s creator and on the world in general?

Day 2 

Activity 1: Reflect on Patriotism and National Pride

Let students know that in this lesson, they will be examining the German response to the end of the war and the peace treaty that the world leaders signed. Start by having students respond to the following questions in their journals:

• What are some ways that people express pride in their country? What are some benefits of patriotism? Can feelings of national pride ever go too far?

Have students discuss their responses using the Think, Pair, Share strategy. Make sure students understand that war almost always amplifies people’s feelings of loyalty toward their country. Encourage them to make connections between these ideas about patriotism and loyalty and what they learned about the creation of “we” and “they” groups during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Genocide.

Remind students that the countries that fought in World War I were motivated by a belief that the people of their nations were superior to the people of the nations they fought. This more extreme form of patriotism, called nationalism, involves the belief that one group of people is distinct from and superior to another.

Activity 2: Evaluate the Treaty of Versailles

Explain to students that even though an armistice (truce) ended fighting on November 11, 1918, the war was not officially over until a treaty was signed. The Allies determined the terms of the treaty in negotiations in 1919, and Germany and other Central powers had no choice but to sign the treaty in 1920. 

Before looking at some details about the Treaty of Versailles, pause and have students think about the purposes of a treaty to end a war. Have them turn to discuss the following two questions with a partner:

• To what are the victors entitled at the end of a war?
• How should the countries that surrendered and lost a war be treated?

Pass out the reading Negotiating Peace, containing excerpts from the Treaty of Versailles, and divide the class into groups of three to four students. Read the excerpts from the treaty in groups or as a class. Then have students discuss the following questions with their group members before having them share their ideas with the class:

• Based on the information you have about the Treaty of Versailles, what do you think its goals were?
• What were some of the ways that the Allied countries punished Germany in the treaty?
• Who benefited from the treaty? How? Who was harmed by the treaty? How?
• Do you think the treaty was fair? What makes you say that?

Activity 3: Consider the Impact of the War on National Pride

After students have had a chance to evaluate the excerpts from the Treaty of Versailles, have them spend a few minutes reflecting in their journals about the following questions:

• How do you think the outcome of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles might have affected Germans’ feelings about their nation?
• How might people respond to evidence that their belief in their nation’s superiority is wrong?

Then, to help students understand the extent of the Germans’ anger following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, project or pass out and read aloud the following passage from the reading Signing the Armistice:

• The armistice was a shock for many Germans because they had begun the war with a strong sense of national superiority and the expectation that their country would win. Few blamed the generals or the kaiser for the nation’s defeat. Instead they placed the blame on the people who signed the armistice—the Social Democrats and the Catholic Center Party. Historian Richard Evans notes: "All of this was greeted with incredulous horror by the majority of Germans . . . Germany’s international strength and prestige had been on an upward course since unification in 1871, so most Germans felt, and now, suddenly, Germany had been brutally expelled from the ranks of the Great Powers and covered in what they considered to be undeserved shame." In the years that followed, many of Germany’s generals, including Hindenburg, would claim that the country’s new leaders, as well as socialists and Jews, had “stabbed Germany in the back” when they signed the armistice.

To deepen students’ understanding of the armistice and the vicious “stab in the back” myth that it spawned, consider the extension suggestion to read the entirety of Signing the Armistice with your class. 

Finally, tell students that they will be working with a partner to create a newspaper headline, in 15 words or less, that summarizes the impact of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany. Have half of the pairs imagine that they are German reporters writing the lead story about the signing of the treaty for their country’s newspaper, while the other half of the pairs are French reporters writing for their own country’s newspapers. Challenge students to try to capture their country’s feelings about the treaty.

Invite pairs to share their headlines using the Wraparound teaching strategy, noting any differences between the French and German perspectives that students captured.