Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mr. Hutchinson.

I'm going to be teaching you Year 6 history.

I'm really excited about it.

I'm a teacher in London, but I get to teach you and I get to teach you a really important topic, which I'm very excited about.

We're going to be learning all about 20th century conflicts.

We're going to be learning about different wars, different conflicts, where countries have collided over the 100 year period from about 1900 to about the year 2000.

So you might even have relatives, parents or grandparents who have lived through these periods and you can find out from them firsthand what they were really like.

We're going to be surveying that whole period and it's fascinating.

We've got a lot to cover so we're going to get straight into it.

We're going to get right back to the start of the, 20th century, sorry, the 1900s, and we're going to look at why the First World War broke out.

So the first great war, the first major war, in which countries from all over the world were involved in a single conflict.

For this lesson, you need to make sure that you're going to hand a book.

I've just found this old notebook that I'm going to be using.

You need to make sure that you've got a pen to hand, because I'm going to ask you to pause the video and write answers to some questions I'm going to ask you and some tasks I'm going to give you.

You need to make sure that you've got your brain switched on.

If you've got a phone, put your phone away, switch it to aeroplane mode, just focus for the next hour on this lesson so that you can really, really throw yourself into this fascinating period and become an expert in this crucial period of history.

I've got here a knowledge organiser.

I'm going to put it live up on the screen for a moment.

This has got all of the key pieces of information that we're going to be covering over the next four weeks, over the next six or eight lessons.

It's got the two main sides in the First World War.

It's got the key vocabulary on this side.

It's got the main people who we'll be discussing, and it's got a timeline of the different events you'll see, we're starting with the 19th century with the 1800s because we need to go back to the 1800s to understand why the First World War in 1914 broke out.

Something I'd recommend that you do, is take some pieces of paper and make yourself some flashcards with this information so that you can learn them off by heart.

So you can learn the key events, the key people, the key vocabulary, that will really help you when it comes to engaging with these lessons, because you'll just have those backs at your fingertips.

You might like just pause the video, not with all of them, just with some of the vocabulary perhaps, pause the video and make yourself some flashcards so you can start to test yourself whenever you get a spare moment, you can do that now.

Great, hopefully you've had a chance to do some flashcards.

Maybe you've decided that you're going to leave that to later, that's okay as well.

Today's lesson, we're going to begin by having a closer look at what Europe was like before the war, before the First World War.

We're focusing on the First World War today, we're going to look at what Europe was like before the First World War.

Then we look at a conflict in a place called the Balkans in the Southeast of Europe.

We'll then look at a period known as the July Crisis just before the war really kicked off.

We look then at Britain joining the war, and finally there'll be a quiz at the end.

That's our structure of our lesson, those five elements, that's what we're going to be doing today.

So first one, Europe before the war.

We're going to take a close look at Europe before the war.

So let's look at Europe today.

In fact, before we do that, four key themes I want to tell you about now so you can see them as they come up.

Four key themes characterise this period in the buildup to the First World War, different countries having a sense of militarism, wanting to build big militaries, alliances, agreements between different nations, imperialism, the sense that one country should rule over lots of other countries, and nationalism, the feeling that your country is better than other countries, not like patriotism, patriotism, where you're proud of your country, rightfully proud of your country and maybe support them in football or proud of the achievements of your country, nationalism takes it further.

Nationalism is the idea that you are better than other people.

Perhaps you deserve to be in charge of other people, because the way you do things is better.

So let's look at Europe today.

Here's a picture of Europe today.

We live here in the United Kingdom.

We can see the major countries of Central Europe here down to the Balkans I was talking about earlier.

Russia is huge country which expands further to the East over here.

Scandinavian countries at the top.

To begin with, we're going to focus just on this area here, Central Europe.

Now that's what Europe looks like today, but it hasn't always looked like that.

It hasn't always had countries with those exact lines and boundaries or even names.

So let's go back way back in time, 200 years ago to 1815, and look at this area of Central Europe.

So I've zoomed in this area of Central Europe.

You can see here we've got the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.

Baltic Sea, North Sea and here, I've also got the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.

And there was an empire called the empire Prussia.

Now we're going to use Prussia and Germany, sort of interchangeably here.

They sort of mean the same thing.

So Prussia was the empire and German people were the peoples who were living around this sort of area.

In 1815, this is what Prussia sort of looked like.

This is actually about 1830.

This is what Prussia looked like and this light blue area here is everywhere that Prussia was in charge of, where the Prussian Emperor, Wilhelm was in charge of.

They sort of were in charge over the, areas and nations and territories but this light blue places that is the main area.

Between 1850 and 1871 the Prussian Empire hugely expanded.

They wanted to unify Germany to bring it all together, to join it together.

So this is what it looks like to begin with, by the end of the 19th century, it looks like this.

The Prussian Empire is now in charge of all of this area as well.

They got that through annexing countries, which means sort of taking them over without war, going to war with other countries, especially a big war with France, making agreements with the countries, and making deals with other countries.

So the Prussian Empire managed to hugely expand its rule over Central Europe.

We're going to flip between so that you can see.

Before unification, after unification.

Before, after.

One area in particular I want to draw your attention to is this pink area here, it's called Alsace-Lorraine.

Alsace-Lorraine is very important because it used to belong to France.

Now Prussia realised that to join all these people together, the best way to do that is to have a common enemy, somebody that you want to fight against.

So either by accident or perhaps deliberately, they created a war with France and Prussia won that war.

Prussia won that war, which meant that they took this land, Alsace-Lorraine away from France.

it's a very important piece of land because it's got lots of raw materials and important sorts of things that different countries want.

It caused France to be very upset in losing that land.

And it comes down to this idea of imperialism that we were talking about of one ruler ruling over lots of different countries.

So one government being in charge of lots of different nations or states or territories, and the Prussian Emperor wants to be in charge of all of the German people and, this perhaps isn't too strange or unusual after all other countries in Europe, including Britain and France, they had large empires.

They colonised many countries by force and ruled over many lands.

They travelled to America and to Australia and to Africa.

They'd taken their weapons and through force, they'd taken over those lands and they'd taken slaves and they'd taken control of all the different resources and still were in charge of those countries.

So Britain or other European countries were imperialistic, but now Prussia was marching forward with this imperialism and being very successful in Central Europe.

So we're going to pause now, and I'm going to ask you your first question.

I'd like you to write down an answer to this.

It's better to write down an answer 'cause that gives you some thinking time, now lock it in your brain a bit more.

So your first question is this.

Why would Prussia building up its empire, worry, other European countries? Take a moment, pause the video and write your best answer.

Here's Prussia again, in a different map, and you can see this dark grey is all Prussia and they take over all of this light grey as well.

They're taking over most of Central Europe.

You can see Austria just below Austria-Hungary, also including German speaking people but different monarchy.

So it did manage to take over over Austria-Hungary.

France, just to the left of it here, to the West of it.

Russia to the East of it and Britain of course, where we're sort of just over the channel.

The person that's often credited with unifying Germany is this gentleman here, he's called Otto Von Bismarck.

Bismarck was the chancellor at the government and had this real sense of nationalism.

You can see here, nationalism, another key theme.

This idea that the German people were better than other people.

Their culture was better.

They deserved to have all of this land.

They deserved to be a great empire because they were better.

Again, other European countries had this idea.

Britain had this idea when they went and colonised other countries and called them uncivilised.

What they meant was they were better than they.

Britain felt that they were better than other people.

So different countries developing a sense of nationalism.

The feeling that they are better than other countries.

So we've got imperialism and nationalism growing across Europe.

So just to recap, see if you can answer this question.

We're in the late 1800s now, about 1871 to about 1900 and relationship between Prussia and its next door neighbour, France, are very poor.

The relations are very, very bad.

Why are they so bad at this point? See if you can not answer that question.

Pause and write down why they were so bad.

So hopefully you mentioned one of these two things.

That France and Prussia had fought in a war with each other.

The Prussian-Franco War it was called when from, I think it was about 1871, and Prussia had taken that land of Alsace-Lorraine away from France.

So these two next door neighbours are not best friends in this period.

So that led countries to start to make alliances, deals, agreements, and France who just had their land taken away, made a deal with Russia on the other side.

They said, hey, we need to, we're in trouble here.

The Prussian Empire is so powerful right in the centre.

If we're not careful, we could be invaded.

Let's make a deal that if Germany, if Prussia invade either one of us will have each other's backs.

They start to make these alliances and so Germany in response starts to make an alliance.

They say, to their neighbours in Austria-Hungary, hey, on one side we've got France and the other side we've got Russia.

We could be in trouble of being invaded here.

France also made an agreement with the United Kingdom.

We could be in trouble, we're in circled.

We need to make sure that we team up as well.

So these different countries starts to make all of these different alliances with each other.

So here's another question for you to ponder.

How could having all of these different alliances that you can see, how could that make a war involving lots of different nations, more likely? Pause the video and write your answer to that question.

So hopefully you've mentioned that once you have alliances, if one country is invaded or goes to war, lots of other countries will feel like they have to be involved because they've made a promise to other countries.

We'll see that's exactly what happens.

So we've got imperialism, we've got nationalism and we've got alliances across Europe.

Our last feature is this idea of militarism, which comes from the word military, navies and armies, countries building up their armed forces.

You can see in this picture here, they call it an arms race.

Arms as in, weapons.

So we've got nationalist movements, we've got an arms race and they say that these clouds are sort of blowing on the flames at the start of the World War.

The Triple Alliance, the Triple Entente, all of these different sorts of things here, a world ready to set on flame.

There's a trouble in the Balkans which we'll get to in a moment.

So on top of these rising tensions, countries are also increasing their military.

Between 1910 and 1914, nations across Europe, hugely increased how much they spent on their military.

Here's a table it shows you, how much the increase was.

So France increased how much they were spending on their army and navy by 10%.

Britain by 13%, Russia by 39%, and Prussia, the new Germany, by huge 73%.

So in this tense situation, we've also got countries really expanding their militaries.

Let's recap our four main factors that led to the First World War, the conditions for the First World War breaking out.

First of all, there was this rising militarism across Europe.

Second, there were lots of alliances, intricate alliances across Europe with countries and deals with each other.

There was a sense of imperialism still, this idea that one country could rule over lots of other countries.

There was this sense of nationalism across different European countries that my country is the best.

We're going to switch now a little bit from Central Europe.

We're going to look at the Balkans.

So we can see it there all these tensions rising across Prussian Empire and Central Europe but let's zoom in on this area in the Southeast here.

It's called the Balkans.

All of these countries down in the sort of South and East of Europe.

So zoom in there.

You can see, there's lots of different countries.

Modern-day Serbia, Montenegro, Sarajevo here.

The sort of capital of what's now Bosnia and, I can't pronounce this word.

You can look it up and pronounce it for me.

Lots of people who are sort of living around here and have a sense of identity.

Then something very, very important happens.

It's often called the spark that began the First World War.

The heir to the Austria-Hungary throne, a man called Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated while he was in Sarajevo.

The person that was going to become King of Austria-Hungary travelled to Sarajevo and Austria-Hungary had taken over this land.

They'd annexed these territories.

Serbia were very upset about this because they felt like that should be a part of their sort of a territory of their people.

They wanted to unify their people in the same way that Prussia had unified their people.

There was one group that were especially obsessed about this, a terrorist group called the Black Hand group and they decided that to take vengeance on Austria-Hungary for annexing what they felt like was their land, they would assassinate the heir to the Austria-Hungary throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

We're going to watch a little video now of how that happened.

You can see here there's a picture, of what it might've looked like with the assassination.

This gentlemen here who going to be, a 19 year old with a gun killing the Archduke and his wife as they drove through Sarajevo.

So the conditions were already in place, First World War to begin, but the spark that sparked it off was this assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Balkans.

That triggered a number of events.

Let's take a closer look and we're going to do a little bit of reading now.

So there's some text on your screen.

I'd like you just to pause the video and read through this text.

Hopefully you've had a chance to read that now.

Just in case it's too small, I'll read it for you.

The empire of Austria-Hungary was in conflict with Serbia, a country in the Balkans.

Austria-Hungary saw Serbia is a big threat to its stability.

So to try and control this, Austria-Hungary annexed, they took over the territory of Bosnia, which was also in the Balkans in 1908.

Serbia wanted to unify the people in the Balkans so they were very angry that Austria-Hungary had done this.

As a result, a terrorist group from Serbia planned the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

On the 28th of June, 1914, a 19 year old called Gavrilo Princip shot him while he was visiting Serbia.

Immediately countries across Europe were forced to take sides between Austria-Hungary or Serbia.

Russia was a supporter of Serbia and then on 5th July, Germany promised Austria-Hungary full support against Serbia.

If either side back down they'd lose credibility and prestige as great powers.

So we can see the idea of militarism and nationalism and imperialism, all coming in here, and there's alliances as well of course.

So I'd like you to read to that text again.

Remember the video.

You can go back and watch it again if you'd like, and answer this question in your book.

Why was Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated? Pause the video now and answer that question.

Hopefully you got a good answer to that question and, it's quite complicated.

Lots of countries involved, lots of disagreements, lots of alliances and so it's worth pausing and making sure you have it all in your head correct.

To help with that, I'm going to put a timeline together now of the events of July.

So I'm going to introduce them one by one.

This is called the July Crisis.

We're in July, 1914 now, the start of the First World War.

This is where it all kicks off, the July Crisis.

July 19, sorry, not July, 1917, July, 1914.

I can quickly change up.

There we go, phew.

So July, 1914, the July Crisis.

So the first thing that happens after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Austro-Hungarian heir, is Austria-Hungary give an ultimatum.

That's a final warning, a final deal, a demand, a final demand.

They say, you need to do these things or else war.

It's a ridiculous ultimatum asking for all sorts of things that Serbia couldn't possibly do.

So, Serbia unable to fulfil and choose not to fulfil that ultimatum.

About this time France and Russia make an alliance to support Serbia.

France and Russia already have made that deal with each other and they say, hey, let's protect Serbia.

They're in trouble with Austria-Hungary here let's agree that we will protect them.

Austria-Hungary and Germany, declare war on Serbia when Serbia don't answer the ultimatum.

They only gave them 48 hours to reply and Serbia doesn't apply, so Germany say to Austria-Hungary, hey, we'll back you up here.

We'll help you and we'll declare war on Serbia together.

Now Russia has a deal with France.

They said, we're going to back you up France.

We're going to protect Serbia.

So Russia starts to mobilise its army that means get them ready, get all of the soldiers together, get all the weapons ready, they start to mobilise their army.

Germany finds out about this and they issue an ultimatum to Russia, a final demand.

They say, hey, stop mobilising your army.

Russia doesn't do that, they continue to mobilise and so Germany declares war on Russia as well.

France, because they're friends with Russia, have a deal, the alliance with Russia, then also needs to declare war on Germany because Germany's declared war on Russia.

So that's the July Crisis.

That's the events as they unfolded that marked the beginning of the First World War.

So I've got those events here, jumbled up.

The green events, Austria-Hungary and Germany, and the purple events, France and Russia and Serbia.

So take a moment and see if you can draw your own timeline, putting those events in the correct order so that in your head, you make sure that you've got them on the correct order, you know how the events unfolded.

Pause the video and draw a timeline and write those events in now.

Great, got it all clear in your head.

It should look like this.

You can mark it now with a different coloured pen if you'd like to, make sure you've got it all right.

So what about Britain? At the moment Britain aren't involved in the war, and Britain don't need to be involved in the war.

In fact, there's a bit of a sentiment in Britain that maybe we shouldn't get involved in this European conflict.

Could be very dangerous, could take a very long time, is it really anything to do with us? It's a bit of a sentiment that maybe we don't want to be involved in the war.

The person in charge of Britain's foreign policy is the foreign secretary, this man here, Sir Edward Grey.

He was in charge of foreign policy and Edward Grey felt that looking at Europe, we couldn't let Germany take over France and take over all of Western Germany.

We had an obligation with a duty to stop that.

The king felt the same way.

King George felt the same way at this point, but we didn't want to guarantee that we wouldn't do that.

So when Germany said, hey, Germany sent a letter to the UK and said, hey, will you stay out of all of this please, don't get involved in the war.

The king and and the government said, we're not going to promise that, maybe we will get involved, maybe we won't.

One of the things that Sir Edward Grey said was, you shouldn't attack France and you shouldn't attack Russia.

The king was clear in that as well, you shouldn't attack France and you shouldn't attack Russia.

But it wasn't clear whether that would make us get involved.

The thing that we said would make us get involved is if Belgium, this little country down, this little country in between France and Germany, if Belgium was invaded, then we would get involved.

Now, Belgium weren't involved at the moment.

They were neutral.

They weren't on either side.

Britain said, we will guarantee the neutrality of Belgium.

We'll make sure that they don't get picked on it.

They don't get invaded 'cause they're staying out of it, so that wouldn't be fair, and Germany ignore that.

Germany say to Belgium, we want to march our soldiers through your country so that we can attack France.

Belgium says no, and Germany sends their soldiers into Belgium anyway.

So once they do that, Britain joins the war and declares war on Germany on the Triple Alliance powers.

The Triple Alliance powers of Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany, sometimes called the axis powers.

So now the UK, France and Russia are all involved in this pack together called the Triple Entente sometimes.

Fighting against the alliance powers.

So what was the blame? Coming back to our first question, what was to blame for the First World War? Well, this man's called Arthur Zimmerman, and he was the German diplomat to Britain, the German ambassador to Britain.

His role was to be in Britain and to try and make sure that the country still got on, and Arthur Zimmerman had this to say.

"This damn system of alliances.

the curse of modern times".

So Zimmerman obviously felt that these alliances between different countries were the cause of all of these problems. The reason that, one conflict escalated into a war in which every major nation in Europe by 1915 was involved in fighting it.

Do you agree with Zimmerman? Was it only alliances that were to blame for the outbreak of the First World War? Or were the other factors, militarism, imperialism, nationalism, were they equally important? How do those factors interact with each other? This is how we do really sophisticated history work.

We don't just look at one factor.

Very rarely in history is there one cause and one effect, we look at multi factors or multifactorial causation.

So have a go at writing and answer about how the different factors influenced or caused the First World War.

Pause the video and see if you can write your best answer to that.

It could be a paragraph.

It could be a couple of pages.

Pause the video and write your answers to that now.

So that's just done.

That's the outbreak of the First World War.

The only thing left to do is your quiz.

So close down this video and there'll be a quiz waiting for you, which will just test you on some of the key facts to make sure you've got the main pieces of information locked into your brain, ready for our lesson, and ready for our next lesson on Thursday.

I'm going to look forward to seeing you then.

Thanks very much, bye.