European Magazines. Comparison
The origin of the conflict in European popular history magazines
A comparative analysis of different national viewpoints
Next you will be able to access a series of documents which contain excerpts of articles from different countries where the origin of the Great War is mentioned. Each task is dedicated to analyze the view on the origins of the conflict according to historians and popular history magazines from one of the countries participating in the EHISTO project. For each text, we suggest some activities.
Tasks:
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The origin of the conflict in German magazines. Get the text from here and complete the following activities: a. According to the first of the two German texts, was the assassination attempt a pretext used by Austria, or was it rather an excuse which was used by all the powers to get into the war? Did the military men, the politicians and the monarchs from different countries share an interest in beginning the war, or was there a part which imposed its will otherwise? b. The second text shows with great detail the events which unleashed the war, from the German point of view. How is the role of Serbia, Austria, Russia and Great Britain analyzed in the days prior to the outbreak of the war? c. According to the second text, why did Vienna feel reinforced with the German support? What role is attributed to Russia in the unleashing of the conflict? d. According to the second text, to whom is it considered fair to attribute the outbreak of the war? Did it happen exactly like this? |
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The origin of the conflict in British magazines. Get the text from here and complete the following activities: a. According to the first of the British texts, were there really economic reasons to start the war? And military ones? What were the real triggers of the war? Why do you think the text says that "the war was a miscalculation"? According to the text, who lost the war?
b. In the second text the different reasons for the countries to get into the war are analyzed, what was Great Britain's point of view? According to the text, did Britain have any interest to get involved in the war? |
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The origin of the conflict in Polish magazines. Get the text from here and complete the following activities: a. The Polish text introduces the point of view of the societies belonging to the fighting countries. Were they initially involved in the cause of the conflict? Why did they finally get involved afterwards?
b. How did the Polish society react before the call for war? |
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The origin of the conflict in Swedish magazines. Get the text from here and complete the following activities:
a. The Swedish text suggests that in fact the war was far from being inevitable. Why? What must have happened in each case for the war not to have started? Do you think the war was inevitable or did it happen as a result of a whole series of fatal circumstances, being all of them being avoidable? |
Tasks:
We suggest you to set out these questions and give these texts out to groups and at the end propose a game where each group play the role of a country trying to defend the reasons, according to what they have in their respective texts. You can "interview" them to try to extract the different points of view which have been noticed in the respective texts. Besides, in the Additional Material section you have enough information from the original sources that, in some cases, you'll be able to get if you want it.
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1 |
The origin of the conflict in German magazines. Get the text from here and complete the following activities: a. According to the first of the two German texts, was the attempt a pretext used by Austria, or was it rather an excuse which was used by all the powers to get into the war? Did the military men, the politicians and the monarchs from different countries share the interest in beginning the war, or was there a part which imposed its will otherwise? b. The second text shows with great detail the events which unleashed the war, from the German point of view. How is the role of Serbia, Austria, Russia and Great Britain analyzed in the days previous to the outbreak of the war? c. According to the second text, why did Vienna feel reinforced with the German support? What role is attributed to Russia in the unleashing of the conflict?
d. According to the second text, whom is it considered fair to attribute the outbreak of the war? Did it happen exactly like this? |
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2 |
The origin of the conflict in British magazines. Get the text from here and complete the following activities: a. According to the first of the British texts, were there really economic reasons to start the war? And military ones? What were the real triggers of the war? Why do you think the text says that "the war was a miscalculation"? According to the text, who lost the war?
b. In the second text the different reasons for the countries to get into the war are analyzed, what was Great Britain's point of view? According to the text, did Britain have any interest to get involved in the war? |
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3 |
The origin of the conflict in Polish magazines. Get the text from here and complete the following activities: a. The Polish text introduces the point of view of the societies belonging to the fighting countries. Were they initially involved in the cause of the conflict? Why did they finally get involved afterwards?
b. How did the Polish society react before the call for war? |
|
4 |
The origin of the conflict in Swedish magazines. Get the text from here and complete the following activities:
a. The Swedish text suggests that in fact the war was far from being inevitable. Why? What must have happened in each case for the war not to have started? Do you think the war was inevitable or did it happen as a result of a whole series of fatal circumstances, being all of them avoidable? |
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