Teaching the first world war: what Europe's pupils learn about the conflict

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/teaching-first-world-war

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United Kingdom

The first world war is not really taught in British schools. Nearly all British children do learn about the 1914-1918 war, but only really as a war fought between two countries, Britain and Germany. What they learn can be summed up in one word: trenches.

So what usually gets missed out? The Serbs and Austrians only get a mention at the beginning. The Russians' three-year war on the eastern front against the Germans and Austrians is usually glossed over, as is the three-year war fought by the Italians on the Allied side. Most British teenagers would never understand why the 1914-1918 war is called the "first world war." They are not taught about the campaigns that made it a world war: the war at sea that stretched far beyond Europe at times, and the land campaigns in the Middle East, Africa and east Asia.

In most schools history teachers focus overwhelmingly on aspects where British involvement was most significant. The British-dominated Battle of the Somme (1916) receives exhaustive attention, whereas the equally significant French-dominated Battle for Verdun (1916, too) often gets left out. And so the first world war for most British people remembering their history lessons means mud, barbed wire and machine guns from the trenches on the western front.

Why? Because that was the fighting experience of most British soldiers, the wartime experience that has passed into national culture.

Over the past 30 years British children have been asked to look at sources as part of their first world war education, as they would be for any other aspect of history. These sources are often a bewildering mixture of the specialist historian's analysis of episodes from the war and extracts from a letter from lowly Private Bloggins describing the horror of the trenches. This encourages children studying the war to question what happened and to develop their own opinions.

The most common debate from our British-centric view is: was Field Marshal Douglas Haig a "donkey"? In other words, was the Haig as played by Geoffrey Palmer in Blackadder sweeping toy soldiers off the battle table at HQ hundreds of miles away from the front, an accurate portrayal? Fourteen-year-olds pontificating on this must be making the old field marshal turn in his grave, and this debate also perpetuates the myth that British soldiers were "lions led by donkeys", the idea that the brave ordinary Tommy was let down by the brandy-soaked toffs in charge. Partly true, no doubt, but a lazy simplistic stereotype that is easy to pass on through the decades.

As we get ready to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war next year I hope that we in Britain will finally learn that it was indeed a worldwide war, and a war in which Britain was one among many belligerents.

Jonathan Lisher, history teacher in Edinburgh, for the Guardian

France

A French child will cover the muddy trenches and murderous assaults three times during their formative years.

Teachers have four or five hours to teach the conflict, but national programmes don't allow for a richer understanding of the war and its stakes. They force the teachers to focus on certain aspects, to the detriment of a more global comprehension of the war.

Once the military phases are quickly run over, it's on to the mass violence that constitutes the backdrop and the crux of secondary education. From the battle of Verdun, a symbol of trench warfare and uncensored degrees of violence, to the study of the fighting experience, the approach of the French teacher should allow for students to understand the phenomenon of the total mobilisation of societies in war.

The fact is that the war is not envisaged as a point where international tensions peaked, of the rivalries of European powers, or the building of alliances; it is only seen through the prisms of suffering.

French teaching of the suffering of soldiers on the battlefields is reduced to the Franco-German confrontation. It leaves the suffering of civilian populations behind, or even of the details of mass murders, as the teaching of the Armenian genocide well illustrates. The first world war is not taught as an end in itself - the traumatism of the front, the upheavals of wartime societies and the genocidal violence clear a path to the study of the second world war. It is almost as if the first world war were a point of depart in a direction leading to the peak of mass violence during the second world war.

Iannis Roder, history teacher in Saint-Denis, for Le Monde

Germany

The basic question when teaching history is how to get young people interested and whether the events are too abstract for them to identify with.

My school in Ingolstadt offers a visit to a local Bavarian army museum where there is a permanent display showing the daily hardships of the front, or the life of families at home. It's good at bringing the subject home to young people. Trenches are recreated, and knapsacks available so you can feel how heavy they weigh.

The first world war is taught at various points - for example, in the eighth grade, students learn about imperialism and the war. In general, our history curriculum is not very detailed. There are broad topics such as "material battle and the impact on civilian population". But beyond that it is up to the teachers. Interestingly, the only mandatory topic is the Treaty of Versailles. Bearing in mind that the Golden Bull of 1356 is considered basic knowledge, but the first world war isn't, you can start to wonder.

The turning points of the US entry into the war and the October revolution may pass many students by. One has to bear in mind of course that these are 14-year-olds and so it may be difficult for them to properly understand these things. There is also a shortage of time to become properly engrossed with these issues. And Nazism and the second world war are of much greater interest to young people than the first world war.

Fritz Schäffer, history teacher in Ingolstadt, for Süddeutsche Zeitung

Poland

I'm afraid my pupils will not learn much about the activities of the Polish armed forces during the first world war. I do hope though that they will understand why that war is called the Great war.

I have to choose a specific way of telling them the story and I propose one in which the first world war is one of the turning points in history. I teach about a war which, at the turn of the 19th century, a significant part of European public opinion expected and wanted, but which nobody ever really imagined.

We read about how the bourgeoise of the modernist era lived with the picture of war and its imagined glories, and we contrast that with the fragments of memoirs from the western front or the paintings of Otto Dix.

The writings of Bertrand Russell, fragments of Doctor Faustus and George Steiner's description of the "imagined garden of liberal culture" help to illustrate the modernist narrative of the 19th century as an era of progress combined with crisis. The Great war is the point at which that narrative becomes impossible.

If I do use a textbook, it is Enzo Traverso's The origins of Nazi violence. Traverso likens modern war with its organisation, administration, use of technology and anonymous mass killings, to a factory. In this light, the first world war becomes one of the keys to understanding the birth of Nazi ideology and the second world.

Poland gained independence as a result of the first world war. Over here, tales of the Great war are not tales of catastrophe, but of a wonderful event which, thanks to the combined wisdom of the leaders of the socialist and nationalist camps, made possible the rebirth of the Polish state after 123 years of being non-existent.

In my school, pupils start their third year of secondary school with a trip to Sarajevo. In essays they prepare, they discuss the intricacies of international politics at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. The trip to the Balkans also enables us to discuss the issue of nationalism within nations without a state, an important subject in Polish history.

When teaching about the Russian revolution, particular emphasis is placed on its utter unpredictability. Being conscious of the fact that in 1916 Lenin himself was not prepared for what was about to happen, helps one observe with healthy scepticism all attempts at historical predictions.

The Great war was also a turning point in the history of female emancipation. Poland, under pressure from the suffragettes, gave women the vote in 1918. This was the one political success that was not mentioned during the 90th anniversary celebrations of Poland regaining her independence, held in 2008. This fact enables one to connect the stories of the 19th-century fight for women's rights with a reflection on the contemporary Polish problems of gender equality.

For my pupils, the 20th century started in the summer of 1914. The first world war is the code to understanding the 19th century as well as the prelude to the 20th. It makes the self-congratulatory attitude of European culture impossible to accept.

Anna Dzierzgowska, history teacher in Warsaw, for Gazeta Wyborcza

Italy

In Italy, the first world war is studied in the last year of middle school and the last year of high school; the subject is given a significant place in the curriculum. But every teacher is free to choose the method they consider most effective.

There is no better way of explaining the first world war to young people than discussion. You need to tell them that hatred can be built, that the feelings of humans deemed useful for going to war can be "fabricated". And so you need to understand in whose interest it was to build that hatred - and why. This means interrogating ourselves about the economic, political, social and cultural causes of the conflict: on the role of propaganda, for example. Or, in Italy, about the interventionism of most intellectuals.

It's also necessary to deal with the war empirically, as an event with its own chronology, dates and events; placing everything in the complex international and Italian context of the time. For instance, comparing the Great war with the Balkan war of 1912 and 1913, or with the Moroccan crises of 1905 and 1911.

I have been a teacher for 18 years, and I am a supporter of traditional lessons, even if I'm not dead against other forms of classes. I believe the classroom remains the launch pad for any kind of reasoning. It is there that the teacher is able to connect the past and the present – and that, in many ways, is the case for the first world war.

The most immediate connection is with the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Then I talk about the climate of democratic mistrust during that period in Italy and Europe; about the firm belief that [political] parties were responsible for all the nation's woes and it was the individual that could make "the difference"; about the strong personality cult – derived from Romanticism – that would come to have significant consequences in the following years; about ethnic tensions.

I attribute much importance to the cultural aspects of the war. The possibility of exposing the mendacious speeches, populism and sophistry of politics, economics and culture is thrilling. Ultimately, a discussion of the early 20th century and, therefore, of the first world war, means reflecting on the origins of mass society – its institutions, its political lexicon, its tensions.

It is at school, and in our studies, that what happened 100 years ago can once again come alive and be full of meaning.

Roberto Sandrucci, history teacher in Rome, for La Stampa

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