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For the past two weeks We’ve been looking at the first battles of world war 1. Germany attacking France (through Belgium) after Austria attacked Serbia. England engaging Germany.
Do you remember that we took a rhetoric course through Silverdale Press? Well, we took some of what we were learning through that course and are applying them to speeches we are finding about the start of the world wars.
Wilhelm of Germany and Lloyd Jones of England. The lad read through the speeches giving me the main points and figuring out what persuasive points each man made in favour of their own people and country. The lad was shocked to read Wilhelm say he wasn’t looking for war but he would take it if the opportunity presented itself. With the Lloyd Jones speech he asked “what made the Germans barbarians?” This led us to start understanding how the rhetoric happened.
Books Read:
The lad read through sections of the following books.
The Great War.
Desperate Glory: the Story of WW1.
First World War.
Battles.
The War to End all Wars.
The First World War.
Videos:
We watched these movies as well as others. I love watching these videos with my lad. We learn so much and often stop just to talk.
We paused this video frequently to talk about some of the ideas. The lad was really able to show me the results of his reading as he answered my questions and filled in some of the background this video doesn’t provide. For instance, he told me that Britain had a treaty with Belgium because of it’s proximity to a weak spot in Britain’s defenses. Having Belgium as an ally meant that if anyone wanted to attack Britain they would have to go through Belgium. This alliance meant that attacking Belgium meant you had a powerful enemy defending them. We watched the next four in this series as well. Taking us through the first five weeks of the war.
The lad had mentioned the Krupp420 to me a few times. It was 24 feet long, weighed 98 tons, and had the ability to fire 2000 lb shells over the range of 9 miles. The German’s used this gun effectively against the Belgium forts. It’s a massive gun.
And for variety I played this one… which ended up really helping ME understand how all the alliances came into play. The lad helped me put all the pieces together as well.
Since Germany first attacked Belgium, we had Belgium Waffles for supper on Thursday night. Seemed fitting. 🙂 I wanted to make a bigger, more “Belgium-ish” meal but couldn’t find what I needed.
Looking Forward
Looking forward we’ll be studying
- Soldiers, training, recruitment, uniforms
- Trench warfare
- War at sea
- More battles
- Animals of war
- Canada at war
- Shell shock
- Propaganda
I discovered some twitter accounts to follow that provide us with photos of the war to look at and information we didn’t otherwise know or even think to learn about. World War 1 & 2 Photos. News from the Front. World War II facts. WhatIfHistory. The Great War. Great war 100 years.
Others in this series:
Assassination!
Belgium in the early 1900’s.
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