Teaching Resources

World War 2-1 Drama Planning

Theme planning World War II - P7

Sir Winston Churchill biography 1

Sir Winston Churchill biography 2

Researching WW2 people

(PDF files)

Neville Chamberlain’s Speech

At 11.15am on September 3rd 1939 the Prime Minister addressed the nation.

“I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at Street. This morning the Ambassador in handed the government a final note stating that unless told them by
that they were prepared to withdraw from a state of would exist between us.
I have to tell you now that no such has been received and that consequently this is at with .

What kind of settlement did Chamberlain believe might have been possible?
The settlement would have involved and France.
Who said that Poland rejected his attempts at a settlement?
Did the Polish people agree with this?
Which country was obliged to go to the aid of Poland along with Britain?
Chamberlain described the attack on Poland as and
Did Chamberlain trust Hitler?

Sir Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Churchill was the eldest son of the aristocrat Lord Randolph Churchill, born on 30th November 1874. He is best known for his stubbornness yet courageous leadership as Prime Minister for Great Britain when he led the British people from the brink of defeat during World War II.
Following his graduation from the Royal Military College in Sandhurst he was commissioned in the Forth Hussars in February 1895. As a war correspondent he was captured during the Boer War. After his escape he became a National Hero. Ten months later he was elected as a member of the Conservative Party. In 1904 he joined the Liberal Party where he became the president of the Board of Trade.
It was in 1910 he became Home Secretary where he worked with David Lloyd George. In 1911 he left the Home Office and became first Lord of the Admiralty. His career was almost destroyed as a result of the unsuccessful Gallipoli campaign during the First World War. He was forced to resign from the Admiralty. However, he returned to Government as the Minister of Munitions in 1917. In this year he joined the coalition party in which he was a member until it collapsed in 1922 when for two years he was out of Parliament. He returned to the conservative government in 1924 and was given the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer. For 10 years during the depression Churchill was denied cabinet office. His backing and support for King Edward VIII during his abdication were frowned upon by the national government. However in September 1939, when Nazi Germany declared war on Poland, the public supported him in his views. Once again Neville Chamberlain appointed him First Lord of the Admiralty on September 3rd, 1939.
In 1940 Churchill succeeded Chamberlain as prime minister and during World War II he successfully secured military aid and moral support from the United States. He travelled endlessly during the war establishing close ties with leaders of other nations and co-ordinated a military strategy which subsequently ensured Hitler's defeat.
His tireless efforts gained admiration from all over the world. He was defeated, however, during the 1945 election by the Labour party who ruled until 1951. Churchill regained his power in 1951 and lead Britain once again until 5th April 1955 when ill health forced him to resign. He spent much of his latter years writing (The History of the English-Speaking People) and painting. In recognition of his historical studies he received the Nobel Price for Literature in 1953 and in 1963 the US Congress conferred on him honorary American citizenship.
In 1965, at the age of 90 he died of a stroke. His death marked the end of an era in British History and he was given a state funeral and was buried in St. Martin's Churchyard, Bladon, Oxfordshire. During all of his life he had served no less than six British monarchs: Queen Victoria, Edward VII, George IV, Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II.
He also possessed a large collection of toy soldiers. However in his book 'My Early Life' he does not mention which make of soldiers he collected. They were probably all made between 1880 and 1900 and therefore some time before Lineol and Hausser figures became available. As a collector he might be the only one of whom also a personality figure was produced.

Winston Churchill

(1874–1965)

Sir Winston Churchill
Churchill was a politician and wartime Prime Minister who led Britain to victory in World War II.
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born on 30 November 1874 at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. His father was the prominent Tory politician, Lord Randolph Churchill. Churchill attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, before embarking on an army career. He saw action on the North West Frontier of India and in the Sudan. While working as a journalist during the Boer War he was captured and made a prisoner-of-war before escaping.
In 1900, Churchill became Conservative Member of Parliament for Oldham. But he became disaffected with his party and in 1904 joined the Liberal Party. When the Liberals won the 1905 election, Churchill was appointed undersecretary at the Colonial Office. In 1908 he entered the Cabinet as president of the Board of Trade, becoming home secretary in 1910. The following year he became First Lord of the Admiralty. He held this post in the first months of World War I, but after the disastrous Dardanelles expedition, for which he was blamed, he resigned. He joined the army, serving for a time on the Western Front. In 1917, he was back in government as minister of munitions. From 1919 to 1921 he was Secretary of State for War and Air, and from 1924 to1929 was Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The next decade were his 'wilderness years', in which his opposition to Indian self-rule and his support for Edward VIII during the 'Abdication Crisis' made him unpopular, while his warnings about the rise of Nazi Germany and the need for British rearmament were ignored. When war broke out in 1939, Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty. In May 1940, Neville Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister and Churchill took his place. His refusal to surrender to Nazi Germany inspired the country. He worked tirelessly throughout the war, building strong relations with US President Roosevelt while maintaining a sometimes difficult alliance with the Soviet Union.
Churchill lost power in the 1945 post-war election but remained leader of the opposition, voicing apprehensions about the Cold War (he popularised the term 'Iron Curtain') and encouraging European and trans-Atlantic unity. In 1951, he became Prime Minister again. He resigned in 1955, but remained an MP until shortly before his death. As well as his many political achievements, he left a legacy of an impressive number of publications and in 1953 won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Churchill died on 24 January 1965 and was given a state funeral.

Use different thinking skills to respond to the Treaty of Versailles.

Knowledge
What?
When?
Who?
Where?
1. What was the Treaty of Versailles?
2. When was it put together?
3. Who were the four main leaders who were involved in putting the treaty together?
4. Where was the Treaty discussed and signed?
Comprehension
Why?
5. Why was the treaty put together?
Application
6. How would you have felt if you had been a German living at the time that the treaty was signed?
Analysis
7. List 5 of the terms of the Treaty and explain why you think that these terms were included in the treaty.
Synthesis
8. If the German Government had been invited to discuss the Treaty, how might things have been different?
Evaluation
9. Was the Treaty of Versailles fair? Explain your answer carefully.

World War I

It was started in 1914. The event triggering it was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The people behind this assassination were a Serbian terrorist group known as, "The Black Hand".

The Archduke was heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne so Austria-Hungary gave Serbia, who it felt commanded The Black Hand to assassinate the Archduke, an ultimatum.

Austro-Hungary was not satisfied with Serbia's response and on July 28, 1914 Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.

(The Archduke’s assassination was on June 28, 1914.)

WWII timeline

1914 World War I began

1918 World War I ended

1919 Treaty of Versailles

1933 Adolf Hitler becomes ruler of Germany

1935 Hitler announces his disagreement with the Versailles Treaty. All Germans conscripted for two years

1936 Hitler begins to rebuild Germany’s armed forces

1936 3rd March German troops marched into Rhineland
1938 Hitler’s soldiers marched into Austria

1938 Hitler makes demands on Czechoslovakia

1938 Britain, France, Italy and Germany meet in Munich to discuss Hitler’s demands for Sudetenland

1938 Germany took over Sudetenland

1939 1st September Germany invaded Poland

1939 3rd September Britain and France declared war on Germany

1940 9th April to 1st May Germany invades and conquers Denmark and Norway

1940 10th May German invasion of Netherlands and Belgium begins. German tanks break into northern France

1940 26th May 224,000 British and 95,000 Allied troops carried to safety from Dunkirk by a flotilla of Royal Navy and civilian boats

1940 14th June Germans enter Paris. France signs an armistice on 22nd June

1940 10th July–15th September: The Battle of Britain. The RAF wins and Hitler abandons his plans to invade Britain

1940/1 German bombers begin full-scale attacks on British cities (the Blitz)

1941 British sink the German battleship Bismarck

1941 22nd June Germany invades the Soviet Union

1941 Germans besiege Leningrad. The city remains under siege until 1944. Almost 1 million inhabitants are killed

1942 The Battle of Alamein in North Africa. British forces defeat the Germans

1943 Germans at Stalingrad surrender having lost 300,000 men

1943 Climax of the Battle of the Atlantic. German U-boats try to starve the British by sinking supply boats.

1943 In the Battle of Kursk the Russians defeat the Germans in the biggest tank battle in history.

1943 The Allies invade Sicily. The invasion leads to the fall of Mussolini’s government in Italy

1944 Allied forces land at Anzio in southern Italy and begin their advance through Italy

1944 Allied forces begin the battle for Monte Cassino, site of the oldest European monastery.
1944 The D-Day landings. A massive force lands in Normandy in northern France.

1944 13th June - The first German V-1 bombs are fired against London.

1944 1st August – The Poles rise up against the Germans in Warsaw. The uprising is crushed.

1944 25th August – The Allies liberate Paris from German occupation

1944 17th September The Battle of Arnhem: Allied paratroopers drop into the Netherlands. They are defeated.

1944 Battle of the Bulge – the Germans launch a last desperate offensive in the Ardennes (France). It fails

1945 British RAF destroy the German city Dresden. About 60,000 German civilians are killed

1945 30th April Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker as Soviet forces occupy the city

1945 8th May War ends in Europe

1945 Churchill loses the election

1945 6th August atomic bombs dropped at Hiroshima

1945 9th August atomic bombs dropped at Nagasaki

1945 Japan signs unconditional surrender. War is over

Map

Neville Chamberlain’s Speech