Lesson video

Hi, and thank you so much for joining me on this.

The first of six lessons about the Western Front.

And the question we're going to be looking at is what do the stories of the often forgotten armies reveal about the Western Front.

But before we get into all of that for the next six lessons with me, you going to need a pen or pencil, something to write with, and then something to write on.

Maybe that's your exercise book or a piece of paper.

So if you haven't got that, please pause the video and go and grab it now.

Okay.

So hopefully you've got everything you need just before we properly get started.

Just wanted to introduce myself.

My name is Ms. Cusworth.

I'm a history teacher in Southeast London, and I teach the First World War for GCSE.

But what we're going to be looking at is, is there kind of a slightly different take on the Western Front? And our question is what do the stories of the often forgotten armies reveal so sort of show about the Western Front and why I've got this image of the curtain is because I think that idea of revealing something is kind of summed up by it.

So I'm hoping that in our lessons together, we're going to be looking at often forgotten armies, and they're going to allow us to sort of peek behind the curtain of the Western Front.

They're going to show us something new about the Western Front.

Now, before we kind of get into looking at the different forgotten armies, and maybe thinking about why we're doing that, let's just be super clear.

Apologies if you know exactly what we're talking about here, but here's a sort of timeline of the 20th century, and we're going to be talking about the First World War.

When we speak about the Western Front in these lessons.

We're going to be talking about the First World War.

And then you'll know that sort of tragically a couple of centuries later, the Second World War happened and when we're here in the 21st century.

And this is a sort of brief outline of the war, some of the things we're going to be covering.

So it began in 1914 and then shortly after it, something called the race to the sea happened.

And we're going to be talking more about that in our next lesson.

And then in 19 sort of 1915, really something called stalemate had set in.

The two sides neither of them could really get a particular advantage.

They were stuck in stalemate in the trenches, in the Western Front.

1916, saw really big battles.

The Somme maybe being the most famous of those from a British perspective, trying to break that stalemate, trying to win the war.

And then things start to change a little bit.

In 1917 Russia experiences revolution, they leave the war and the U.

S.

enters the war on the side of Britain, France and the allies.

And that really starts change things.

In 1918, something called the Spring Offensive happened, which is when Germany has a kind of lost push to try and win the war.

Knowing that the U.

S.

is coming in and that their entry is going to be really decisive.

And then in November, 1918, the war ends.

Now in our lessons together, we're mostly going to be looking at this kind of earlier part of the war.

There are other inquiries on Oak one about this period about why the war ended, and then a really interesting inquiry about the kind of peace, the troubles of making peace at the end of the war.

So check those out after you've done these lessons, perhaps, and let's just now think about what I mean by, or what we mean by Western Front.

I thought maybe the easiest way to do this would be to type Western Front into an image search.

You can see two types of images are coming up.

You've got lots of maps.

And then you've got these photos, and this one's from a film photos and images of kind of maybe what Western Front would have looked like if you had been there.

And so the Western front is an area.

Hence why you've got all of those maps.

And this is a map that I've drawn of the Western Front.

And you can kind of see where it is.

So you can see it in really Northern France and sort of Southern Belgium.

These xes represent battles that were fought, and we're going to be looking at some of those together in later lessons.

Here you can see Germany.

But most of the Western Front really is Northern France, Belgium.

And then here, you can see the sea with Cali in Northern France.

And if the map sort of extended a bit further on, you'd be able to see the sort of South of England with Dover.

So this is where a lot of the fighting took place though the Western Front is described as a theatre of war.

So an area that is, involved directly in fighting, that's what we mean by theatre of war.

An area that is involved directly in the fighting.

Where the fighting took place.

It took place on the Western Front in many cases.

And then these are some images of, like if you were there, what is it like for the people that fought on the Western Front.

You can see here, a lot of barbed wire, you can see men, soldiers in sort of, this looks almost kind of sandy, but oftentimes in fields you often think of the Western Front in trenches.

You can see your soldiers marching maybe to the front lines, or maybe marching away from the front lines to have arrest through kind of towns, maybe in Belgium or in France.

So before we move on with the lesson, what I would really like you to do is to create a mind map and Western Front is going to go in the middle.

And then I would like you to add on different details about the Western Front.

Take what you see in the pictures.

Maybe you want to write down this idea of the Western Front, being a theatre of war.

Think about where it is, where the Western Front was.

And I'd like you to pause the video, make that mind map, and then when you're done, carry on, press play on the video.

Okay.

So welcome back.

Hopefully you've got a mind map full of different ideas about what sort of war the Western Front was.

Just before we move on to the next part of the lesson, what I would like you to do is just make sure you're a hundred percent tight on that definition.

So What was the Western Front? Was it option one, Western Europe.

Option two, a theatre of war.

So where fighting directly takes place in Western Europe.

Option three, a line or option for an attitude held by Western Europeans in the First World War.

Could you write down for me? Either one, two, three, or four.

Okay.

So hopefully you wrote down option two, that it was a theatre of war, a place where fighting happened in Western Europe.

There were kind of trench lines.

We're going to talk about that later that went through the Western front line of trenches.

That's true, but that's not what that it means it was in Western Europe.

It's a theatre of war in Western Europe.

Okay.

So moving on, I would like you to write down for me three countries, or just kind of places you think fighting took place in the First World War.

So I'd like you to write those down on your piece of paper for me, you're going to get you to pause the video, and when you have finished writing down those three places, you can write down more if you want then you can pause the video and we'll move on.

Okay.

So if you're seeing this, hopefully you've written down your three places.

Now you might have put down a France, Belgium, you might have put down and then you might have been a bit stuck and thought, okay, actually, hold on, I know Ms. Cusworth said it was France.

It was Belgium.

But where else? I wonder how many of you put down that fighting took place in East Africa or that fighting took place in India.

Or the fighting took place on something that was the Eastern front, which is more in Eastern Europe, because from a British perspective, at least we did a tend not to think of those places, but that is where fighting took place.

Mostly as you can see on the Western Front, but actually across Europe, the middle East, across Iraq, across the globe really.

So that's why I fights took place, conflict took place.

Now we're going to think about who was involved so here you can see Serbia, Austria, Hungary, Russia, but look, see France, but then huge parts of Africa being involved in 1914 as we move into 1915.

Yeah, you can see China gets involved Brazil, United States, Canada, Australia, as well as obviously the obvious places of sort of Germany, great Britain, France.

And so what I want us to be thinking about now, and I've seen just how many countries were involved in the first world war.

I want you to think, why would so many countries take part? Often when we think of the First World War, we think of France, Britain and we think of Germany.

But as we've seen from here, it was actually much broader than that.

So what I'd like you to do for me is pause the video and write down a guest's prediction, or if maybe you're feeling confident and you kind of know the answer, why would so many different countries take part in the First World War? Pause the video and I'll see you in a moment.

Okay.

Welcome back.

So you might have a whole range of different answers.

Maybe you've put, Oh, well it was obviously Ms. Cusworth it was a World War.

That's kind of a cruise kind of in the title.

And so of course, lots of countries fought, but why did it turn into a World War when it started in Europe? And I think this map gives us a bit of a clue.

So it was quite busy, lots of different colours, but I think what it shows is that at this time you probably know this already Britain and France in particular, were empires and controlled territory and people from a variety of countries, continents, you can see Canada in the Caribbean, Australia, what was called British India, but actually includes lots of countries, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar countries in Africa.

And the same for France, huge swathes of Western North Africa.

And those countries took soldiers, and recruited soldiers from the empires and brought them to fight on the Western Front.

So when my thinking about often forgotten armies, that's sort of what I mean.

I mean, these soldiers, the troops, the soldiers from parts of the world that were ruled by Britain and France in particular.

By looking at their stories, we can, I think, find out a variety of different things about the Western From.

Now a lot of the things we're going to look at in our lessons together are taken from this book, The World's War.

Which looks at the forgotten soldiers of empire.

And it's written by a historian called David Olusoga.

And on the front cover of his book is a British soldier called Walter Tull, who was a football player and was kind of Caribbean heritage who fought in the First World War.

We're going to look at a range of different troops and Olusoga in his book, he gives this sort of reason really for why he wrote the book.

And he says 70 million men were mobilised, which means like got ready.

17 million men were mobilised during the First World War.

4 million non-white non-European soldiers fought for Britain, France and their allies.

So while it's a small percentage, perhaps it's a huge absolute number 4 million.

Seeing the first world war as the world war is at one level about recovering those stories and those perspectives, those viewpoints, the experiences of those 4 million non-white, non-European soldiers.

And the reason why I'm so excited about these lessons is because I think we know quite a lot about the Western Front.

We're quite familiar with it.

But by looking at the stories of these often forgotten armies, I feel like maybe we could get some new perspectives.

We could see the Western Front, maybe a little bit in a little bit more detail.

In a slightly different way.

And I think that's exciting because, well, partly because I love history, but also because I think it's valuable sometimes look again at something that actually maybe feels really familiar.

So where we're all often forgotten armies from? We're going to be looking at men from Canada, from Algeria, from what was known then as India, but actually covered, as I said before, a range of countries and from China.

We're going to be looking at a man called Ganga Singh.

We're going to be looking at a group of Algerian soldiers, a native Canadian soldier called Mike Mountain Horse and his experience.

And then at the Chinese labour Corps and their experience of the Western Front.

So I'm really excited about seeing you for the next few lessons.

Here's an image of where they were.

So although they came from all over the world, they actually fought or worked really close together on the Western Front at Ypres, Vimy Ridge, Cambrai, and this kind of more general area we know as the Western Front, that's where the soldiers and men served.

So please take a look at the other lessons.

Find out a bit about their stories.

For now, I am going to leave you with answering these five questions.

Where was the First World War mostly fought? What is the Western Front? In which continents did fighting take place during the First World War? You can just give me a few for that one.

Why did soldiers on the Western Front come from across the world and why are we looking at forgotten armies? So as usual, pause the video while you complete the questions, when you're done unpause and we'll go through the answers together.

Okay, so hopefully you are all done with the questions.

Let's go through some of the answers.

So where was the First World War mostly fought? The Western Front.

It would be good if you could write in a full sentence.

And then if you kind of mentioned that there were battles across Europe, but also Africa, Asia, and the Americas, give yourself a big tick though if you put Western Front or anything similar to that.

Where is the Western Front? This is where the fighting happened.

But it would be better if you use that time movie theatre of war.

If you talked about you might've said something about Northern France or Belgium, give yourself a tick.

If that's the case.

In which continents did fighting take place? Europe and others.

And then a kind of a good answer would be, although the First World War was fought primarily in Europe, conflict occurred in America, Africa and Asia.

Why did armies on the Western Front come from across the world? Acceptable answer would be because the war was global or because it was a World War.

But a better answer would be about colonialism and the empires and Britain and France in particular using mobilising soldiers from their empire.

So give yourself a tick if you got something similar to this.

And then the last one is, why are we looking at often forgotten armies? Now you might have a whole range of answers for this one.

These were some of my ideas.

You might've put because they're important.

You might have also talked about perspective.

So looking at often forgotten armies gives us a new and maybe different perspective on the First World War, meaning we can deepen our understanding.

Any answers that similar to that, give herself a tick.

So extension activity is taking the quotation.

Let me move myself a bit smaller.

From Olusoga's book, The World's War.

And it's using that quotation.

And what we've talked about in this lesson to answer maybe and write a paragraph.

You can use the sentence starters if you want, answering this question.

Why do you think the armies we are going to study, have often been left out of books and films about the Western Front? So it's asking you kind of a more overarching question about why have these soldiers from across the world, why have they often been forgotten? You can use the quotation on the previous slide and the sentence starters to help you answer that.

Okay.

So make sure that whether you're doing the extension activity or not, you do the end of lesson quiz to check your understanding.

And I really hope you join me for our next lesson about our first soldier.

I look forward to seeing you then, see you later.

Bye.