Lesson video

Hello, and welcome back to your Oak Academy history lesson with me Ms. Goult.

And our inquiry into what kind of peace was made in 1919.

So today's lesson is the third lesson of the inquiry, and we're looking into the question, what were the limits of self-determination? Now this lesson and this question will only make sense if you've already done lesson one and lesson two of this inquiry.

So if that's the case, great, we'll carry on, if not, go back and start with lesson one.

So if you are ready to go, for this lesson you will need a pen, so I suggest you pause the video now, get your pen and write down the title, what were the limits of self-determination? Right, so if we have a look at this map of Europe in 1914, so just before the First World War, what can we see? Now a lot of what we see here, are large sweeping empire, so here we have the Austria-Hungarian empire and we've got what is actually the German empire here as well.

Now, if we move forward to the end of the First World War and after the Treaty of Versailles, and those decisions been made about Germany.

This is what Europe looks like in 1919.

And you can see this area here, that was the Austria-Hungarian empire has been chopped up into several different countries, okay? Now, if we go back to our previous slide, we can see this empire, we can see it looks quite different.

Now the idea of having an empire had existed for hundreds of years.

And in the lead up to the First World War, countries in Europe had competed over the size of their empires and this was a big factor in the outbreak of war in 1914.

So in order to look at how they managed to do this and split Europe up, what we need to do is meet again these three men.

So we've got David Lloyd George of Britain, George Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the USA.

And we're going to zoom in on Woodrow Wilson's data.

That's why I've made his image a little bit bigger.

He came to the Paris Peace Conference to discuss the Treaty of Versailles with a grand idea of how to create lasting peace in Europe.

And he brought with him the 14 points with which he wanted to guide this peace making in Europe.

One of the most important points of the 14 point plan was an idea of self-determination.

Now self-determination meant the right of a country to rule itself and not be ruled by others.

Lots of national groups in Europe and around the world were colonies, which meant that they were part of empires.

So they were ruled over by much more powerful countries.

Just to give an example if we go back to our first map here, Austria-Hungary, or Austria-Hungarian is that, had huge numbers of ethnic groups mixed in.

Okay so, we'll go back.

Now, Wilson cares so much about the world and he wants to save the world from future Wars by this idea of self-determination.

He thinks that all war is created because people are greedy.

And if all countries were made up of self-determined nations so nations that ruled themselves and with democracy, which meant that they could vote for their leaders, then there'd be no need for war.

And in good sense Wilson was right.

If in 1914, the Serbians in Bosnia had been part of Serbia, there wouldn't be any need for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which then triggered off the Alliance system which caused the First World War.

There are however, some problems with Wilson's idea.

Firstly, he underestimates the greed of Britain and France.

They were not willing to give up their empires and work for the greater good.

They didn't want to.

They had too much to gain from it.

They had too much particularly money to gain from their empires.

He also underestimated this as well.

He underestimated how complex Europe was.

So this is the Austria-Hungarian empire.

And as you can see, this image shows the different ethnic groups which were in the empire.

Now if we just take German for example, which is that sort of pinky colour, you can see that in Austria, there's lots of German speakers, okay? But then if we go over into Hungary, lots of German speakers dotted around there.

And if we look North of Austria, which became Czechoslovakia, there's also lots of German speakers around the borders there.

So, this made it very difficult to make those decisions because it wasn't necessarily possible for one ethnic group to be ruled by the same ethnic group.

So this lesson we'll look at how this caused problems and how this affected what kind of peace was made in 1919.

Hello again, so based on that information, just to check that you've got it we're going to have a quiz.

So, I will come up with a question, then four options will appear on the screen.

I'd recommend then that you pause the video, have a think about what the answer is and it's up to you.

You can say the answer, you could point at the screen, or if you want to write down the answers, you can write them down as well, then press play, and I'll say the answer and give a bit of an explanation as well.

So without further ado question one.

What were the 14 points? Were they the terms of the Treaty of Versailles? The 14 reasons why France wanted revenge on Germany, the 14 terms of the armistice signed at the end of the First World War or Woodrow Wilson's idea of how peace should be made in Europe at the end of the First World War.

Pause your video and think about your answer.

Okay, here we go.

So it's option four, the 14 points were Woodrow Wilson's idea of how peace should be made in Europe at the end of the First World War.

And he wanted to make lasting peace.

He came to the Treaty of Versailles with his 14 points.

Right, question two.

What was self-determination? Was it a country that is ruled over by more powerful country, an ethnic group that rules over itself rather than being ruled over by another country, someone who is really sure that they are going to achieve something or a country which has an empire.

Pause here and think about your answer.

Okay, well done.

Number two, is an ethnic group that rules over itself, rather than being by another country.

And it was one of the key points of Woodrow Wilson's 14 points.

Right, question three.

Why was self-determination about the idea of ethic groups ruling themselves likely to be difficult in Europe at the end of the First World War.

And for this question, there are two correct answers out of the four.

So number one, Britain and France did not want to lose any of their colonies and therefore their power.

The answer number two, the ethnic groups in Europe preferred to be part of an empire and did not want independence.

Option three, Europe was very complicated with people of lots of different ethnicities in all sorts of different places across the continent.

Option four, Germany had kept enough power to argue with the Big Three that she should be able to keep all of her colonies.

So which ones do you think, pause now and choose.

Okay, welcome back.

And yes, it was option one and option three.

Britain and France did not want to lose any of their colonies and therefore their power.

And also Europe was very complicated and that made it very difficult to organise self-determination in Europe at the end of the First World War.

We come back to our lesson question, what were the limits of self-determination? There were three big limits of self-determination, and we'll keep going back to this.

Limit number one is that it was selective.

Not all countries were given self-determination.

So for example, African colonies of Germany were given to Britain and France.

The Big Three decided when they thought an ethnic group should govern themselves and when they did not.

And when Wilson returned to the USA, Britain and France made most of the decisions.

So not everyone got self-determination and this therefore linked because it was Britain and France making the decision to the fact that that self-determination was self-interested on the part of Britain and France.

Britain and France for doing what they wanted to do and not what was best for the countries themselves and by the countries I mean, the ones that they were deciding who was going to rule.

Wilson had underestimated the European lust for power.

The borders of the countries were dictated by the winners, not by the people who lived in the countries and Britain and France in particular changed.

They hoped their countries would gain the most.

Britain and France often did not ask the local populations who they wanted to govern them.

And you'll notice that Britain and France didn't lose any of their colonies in Africa.

Finally, it was shortsighted.

So self-determination was shortsighted.

Huge numbers of ethic groups and particularly Germans were cut off from the state that they identified with the state they wanted to be part of.

There were difficulties making countries have a uniform currency and transport systems. And the Big Three didn't think about a longterm consequences of the actions of splitting up the ethnic groups.

The border changes often resulted in particularly German speaking people, living in new countries where a different ethnic group had gained that self-determination.

So let's have a look, we'll break this down about what sort of peace was made as a result of this.

So looking at some examples of when self-determination was applied in a selective way, a good one, which picks out why this affected the sort of peace that was made in 1919 is the example of Poland.

So this is a map of Europe in 1919 after the decision have been made, but in 1918, Poland had no access to the state.

This state here, was part of Germany.

So Poland having no access to the city was enabled to trade using ships.

And it meant that Poland was poor.

So the Big Three, Britain France and the USA decided to give a section of land that had belonged to Germany, to Poland to govern.

So this bit up here, this bit between Germany and East Prussia.

This area of land was called the Polish Corridor.

And the city on the coast was called Danzig or Gdansk.

Now interestingly, 90% of the people in the city of Danzig were Germans, right.

But now they're being governed by Poland.

Whereas only 10% were Polish.

Now, in the countryside around the city, it's hopped 90% of the people were Polish and 10% were German.

Neither group were happy with the decision that had been made.

The Polish people wanted the land to actually belong to Poland.

And the Germans wanted to be part of Germany.

This caused tension between Germany and Poland, right up until Germany invaded Poland in 1939.

It's far from the Second World War.

Germany wanted their land back.

So, at this point then, let's have a look.

Why could decisions like that, that selective application of self-determination cause problems in the future.

I'd like you to pause your video and see if you can come up with one or two ideas.

I've gone for three of how this could cause problems in the future so pause your video now.

Okay, welcome back.

So I've come up with three general ideas of how this could cause problems in the future, which can also be applied to other examples as well.

So number one, is that the views of the citizens have not been taken into account.

So we know that the Polish and the Germans weren't happy with the decision.

So that could cause problems with people rebelling against rulers, for example.

Or wanting to rejoin countries that they've been removed from.

The second reason is that Germany had the worst outcome.

And you'll see this is a pattern that repeats itself.

So Germany was not happy with what happened.

And that means there's a risk of Germany, they want to revenge.

Now the final one, doesn't really apply until we've looked at the other examples.

So the 14 points have not been consistently applied.

We'll come to that more in the other examples.

So even if you've got different reasons why it might cause problems, because there were lots of reasons, take these three in mind.

Right, so we said that not only was self-determination applied selectively, it was also applied in a self-interested way.

So let's look at an example for this.

So it was applied in a self-interested way in terms of Germany's African colonies.

So this is the map of Africa and the black and the pink countries, were Germany's colonies.

So when war broke out in 1914, Germany after they had several colonies in Africa, as part of the Treaty of Versailles, these were taken and given to Britain and France.

Now these colonies, unlike the countries in Europe were not allowed to become independent.

So were not given self-determination.

This meant that Britain and France gained from this and Germany lost out.

It's an example of the 14 points being used unfairly in a racist manner by Britain and France.

Countries in Europe were given self-determination, but countries in Africa were not.

They were being viewed as unable to govern themselves.

I think additionally, as I said, Britain and France are gaining from this.

To Germany it seemed that it was being applied unfairly, the 14 points were being applied unfairly, if self-determination weakened Germany, it was used to change the borders, but if self-determination was never applied, if it might weaken can Britain and France.

So Germany feels like a victim here.

Again, you can see that Woodrow Wilson has underestimated this greed for empire.

Additionally, the Treaty of Versailles, there were Indian citizens there and India was a colony of Britain.

They asked for self-determination to be applied to India and they weren't allowed to have it.

So, these are clear examples of self-determination being selective since Britain and France are choosing when to do it, but also being self-interested.

They're not giving self-determination to countries that they could gain from economically.

Say, let's pause again.

How could this cause problem in the future? Or why could this cause problems in the future? Have a think about the points from the last example.

See if you can remember them, see if they still apply.

Pause your video now, and write down your ideas.

Okay, welcome back.

So again, the views of the citizens have not been taken into account.

The African colonies weren't asked whether they wanted self-determination, is very unusual for countries to want to be ruled over by another country.

And additionally, we know that the Indian delegates asked for self-determination and were not given it.

Germany had the worst outcome again.

And Britain and France on top of this, Britain and France gained from it.

And the 14 points had not been consistently applied.

Britain and France were choosing when they wanted to apply self-determination.

So we also said that self-determination was shortsighted.

And this is another example of when it was shortsighted.

So before the First World War, what were the biggest empires? And in Europe was Austria-Hungary and within Austria-Hungary there were lots of different ethnic groups.

Now Czechoslovakia, which we can see there up was one of the countries which was created out of the Austria-Hungarian empire in 1919.

And as you can see Czechoslovakia bordered Germany, was right next to Germany.

In fact it's sort of stuck inside Germany.

So you've seen this map before as well.

And this is a map just showing you the different languages spoken in the Austria-Hungarian empire.

And I'm just going to use my mouse to show you.

This is the Northern part of Czechoslovakia, it's called the Sudetenland and the citizens there spoke German and did not feel they were part of Czechoslovakia.

They realised that it was impossible to give every ethnic group self-determination.

They had to lump some different ethnic groups together.

So Czechoslovakia had a huge mixture of different languages spoken.

And as you can see a lot of it was German.

Now, Britain and France did not listen to the citizens of the Sudetenland, this Northern part of Czechoslovakia.

And that was very shortsighted.

In the future this now made Czechoslovakia a less stable country.

Now, if you look at this overall, Germany had lost all of its colonies and actually 12% of its land, 6 million German citizens were now living outside its borders.

This is bound to cause problems in the future because those German citizens want to be part of Germany.

So we're going to pause again here with Czechoslovakia and this decision to put lots of German speaking people within the borders of Czechoslovakia, how, why could this cause problems in the future? See if you can remember those three reasons.

Right, so, see what you got.

So the views of citizens have not been taken into account.

The people in Northern Czechoslovakia in the Sudetenland wanted to be part of Germany.

Germany had the worst outcome.

There's a big country now sticking into Germany with lots of German speakers that can't be part of Germany.

And the 14 points have not been consistently applied.

Different ethnic groups are not necessarily getting to be ruled by the ethnic group with which they identify.

So, let's then have another think.

What were the limits of self-determination then? We came up with three limits of self-determination.

Can you remember what they are? Pause now, see if you can write them down.

It's those three that begin with S.

Okay, so the first one, it was selective.

It was only applied when Britain and France didn't feel that they were going to lose out from it.

So for example, it was useful for them to be able to trade with Poland.

So that land, the Polish Corridor was given to Poland.

However, they didn't want to give up the colonies in Africa that were their colonies and they wanted to take Germany's colonies as well, which therefore means that it's self-interested.

If Britain and France could gain from not applying self-determination, they would choose not to.

It also was shortsighted.

They didn't look at the longterm impact of some of the decisions made and Czechoslovakia was a really good example of that, where lots of ethnic Germans were inside the borders of another country.

What kind of peace was made in 1919? Well, Woodrow Wilson had a grand idea of a long lasting peace.

But he underestimated the historical rivalry and huge number of ethnic groups in Europe.

He also underestimated the greed and self-interest of Britain and France.

While the idea behind self-determination was certainly commendable, it was a good idea.

It ignored the reality of the situation.

It was not going to be possible to dictate to individual states of Europe who could rule them.

And additionally, Germany felt more harshly punished than other groups because of the specific terms put in place for her.

For example, her losing all of her colonies and losing 12% of her land.

This set the stage for further unrest and future revenge.

Now, its undoubtful that the self-determination, the idea of it came from this doing the right thing.

So this peace that was doing the right thing, but it was diluted by the self-interest of Britain and France and also guided by their revenge.

They wanted Germany to suffer and lose the colonies.

So while it came from a positive place, this idea of doing the right thing.

The aspects of revenge and the aspects of self-interest cannot be ignored.

Well done, you've made it through what's a really challenging lesson on self-determination and how it was limited.

So, at this point pause the video, read through the slides on the next page and have a go at answering the comprehension questions.

I quote with some ideas of how to answer them as well, so we can compare then and I'll give you some tips on how to write good historical answer.

Right, so here are your comprehension questions.

We'll go through them one at a time.

So question one, what was self-determination? Is that we're looking for a definition there.

So, what was self-determination acceptable answer? The right of countries to rule themselves.

A historian would go into more detail than that though.

So let's have a look.

So, self-determination was a key part of Woodrow Wilson's 14 points.

He thought that to secure future peace in Europe, different national groups needed to rule themselves.

So what's better about that answer is it's not only defining self-determination, its saying where the idea would come from as well.

And relating it to this issue of post World War I.

Okay, question two.

Why was it difficult to organise self-determination in Europe? There were lots of different ethnic groups is a valid answer, that did make it difficult.

But let's have a look at a more detailed answer.

It was difficult to organise self-determination in Europe because there were lots of different ethnic groups living in lots of different areas and often very mixed up.

What's interesting about that first sentence is essentially the same as the acceptable answer, it just gives a bit more detail, okay.

The rest of this answer now explains why that makes it difficult.

So you have heard your teachers talking about point, evidence and explanation, this answer does this.

So we'll carry on.

Say, this meant that it was almost impossible to separate Europe into states of different nationalities.

Also, the idea of empire was old in Europe.

Countries wanted to have empires that they could be strong, agreeing to self-determination meant giving up on this idea.

Questions three.

what happened to Germany's African colonies and why did Germany think this was unfair? Acceptable answer, they were given to England and France and did not get self-determination.

That's true.

That's not incorrect.

It's not fairly got the explanation of why Germany thought this was unfair though.

So let's have a look.

So Germany's African colonies were given to Britain and France.

Germany thought this was unfair as Britain and France were going to gain money from her colonies instead of offering self-determination, which is what happened for colonies of Austria-Hungary in Europe.

And that really picks out why Germany felt that it was unfair, it gives a comparison to another empire that's been broken up.

Okay question four.

Can you give an example of when self-determination was selective? So when Britain and France choose to do it and when it suited them.

So acceptable answer, with India.

You could have also said, for example, the Polish corridor, and you could have given the example of Africa again as well.

So, good answer, India was a colony of Britain and requested self-determination.

Britain did not to give India self-determination because India provided so much money to Britain.

So Britain is choosing not to because they gained from India.

Okay.

And this is now a bit more of a challenge question.

I'm just going to move my face out of the way so you can see it.

Okay so, explain why self-determination was likely to cause future problems in Europe? So why is this idea of self-determination going to cause problems? So, using the sentence starters is that, one reason why it was likely to cause problems was, and then you might want to it follow up with evidence and explanation.

Another reason was, and some keywords there, revenge, who's going to want revenge? You're right, Germany is going to be desperate for revenge after the way they've been treated.

Selective, self-interested, ethnic groups, empire, you might also have shortsighted as well.

That's a bit more of a challenging question for you to have a go at.

Right so, well done, you've made it to the end of the lesson.

And if you can, we'd love to see your work.

So if you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and hashtag #LearnwithOak.

I'll see you for our final lesson in this unit, looking at what kind of peace was made in 1919.

To have a look at the League of Nations which was created.

Another one of Wilson's 14 points and created it to try and keep long lasting worldwide peace.

Have an excellent rest of your day.