Lesson video

Hello, welcome back to Stage Three History.

I'm Ms. Dawson.

Today we're going to be looking at our second lesson of a six lesson inquiry, trying to answer the question when was the turning point of the Second World War? Last lesson, we looked at Blitzkrieg and Nazi control of Europe.

And today we're going to be looking at the Battle of Britain and aerial bombardment.

If you've already done lesson one, well done.

You're in the right place.

If you haven't, you need to go and do that one first.

What I'm going to do now is get my head out of the way of the screen so that you can copy down today's title.

Pause your video in order to do this and then when you're ready, resume the video and we'll get going.

Off we go.

Here's the equipment you're going to need for today's lesson.

You will need some paper, a pen, a ruler, a pencil, and you're also going to need the turning point table that you began to fill in last lesson, I'm going to refer to this throughout the inquiry.

You're also going to need to make sure you're set up somewhere nice and calm and quiet, free from distractions where you've got space to work.

If you've already done this, well done.

If you haven't pause your video, get the equipment you need and get yourself set up, ready to go.

I'd like us to start by taking a look at this image.

What can you see? What do we think is happening or has happened in this picture? Here are some of the details that I would've picked out.

So in the top right-hand corner, I've circled buildings that we may or may not recognise on the skyline and the bottom two images, I've circled what appears to be very, very heavy damage that's been done.

So what do we think has happened to this big city and why, given the context I'd like you now to pause your video and write up a short answer using the image to say what it shows.

So you can use my sentence starters on the left.

Remember to write in full sentences and use details from the picture to back up your answer.

Put the video and pause for a couple of minutes.

Resume when you're happy with what you've written, and then we can check it against my answer.

Off you go.

Well done, welcome back.

Let's have a look at my answer and see how it compares.

Remember that our answers could be different, but that doesn't mean that yours is wrong.

This picture shows a skyline of London with heavy damage done to buildings.

This suggests that London was bombed by the Germans during World War II.

So if you'll notice what I've done is used details from the image and then I've made a guess about what I think has happened, based on what I can see.

Give yourself a big tick if you did anything that looks like that.

Remember that our answers do not have to be exactly the same.

Well done, let's move on.

So we are our second lesson of this inquiry.

And today we're going to be looking at an event called the Battle of Britain and something called aerial bombardment.

Well done if you've worked out that aerial bombardment means being attacked or bombed from the air, because in that image, we can see damage that had been done to London after experiencing aerial bombardment.

And we're going to look a little bit more at that today.

Then we've got four more lessons before we decide when we think the turning point in the Second World War actually was.

We're going to just go over some of the key dates that we've looked at so far and are going to be looking at today in order to give you some context.

This inquiry only covers a span of about six years, but a huge amount of happens there.

So we need to be really clear on our chronology or order of events before we get started.

So one of the first things that we would have looked at last lesson was the events of September, 1939.

And if we remember this is when Britain and France declared war on Germany, following Germany's invasion of Poland.

So that's the beginning of the Second World War is this declaration of war on Germany.

Can you remember what the beginning of the war was like? Well done if you remembered that the start of the war was characterised by success for Germany, by using the tactic of Blitzkrieg.

Really well done if you remember that this word Blitzkrieg means lightning war.

So between September of 1939 and June of 1940, the Nazis and Germany had huge success conquering Northwestern Europe, because they used Blitzkrieg.

They use concentrated attacks on the land and from air at the same time, in order to secure the surrender of many European countries.

One of these was France.

So in June of 1940, if you remember, we looked at that picture last lesson of the Nazis and Hitler in Paris.

So in June of 1940 France, surrendered to Germany and the country was occupied.

Between July and September of 1940 is the Battle of Britain, which is what we're going to be looking at today.

A really significant battle that took place in the air and along side that, not exactly the same length of time, but in a similar timeline, we will be looking at an event called the Blitz.

So the Battle of Britain and the Blitz together make up the story of our experience of aerial bombardment or war from the air.

And don't worry if you're not sure what those things are, because we're going to go over it in a moment.

This is the story we've experienced so far.

And at the moment, if we're thinking in our turning points, based on what we've done last lesson, the war's going quite well for Germany at this point.

So have that in your mind for the start of today's lesson, Germany had been quite successful up to this point.

We're looking to see if their fortunes change in the events we're studying today.

This is a quote from Winston Churchill.

"The Battle of France is over.

"I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin." So what does he mean by this? When he says the Battle of France is over, we need to use this date for context, don't we? In June, 1940, the Battle of France, as far as he was concerned, had been lost because the French had surrendered.

So what Churchill was saying here is that he anticipates that Britain is now going to have to fight because they're going to be attacked.

And this image here is a picture, a diagram of the plans that Germany had to attack Britain.

So we'll see here, there's lots of details of regiments that are intending to attack from Northern France, to head in and land on the British coasts.

If you remember, by now, Northern France was occupied and controlled by Nazi Germany.

And the British had been evacuated from those beaches of Dunkirk.

So the plan was that the Germans were going to invade through the southeast of England and they were going to take it over.

So Nazi Blitzkrieg had showed that they'd had a huge amount of success in Europe.

Hence the reason that they've occupied the north.

Britain was now standing alone against Germany.

And when we say that, we mean because they hadn't surrendered yet.

And so far, the Germans had managed to force surrenders from Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Hitler and the Germans had intended to invade Britain.

They made plans for what was known as Operation Sealion.

So this was the code name for their invasion that was going to come partially by sea, land in the southeast of England and be supported by air.

So this was an image of the plans for Operation Sealion.

However, the Germans knew that they would not be successful straight away if they didn't deal with a problem that they had.

This problem was that the RAF or the Royal Air Force of Britain posed a huge threat.

The Germans were aware that if they tried to attack by sailing over to the southeast of England, if they hadn't done something to weaken the power of the British Royal Air Force, they could be attacked and have their ships sank before they even landed.

So this was a big problem they had to overcome before Operation Sealion could be successful.

Okay, so we've had a little bit input from me on our context.

It's now down to you to work out whether these statements are true or false so we can establish how much you've managed to learn already.

There are five statements on the screen.

They are not all correct.

What you need to do is pause your video and you can either just write down true or false for each statement.

Or if you'd like to challenge yourself, what you can do is rewrite the false statements to make them true.

You've got a few minutes with which to do that, resume the video when you're happy with your answers, and I'll tell you what they are.

Off you go.

Well done, welcome back.

Let's check through the answers.

Give yourself a tick for every one that you got correct.

And anything you missed to make sure that you correct it.

So statement A, well done if you said this was correct.

Yes, France did surrender to Germany in June of 1940 after experiencing heavy Blitzkrieg all across their country.

B, well done if you noticed that this was not correct, Britain and Italy did not stand alone against Germany.

Italy was an Axis power, so Italy was actually on the same side as Germany, although they hadn't surrendered, they wouldn't surrender to the Germans.

So it was Britain who were now alone against Germany.

C, Hitler had intended to force the British to surrender by invading Britain.

This is true.

As I just said, he'd made plans for Operation Sealion.

He wanted to invade British soil.

D, Hitler's invasion plan was called the Battle of Britain.

Well done if you realised that was not correct.

Hitler's invasion plan was called Operation Sealion.

The Battle of Britain came before this.

So the Battle of Britain needed to happen because he wanted to wipe out the British Royal Air Force before he could try and invade, before he could attempt Operation Sealion.

So that's what his plan was.

E, yes, Hitler was worried about the strength of the British Royal Air Force so he delayed the invasion in order to wipe them out first.

Absolutely, so Hitler had made plans for Operation Sealion.

He realised there's no way that they'd be successful if the Royal Air Force was at full force.

So he decided to wait and they would do Operation Sealion after they'd attacked RAF.

Well done if you got all of those correct.

Give yourself a big tick.

If there's any you didn't get correct, feel free to pause the video now and correct them.

If not, let's keep going.

This image here shows London during the Battle of Britain.

So as I've already indicated, the Battle of Britain was part of German aerial bombardment or air attacks against the British.

And this picture here shows somebody standing on a roof, looking for German bombers in the air.

So I'm going to give you a quick overview of some key facts about the Battle of Britain before I set you off on today's task.

So it took place between July and September of 1940.

So if we think about that date context-wise, it is just after the French had surrendered to Germany.

So as far as Germany was concerned, they had one country they needed to get rid of, and they needed to make sure that in order to invade, that they could defeat the air force.

The German Luftwaffe, so that's that German air force, attacked British ships, airfields, and ports.

So they concentrated their attacks on the British Navy, the British Air Force and on supplies.

So ships that had food on them, in order to try and weaken Britain.

Their aim was to eliminate the RAF, the Royal Air Force, to make way for an invasion.

So Germany was determined that they would invade, they would land in Britain and occupy it, but not until they were ready.

The Luftwaffe outnumbered the British Royal Air Force by four to one.

So the Luftwaffe had a huge amount of resources available to them.

However, they still were not able to defeat the Royal Air Force.

They were not successful in overcoming them in the Battle of Britain.

And it's the fact that they were outnumbered and still did not get overcome by the Germans that led Winston Churchill to say this very, very famous statement: "Never in the field of human conflict "was so much owed by so many to so few." So this was an example of when the British could have been overcome by significant German forces, but they managed to keep to keep it together and not be.

So this is what this quote means, is that a small minority managed to hold up against a bigger force.

Now, the Battle of Britain.

So this attempt to overcome the RAF was not successful.

So their plan, the German plan of attacking air force bases, of attacking ships and ports, was not successful and it didn't force the British to surrender.

So they moved on to what is known as the Blitz.

This take place from September, 1940 to May, 1941.

So immediately following the Battle of Britain.

And the two are very, very linked because they are both parts of the German programme of aerial bombardment.

So the Luftwaffe, after having not been successful in overcoming the RAF during the Battle of Britain, targeted civilians in an attempt to force surrender.

If you remember that word civilian, it means ordinary people who are not soldiers.

So after not being successful in attacking military bases, ports, airfields, the Germans changed their tactics and they decided to start bombing cities, bombing ordinary people, hoping that it would terrify and force the British to surrender.

So during the Blitz, buildings and homes were bombed, which we can see in this image.

Multiple cities across the United Kingdom were subjected to aerial bombardment and some areas of the countryside also experienced it.

There were continuous raids.

So the idea was that it would be constant and it would be terrifying.

London at one point was bombed 76 nights consecutively.

So 76 nights in a row, every night that London was bombed.

So if you can imagine, this must've been a very, very terrifying time to be in London.

The Blitz ended in may of 1941 as Hitler became frustrated with German inability to defeat the RAF.

And he decided to turn his attention to the east and attack the USSR.

So if we look on this map, the USSR to the east of Germany, we may have also heard this referred to as Russia.

It was known as Russia up until 1922.

Then it became the USSR.

It's a lot of the same land.

It's a bit bigger, but if we said USSR, we could think the same land as Russia.

So despite the fact the Luftwaffe had quite a significant advantage because they were unsuccessful in terms of defeating the RAF.

The Battle of Britain and Blitz ended without this German invasion of Britain and Hitler decided to change tactic at the end of it.

So we've had a quick overview of the context of what was going on in 1940.

We've had a quick introduction into what the Battle of Britain was and what the Blitz was.

Now, what I would like us to do is to get on with our main task.

So we've got comprehension questions to answer, which I'll read to you before you pause the video and have a go.

Question one, what was Hitler's invasion plan called? Question two, what did the Nazis need to do before they could carry out their invasion plan? Question three, why did the Germans begin to bomb London? Question four, how do people protect themselves during the Blitz? Question five, why were the Luftwaffe unable to beat the RAF? Question six, what did Hitler do in October, 1940? Challenge question, why was the Battle of Britain such a boost for British morale? And you can use the sentence starters at the bottom to help you with that.

Remember that all of the answers to the comprehension questions are contained within the worksheet so read it carefully before you start answering.

Try and challenge yourself by writing in full sentences with historical detail.

When you're happy with your answers, resume the video and we'll check them.

Off you go.

Well done, welcome back.

Let's see how you did.

Question number one, what was Hitler's invasion plan called? The acceptable answer was Operation Sealion.

Well done, give yourself a big tick if you've got that correct.

A good answer with more detail is Hitler's plan to invade Britain was called Operation Sealion.

He hoped to land 160,000 German soldiers on British coasts in September of 1940.

Very well done if you used specific details and full sentences in order to improve your answer.

Let's have a look at question two.

Question two, what did the Germans need to do before they could carry out their invasion plan? The acceptable answer is wipe out the RAF.

A good answer with more detail is the Germans were worried about the strength of the British Royal Air Force.

The Germans feared that the RAF could defeat the German army before they were able to land in Britain.

Therefore, the Germans decided that before they could attempt Operation Sealion, they needed to wipe out the RAF.

Very well done if you got this answer written in full sentences.

If you're not sure if what you've got is correct, at any point, you can feel free to pause the video and add some detail to your notes, using my answer to help you.

A reminder, as always, your answer and my answer might not look exactly the same.

That doesn't mean what you've written is wrong.

So be generous with yourself.

Give yourself a tick if you wrote anything about getting rid of the air force.

Let's take a look at question three.

Question three.

Why did the Germans begin to bomb London? Acceptable answer, their attack on the RAF and British ships weren't working.

A good answer is before September, 1940, the German Luftwaffe had concentrated their attacks on British food ships, ports, and airfields.

They had hoped to force them into a surrender by attacking their food supplies.

When this didn't work, the Germans decided to attack civilians instead.

So on September 7th, 1940, they were sent to bomb London.

Very well done if you made use of specific key terminology and dates in order to improve your answer.

Let's look at question four.

Question four, how did people protect themselves during the Blitz? The acceptable answer is shelters, evacuation and blackouts.

A good answer is one way in which people protected themselves was through shelters.

Either people built them in their gardens or sheltered in tube stations.

Lots of children were evacuated to the countryside where there was less chance of being bombed.

Finally, there were mass blackouts in cities, so they would be harder to spot.

Well done if you developed your sentences with more detail of how people protected themselves and well done if you've worked out that there was more than one answer to this question, there's three possible things you could have written.

Good job.

Question five.

Why were the Luftwaffe unable to defeat the RAF? Acceptable answer, radar and home advantage.

A good answer is one of the reasons that the Luftwaffe were unable to defeat the RAF was that the RAF used radar technology.

This meant that they could anticipate the Luftwaffe attacks and plan for them.

In addition, the RAF were fighting at home so they could stop to refuel.

The British pilots were also not at as much risk if they were shot down as they could parachute to safety.

Whereas the German Luftwaffe would be taken as prisoners.

Again, well done if you realise there's more than one, correct answer to this.

If you'd like to pause the video and take some details from my notes for yours, please go ahead.

If not, let's move on.

Question six.

What did Hitler do in October, 1940? The acceptable answer is he cancelled Operation Sealion.

A good answer with full developed sentences is after having already postponed it several times, in October, 1940, Hitler formally cancelled Operation Sealion.

He did this because the German Luftwaffe had failed to defeat the RAF during the Battle of Britain.

Question seven, why was the Battle of Britain such a boost for British morale? Acceptable answer, it was the first major defeat of the Nazis.

A good answer, the Battle of Britain was a huge boost for British morale because it was the first major defeat of the Nazis.

Evidence to support this is the fact that Hitler had to call off his planned invasion because the Luftwaffe were unable to defeat the RAF.

This meant that the British experienced a big boost to their morale, particularly after the evacuation at Dunkirk in May of 1940.

Really good job if you've used full sentences to justify your opinion here, your answer.

Very well done.

Remember this could look different to my answer.

That's not a problem.

Good job.

You've got all your comprehension questions done.

Now we need to think about the focus of this inquiry, which is when the turning point of the Second World War was.

If you remember last lesson, I asked you to make a table that looks like this.

I'm going to get you to fill in a date in every lesson so that we can compare the fortunes of the countries in the war so that we can help work out when the turning point was.

So, for example, if we look at my model in June, 1940, it looked pretty certain, to be honest, that Nazi Germany was going to win the war and evidence to justify this is they had defeated Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, and they'd forced the British in France to evacuate.

So by May, 1941, which is the end of today's lesson content, some things have changed.

The Nazis had intended to invade Britain.

They had drawn up plans in which to do it, and they've had to cancel these invasion plans.

However, Britain is still the only country fighting against the Nazis.

They've been subjected to heavy amounts of bombing, huge losses there.

So at this point, who looks likely to win the war and why? You need to use evidence to justify your view.

So go ahead, pause the video now and complete today's section of your turning point table.

So you should be adding to the one that you started last lesson.

After you finished that, resume the video and we'll move on.

Okay, very well done.

So you've completed a huge amount of work today, and if you're still here and up for doing the extension activity, that's great.

So our extension question is what was the impact of the Battle of Britain on Germany? And here is some help you can use in order to complete this question.

There are sentence starters on the left.

There are key words on the right.

You can return to the worksheet in a moment to help you find some evidence to support your answer to this question.

Remember, we want to be writing in full sentences with historical detail.

Okay, off you go pause the video, complete the extension question and when you're happy, resume, and we'll check it against mine.

Off you go.

Well done, welcome back.

Let's see how you got on.

So do remember that our answers might not look the same.

Let's have a look at what I wrote.

The impact of the Battle of Britain was a huge blow to German morale.

Evidence to support this is the fact that Hitler became frustrated with the failure to defeat the RAF and decided to turn his attention to trying to conquer the USSR instead.

This meant that Hitler had realised that the German Luftwaffe.

had been defeated.

After postponing the planned Operation Sealion several times, it was cancelled in October of 1940.

This damaged German confidence as they had believed that they could force the British to surrender.

Very well done if you wrote anything about the Battle of Britain having a negative impact on German morale, if you wrote anything about them having to change tactics, anything about them having to cancel their invasion, really good job.