Year 12 Ancient/Modern - Poll Results

Hi guys, hope everyone is enjoying their holidays...and studying hard. There are plenty of old exam papers you can be looking at on the BOS website.

meanwhile, the latest poll results (a few days late, I know):

Why did Xerxes leave Greece after Salamis? According to 77% of you, it was because he was so humiliated after the battle.

And why did Hitler invade the USSR? 83% of you believed he wanted more territory (lebensraum), whilst 50% each (you could make mulitple responses) said it was because he hated communism, and because it had been his lifelong obsession. All pretty accurate, I would say - Hitler certainly did see the fight with Russia as an ideological and racial showdown, that was both inevitable, and necessary for Germany's survival.

Year 12 Modern - The World At War

The World At War was an incredible documentary series made in the 70s, covering the whole of WW2 in 26 one-hour episodes. You can access pretty much all of it on youtube, though in 10-minute segments. I am embedding the first sections of some of the most relevant episodes below. Just click on them to start watching, and then you can link through to the next instalments via youtube.

Episode 2: A Distant War (Poland - 1939)



Episode 3: France Falls (1940)



Episode 5: Barbarossa (1941)



Episode 8: Desert (North Africa, 1940-43)

Year 12 Modern - Flash Animations of WW2

Hi guys. As those of you who came to class this week may remember, we watched a pretty exhaustive (and exhausting) flash animation of the conflict in the East. You can find this fantastic resource (in English) here.

You can also find a flash animation outlining the course of the whole war here.

There is a whole range of multimedia resources on WW2 on the BBC History wesite. You can also search around on this site for some equally great WW1 movies, galleries, animations, and interactive sites.

Year 12 Ancient/Modern - Poll Results

Hurray! The biggest voting numbers yet! I guess it could have something to do with the assessments last week...(which I hope went well, by the way...)

When it came to Hitler's biggest mistake in WW2 - 69% of you said it was his invasion of the USSR. Certainly, that would be the view of most modern historians.

As for the most interesting battle in the Persian Wars - 71% of you went with Thermopylae. That must be The 300 effect. 19% of you voted for Salamis, and the rest went with Marathon. Surprise, surpise - nobody voted for Artemisium, Plataea, or Mycale.

Year 12 Modern - WW2 Anniversaries

Some important anniversaries of events in World War Two are coming up in the next few days:

June 5th: 65th anniversary of the liberation of Rome (1944)

June 6th: 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in France (1944)

June 22nd: 69th anniversary of the surrender of France (1940)
68th anniversary of the invasion of Russia (1941)

Keep an eye on the news for any stories about these events, especially the D-Day landings.