Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the major parts of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the objectives each part of the German army was given, and why the German advance was stopped short of its goals.

Through an in-depth analysis of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Walter Gropius’s ideas behind internationalism, how the Bauhaus School in its different forms tried to promote itself as a vanguard institution dedicated to modernist ideas, and finally why the school collapsed in an era of volkish hyper-nationalism that sought to define for the world what it meant to be “German.”

Through an in-depth analysis of primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the basic outlines of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, his views on salvation and the Roman Catholic Church’s response to Luther’s writings.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the basic story behind the Thirty Years War, why the war broke out and how the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) forever changed the history of Europe.

Through the investigation of selected primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the importance of Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance, how the Frankish king was able to expand his lands across Europe, and how he ultimately strengthened an already tight relationship between the Franks and the Catholic Church to the point where the Pope had him crowned Emperor of the Romans in 800.

Through an in-depth analysis of various primary and secondary sources, including a thorough examination of the Communist Manifesto itself, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Marx’s ideas behind history and class struggle, how the Manifesto seeks to explain changes in history through revolutionary activities, and finally how and why Marx and Engels called on the proletariat of their time to revolt against the bourgeoisie. Secure in the knowledge gained in this lesson, students will then be able to judge the effects of Marx’s theories over the last 160 years and also to theorize as to whether the Manifesto is still relevant to the global society of the 21st century.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, including selections from All Quiet on the Western Front, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the story behind the main characters and plot of Remarque’s novel, how the character of Paul develops over time, and how the novel itself might be seen by some as socialist propaganda.

Through an in-depth analysis of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Otto von Bismarck’s reasons for calling the Berlin Conference of 1884, what provisions the European nations were able to agree upon at the conference, and how the “Scramble for Africa” both temporarily saved Europe and also eventually hurt Africa.

Through an in-depth analysis of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Otto von Bismarck’s ideas behind “Realpolitik” as they related to unifying the German lands and how Prussia used wars with Denmark, Austria and France to finally achieve unification.

Through an in-depth analysis of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the major elements of Otto von Bismarck’s domestic policy for the German Reich during his time as Chancellor, focusing on the specifics of his old-age pension fund, his universal government medical insurance for all Germans, and the implementation of universal male suffrage.

Through an in-depth analysis of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Bismarck’s foreign policy from the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 to the Iron Chancellor’s dismissal by Kaiser William II in 1890, and in particular how the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria and Italy was forged by Bismarck by 1882, inevitably laying the groundwork for the Great War.

Through an in-depth analysis of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the different parts of the Schlieffen Plan, how the plan as a who was supposed to prevent a two-front war, why the plan’s failure by September 1914 spelled doom for the German war effort, leading to four years of horror on the Western Front.

Through an in-depth analysis of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the basis for the 1848 revolutions in the Germanic lands, the debates on German unification that raged among the delegates at the Frankfurt Assembly, how the Constitution of 1849 tried to solve the issues surrounding Austrian and Prussian roles in the newly united Reich, and why the Frankfurt Assembly ultimately failed in its task of uniting Germany under a liberal constitutional monarchy.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, including primary source video news recordings from the night the wall fell, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the events leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, how the wall had come to symbolize the Cold War, and what the collapse of the Wall meant for Germany, Eastern Europe and the World.