WW1 and Blackadder

I shouldn't but I get rather wound up by people who criticise the use of Blackadder in the teaching of the First World War.  It was not made as a documentary and was never intended to be used as one.  It is a comedy programme and as such it sets out to make people laugh.  It uses satire and irony (and many other devices) to achieve this.

Many teachers use it and rightly so.  Just because you may not agree with the stereotypes in the characterisations, should not mean you disapprove of it being used in lessons.

In fact I do not use it in school, but on a coach!

I use Blackadder goes Forth on our annual October Battlefields trip.  We go for four days and spend a day near Arras, a day in the Somme and two days in Ieper.  

We use it on the coach ostensibly as a comedy show related to their visits those four days.  It is used as a teaching tool and also as a release valve, ie to get them to laugh when they have spent the whole day hearing and seeing and learning some pretty horrendous stories/personal histories of our boys' relatives.

Our first day alone can often see us visiting five or six sites and we've been up since 3 am.  We play the six episodes in broadcast order.  This works well.  When our coach drives from our last site on the first day to our youth hostel in Albert, there's just about enough time to watch the first one.

Our second day is a very intensive and emotional visit to the Somme battlefields, taking in as many as ten different sites.  (In 2013 there were as many as three of our forty boys who told us the story of their relative on the Thiepval Memorial alone).  After ten hours in cemeteries and battlefields our coach starts the 90 minute drive to Ieper in Belgium. Thus we get to see episodes 2-4.

Usually ( as we are on a coach and the boys are tired), we don't need to do much teaching, if at all, on the coach.  They might ask us a question which we answer, but our students see it as the clever parody that it is.

After our third day we are preparing for our participation in the Menin Gate ceremony.  Thus we do not watch 5-6 until we have left Ieper for the journey home.  Sometimes we watch the last episode before Calais, at other times we get to the crucial last scenes on the M25.  

The boys are exhausted after four days and there usually is a bit of chatter during 5 and even the start of 6.  However, wherever we are as 6 reaches its climax, be it in France, daylight, Britain or darkness, a hush falls over the entire coach.  On some occasions there have even been sobs heard on a coach of forty 15/16 year old boys!

Within less than an hour, their parents are picking them up and asking if they had a good trip.

Blackadder is a great teaching tool, emotion release and the perfect accompaniment to our tour.

Such is the power and brilliance of Blackadder.

2014's Whodunnit?

Well let's be honest, German history is going to take a bashing from certain academics and writers this year.  With the seventieth anniversary of D Day and the much-publicised centenary of WW1 approaching, certain historians are going to opine about the two world wars, Germany's defeats and Britain's crucial role in both.

Naturally WW2 was a necessary evil against the tyranny of Nazism - an abhorrent ideology that threatened to engulf Europe and the world in horror and oppression.  There were millions of victims of Nazism and the defeat of Hitler and all the others who shared his warped vision  (of which D Day was a key event), should rightly be celebrated and commemorated.  However among the millions of Nazism's victims were millions of Germans.

The war against Der Fuhrer was justified, the war against the Kaiser is much more complicated.

Not many people will comment on the 180th anniversary of the Deutsche Zollverein, an important and non-military step towards unification, or the 125th anniversary of the failed Frankfurt Parliament, another attempt at the peaceful union of Germans through the will of the people.

No, sadly the focus will be on a war that started in 1914 which Britain won and Germany lost.  Also because Germany lost the war, she was blamed for it.  This blame was accentuated by events at the end of the 1930s.  Even in the 1960s some Germans themselves accepted blame for the 1914-1918 war.  Yet at this particular time if you had asked some German academics if they killed JFK, they would have said yes.

Well, I for one, am not buying this 'it was all the Germans' fault' nonsense.  Certainly the Germans were partly to blame for 1914 and its tragic consequences.  The Schlieffen Plan included an unnecessary assault on Belgian independence, the 'blank cheque' of July made the Austrian government overly provocative and arrogant in its treatment of the Serbian government, the tension between Britain and Germany was due in no small part to the personal animosity between Edward VII and Wilhelm II, and the Kaiser should take his fair share of the blame.  So Germany was to blame  - IN PART - for 1914.

However, Serbia as well as Russia, Austria and to an extent France also need to take their share of the blame.  Likewise British commentators should also remember the role Britain played in the 1914 debacle.  In 2014, it needs to be said that Britain was also to blame for the 1914-1918 war.

This view is unfashionable, unpopular and will not get much air time this summer.  This is a shame as it is our duty and responsibility to remember history objectively and dispassionately.

Germany WAS responsible for the outbreak of war in 1914, ........but so was everyone else.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone and welcome to 2014.

2014 is going to be another big year for historians, especially WW1storians,

Whenever I think of anniversaries or commemorations, I am drawn first to military history.  Clearly many historians are going to focus on the centenary of the First World War in the next twelve months.  However there are other special anniversaries that reflect major social, political and economic changes across the globe.  These include -

• 70th anniversary of D Day
• 200th anniversary of Napoleon's surrender to the Allies and the start of the Vienna Congress
• 30 years since the miners' strike
• 90 years since the first Labour PM
• 25 years since the Berlin Wall came down

Obviously there are many more and equally more important anniversaries before New Year comes round again, but these are just a very select few which reflect my specialism and preference for modern history.

Also 2014 is going to be a pivotal year in British politics as there is a crucial European election in May as well as Scotland's referendum on independence in September.  These results will shape Britain's politics, her relationship with Europe and the rest of the world for the next two generations.

My contribution to these commemorations will be infinitely small.  Over the next twelve months the History Department at John Hampden Grammar School have planned the following events -

1. February : we will be taking our Year 9 students to the Army Museum in Chelsea,
2. March/April : our Year 11 students will be studying the end of the Cold War and asking themselves who was the most responsible - Gorbatchev, Reagan, Thatcher, Kohl, Pope John Paul II or the Hoff!
3. May : the whole school will have a vote in the JHGS European election
4. June : our Lower 6th will start their A2 course on Superpower Relations 1944-1990 which will focus on the Cold War before 1945 and the controversy surrounding the timing of D Day
5. October  : we will be taking 72 boys on our annual IGCSE Residential Visit to the WW1 battlefields and cemeteries including the areas of Arras, the Somme and Ieper
6. November : we look forward to welcoming representatives from a Belgian school as part of our involvement with the national commemorations and the new Memorial Garden in London.

My aim (and hope) is that everyone involved in all historical commemorations, both inside and outside JHGS does so objectively and dispassionately.

Happy 2014