Suggested Level: Junior and middle secondary
Learning outcome: This activity provides students with an opportunity to consider how supporting or neglecting human rights can change history.
Materials and resources: Notebooks, pens,
Treaty of Versailles cartoon https://www.thinglink.com/scene/459863831569498114
Introduction
The Treaty of Versailles has been controversial for many years. The German people viewed it as inhumane because of the unfair burdens imposed on them by post war reparations. The burden of this debts, and the resentment it caused, is often cited as a major cause of WWII.
Suggested activities
- Visit the thinglink website. Run your mouse over the red targets in the cartoon and answer the questions that are revealed.
- You are the private secretary to Woodrow Wilson the President of the United States. Given your knowledge of what would follow, what advice would you give him? How would consideration of the principles of human rights affect the demands made on Germany? Might the economic re-building of Germany be done with less punitive measures? What alternative vision might you impart to the American executive? How would Europe be different if not for the stringent measures of the Treaty?
- Write your own mini political manifesto that offers an alternate way forward for America, Germany and Europe base on the principles of human dignity, the common good and transparency.