Course Description

Welcome! This site is for students, parents, teachers and anyone else interested in the tenth-grade World History 2 Course at Santa Fe Prep.

The overall course covers the history of the world from roughly 1500 to the present. The first quarter opens with the time when Asia was the center of world affairs, then traces European encounters with Asia and the Americas, and the complex interactions and consequences of the so-called "Columbian Exchange" between Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa. The first quarter ends with a survey of the European Renaissance and Reformation, in both its local and global dimensions. The second quarter will focus on the rise of absolute monarchies and new ideas and practices, especially with the scientific revolution and Enlightenment. The second quarter ends with assessments of the legacies of the French Revolution, Napoleon and the emergence of the British Empire. The third quarter starts with the implications of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars in the wake of the Congress of Vienna, i.e., the discourse on rights, reaction, revolution and reform, the rise of new ideologies, in particular, Classical Liberalism, nationalism, and romanticism, and conservative reactions to the changes wrought by the American and French Revolutions. The course then examines the rise of industrialization and social change in 19th-century Europe, and the emergence of middle and working class cultures, followed by new iterations of liberalism and conservatism, the proliferation of more ideologies, e.g., socialism, communism, ultranationalism, social Darwinism, and antisemitism. Then the course examines the unification of the Italian and German nation states, and the creation of the modern welfare state. From there the course traces the rise of a new wave of Western imperialism, followed by the rest of the world's reactions to the rise of European empires and ideas, and in particular, the emergence of industrial Japan and their surprising victory over Russia. The third quarter ends with the outbreak of the First World War. The fourth and final quarter surveys the effects of the First World War, followed by the brief peak of classical liberal nation states and promises for peace, and the rapid rise of authoritarianism, in both communist and fascist variations, with a special focus on the rise of Nazism, the Nazi racial transformation of Germany and the Holocaust and Shoah of modern Europe. The fourth quarter concludes by looking at the causes and effects of the Second World War, the Cold War, the end of European empires in Asia and Africa, the emergence of the Modern Middle East and China, the end of the Cold War, history since 1989, all the way to the present, including current events.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Week 13 - The Holocaust


Monday through Thursday, April 14-17
Long periods: independent research and writing.
Independent Research final drafts are DUE by the end of the day, Thursday, 4/17.
Good Friday, 4/18 - no school; no quiz.

Day 1, Monday, 4/14: The Origins of the Holocaust.
In-class: Finish discussions on Browning's "One Day in Jozefow," and read the interview with Goldhagen in order to set up a debate on the origins of the Holocaust.
Homework#1: Read the primary source handouts listed below, and use the SOAPSTONE rubric to annotate the documents for class discussion.
Document#1: The Barbarossa Decree, by General Keitel.
Document#2: The Commissar Order, by Adolf Hitler.
Document#3: Escape from Treblinka.
Key Terms and Persons: Eugenics, Sterilization, the T-4 Program, euthanasia, Poland as the "laboratory of experiment", Operation Barbarossa, and Einsatzgruppen.

Day 2: The Final Solution and the Question of Justice.
In-class: Continue discussion of the Holocaust, especially radicalization and resistance to Nazism, based on the assigned primary sources.
Homework#2: Read the handout from the Rudolf Augstein interview with Daniel J. Goldhagen, and answer the following question.
Homework question#1: What is Goldhagen's argument and key points about the origins of the Holocaust and why Germans participated.
Homework question #2: Do you buy his argument, or can you also identify any limits or problems with his argument?
 

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