The matron had given her leave to go out as soon as the women's tea was over and Maria looked forward to her evening out ...
Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden (1909)
When Mary Lennox was a young girl, she lived in India ...
Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden: Introduction
After the death of her parents, Mary is brought back from India to live with her uncle in England ...
D.H. Lawrence: The Man who Loved Islands (ca. 1910)
There was a man who loved islands ...
George Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion (1912)
London at 11.15 p.m. Torrents of heavy summer rain. Cab whistles blowing frantically in all directions ...
George Bernard Shaw - PowerPoint-Präsentation
During the hundred years between 1815 and 1914 there was no large-scale war in Europe ...
Causes of the First World War - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Probably the most important reason why war broke out in 1914 is that none of the great European powers (Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Austria Hungary) tried hard enough to avoid it ...
Political terms - PowerPoint-Präsentation
World War I
Nobody could be sure when the war would come or what event would trigger it off
How did the war start? - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Historians have given a large number of reasons for the outbreak of war in 1914 ...
Most people thought that the war would be short and 'over by Christmas' ...
The war in the trenches - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Life in a First World War trench consisted mostly of boring routine ...
Life in the trenches - PowerPoint-Präsentation
The war on other fronts - Russia defeated
There seemed little chance of making a decisive breakthrough on the Western Front - both sides were too strong ...
The war on other fronts - PowerPoint-Präsentation
In March 1918 the Germans launched their final offensive of the war ...
The German Spring offensive - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Aircraft were used in a limited role in the war and did not have much of an impact ...
The war in the air - PowerPoint-Präsentation
There was not a great deal of fighting at sea during the war ...
Jellicoe has been heavily criticised by historians for failing to destroy Scheer´s fleet and for breaking away from the battle by turning away from a torpedo attack by German destroyers ...
"Something's wrong with our bloody ships" - PowerPoint-Präsentation
In the land war the defenders were in the best position and this meant the Germans ...
The generals expected the First World War to be a war of movement: troops advancing shoulder to shoulder across open fields, bayonets fixed ...
Although there were some new weapons in this war, they were not successful enough to end it quickly ...
The feelings of the British war poet, Siegfried Sassoon, on the generals that ran the war are clear enough ...
How warfare had changed - PowerPoint-Präsentation
What was new about the First World War was the way in which each nation had to use every available resource ...
The military and industrial strength of the European powers in 1914 - PowerPoint-Präsentation
You will have been given some idea of the importance of industrial might in deciding who was to win the war ...
Machine guns were extremely important but they were not a war-winning weapon ...
Gas was a weapon which promised to lead to mass panic among defending troops ...
The tank was a British invention and a secret weapon until first used during the battle of the Somme in 1916 ...
New developments in warfare - PowerPoint-Präsentation
"Millions of the mouthless dead"
What was really different about the First World War is just that ...
The British government quickly began a recruitment campaign once war had broken out in August 1914 ...
The Volunteer Army - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Some men enlisted out of patriotism, a sense of love for one's country ...
Why men enlisted - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Allied propaganda - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Not all men responded enthusiastically to the call to arms ...
War news in other areas was censored too - this time by the government ...
Conscientious objectors / Mutiny at Etaples - PowerPoint-Präsentation
It is easy to criticise the way the government treated conscientious objectors and made life very difficult for them ...
The First World War affected Britain in many different ways ...
The Liberal Party had been in power since 1905 and Herbert Asquith had been Prime Minister since 1908 ...
Some Conservatives believed that Asquith and the Liberals were not fit to run the country while it was at war ...
In March 1915 British, Australian and New Zealand troops attacked Turkey in the Gallipoli peninsula ...
The Munitions Scandal - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Asquith's coalition government soon faced a new problem ...
Conscription - PowerPoint-Präsentation
It was clear that privately owned firms were failing to meet the huge needs of Britain at war ...
Agreement with the trades unions
Lloyd George, as Minister for Munitions, brought all the companies that made shells and weapons ...
Defence of the Realm Acts (DORA)
The first of these was passed in 1914 ...
By the beginning of 1918 severe food shortages were common, especially in butter and sugar ...
Agreement with the trades unions / Rationing - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Lloyd George's sense of purpose, his ability to get things done, impressed many people ...
Lloyd George: Prime Minister - PowerPoint-Präsentation
An increase in the power of government
The role of women in Britain before the war was a traditional one ...
Women before 1914 - PowerPoint-Präsentation
One obvious area of change is that before the war women were not allowed to vote ...
Women and the vote - PowerPoint-Präsentation
When war broke out the suffragettes suspended their militant campaign for the vote ...
At first, women found that the only roles available to them were traditional tasks ...
Women at war - PowerPoint-Präsentation
The government was forced to allow women to work in all sorts of jobs ...
Women at work - PowerPoint-Präsentation
It is difficult to be precise about the effect the war had on women ...
More people died in the Second World War than in the war of 1914-1918 ...
The First World War today - PowerPoint-Präsentation
T.S. Eliot: Morning at the Window (1915)
They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens ...
Important factors of World War I - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Working with the First World War - PowerPoint-Präsentation
The legacy of the First World War
The effects of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany were harsh and there is no doubt that the Germans felt both humiliated and unfairly treated ...
The legacy of the First World War - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Britain's economy suffered a depression in the early 1920s. Unemployment rose ...
Back to square one? - PowerPoint-Präsentation
After the First World War the major European powers - except Russia and Germany - set up the League of Nations ...
Europe in the 1920s - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Virginia Woolf: Solid Objects (1920)
The only thing that moved upon the vast semicircle of the beach was one small black spot ...
James Joyce: Ulysses (1922) - deutsch
Gravitätisch kam der dicke Buck Mulligan vom Austritt am obern Ende der Treppe ...
T.S.Eliot: The Waste Land (1922)
April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain ...
Europe in the 1930s: the decade of dictators
There were many changes in Europe during the 1930s ...
Europe in the 1930s - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Aldous Huxley: Schöne neue Welt (1932)
Ein grauer gedrungener Bau, nur vierunddreißig Stockwerke hoch ...
There is no doubt that Hitler was determined to break the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, especially those restricting the size of the German army ...
There were other dictators in the world apart from Hitler and they encouraged each other ...
Mussolini - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Alfred Hitchcock - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Europe 1936-39: the slide to war
Hitler's actions between 1936 and 1939 did lead to war in Europe ...
Europe 1936-39: the slide to war - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Austria, the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia: more of the same
Encouraged by the easy victory over the Rhineland, Hitler made further plans for expansion, convinced his opponents would never try to stop him ...
Austria, the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia: more of the same - PowerPoint-Präsentation
Hitler paid no attention to the Anglo-French promise of help to Poland ...
The Nazi-Soviet Pact - PowerPoint-Präsentation
A. Paul Weber: Hitler - ein deutsches Verhängnis - PowerPoint-Präsentation
T.S.Eliot: Old Possum´s book of practical cats: The Rum Tum Tugger (1939)
The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat: ...
World War II
The war in Europe and North Africa 1939-43
The Germans invaded western Poland on 1 September 1939 ...
Blitzkrieg - The Allied strategy
The key to Germany's success over Poland and the string of victories that followed over Belgium and France was Blitzkrieg ...
Poland engulfed / Blitzkrieg - PowerPoint-Präsentation
The period from the defeat of Poland in September 1939 to the German attack on neutral Norway in April 1940 is known as the 'Phoney War' ...
Chamberlain had considered occupying Norway before Hitler to cut off Germany's iron ore supplies, but he hesitated ...
Winston Churchill - PowerPoint-Präsentation
The invasion of western Europe
On 10 May 1940 Hitler ordered the invasion of Luxembourg, Holland and Belgium ...
The race to the Channel: Dunkirk
The German tank commander, Guderian, now planned to race directly to the Channel ports and seize them ...
The surrender of France - Vichy France
It was only a matter of time before the rest of the French army collapsed under the stunning force of the German blitzkrieg ...
The British attack at Mers el Kebir
Churchill was determined to make sure that none of Vichy France's four fine battleships were seized by the Germans ...
The Battle of Britain - The war in the skies
Before Hitler could launch an invasion of Britain, he had to gain control of the skies by destroying the Royal Air Force ...
7 September: the turning point
On 7 September 1940 the Luftwaffe suddenly changed tactics ...
When war broke out in September 1939, Mussolini decided that Italy should stay out of the conflict ...
In April 1941, Hitler decided that the Italians needed German help ...
By the end of 1940, it was clear that Britain was not yet beaten and an invasion had to be postponed ...
The German army of 3 million men, 3600 tanks and 1800 planes was hurled at the totally unprepared Russians on 22 June 1941 ...
Generals "December and January" to the rescue
The Germans got as close as 60 kilometres to Moscow, but a Russian counter attack in December 1941 meant that they would advance no further ...
The failure to capture Moscow before the beginning of winter was a setback for Hitler, but it would not have made much difference to the war ...
The Germans were only able to launch one more serious offensive against the Russians ...
The German-Italian army in North Africa was forced to surrender in Tunisia in May 1943 ...
The peaks around the town of Cassino, which overlooked the road to Rome, were controlled by the Germans ...
The bombing of the monastery did not lead to an immediate breakthrough ...
Ever since the German invasion of his country in 1941, Stalin had been asking his western Allies, Britain and the United States, to launch an invasion by sea of German-occupied France ...
From the beginning of 1944, plans were drawn up for the invasion of France ...
The ingenious solution was to build an artificial harbour, called 'Mulberry' ...
Allied casualties were much lighter than feared - just 2500 were killed on 'D-Day', 6 June 1944 ...
On 25 August 1944 the Allied forces, led by General de Gaulle's Free French troops, liberated Paris from the Germans ...
The bombing of Germany's cities has caused a great deal of controversy among historians - and there were even protests in Britain during the war ...
Though doubts exist about how effective the bombing of Germany was in winning the war, there is no doubt as to the importance of the war at sea ...
In March 1944 a group of Italian resistance fighters in Rome exploded a bomb in a dustbin as a German military police column marched past ...
By July 1944 a group of German army officers had decided that the war could not be won ...
Civilians on the British mainland never had to go through the ordeal of occupation by the enemy ...
During the early stages of the Final Solution the Jews in the territories captured by the Germans were simply lined up in front of huge pits and shot in the back of the head by special execution squads of fanatical Nazis ...
The Holocaust, the massacre of Europe's Jews during the war, is a terrible example of what happens when intolerance and racism are allowed to flourish inside a country ...
Civilians had quite often found themselves involved in previous wars - especially civil wars ...
The Second World War had a tremendous impact on British society and permanently changed some aspects of life in the country ...
After the Fall of France in June 1940, Britain faced Germany alone and expected an invasion to follow on swiftly ...
At the very beginning of the war, 800,000 schoolchildren were evacuated from cities likely to be bombed along with 550,000 mothers and children under five ...
A generous rationing system was introduced in March 1940 ...
After Winston Churchill, the most powerful man in Britain was Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour ...
Patriotic appeals to boost production and make endless sacrifices had a limited effect ...
Perhaps the biggest change brought about by the war affected women ...
Women also found themselves increasingly involved in military aspects of the war - much more than they had been in the First World War ...
Women turned their hands to a great many new tasks during the war and proved their capabilities, especially in jobs considered too difficult for the 'weaker' sex ...
Many of those who lived through the war, however, speak with warmth about what they remember ...