Activity Five

This activity is to accompany Unit Three of the Curriculum Guide.

Incorporating the C.E.L.s:

• Independent Learning
• Critical & Creative Thinking
• Personal & Social Values & Skills

Concept Application Lesson for:

• National Security
• Spheres of Influence
• World View
• Ideology

This activity allows students to investigate whether nations made significant changes to their national security policies as a result of their experiences during the Second World War. The major influences on foreign policy decisions of the great powers will be analyzed to determine whether they contributed to the achieving the goals of the Atlantic Charter of 1941.

Knowledge Objectives

The student will:

• know that following the Second World War, nations did not abandon past methods and policies of assuring their national security;
• know that the wartime alliance between the Soviet Union and the Western democracies was not built upon mutual trust; and,
• know that the major powers were not prepared to relinquish any of their national powers to an international body for the purpose of enhancing international peace and security.

Skills Development

The student will:

• practise using the critical attributes of concepts and values as criteria to evaluate historic situations;
• practise describing cause-effect relationships;
• learn to develop generalizations about a concept based on available information; and,
• practise using analytical grids/concept maps for the purpose of analyzing information.

Values Issues

The student will:

• discuss whether the experiences associated with the Second World War convinced the major powers that the use of force to resolve international disputes was no longer acceptable;
• discuss whether the concept of disarmament by nations was an attainable goal following the Second World; and,
• discuss whether contemporary conditions, such as the end of the Cold War, have made the goals enunciated in the Atlantic Charter, more possible.

Outline of the Activity

Step One

Provide students with and discuss the eight principles of the Atlantic Charter of 1941. (See the Student Information Sheet: The Atlantic Charter).

• Note that the Atlantic Charter was the result of an agreement between Churchill and Roosevelt; it did not involve the Soviet Union.
• Note that the Charter was composed before the United States had entered the Second World War.

Have students identify and list international and domestic conditions that can facilitate or impede the application of the Charter's principles .

• Some conditions could include:
  • the existence of colonies and spheres of influence;
  • the existence of military superpowers and totalitarian regimes;
  • the presence or absence of world-wide organizations to "police" the international behaviour of nations; and,
  • economic stability or instability.

Step Two

Have students investigate the decade following the Second World War and analyze whether conditions during that time period encouraged or impeded implementation of the Charter's principles.

• Each student group is to select two or three of the Charter's principles to investigate.
• The group is to identify major conditions that influenced the actions of the major powers during that period.
• The group may use an analytical grid or concept map to illustrate the relationships between conditions during that historic period and the actions and attitudes of the major powers.

Group are to report their findings to the class and prepare a position on the question of whether the principles of the Charter could have possibly been achieved during the 1940s.