World War I and II

From Crash Course.  These videos could be used as a preview or review of WWI or WWII.

John Green teaches you about the war that was supposed to end all wars.Instead, it solved nothing and set the stage for the world to be at war just a couple of decades later.  As an added bonus, World War I changed the way people look at the world, and normalized cynicism and irony.  John will teach you how the assassination of an Austrian Archduke kicked off a new kind of war that  involved more nations and more people than any war that came before. New technology like machine guns, airplanes, tanks and poison gas made the killing more efficient than ever.  Trench warfare and modern weapons led to battles in which tens of thousands of soldiers were killed in a day, with no ground gained for either side.  World War I washed away the last vestiges of 19th century Romanticism and paved the way for the 20th century modernism that we all know and find to be cold and off-putting.  While there may not be much upside to WWI, at least it inspired George M. Cohan to write the awesome song, "Over There." 



John Green teaches you about World War II, aka The Great Patriotic War, aka The Big One. So how did this war happen? And what does it mean? We've all learned the facts about World War II many times over, thanks to repeated classroom coverage, the History channel, and your grandfather (or maybe great-grandfather) showing you that Nazi bayonet he used to keep in his sock drawer and telling you a bunch of age-inappropriate stories about his harrowing war experiences. So, why did the Axis powers think forceful expansion was a good idea? (they were hungry). So why did this thing shake out in favor of the Allies? Hint: it has to do with the fact that it was a world war. Germany and Japan made some pretty serious strategic errors, such as invading Russia and attacking the United States, and those errors meant that pretty much the whole world was against them. So, fins out how this worldwide alliance came together to stop the Axis expansion. All this, plus Canada finally gets the respectful treatment it deserves. Oh, and a warning: there are a few graphic images in this episode. Sensitive viewers may want to use caution, especially around the 9:15 mark.