Essay Questions

Directions: Select one of the following questions. Answer the question as if you were living in the period noted in the question. The paper should be no more than five or six pages in length and will be due on or before August 1, 2004. Additional essays will be added between now and the first day of class.

1. The year is 1933 and you are working in the Berlin office of the New York Times. Out of the blue, your editor in New York has asked for a detailed report on Adolf Hitler, the new chancellor of Germany. What would you report to the editors in New York? What would be your assessment of the Nazis and the Charlie Chaplin-like German politician?
2. You are working in the British foreign office and discovered notes and letters detailing the infamous Hoare-Laval Agreement appeasing Mussolini in Ethiopia. You believe that you must tell someone before the story hits the papers in order to mobilize the public against this ill-advised policy. After much reflection you decide to meet Winston Churchill. What would you tell him? Would you feel comfortable providing classified information to a stranger?
3. In 1937 you are assigned to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s White House staff and FDR asked you to draft an opinion paper concerning the world situation at that time. What would you recommend to the President in light of the lawlessness of the decade?
4. London readers have been fascinated by the situation found in the American heartland. The London Sunday Times decided to send you to Kansas in order to file stories on the situation in the Dust Bowl. What would your reports say about the state of agricultural during the Great Depression?
5. A national debate emerged concerning whether the United States should attend the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Most American editorials strongly opposed the sending of American athletes to Nazi Germany. William A. White, the legendary editor of the Emporia Gazette, asked you to help him draft a response to the national outcry. What would you write? Explain.
6. You are teaching in Hope, Kansas and your superintendent has had a lively conversation with you concerning the depression era. Following the discussion, he sent you a memo asking you to develop a narrative unit teaching plan covering the 1930s for both American and world history. What would your unit plan look like? What would your plan include?