Dandylion Salad Anyone?

This is a little different from my normal content but it gives you a good idea of what people will do when they are hungry, human beings are very resourceful and can survive through the most extreme times. This is what people ate when they were desperate during the Great Depression in America. Remember, of course, that the country at this time was overflowing with surplus food, John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath writes about orchards and orangeries being patrolled by armed guards to stop the hungry from stealing fruit while it sat, unpicked on the trees.

The great depression was an example of capitalism failing as a means of efficiently allocating resources (in this instance, food) to people. Watch this video and see

Treaty of Brest Litovsk update!

This is specifically for Year 10, we've been talking about the Treaty of Brest Litovsk this week and here is an animation that shows the treaty and also the Treaty of Versailles that followed it. Check it out here.

The Bonus Army

The journalist John Pilger called World War Two the 'cleansing moral bath' that expunged from the history books any crimes or deviations of the allied powers, Britain and America. One very good example of this is the largely forgotten crimes perpetrated against the bonus army in 1932. World War One Veterans who camped out in Washington, demanding the 'bonus' they were entitled to for fighting the war, were dispersed with terrible violence by the 'heroes' of the next war General Douglas MacArthur and his able deputies George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower. It would be highly unlikely, considering subsequent events, that these figures would ever be held up to public scrutiny and aprobrium over their extremely violent and largely unnecessary (and in more than one instance, illegal) actions regarding the Bonus Army. We as history students, however, look beyond the historical legends of these three men into their more questionable behaviours and beliefs.

Have you joined our new history answers forum yet?

Hi there everyone, just to remind you that if you're not using it, you're missing out on a really hand resource. Join the free resource forum and get-

* Daily bulletins when cool new stuff goes on the site.
* Access to history debates that help clarify anything you learn in class.
* The chance to ask any question you want and the answers you need.
* Links to all the resources you get in lesson time in case you've missed anything.
* There's lots more stuff in the post, plus you can engage other students in the weekly debates.

Free Learning Resources Page

Hi there here's the link to all the resources I create in the classroom, just in case you lose one or need a new one. To any visitors from elsewhere, feel free to download for free as many worksheets, lesson plans etc that you need.

Eventually this page will include sample essays, revision tips and all the works, give me time and it'll be on there

The End of the Third Reich

Richard J Evans, the best historian of the 3rd Reich I've ever read, gives a lecture here on the fall of the Third Reich. This is the sort of thing that will be indispensable at exam time, watch it, make use of it!

The Great Depression Video

This is a video link to Liquiat Ahmed's lecture on his book The Lords of Finance. It's an absorbing and fascinating account of how 'the wrong economics' was applied in the 1930s, it has interesting parallels with today.

A cartoon history of American Empire

This is a brilliant way of understanding one view of American Foreign Policy. Traditionally, America has been thought of as a non-imperial nation, certainly it differs from the European Empires of the 19th and 20th Centuries. But it is only different in its strategies for empire, not its intention. This cartoon, narrated by Viggo Mortensen, written by the US historian Howard Zinn, shows a different view of US Imperialism, from the massacre of the Plains Indians, all the way to the invasion of Iraq.