Barnes@LHS
  • AP Euro
    • Activity Websites >
      • "Leaders of Men" Activity
      • "Fantasy Christianity": The Protestants vs. The Catholics
      • Thirty Years War: Eyewitnesses To Horror
      • "Colonial Expansion" Activity
      • Absolute Monarch "Stock Market" Simulation
      • The Great "Fate" Debate: The English Civil War
      • "Bow Tie Flip" Activity
      • French Revolution HEADLINES Activity
      • Napoleon's Paris
      • Napoleonic "Praise or Infamy" Activity
      • 1848: National Powder Kegs
      • "Step Forward, Step Backward" Activity
      • "Strong Borders, Strong Governments" Industrialization Activity
      • "Industry and the People" Analysis
      • "White Australia" Immigration Activity
      • Imperialism: Rationale, Criticism, and Response
      • World War I: A Gallery Walk
      • "Age of Anxiety": Art, Literature, and Thought
      • Sachsenhausen: The Model Camp
      • Stasiland: Life Behind 'The Wall'
  • U.S. Government
    • Activity Websites >
      • U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights: IN PLAIN ENGLISH
      • "Voting History" Activity
      • "Political Socialization" Activity
      • Media and The Government - The Right to Know
      • That's My Congress?!
      • Lobby Infographics
      • Electoral College Activity
      • "Keep It / Cut It" Cabinet Positions Activity
      • "Court Leanings" Activity
      • "Power Through Precedence" Supreme Court Activity
      • UBER: Supply & Demand
      • "Sacred Cows" Budget Cutting Analysis
      • "A Guy Walks Into a Bar..." / U.S. Government Services Activity
      • "Good GDP" Activity
      • Rubber Bands: Global Crises Explained
      • Obamacare: The Obama Legacy
      • U.N. Debate Activity
      • Zombie Apocalypse Activity
      • "American Immigration" Activity
      • American Foreign Policy - "Why We Fight"
      • American Foreign Policy - "Through The Eyes of a Cartoonist"
      • Make MONEY, MAKE Money!
      • "Life Lines" Activity

The Thirty Years War

Eyewitnesses to Horror

Picture
The Thirty Years War has been regarded by historians as the world's first "total war" in terms of complete and absolute destruction. What is "total war"? To use a quote from Simplicissimus:
  • They flattened out copper and pewter dishes and baled the ruined goods. They burned up bedsteads, tables, chairs, and benches, though there were yards of dry firewood outside the kitchen. 
"Total war" is the complete destruction of a human's existence: his body, his possessions, his culture, and his livelihood. In the end one-third of urban populations had been killed, and up to 40 percent of the peasant populations.  Historian Peter Wilson reveals that: 
  • “Public opinion surveys carried out in the 1960s revealed that Germans placed the Thirty Years War as their country's greatest disaster ahead of both world wars, the Holocaust and the Black Death.” 
He continues:
  • “...even in the twenty-first century, German authors could assert that 'never before and also never since, not even during the horrors of the bombing during the Second World War, was the land so devastated and the people so tortured' as between 1618 and 1648.” 
What was it like? What were the horrors of war? We will be using two (2) primary sources:
  1. The chronological recordings of Hans Heberle, entitled Das Zeitregister von Hans Heberle
  2. The etchings by Jacques Callot, entitled Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre

But to truly understand the war, one must both listen, and look. In partners, you will click on one of the two (2) buttons below. With your partner, you will alternately read a passage and examine an etching that are linked together. The point of this activity is to listen, and look. Click below to get started.
Partner #1
Partner #2
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