D-Day

It was early morning on 6 June 1944. Franz Gockel, a nineteen-year-old German machine-gunner, looked out through the slit in his concrete pillbox in Normandy. On the horizon, in the English Channel, he saw thousands of enemy ships. His stomach churned. This was what he had been dreading. This was the largest invasion force in history.  This was D-Day.

Pupils need to realise that events and outcomes in history are not inevitable.  This is emphasised by giving pupils decisions to make at stages in the enquiry.  The focus of the task is to follow a narrative of events and move pupils to an analysis of factors that explain the Allies’ success in the first 24 hours of the invasion.  The end product maintains this focus: pupils must plan the final minutes of a television documentary about D-Day, identifying factors that made the operation a success.

The focus for this enquiry is on interpretations of D-Day in later years. There are good reasons for using the approach shown here which involves pupils in interviewing veterans and others who have lived through the events. It will motivate pupils, it is likely to make the events, dangers and sacrifices of D-Day more real and it requires pupils to show appropriate social skills. There are opportunities to help pupils to identify and analyse the differences between interpretations and to devise appropriate questions.

The focus for this enquiry is on the use of historical sources.  In particular it aims to help pupils to see how different sources can be useful for different purposes, how historians must select relevant evidence from sources and how they construct a valid narrative from this evidence.  This is a study in depth into one incident within the story of D-Day.  As with most such studies it is important that pupils have a grasp of the wider narrative of the Normandy Landings.
Teachers will be able to adapt the instructions and sources suggested here, to suit their own context but the core activity (enhancing a given narrative) should work with most ages and abilities.  Downloaded files can be edited electronically by teacher and/or pupils of course.