U.S. History - World War II: Lesson Plans

This lesson plan explores the contributions of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) during World War II, and their aviation legacy.

Curriculum Unit overview. After learning that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, thus ensuring that the United States would enter World War II, Prime Minister Winston Churchill breathed a sigh of relief. "Hitler's fate was sealed," he would later recall. "Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force." In this unit, students will examine the role that the United States played in bringing about this victory.

Lesson 1: Turning the Tide in the Pacific, 1941-1943
Lesson 2: Turning the Tide in Europe, 1942-1944
Lesson 3: Victory in Europe, 1944-1945
Lesson 4: Victory in the Pacific, 1943-1945

Curriculum unit overview. This four-lesson curriculum unit will examine the nature of what Winston Churchill called the "Grand Alliance" between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union in opposition to the aggression of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Lesson 1: How “Grand” and “Allied” was the Grand Alliance?
Lesson 2: How to Win a World War
Lesson 3: Victory and the New Order in Europe
Lesson 4: The New Order for “Greater East Asia”

This lesson asks students to explore the various roles that Eleanor Roosevelt a key figure in several of the most important social reform movements of the twentieth century took on, among them: First Lady, political activist for civil rights, newspaper columnist and author, and representative to the United Nations.

This lesson shows students how broadly the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941 empowered the federal government—particularly the President—and asks students to investigate how FDR promoted the program in speeches and then in photographs.

In this lesson, students reflect on the Holocaust from the point of view of those who actively resisted Nazi persecution. Weigh the choices faced by those for whom resistance seemed both futile and the essence of survival.

Explore American attitudes toward conflict through Civil War photographs and World War II poster art.

Learn about the effects that the Second World War had on jazz music as well as the contributions that jazz musicians made to the war effort. This lesson will help students explore the role of jazz in American society and the ways that jazz functioned as an export of American culture and a means of resistance to the Nazis.

Learning about World War II American efforts helps students gain some perspective regarding the U.S. response to the conflict generated by the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Curiculum unit overview. Although most Americans were shocked by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the outbreak of war between the two countries came as no surprise to most observers of international affairs. Using contemporary documents, students explore the rise of animosity between the United States and Japan from its origins in World War I and culminating two decades later in the Pearl Harbor attack.

Lesson 1: The Growth of U.S.-Japanese Hostility, 1915-1932
Lesson 2: America and the Sino-Japanese Conflict, 1933-1939
Lesson 3: Japan's “Southern Advance” and the March toward War, 1940-1941
Lesson 4: The Failure of Diplomacy, September - December 1941

Curiculum unit overview. Over the two decades between World War I and World War II, Americans pursued strategies aimed at preventing another war. In this four lesson unit, students use primary sources and an interactive map to examine the rise of antiwar sentiment and legislation in the United States and the main arguments used by both sides as to whether the United States should enter the war or remain neutral.

Lesson 1: Postwar Disillusionment and the Quest for Peace, 1921-1929
Lesson 2: Legislating Neutrality, 1934-1939
Lesson 3: U.S. Neutrality and the War in Europe, 1939-1940
Lesson 4: The Great Debate: Internationalists vs. Isolationists