Here we take a mystery enquiry approach to explain why Hitler became Chancellor. Your class will raise questions, come up with their own hypotheses. They will then amend and change their theories when new evidence comes to light.
Our intention is to lead them down the garden path.
Firstly they will see that Hitler was a great speaker and that the Nazis were a well-oiled propaganda machine. But then they will discover that in 1928 the Nazis struggled to gain any real support. So what changed by 1933? What will the other clues suggest?
Once they have solved the mystery we neatly turn from causation work into interpretations. Why did Hitler appeal to the voters? Was it down to his charisma as an ex-Nazi suggests? Or was it down to the worldwide economic crash.
This neat interpretations work addresses how interpretations are written in style and how they compare with the available evidence.
Download lesson
- Lesson presentation: PowerPoint
- Lesson write-up: PDF
- Resource 1: PDF
- Worksheet 1: PDF