Roshan Varghese, History, David W. Butler High School
Final Unit (PDF) Implementing Common Core Standards (PDF)
Synopsis
In this Curriculum Unit, the life and reign of Vladimir Putin of Russia will be
compared and contrasted to Adolf Hitler of Germany, domestically and internationally,
through the use of mass media. As the events involving Vladimir Putin have unfolded in
2014, many Americans and other Westerners may have harkened back to a time when the
world witnessed constant territorial expansion and blatant disregard for the rights of a
sovereign nation. In the periods between World War I and World War II (1919-1939),
and often known as “the Interwar Era”, the world witnessed much changing of borders,
not by popular choice or nationalistic fervor, but rather by will and expedience of a few
powerful men. The world witnessed as Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s German troops marched
into Austria and the subsequent appeasement of Hitler with the German-speaking
Sudetenland of sovereign Czechoslovakia, prior to the Germans steamrolling over much
of the European continent. Now today, one such individual is causing the world the same
type of alarm and his desires and ambitions do not translate to that tension be reduced as
the days pass. That man is Vladimir Putin, the current president of Russia, who in the
past few months has put the world on notice through his invasion of Ukraine-controlled
Crimea, as well as, his financial and militaristic support of pro-Russian separatists in
Eastern Ukraine, which further compromise that state’s sovereignty.
Home