Doreen Bärwolf 
‘The Wave’ as an exchange project 

Lesson Plan from the year 2008 in the subject Didactics for the subject English – Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 1, 7, http://www.uni-jena.de/ (Anglistisch/Amerikanistisches Institut), course: Proseminar: Transatlantic E-Mail exchange, language: English, abstract: The Wave is a movie based on real circumstances: A history teacher in the USA tried to answer the questions of his students: Why was it possible that the national socialists could move a whole nation to war? Why did the Germans not stop the killings in the concentration camps and why did most of them not know what was happening there? Is a dictatorship like the one of Hitler in Germany possible again in modern times?
To answer these questions the teacher made an experiment to show the students what a dictatorship is about. However the project went wrong and the story moved around the world. At first a movie was made in the 80’s in the USA for television, later a novel was written by Morton Rhue and last year a German movie was produced with Jürgen Vogel in the male main character role. The movies and the novel caused a lot of discussions about the National Socialism in Germany in the 1930’s and 40’s and about the possibility of autocracies in general. This movie shows what is needed to develop a dictatorship and how people change during this process.
In the USA German history is not taught very detailed, therefore many students have a lot of questions when it comes to the topic of the Second World War. As well as the students in the 80’s, students of today can not imagine how Hitler came to rule Germany and to kill so many people. Even German students often do not understand the fanaticism of the generations of their grandparents for that system. Hence there is a need for explanation in both countries. Therefore an e-mail project between a German class and a US class could help to answer the questions and to remove prejudices of both sides concerning the National Socialism.
This paper presents an idea for a Transatlantic E-mail exchange about the National Socialism on the example of the movie The Wave. Both classes use the movie as the basis for their discussions with the task to find out if a dictatorship like the one of Hitler is possible in our times. The project should last 6 weeks in which the students work with the e-mails twice a week and for each transaction with the other side have different tasks. At the end a reader should be produced with the discoveries the different groups made.