Anniversaries

This month sees the 50 anniversary of the start of the Watergate affair. The Washington Post aptly has some excellent articles to commemorate the event including this one which gives a timeline of how the scandal emerged:

Washington Post: Watergate anniversary

And this one on the legacy of Watergate which includes a good discussion on how Watergate changed politics and the relationship between the public and the politicians:

Washington Post: legacy of Watergate

The anniversary has been covered in British papers as well. This podcast from the Guardian newspaper looks at the legacy of Watergate, focusing on the current political situation in the US:

As Americans mark the 50th anniversary of the Watergate affair, Jonathan Freedland wonders: had it happened in today's political climate, would Richard Nixon have resigned? And what can a new round of televised public hearings into a different president accused of undermining democratic elections learn from the Watergate hearings?

This site from the US National Archives has documents and worksheets on Watergate  - also in Spanish - for students to download to help with source analysis:

National Archives: Watergate documents

What is new on the site?

Paper 1

We are currently  re-organising our Paper 1 section: adding content and activities, and splitting the pages into the three themes identified in the IB syllabus. PS4 is complete and we are just working on PS3 and PS5 which will be finished next month.

New books

Jonathan Freedman is a writer for the Guardian newspaper (see podcast above). He has just written a book about Rudolf Vrba who escaped from Auschwitz. It has excellent reviews and we are looking forward to reading it over the summer:

History in the news:  When not to draw lessons from history

Those of you who have read Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, will be interested to read his thoughts on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and why we should not be drawing parallels between 1914 and 2022: