Teaching World War I With The New York Times By MICHAEL GONCHAR

This summer marked the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by a Serbian nationalist — the catalyst that sent Europe into a spiral of war and destruction for the next four and a half years.

Below, we offer a series of topics and questions paired with Times essays, articles, slide shows and videos to help students dig deeper into the causes, effects and overall legacy of World War I. We imagine students could use these resources as part of a class jigsaw activity, a mini-research project or a jumping-off point for discussion and analysis.

Remaking the Map of Europe

How did World War I rewrite the map of Europe? What is the significance of Europe’s post-1919 borders?

Before the Great War, Europe was still a land of centuries-old empires: Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian and Ottoman. After the war, new borders were drawn to better reflect the ethnic divisions scattered across the continent — laying the foundation for the borders of today’s nation states. Visit the Times special section“A 100-Year Legacy of World War I” to compare maps of Europe from before 1910, after 1924 and in 2014. What changes do you notice?

Causes and Lessons

What caused World War I? What can we learn from how the Great War started, to help prevent future devastating conflicts?

While historians can easily point to the archduke’s assassination as the trigger that set off war between Europe’s great powers, pinpointing the war’s root cause is much more murky. Who was to blame? And was the war avoidable — if perhaps the archduke had survived? Would Europe’s history be vastly different?

A dangerous mix of rising militarism and nationalism, imperialist aspirations and tangled alliances was brewing in Europe at the time, but is that landscape really all that different from today’s world? Margaret MacMillan argues in “The Great War’s Ominous Echoes” that our inability to clearly identify the causes of one of the modern world’s most momentous conflicts may come back to haunt us a century later.

The First World War: In the Trenches

An officer led the 9th Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) over the top under cover of a creeping barrage, near Arras, in northern France, in 1917.

Lt. John Warwick Brooke, British Army photographer, via Imperial War Museums

Deadly Technological Advances

How did technological advances make war deadlier and more devastating? How did the use of trench warfare during World War I change the way war was fought and experienced by soldiers?

Poison gas, machine guns, long-range artillery, fighter planes, submarines and thousands of miles of muddy trenches resulted in death and destruction during World War I on a scale without precedent. At least 8 million combatants were killed, and another 20 million were wounded. The video “Military Multiplier of Death”and the slide show “The First World War: In the Trenches” reveal some of the devastation wrought by technological advances and trench warfare. And, in “Colonial Folly, European Suicide,” Adam Hochschild explores how tragic illusions and outdated notions of warfare only made war’s new weapons that much more deadly.

Echoes and Legacies

What is the legacy of World War I?

World War I destroyed kings, kaisers, czars and sultans; it demolished empires; it introduced chemical weapons; it brought millions of women into the work force. Steven Erlanger writes in“The War to End All Wars? Hardly. But It Did Change Them Forever.” that World War I still has resonance — on land and geography, people and nations, and on the causes and consequences of modern war.

America: The Rise of a Modern Military Power

What role did the United States play in turning the tide toward victory for the Allies?

World War I was the first military conflict in which American troops fought in a European war, and the Second Battle of the Marne was an early moment when they were tested. Jim Yardley writes in “When the Americans Turned the Tide” how World War I signaled the arrival of the United States as a modern military power.

‘Your Country Calls!’

A poster by an unknown artist, from around 1916, is one of the works in “Your Country Calls!,” at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif.

The Huntington Library

The Cultural Impact of World War I

How has World War I remained culturally relevant for a century?

In “A War to End All Innocence,” A. O. Scott tackles the lasting cultural impact that World War I has had on the popular consciousness over the past century, and the slide show “Your Country Calls!” features World War I propaganda posters.

The Powder Keg of Europe

What role did the Balkans play in leading to World War I? To what extent have the ethnic and sectarian tensions in the region healed in the century since the war?

Textbooks often refer to the Balkans at the beginning of the 20th century as the “Powder Keg of Europe” because of the competing territorial claims by rival European powers and the rising nationalism among different ethnic groups living in the region. The assassination of the Austrian archduke in Sarajevo by a young Bosnian-Serb nationalist on June 28, 1914, lit the fuse that exploded the powder keg. Only 20 years ago the Balkans were again torn apart by war, and John F. Burns writes in the article “In Sarajevo, Divisions That Drove an Assassin Have Only Begun to H... about how national and sectarian passions continue to haunt Sarajevo and the relatively new nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Carving Up the Middle East

How did World War I help to sow the seeds for current conflicts in the Middle East?

With the impending disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, which joined the losing side in World War I, England and France quickly worked to redraw the lines of the Middle East to increase their dominance and influence in this oil-rich and strategically important region. Before the war even ended, the Sykes-Picot agreement created new borders, which lay the foundation for today’s modern nation states and angered many in the Arab world who felt European promises for an independent Arab state were betrayed.

The article “For British Spy in Iraq, Affection Is Strong but Legacy Is Unfulfi... by Tim Arango recounts the role of Gertrude Bell, an often overlooked figure, who worked behind the scenes to stabilize Iraq following World War I. And, in “A Crisis a Century in the Making,” Vali R. Nasr argues that the roots of today’s conflict-ridden Middle East lie in “the unfinished business of the Ottoman Empire, a century after it collapsed.”

Other Times Resources

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, moments before their assassination. <a href="<a href=

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Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, moments before their assassination. Related Article Time Life Pictures, via Getty Images

“Long Echoes of War and Speech” | In the spring of 1917, President Wilson delivered a string of statements that defined war as an attempt to set the world right.

“Belgians Share Their Land With War’s Reminders” | A century after hundreds of thousands died around Ypres, their remains are still being found, and shells are still exploding.

“At Gallipoli, a Campaign That Laid Ground for National Identities”| For the Turks and the Australians, the Gallipoli campaign has taken on an outsize importance as the bloody event that became the foundation of a modern national consciousness.

“A Battle in Ukraine Echoes Through the Decades” | Divided loyalties among the citizenry during World War I are still seen in today’s struggle with Russia.

“Militarism and Humiliation Cast Shadow on Germany” | A century after World War I began, German leadership in Europe is both desired and resented, an ambivalence keenly felt by both the Germans and their wary neighbors.

Original Times Reporting