Tuesday 18 August 2026 · 18:00–20:00 CEST · Zoom. Museum Berlin-Karlshorst · How Do Wars End? online intensive. You read a four-page research report with no citations. Tonight you put it next to the sources it should have been built from, in groups, and name what does not match.
Preliminary notes
Who runs this, and what for
We are developing this course in order to run it again in 2027. So your honest feedback is genuinely needed — and always useful.
Who runs it
Museum Berlin-Karlshorst
within the Eastern Partnership Programme of the German Federal Foreign Office
Strategic goal of the programme
strengthening pluralism and resilience of civil society actors in Eastern Partnership countries
To help creators of historical media content and history teachers from Armenia, France and Germany to independently produce multi-perspective educational content on the Second World War, and to disseminate it via digital platforms.
Through multi-perspectivity, technological diversity and transnational collaboration — against disinformation in public history and the misuse of digital tools in the age of generative AI.
Where this sits
The course structure = the creator's workflow
The modules follow the real steps of making a short video. We call it the Creator's Workflow.
Creator's workflow
1Idea and the topic
2Research: collect and verify materials (facts and visuals) ← today
3Archival materials: decide how to present the document
4Write a screenplay and record the voiceover
5Assemble the visuals with tools that fit you
6Polish: subtitles, visual effects, sound design
7Pre-publishing screening and evaluation
Does this seem familiar? How does it correlate with your own workflow?
Course schedule
01 · 14.08
Introduction and Finding the Focus
02 · 18.08
Research Phase — AI-powered or AI-distorted · today
03 · 21.08
Ethics and Techniques of Intervening in Archival Footage + Moodboard
04 · 25.08
Editing as a Way of Thinking Through a Fragmented Reality — script workshop
05 · 27.08
Tools Implementation: Choose What Works For You or Build Your Own
06 · 02.09
Production Process: Visual Effects and Sound Design
07 · 07.09
Final Screening and Wrap Up Discussion
All sessions 18:00–20:00 CEST (20:00–22:00 Yerevan) · plus 4 × 30 min consultations between modules.
What we address in this module
Research question of MemoActs 2026
What happens to a historical fact when we turn it into historical content?
History is instrumentalised as a political tool more than ever. People do that on purpose — and the new media environment suits them well.
Since the first day of social media
—algorithms prioritise polarising content
—shrinking attention spans shorten every message — and shortening means (over)simplification
—audiences prefer strong emotion to a calm, reasoned tone
?What else
Since generative AI — November 2022
—hallucinations
—flattening — everything starts to look the same
—reproduction of common mistakes
?What else
Every risk on this slide is worth being aware of when you make historical content.
What is historical content anyway?
One museum documentary and two vertical reels
Three pieces about the Second World War — one museum documentary and two vertical reels.
Example 1 YouTube · 16:9
„Nikolaj Wlasenko. Ein sowjetischer Zwangsarbeiter“ — Alöna Todorova · Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, 2023 youtube.com/watch?v=N8v9OPc0Yq4
Today we work on 2.2. Bring your notes — we start by comparing them.
Your homework reading
“Preliminary Research on the German Instrument of Surrender” — a 4-page LLM output with no citations. We gave it to you as an example of a research result — read the way you would read your own first pass.
Question
What is your first impression of the text you read? Three words in the Zoom chat.
The prompt behind the report
What the four pages were actually asked to be
Context
We are preparing a curriculum for an 8-session online intensive course on creating historical content about the end of the Second World War in the form of vertical videos, using open-source generative AI models. The title of the intensive course is ‘How do wars end?’. We are working on a project-based learning basis, creating a vertical video on the topic.
Video topic
A brief history of the German Instrument of Surrender.
Task
To carry out initial research and gather factual material for the script of the forthcoming video. The research and the video are to be in English. There need not be a great deal of material; the final video will be short, lasting 2–3 minutes. Facts about the drafting of the document, the signing procedure in Karlshorst and a brief overview of the consequences. I will then submit it for review to colleagues at the Berlin-Karlshorst Museum.
What did this prompt never ask for?
Task for the breakout groups
25 minutes in the room · 3 minutes per speaker in the plenary
Same task for every group, two exit conditions. Assign roles inside the room first.
Note-taker (writes the sentences) · Speaker (reports back)
25:00
Left
Phase
Done by the end of it
25–22
Roles
Note-taker and speaker named. Both documents open side by side
22–7
Compare
Differences between source and output found and marked in the document
7–0
Write the sentences
The speaker has the exact sentences to read out, not a summary to improvise
Space starts and pauses · R resets · The clock is shared, the phases are a guide
Groups, sources, baseline task
Group
Source
Baseline task
1
Museum Berlin-Karlshorst — “First signing of the surrender in Reims”
Find any difference between source and output. Mark them and present.
2
Avalon Project — text of the Act of Military Surrender, Berlin, 8 May 1945
Find any difference between source and output. Mark them and present.
3
Museum Berlin-Karlshorst — “Act of military surrender on 8/9 May”
Compare the ceremony as described in source and in output.
4
NPS — “Eisenhower and Victory in Europe”
Compare the Reims episode in source and in output.
Source texts
Each group opens its own document. Links also go into the Zoom chat.