Nick Taylor 2nd October 01
Coursework Assignment:
The war on the Western Front
- Source A and B both have advantages and disadvantages. Source A discusses many valid and different points to B and B always shows valid and different points. Artillery is shown in photograph B to destroy the enemies’ defences, so the attacker can advance and take the enemies fortification or trench, but the picture looks suspicious because there is a British soldier is standing over the remains of a German machine gun post and that would be unlikely in September 1916 and probably propaganda for current battle The Somme which ended in a stalemate and the trench also looks suspicious because a lot of German trenches were concrete and very advanced, but this particular trench is wooden and primitive.
Source A explains what British soldiers were told and then explains the harsh reality that Artillery was not as affective as people were led to believe and this led to a slaughter. Many shared this view of Historian Craig Mair such as Private Coppard (survivor of the Somme) “ Any Tommy could have told them that shell fire lifts wire up and drops it… in a worse tangle than before”. Source A therefore is more effective than he is led to believe because after 63 years the evidence can be gathered to give less blinkered viewpoint from variety of people opinions as he can puts them together to get aureate and consistent series of events. I feel that source A is more useful due to the opinion of Craig Mair being similar to most historians and soldiers opinion’s that bombardment tactics didn’t do their task in most places, but again source B is also reliable that a German machine gun posts and other defences could be destroyed by bombardment and be effective and have a big part in the WW1, but was a exception.
- Source C is aureate to most views from front line officers and soldiers. The poem itself is indirect in some parts, but also has key points which are bitter such as “most ‘em dead,” and “And were cursing his staff for his incompetent swine”. The indirectness throughout it is because of the High Command would do something horrible to him if he was blunt and direct. It coincides with the general feeling of front soldiers. Lieutenant J.A. Raws said, “murdered through the stupidity of those in authority” about his friends who had been killed. The author of the poem was a soldier called Siegfried Sassoon who had first hand experience of the brutality of trench warfare. Another example of anger among the ranks in the French army when there was a rebellion in which the current Field Marshal was sacked. At the time even though most hated High Command, the poem describes a group who were too simple and innocent to know any better as says “He’s a cheery old card” about the General, as soldiers were led, and that war was heroic, honourable etc. because of propaganda, censorship and high command’s casual manner could be deceptive, Sassoon even touches upon the High Command heartless behaviour when he says “Now the soldiers he smiled at most ‘em dead”. The last line is wrote in such a way that he insinuates the death was the General’s fault because if put bluntly that because of their tactics, he would get court marshalled. Therefore source C gives a aureate impression of their Commanders in most opinions, but it would be unwise to say all felt that way, though I could say a very small minority thought the opposite.
- The interpretations of sources D and E are different because the aspects of Haig being discussed are different from each other as E covers his personality when it describes his achievements it says, “The cost of victory was appalling, but… must be judged a success”. D concentrated on suffering and his faults at the Somme and Passchendaele, which is because it’s from a book called Great battles of World War 1. E justifies him by saying “He did push the most powerful army in the world off French soil,” and “People criticise…they do not offer other methods,” this is greatly different from D, because D is one sided and does not even look at the other side’s argument when it says his “ inability to recognise defeat,” which makes the statement sound factual rather than opinion.
