Why have later interpretations of the Battle of Britain not always followed the popular myth?

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Why have later interpretations of the Battle of Britain not always followed the popular myth?

Looking at later interpretations, I can see that they have not always followed the popular, for example interpretation 7 is an article taken from the daily graphic in 1944, bearing in mind that the war is still not yet over. It was written at a time when it was clear that the allies were going to be victorious. This interpretation is reliable because the writer Sir Arthur Bryant had very traditional views and in his writing of history he was not afraid to include his own views, which I suppose could be looked upon as biased but probably just looked at as a more realistic point of view. There are really three messages of this interpretation. These are 1) that the pilots played an important role in winning the war but there are several other reasons for Britain’s victory. 2) Britain withstood terrible bombardment, survived and became triumphant. 3) Britain saved the world.

This interpretation is different however because it considers many more factors why this war was happening etc. for example, this article has been written after there has been time to reflect and gather information and get a full range of reasons. Also I have already mentioned the fact that Bryant puts in his own views, i.e. Personal not government. At this moment when the article was written it is also clear as I have said that Britain was going to win the war so Bryant knows that he can say basically whatever he wanted without jeopardising anyone’s morale. Some people may think that it is luck at the time but cannot say it until this time when this article was written, so in that respect Bryant is saying what some people think anyway. This article, I believe is for historical accuracy not for propaganda, because the war is almost over there is no reason for Bryant to do this. Another reason that tells me this is not propaganda is because knowing the background information I know that Bryant is a very open minded person and he says what he thinks- therefore I believe that he would not be pushed into writing about anything that he didn’t believe in. however, in some respects though it is propaganda but only in the sense that he praises the soldiers quite respectively. The strengths of this article are tat it is more convincing as an assessment, there are more factors and also that it is first hand information as Bryant has experienced the war. The weaknesses are that it is very biased towards the soldiers and it is still propaganda.

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Interpretation 8 is taken from the official Battle of Britain book written by JRM Butler in 1957 (war over). It is factual and gives two sides however it is slightly biased. It informs us that Hitler didn’t intend to invade Britain and that it was an improvised situation. This was because he was dedicated to Russia and gaining superiority over that country. The actual fact was simply that Hitler didn’t realise what a threat Britain was and how important it actually was. This information- because it was official, was probably not used for propaganda but was most likely to be ...

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