Source G is a visual image showing the desolation in a residential suburb outside Stalingrad. But without a name or signature on it we can’t be sure who took it, or for what reason. The photo is quite hard to make out and we can’t be sure that is hasn’t been staged. We can see people climbing from underground bunkers and we can see the immense devastation and destruction caused although the date is very vague, ‘’1943’’, so we can’t be sure the photo is reliable. It is also possible that it has purposely been made worse to generate more sympathy from the people back home. There are very few people about for a residential area which again adds to the suspicion that it may be fake. It also only shows one place at one time, so when all these things have been taken into account it’s very hard to say that this picture gives a full or accurate picture of what life would have been like during the Battle of Stalingrad.
Source I stresses the importance of propaganda. It tells us how leaflets were dropped into trenches or cellars and theses were sometimes the only way it was possible to find out political information, some of the more important events happening on the front or about military activity in their neighbourhood. This Source gives us a slight insight into the conditions that the troops were facing in the trenches, dugouts and cellars in Stalingrad but as it’s a propagandists’ report he tells us more about methods and ways they used propaganda rather than the actual conditions that faced the troops in battle. The Russian propagandist, Pavel Ivanovich Doronin, who wrote the report, only focuses on how the Russians were doing and he only gives us his perspective. This makes the report a little less reliable as he may make things up but as he is running from trench to trench giving out information, we know that he would have been all over Stalingrad and would have had a very good idea of what the whole city was like rather than just one area. There is no date recorded in this secondary Source which means that he could have written a period of time after the war which would mean that some of his details may not be right. We also aren’t sure who he is writing to. It is written in quite an official tone and without mention of Germans it might be for a Russian newspaper or magazine etc. and if this is the case then we could assume that it would be a fairly accurate report.
Source J was written by a German pilot, Gilbert Geisendorfer, who was delivering supplies to Stalingrad. We can tell from this that he was there to witness the events first hand but he was only in one place at one time. This means that he could have been in a particularly bad area or an area that hadn’t been hit as bad as others. This gives us an insight into what happened but isn’t enough for the source to be reliable. The tone that it is written in isn’t a very official tone. It’s written as if for a friend or colleague and may be meant to generate sympathy whereas if it had been official it would have had a lot more fact in it and a lot less opinion. There also isn’t any recorded date on it or purpose for writing it and no mention of Russians or civilians so all in all this Source is quite an unreliable source and doesn’t give us a full picture of life during the Battle of Stalingrad.
In conclusion these four sources alone do give us some useful information but ultimately are not enough to paint a full/accurate picture. Sources C and I are both written by Russians, J is written by a German and it’s not possible to decide who took the photo in Source G. So in each of these reports the writer is going to be more biased towards his side. A civilians report would be the most reliable because they would see the full picture as they would know through propaganda, newspapers etc what was happening in different areas and this would probably be a fuller more honest report of life in Stalingrad during the battle.
