Why did War on the Western Front last so long?

Asha Samrai

1. Both sources A and B show similarities in the way that they show the soldiers having to fight in the trenches (often filled with water as shown in source A) and source A outlines the basics of what the soldiers had to do “…You get peppered day and night…” Both sources show the soldiers in their uniforms and armed with their weapons. In source A the soldiers are shown smiling and sharing a joke whereas in the photograph (source B) there is no smiling nor the sharing of jokes. Source A is written for a cartoon and therefore would be exaggerated so as to make it humorous. The sources are written at different times so would be at different stages in the war. As source A is written earlier this is when nobody really understood how the war was no laughing matter with the amount of people dying and is perhaps why the soldiers are shown happy and smiling. I would say that source B is more reliable as it is an actual photograph from the time, showing actual soldiers in an actual trench. However it sort of contradicts with source A because of the happy vibe but in order for the sources to agree further more information would be needed about the conditions of the trenches.

2. Advertisements like this would have been published in 1915 as this is when things on the western front wouldn’t have been going too well (Ypres, November 1915) and so this sort of advertisement would encourage people to volunteer to serve in the war in order to make up the lost numbers. Source C shows soldiers preparing for battle with the caption ‘Time for on more’. This is a form of propaganda as this isn’t really a battle scene but an ideal battle scene as you don’t see the bad conditions of the trenches that soldiers had to endure, so not as to put off people from joining the war nor destroying peoples high morale. The ideal battle scene makes the soldiers look brave and heroic and if you smoke this brand of cigarettes you are like heroic soldiers and would want to join the army, thus allowing the government to accomplish their plans of getting people to volunteer to join the army. The government would have wanted people to volunteer as conscription was not introduced till 1916, a year later.

3. Source E supports D as they both Say how the tactics weren’t good enough for the opposition. Source D says ‘Our war doctrine was thus too summary…’ and source E says ‘Attempts at mass break-through… cannot be regarded as holding out prospects of success…’ Here both sources are

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saying that the British and French tactics weren’t going to work well against the opposition. Both sources say about how the Germans were well equipped and strong. Source D says ‘In the face of fire poured upon them from every direction by invisible weapons’ and source E backs this up by saying ‘A well-armed enemy whose morale is sound and who is not seriously inferior in numbers.’ Also source E backs up source D by saying how there wouldn’t be much chance of the war plan succeeding. However source D is about the French tactics and source E is about the British tactics. Nevertheless source E doesn’t contradict any of the information in source D yet source E only backs up source D to a certain extent as much of the information in source D such as actual tactics and about how the army were attacked ‘from every direction’, therefore if more information was included in source E it would back up source D even more.

4. This source from the diary of Field Marshall Haig is reliable in a number of ways such as it being written for a diary. This would have been his own private thoughts, not intended for publication so why would he need to exaggerate? The source is written at the time of the war so the memories would be fresh, not hazy and made up to fill in the gaps. We already know that Haig was the leader of the army on the western front at the Somme and he reckoned that if they carried on at this rate Germany would fall within six months. This would have been the situation at the time in 1917 as Politicians would have been worried about the battle of Somme and would have wanted to devise a new offensive for the war.

Ways that this source is unreliable is that this is all Haig’s opinion and therefore doesn’t make it correct. He thinks that Germany will fall within the next six months, whereas the war didn’t end until the 11th November 1918, over a year afterward. Haig doesn’t want a new attack as he thinks that this would be too costly.

I think that this source is more reliable than not because none of it would be exaggerated as this is from a diary and it backs up our knowledge of the Somme and how it was alarming Politicians and the public back home, giving a reason for why Haig met the War Cabinet in London. Also, it’s not all just Haig’s own opinion as he also includes Lloyd George’s opinion of ‘The decisive moment of the war would be 1918.’ Therefore this account isn’t just one-sided.

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5. There are a number of strengths of Source G as an interpretation of the war on the western front, such as Black Adder gives a good insight of how the soldiers would prepare for a battle such as The Somme. The BBC would have had to have done a fair amount of research into the War in order to make the programme as accurate as possible making this a strength of the source. The characters in the programme are based upon real people such as Geoffrey Palmer as Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, and so it is not all completely made up. Source D says ‘Many troops were put into action at once; they were feebly supported by artillery fire…’ and this was shown in the episode of Black Adder where the soldiers ‘went over the top’ where they all went over through no-mans land altogether without being sufficiently equipped.

This source had weaknesses such as it is a comedy programme and therefore it has been exaggerated in order to make it funny. Another weakness of this source is that the programme isn’t from around the time of the war and so it wouldn’t be one hundred percent accurate like perhaps a film such as ‘The Battle of the Somme’ which would have been made at the time of the battle. Another weakness of this source is that it doesn’t cover anything about the actual battle of the Somme, the fighting and how many men were killed.

I think that on the whole the source has more strengths than weaknesses as it is also good visually to see what the trenches were like and it is fairly accurate and doesn’t contradict with our own knowledge from the war and the other sources.

6. Sources H and I are useful in giving evidence of war on the western front as source H goes into detail about how it was difficult to get messages across the trenches without the use of a ‘walkie-talkie’. It goes on to tell us about how the soldiers had to cross enemy boundaries dodging the shells that were constantly fired. They were by then at that stage unreachable by the generals and so the soldiers would face the same doom as the men before them as no message to stop them could be passed on. Source I tells us about the British army being ‘Lions led by donkeys’ implying that the generals had no idea what they were doing and that the army who had the most ammunition and most men were most probable to win the war. These sources give a lot of additional information about the western front, about the faults during the war.

However, it doesn’t mention anything about the conditions the soldiers had to put up with such as the trenches, nor the deaths people endured

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which would all be evidence about war on the western front. Source H is written in a book and could therefore be exaggerated, were communications really that bad? Both sources are written a fair time after the war and some information would have been forgotten which would make these sources more useful.

7. The war on the western front lasted so long due to a number of reasons. Firstly, the conditions of the trenches as shown in sources A and B would have made many men ill and infected with all sorts of diseases and so many men died in the trenches let alone the battlefield plus these trenches would have taken so long to dig out, at this point there would be no fighting.

Secondly, as source I shows, the generals weren’t really sure on what they were doing, such as the Battle of the Somme where they just marched thousand of men across no-mans land in order for them to all get killed.

Another reason for why the war lasted so long was that communications between the trenches were a problem (source H). The generals found it difficult to send orders to the soldiers before it was too late. The generals also thought that the army with the most men and ammunition would win the war which didn’t really get any side anywhere.

Both sides lost many men in battles such as Ypres and The Somme so the damage done to both sides would be equal and nobody would be winning the war. The same was also with territory. Whatever one side lost they would regain it back.

I think that it’s not just reason that caused the war to last so long but all of them contributed to the duration of it.

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