We can imply from this source that Foch thinks that the tactics led to many deaths with no progress made. We know this was true when we look at something like the Battle of the Somme, where 20,000 Allied soldiers died in one day for not even a miles worth of enemy territory. We can also infer that Foch thought that the Allied forces were inferior to the opposition. Because they were told to ‘get forward quickly’ they were killed by Germany’s ‘invisible weapons’. We can think of different things from the phrase ‘invisible weapons’. This could be referring to Germany’s use of gas, which would certainly kill a lot of Allied soldiers because they were told to go forward ‘together’. Gas wasn’t visible and has no scent, so it was often hard to detect until it was too late and was therefore ‘invisible’. It could also be talking about hidden German snipers, who would lay unseen and shoot many men with the newly invented machine gun. Because Foch says ‘fire poured upon them from every direction’ this make us think that Germany were well organised and were the stronger army.
Source E is written by General von Falkenhayn and discusses the ‘Critical Decisions’ taken by Germany from 1914-1916. This extract of the book looks back on German tactics at the Somme in 1916.
In this extract Falkenhayn says that ‘attempts at a mass break-through’ were extremely hard even with ‘extreme accumulation of men and material’. The reason for this is because the Germans were ‘against a well-armed enemy whose morale is sound and who is not seriously inferior in numbers’. Because the were against ‘a well-armed enemy’ the Somme ‘threatened to become a mere slaughter house’.
From this source we can see that Falkenhayn thinks that the Allied soldiers were better than the Germans, and that contrary to peoples beliefs the Allies were not ‘inferior in numbers’. Falkenhayn says that even with a lot of men and artillery, there was little chance of ‘a mass break-through’. We can infer that German morale wasn’t good in the trenches because when Falkenhayn is stating the Allies strong points he mentions their ‘morale is sound’, implying that Germany’s isn’t. General Falkenhayn says the Somme ‘threatened to become a mere slaughter house’. We know that this was true as over a million lives were lost in this battle, with about 500,000 of them being German.
Sources D and E are similar because they both contain high up military leaders, being negative about what happened in the battles of WWI and its problems.
Sources D and E differ because in Source D Foch is criticising his own army [allied] and its’ problems. In Source E Falkenhayn isn’t really criticising his own army [Germany] but is rather saying that the Allies were just better. Source D isn’t supported by Source E because D is criticising the Allied army and E is complimenting them.
- Study Source F
How reliable is this account?
Source F is an entry of Field Marshal Haig’s Diary, written on 19th June 1917. This is a primary source, as he was there and is reliable because it was written by himself, and he has first hand knowledge. At this time, Haig was Commander-in-chief of British forces on the Western Front. This particular entry focuses on his meeting with the War Cabinet in London to discuss a new offensive.
Haig was very much into conventional war tactics, and was very old fashioned. He says in the source that the War Cabinet were all ‘pessimistic’ about the war. The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, believed that the ‘decisive moment of the war would be 1918’ and that ‘until then we (Britain) ought to do little or nothing except support Italy’. However, Haig believed ‘that Germany were closer to her end than they seemed to think … and was within six months’ of losing the war. Haig thought that the War was definitely in the Allies favour.
General Haig was known as the ‘Butcher’. This is because he was responsible for many soldiers’ deaths. In 1916 he believed Germany could be defeated with one final push, this belief resulted in the long Battle of the Somme which cost the lives of over 600,000 Allied soldiers with 400,000 of those being British, and contrary to Haig’s thoughts, after this battle, the Allies had hardly gained anything. He had failed to adjust his plans even with the knowledge that on one day, 20,000 allied soldiers had died in the Battle of the Somme. In 1917 he still thought Germany would be easy to beat if Britain went on the offensive instead of the defensive.
However, we know this was not the case. We know that to make progress in World War One was very difficult and slow, and therefore it is hard to believe that General Haig thinks that Germany could be defeated within six months. Haig didn’t actually know what was going on at the Western Front as he did not experience being there first hand. We do not know whether Germany could be defeated in six months is reliable because even Haig doesn’t know that. For all we know, the people who told him this could have been lying to him just to make him happy and thinking that progress had been made. We cannot really trust Haig’s viewpoint. We are more willing to believe Lloyd George, who thinks that something will happen in 1918. From some of the other sources we know that progress in the war was slow, which contradicts Haig’s opinion. In source B, we see a tank stuck on barbed wire on No Man’s Land, this tells us that it was really difficult to cross No Man’s Land, and therefore go onto enemy territory. In source G, the cartoon shows soldier’s waiting to go into the trenches go the 200th time, they look very bored and tired showing that WWI was very long-winded and slow. We can see from these sources that Haig must be wrong, and therefore we don’t think his opinion can be right.
- Study Source G and H
A cartoon contains more information but less reliable evidence than a photograph. Using sources G and H discuss this statement with reference to life on the Western Front.
Source G is a British carton showing life at the Front. We can see three soldiers sitting round a table, and another stood up in a dark, dirty room. The light is coming from a small window and a candle in an empty bottle. We can see a puddle of water, and something in the corner that’s broken. The soldiers all look very tired and are wearing dirty uniforms. One of them is smoking a pipe. The caption below the cartoon reads, ‘In and Out, The last half-hour before “going in” to the trenches for the 200th time.’ ‘200th time’ is to show the length of time the soldiers had been at war for. There is possibly a high threat from the Germans because there is another soldier standing outside of the window guarding. We can infer that their uniforms are not changed that often. From this source we can also infer that the soldiers are suffering from boredom and that they’ve been at war for a long time, many of their friend will have died and they’re waiting for the war to end. We know from the soldiers’ daily routine that life was very repetitive and slow on the Western Front. Generally at dusk and at dawn all soldiers had to ‘stand-to’. This was when they had to be on guard because poor visibility made enemy attacks more likely. In the morning this lasts roughly an hour after which rifle equipment was cleaned, breakfast served and daily tasks were assigned. The tasks that they did included repairing the duckboards, draining trenches, and reinforcing trench walls damaged by the rain. This routine was very tedious and boring and took up almost all of the soldiers’ time. Wherever they had any spare time they tried to sleep, write letters home, write in their diaries, or write poems or do artwork. When the evening stand-to began, time was also taken to bring supplies of food and ammunition from the rear lines, the barbed wire defences was repaired, the men who had gone over the top were rescued from no-man's land to be treated or identified, and they searched the area for German snipers. Soldiers’ weren’t always on the front line. They had a few days on the front line, followed by a few days in a reserve trench and then a rest. Soldiers were unlikely to have more than 5-10 days worth of combat in a year.
In this source, however, we don’t know how long the soldiers have been fighting for, or what rank the soldiers are. We also don’t know where the soldiers are meant to be on the Western Front. We can only infer what some things mean on this cartoon.
In source H, it shows a picture of a British trench on the Western Front. We can see a number of soldiers but none of them are looking out at Germans trenches or guarding. None of them are holding any sort of artillery. The men all seem to be doing daily chores. One soldier is making repairs to the trench, while another is cleaning and another is eating. In theory, soldiers were meant to get quite a lot of food for their daily rations, but in reality, this never happened. As the war went on, the amount of rations became less and less. It was very unlikely for a soldier of the front line to receive a hot meal. The bulk of British soldiers’ diets came from tinned corned beef (known as bully beef), tea, bread and biscuits. Food would often take up to eight days to reach the front line trenches, and so the bread and biscuits were inevitably stale. Source H shows a typical trench, constructed from sandbags, wooden supports and containing a dugout – where the soldiers’ sleep. On the floor we can see mud, which caused the condition ’Trench Foot’.
In this source we don’t know where on the Western Front these soldiers are, or who the soldier’s are. We don’t know what they’ve been through, an we can only infer what life is really like for them.
This source is very realistic, and because it is a real photograph it must have been like this. However, this source may not be reliable. This photograph may have been staged to show that life was better than it actually was.
In conclusion, I think the Source G contains more information but it is not as reliable because it is made up, whereas Source H is a photograph from an actual trench on the Western Front and is therefore more accurate. The artist of Source G could very easily manipulate the truth in the cartoon and nobody would know because the British people only found out about the war through cartoons like this.
- Study Source I and J
Which is the more useful source of information on the employment of gas in World War One?
Source I is a table showing the official figures of casualties in the British Army relating to gas. The table shows a steady increase in the amounts of casualties and deaths relating to gas as the war goes on. The number of casualties goes up at an alarming rate while the number of death goes up quite slowly in proportion to the casualties, the casualties go 12792, 6698, 52452, 113764 whereas the deaths go 307, 1123, 1796, 2673. This suggests that the soldiers were getting better at protecting themselves, or maybe were just more prepared for a gas attack. There are a few negative aspects of this source though. Although it looks formal, the figures could lie. The British Government may have doctored the figures to make them look better. The figures only relate to the British Army, and the numbers could be totally different for the Germans, so we can’t say that everyone used gas. We also don’t know whether these figures are just from German gas attacks or whether there also from British Gas attempts on Germans that has gone wrong, as it often did. It also doesn’t say what gas was used, or what the effects were, and it probably doesn’t account for all the bodies on No Man’s Land that were gassed. Although poisonous gases were known about a long time before WWI, no one had ever used them because they were hard to control and nobody knew much about them. But in WWI gas was used for the first time in a war. France first used tear-gas grenades against the Germans. In 1915 Germany had the first use of chlorine gas, which was very nasty and worked by destroying the breathing organs of the victim and slowly led them to die by suffocation. After this, Allied troops used urine soaked cotton pads as masks because the urine neutralised the poison. In July 1915 soldiers were given gas masks, but these were hard to breath in. Both sides then used gas because it was more effective than chlorine gas and only little amounts were needed to kill a soldier. Germany then used Mustard gas in September 1917; this was the most deadly gas of all of them. It was also hard to detect as it was almost odourless and was even more fatal because it stayed poisonous in the soil for weeks after.
Source J is a poem, Dulce et Decorum, by a soldier called Wilfred Owen. Unlike Source I, this poem describes what a gas attack is like. There is a shout of ‘Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!’ the gas made them go ‘all blind’ and ‘deaf even to the hoots’. To try and protect themselves soldiers would fit ‘the clumsy helmet’. The soldiers that inhaled the gas would be ‘choking and drowning’. After that the gas would take it’s effect and make the soldier have a ‘hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin’ and would make ‘the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs’ and would create ‘incurable sores on innocent tongues’. In this poem, Owen has used metaphors and similes to really make us understand what happens to the soldiers in a gas attack. However, although the writer was there and saw the effects first hand, Owen could have used the emotive language to exaggerate the truth.
In conclusion, I think Source J is the most useful source of information about gas use in WWI. In Source J we learn the tragic effects of gas through a man who saw it first hand. Source I is a bunch of figures that we don’t really know a lot about, and could have been doctored to make them look better.
- Study Source K and L
These two sources were written a long time after the war. How reliable are they as evidence of war on the Western Front?
Source K is an extract from an article written in 1978 by John Terraine about the communications on the Western Front entitled, The Texture of the Somme. In this source Terraine is saying the major problem of the war was ‘communication’. The problem was never ‘overcome during the war’ and the ‘required apparatus did not become available until the next war (WWII)’. The big problem was that as soon as soldiers went “over the top” they lost all contact with their generals and therefore didn’t no what to do. ‘One single device would have’ eradicated this problem, ‘the two-way portable radio set, the “walkie-talkie”. But it didn’t’ exist.’ Because of this on ‘days of murderous battle, (no one) had the slightest idea of what was happening, or any chance to do anything about it’. And because ‘no one could stop them… one assault was allowed to follow another’. If the ‘walkie-talkie’ had been invented, on 1st July 1917 during the War of the Somme, maybe a lot of the 20,00 that dies would have never have gone ‘over the top’. It would certainly have saved the lives of many soldiers, perhaps millions.
Source L is an extract from a book by P. Clark called ‘World War One’, published in 1984. Where Source K was saying technology made the war so difficult, this source cites bad leadership. It starts by giving a quote from Erich Ludendorff who in 1917 became one of the most powerful men in Germany. ‘Lundendorff once described the British army as “lions led by donkeys”’. The point of this extract is to say that ‘none of the commanders knew how to win the war’ because of ‘completely new conditions’. Clark says that ‘their one thought was to have more men, more guns and more ammunition than the enemy’. This plan was so ‘if they couldn’t win a decisive battle, they could defeat their enemies by forcing them to use up all their reserves’.
Because these two sources were written along time after the war its both enhances and deflects from their information quality. One way in which it makes it better is because the writers have had lots of sources to collect information from so it has a wide range of opinions and a true feeling of what the war was like and the true extent of it’s problems. The major negative of the sources being written so far after the war is that they’re not strictly reliable. The people who wrote these Sources were very unlikely to have been at the war, and even if they had, they will have changed events in their mind and will have forgotten things so it won’t be correct. In the likelihood that the writers weren’t at war, the information will most likely been changed and isn’t as reliable as primary data. It is reliable, however, because it tells us how to solve communication problem but the solution was not around.
The message in Source K is that the main reason why WWI lasted so long and had so many casualties was because of the inability to communicate because they didn’t have the technology. The message in Source J is that it was the commanders on either side that were to blame for the length and deaths in the war.
These sources are similar because they both give a factor, which led to the WWI lasting so long, and millions of soldiers’ being killed. They were both written a long time after the war.
These sources differ in two ways. Firstly, they cite different reasons, in Source K its communication failures because of technology, in Source L it’s the commanders tactics. The other way in which they are different is that Source K gives a solution to the problem, the walkie-talkie, where Source L just states the problem and doesn’t give a solution.
- Using the sources and your knowledge of World War One, explain why war on the Western Front lasted so long.
War on the Western Front lasted for over four years because of the conditions, the tactics of the commanders, propaganda from the government and the lack of effective technology.
One major reason why war on the Western Front lasted so long was the conditions. These conditions were unlike any seen in previous wars. The Western Front stretched through France, Belgium and Switzerland but contrary to many people’s thought, it was not permanent sunshine and had conditions similar to Britain, cold and wet in the winter and quite mild in the summer. This was the first war in which trenches were used. Because the trenches were basically big holes in a field, as seen in Source H and when it rained the soil turned to mud. We can see the mud in Source A. The mud made it very slippery, and even more difficult to cross No Man’s Land. The mud and water was awful to live in and caused the condition ‘Trench Foot’ amongst soldiers. This is when a soldiers foot was constantly wet and this caused the foot to swell over twice the normal size. This would result in the soldier being in agony. On the Western Front there were rats. These rats were huge and have been described as ‘being just smaller than a cat’. The rats grew to be so big because they fed on the flesh of decomposing bodies. The rats were everywhere and carried dieses. Because of the mud the soldiers’ uniform got awfully dirty, and they only had the one set. Soldiers then caught lice, which were almost impossible to get rid of. They caused the soldiers to itch and be permanently uncomfortable. Both the rats and the lice could cause the condition ‘Trench Fever’ which caused victims to experience shooting pains in their shins, and then have a very high temperature. This disease didn’t kill, but kept soldiers out of action. I think the conditions on the Western Front made the war last so long because it made the trenches a very difficult place to live, and gave the soldiers illness. It also made No Man’s Land even more difficult to cross.
The commanders of the various countries knew about the conditions but couldn’t really do a lot about it, they had never faced these conditions before and didn’t really no how to plan around it. And because of this, another reason why the war last so long was because of the tactics by the commanders. As it says in Source L ‘Their (the generals) one thought was to have more men, more guns and more ammunition that then enemy’. All of the countries were guilty of sending over thousands of men and gaining no advantage of their enemy. One example of this is the Battle of the Somme in 1917. For over 600,000 Allied deaths, they gained about 10 miles of German land. Source D also supports this and says that because lots of men were sent out at once ‘fire poured upon them from every direction by invisible weapons’. Each side thought that the enemy was stronger than them. We can see this is sources D and E. A German General describes the Allies as ‘a well-armed enemy’ and that ‘a mass break through’ is very unlikely even with ‘extreme accumulation of men and material’.
I think the commanders tactics made WWI last so long because they were unsure what to do and therefore resulted to just sending out men and used more ammunition, which never worked. This war was different to any other ever seen and the generals of the countries made plenty of mistakes.
Huge amounts of men were lost because of the general’s plans to just keep sending out men. To replace these men, the government had to persuade men to sign up to the army. To do this, the government used propaganda. Before 1916, there was no conscription in Britain, this meant that men had to volunteer. To make the armed forces seem attractive, the government had to make the war look attractive. In August 1914 the government had a big campaign to recruitment men aged 19-30. This was a huge success, with an average of 33,000 men signing up everyday. As time went by the army needed more men and by May 1915 the age limit had been raised to 40. The government mainly used posters to advertise the war, and made the war look quite appealing. The government also encouraged products to have labels containing propaganda, such at the example in Source C. Most men had never left their home town, and the thought of going to France and getting paid for it seemed a brilliant opportunity. It is important to remember that people thought the war would be over by Christmas, and therefore they wouldn’t be gone for so long. People knew France to be sunny, and therefore men thought it would be like a holiday. Another reason why men joined up was to serve their country. They thought when they’d return from the war they’d be treated like hero’s and be seen to be brave. Volunteering was deemed as unfair, and volunteering left some factories and mines short of staff, products from the factories and mines were essential, so better planning was needed, to make sure a constant stream of men were going into war. In 1916 conscription was introduced-meaning that all men from 18-40 were made to serve in the war.
I think propaganda used by the government tricked men into signing up for the war and gave them a false sincerity. Even when conscription was introduced, men still had no idea of what they were getting themselves into.
The main reason why the government had to make men join the army was because they kept getting killed when going ‘over the top’. A lot of those that died wouldn’t have, and the war would have been shorter, if there would have been more effective technology available. The first thing that would have saved millions of lives and inevitably made the war shorter was as it says in Source K, ‘the two-way portable radio set, the “walkie-talkie”. But it didn’t’ exist. ’When soldiers’ got onto No Man’s Land they were alone and had no way of communicating with their leaders.
Another thing that made the war last long was barbed wire. Both sides had barded wire as a defence mechanism outside their trenches. However, as well as stopping enemy soldiers, it also stopped their own from getting through. They would try and knock down the barbed wire first with explosives, to create holes in it, and later on in the war they’d use tanks.
Tanks were new technology for WWI and were introduced in 1916. They were highly unreliable and it could be entirely possible that the tank simply broke down. We can see in Source B that one has got stuck in barbed wire.
The use of gas was also new to WWI. Although poisonous gases were known about along time before WWI, no one had ever used them because they were hard to control and nobody knew much about them. But in WWI gas was used for the first time in a war. France first used tear-gas grenades against the Germans. In 1915 German had the first use of chlorine gas, which was very nasty and worked by destroying the breathing organs of the victim and slowly led them to die by suffocation. After this, Allied troops used urine soaked cotton pads as masks because the urine neutralised the poison. In July 1915 soldiers were given gas masks, but these were hard to breath in. Both sides then used gas because it was more effective that chlorine gas and only little amounts were needed to kill a soldier. Germany then used Mustard gas in September 1917; this was the most deadly gas of all of them. It was also hard to detect as it was almost odourless and was even more fatal because it stayed poisonous in the soil for weeks after. We can see the effects of gas through a man who saw it in Source J and figures about British deaths relating to gas in Source I.
Another new thing in WWI was the machine gun. It had never been used before, and it claimed a lot of lives.
I think technology made the war longer because it was responsible for killing a lot of soldiers, who would have otherwise lived.