Britain in the Age of Total War

Edward Eaton

History Coursework Assignment

a) Source A is written 50 years after the Blitz and by a publisher. This makes it a secondary source. It is written in a very enthusiastic and flattering way of the British who kept their “sense of humour” in the “most appalling circumstances”. The source is slightly dubious as it only gives positive opinions about the British response to the Blitz, and does not provide any evidence to justify the British as “heroes”. The facts it does contain are general opinions about the reaction of the British to the Blitz and the comment. Being on the front cover of a ‘celebratory’ book, the extract acts as an advertisement, and is deliberately positive in order to make the British feel proud of their ancestors whose “memories will break you heart and make you smile”, so that they will purchase the book. What we can learn from the source is that some people did act courageously during the Blitz, as the extracts inside the book are original British people’s memories of the Blitz. We can be sure of this as the publisher is not allowed to lie by law, so the content must be genuine.

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b) Source B is useful in helping us understand the effects of the Blitz on the British as it shows how German bombers hit areas randomly and indiscriminately. It helps us to comprehend the terror that the unpredictability of the falling bombs would have caused. The fact that it shows a bombed school would have deeply upset people and the death of children would have demoralised the public. The photograph does have limitations in that it was taken in 1943, over a year after the Blitz, and so may not represent the general events that happened in the Blitz of 1941. The source also does not help us to understand the reactions of the general public as it was censored by the government in order to maintain morale, therefore the majority of British would not have seen this image, and we cannot comment on how this image would affect society as a whole as they did not have access to it.

Source C is useful as it shows the Blitz had a unifying effect on the British; despite the heavy bomb damage the British still showed courage and “grit”. It is also a useful contemporary source as it was taken in September 1940, the time when London was bombed most heavily, so this photograph represents the images the British were seeing at the worst times of the Blitz so their effects would be to influence others to be strong like the ‘rest of Britain’. These publications, reporting British courage were encouraged to maintain morale, but some were staged in order to achieve this. Therefore we cannot be sure whether this is a genuine image of Londoners ‘pulling together’. Both sources help us to understand what images people were subjected during the time surrounding the Blitz, and that negative images were not available to the general public, which would have lowered morale.

c) In source D it is not entirely clear what the picture is showing, but you can see large scale damage to the buildings and the roads strewn with rubble and peoples belongings from bombed houses. Sources B and C also show the damage that German bombers caused, as you can see the destruction of a school and London housing, the sources all show that during German raids, the bombs dropped did large amounts of damage to all multiple areas and targets. Sources C and D both show belongings and British people in the street after being bombed, but in source C the people depicted appear determined and unified, whereas source D depicts sullen, unhappy figures amongst damaged property, although unclear, the “sorting personal property” caption could refer to looting that occurred during the Blitz. The likelihood is that source C was a staged propaganda photograph by the government and does not represent the real effects that the Blitz caused, whilst source D was a genuine picture of unhappy British, but was censored to prevent morale loss in the rest of the population.

Sources D and B differ in that B shows actual death whereas D only shows the low morale of the public, both were censored by the government as they would have shown the general population the undesirable effects the Blitz caused. Whilst D agrees with sources B and C in that German bombs caused huge damage to British buildings, D shows that morale among the public was low, and there was even looting in some badly hit areas such as Coventry.