World War 1 Source Analysis

Sources E to K vary greatly in terms of their strength of agreement with the provided interpretation of the relative effect of the impact of new technology on twentieth century warfare. Whilst each of the sources present us with a different view on the fighting methods and technological advancements used during twentieth century warfare, some are more supportive of the interpretation than others due to the varying degrees of accuracy we can infer from both a source’s provenance and its content.

The sources shall be analysed in the order of their strength of agreement with the interpretation, starting with the strongest and ending with the weakest. The sources from the Battle of the Somme which agree with the interpretation will be analysed

Source F strongly agrees with the interpretation that the impact of new technology on methods of fighting was far greater in the Second World War than the First World War. It’s a visual source that depicts two ‘British Tommies’ in the trenches of the Battle of the Somme in World War One.

In the source, one of the soldiers is injured and has been rescued by his ‘comrade’ from no-man’s land. After the seven day artillery bombardment (which was originally planned to have lasted only 5 days), 11 British divisions walked across no-man’s land towards the German line. Immediately, the German Army’s machine guns open fired on the British troops. Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Commander of the British Expeditionary Force in World War One, instructed the soldiers to walk across no-man’s land at a ‘walking pace’. However, Haig only issued this order because he felt as if he had no other choice. General Sir Henry Rawlinson (2nd in command to Haig) was the one who decided

The solider may have been insufficiently trained and died as a result, or the solider may have died due to having been ‘under shell fire’. We can infer that this shell fire was an attack from the Germans. The Germans were able to bomb the British trenches successfully due the effective technology they used. The source mentions ‘shell fire’. Shells played a key role in the Battle of the Somme. Germany were able to successfully shell the British trenches due to the failure of the 7 day artillery bombardment. Britain used shrapnel based shells in an attempt to break the German barbed wire and kill all the Germans in their trenches. This was ineffective because the shrapnel failed to destroy the German trench defences and failed to kill all those residing in the German trenches. A large proportion of the 1,700,000 shells fired at the German trenches by the British did not detonate and turned out to be duds, they were