Evaluating Blitz Sources

Useful for what?

On the night of 29 December 1940 the photographer Herbert Mason stood on the roof of the Daily Mail building and photographed the dome of St Paul's standing above the smoke of the burning City. The paper printed it on 31 December under the headline War's Greatest Picture. Is it a useful source? The exam never asks that. It asks how useful it is for a particular enquiry, and the answer changes with the enquiry. For an enquiry into how the government and the press wanted the Blitz seen, it is close to perfect. For an enquiry into the damage done that night, it is nearly useless: the Guildhall and eight Wren churches burned to the ground below that dome, and the photograph shows none of them. That is the whole of the method: content, provenance, your own knowledge to test both, and a judgement tied to the enquiry in the question. This module practises it on the real kinds of source the Blitz left behind.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with a Blitz example, because the words are only worth marks when they are applied.

The method, in order

Put the six moves of a full-mark Q2(a) answer into the order they should come.

• Read the enquiry in the question and hold it in mind; everything is judged against it
• For each source, say what its content tells you about the enquiry, with a detail quoted or described
• Test that content with your own knowledge: does what you know confirm it, contradict it, or add to it?
• For each source, say what its nature, origin and purpose add to its usefulness
• Say what the same provenance limits: who is not speaking, what could not be said, what the maker could not know
• Judge how useful each source is for this enquiry, and say why in a sentence

Same source, different enquiry

A photograph in the Daily Mirror in October 1940 shows a family grinning on the doorstep of a house with no roof, a Union flag propped in the rubble. For which enquiry is it MOST useful?

• How the press and the government wanted the Blitz to be seen, because a censored national paper chose this image out of thousands, and the flag and the grins are the message.
• How many Londoners were made homeless in the autumn of 1940.
• The conditions inside the public shelters.
• Why the incendiary raids caused so much damage.

Local and national, and what each can carry

The spec expects you to know the difference and to choose between them. Neither is better; each answers different enquiries.

Q2(a) on a local source

An entry from a warden's incident log, written for this module in the form the borough ARP logs took. The enquiry is how well the emergency services coped with the raids of September 1940. Tap the TWO entries most useful for that enquiry.

• Incident 47. 21.40 hrs. High explosive, Cable Street, north side. Six houses down, four damaged.
• Persons trapped, believed three. Heavy rescue requested 21.50, arrived 22.35.
• Gas main fractured, area evacuated to 50 yards.
• Two dead recovered 23.10, one living 00.20.
• Rest centre at St George's school opened 22.00; 38 persons accommodated, blankets short.

Judging provenance

Select the THREE statements that use provenance correctly.

• A censored national newspaper is still useful for an enquiry into morale, because what the censor allowed is evidence of what the government wanted Londoners to believe.
• A Home Intelligence report was written for ministers and kept secret, so its authors had no reason to flatter the public mood.
• A memoir written in 1970 by a former minister is shaped by hindsight and by the Blitz spirit story that had grown up in the meantime.
• A photograph cannot be biased, because the camera records what was there.
• A council record is always more reliable than a national one, because it is closer to the events.
• An anonymous diary is useless because you cannot check who wrote it.

Q2(b): from a detail to a source

The follow-up question hands you a detail and asks for four things: a question the detail raises, a type of source that could answer it, and a reason the source fits, all tied to the detail. Two worked examples: Detail: the incident log records the rest centre short of blankets. Question: how well did the rest centres of Stepney cope with the homeless in September and October 1940? Source: the minutes of Stepney borough council and the reports of the WVS, which ran many of the centres. Reason: they recorded numbers fed and housed and the requests for supplies, week by week, and were written for the council rather than for the public. Detail: a newsreel commentary claims that London carried on as normal. Question: how far did absenteeism from work rise during the Blitz? Source: the records of a large employer, such as the London Passenger Transport Board, or the Ministry of Labour returns. Reason: attendance was counted for pay, so the figures were not made for propaganda. The commonest way to lose the marks is a question that drifts away from the detail, or a source that could not possibly answer the question asked. Keep all four parts pointing at the same thing.

Choose the source

Four enquiries a historian of the Blitz might set. For each, choose the source that could actually answer it.

• Enquiry: how many bombs fell on Bermondsey in October 1940, and where. Which source?
• Enquiry: what East Enders thought about the gap between their shelters and the West End hotels. Which source?
• Enquiry: how the government wanted the public to see the Blitz. Which source?
• Enquiry: how one family in Poplar got through the night of 7 September 1940. Which source?

The method in a paragraph

Usefulness is always usefulness for the _____ named in the question. Content is what the source says or shows; _____ is who made it, when and why. Your own _____ is used to test the source, not to decorate the answer. A censored newsreel is useful as evidence of what the government wanted _____. A warden's log is strong on one street on one night and weak on the _____ picture.

Test a source against the figures

A photograph of a crowded tube platform suggests that most Londoners sheltered underground. A government survey in November 1940 found that only 4% of Londoners used tube stations, while 27% used domestic shelters such as the Anderson. How many more people in every 100 used a domestic shelter than the tube?

Q2(a) on a national source

Source B: the commentary of a newsreel shown in cinemas in October 1940, written for this module in the newsreel style. "London can take it. The bombs fall, and in the morning the milk is on the step and the buses run. Down in the shelters the Cockney spirit is unbroken." The enquiry is the effect of the Blitz on the morale of Londoners. Which paragraph uses the source best?

• The newsreel is useful less for what it says about morale than for what it shows about the effort to shape it. Made for cinema audiences under the Ministry of Information, its purpose was to reassure, so its claim that the Cockney spirit was unbroken is evidence of the message rather than of the mood. My own knowledge shows why the message was needed: the Savoy protest of 15 September and the Home Intelligence reports of bitterness in Stepney suggest the mood was more mixed than the commentary allows.
• The newsreel is very useful because it was made at the time and shows that morale was high.
• The newsreel is not useful because it is propaganda and cannot be trusted.
• The newsreel says that the bombs fall and the milk is on the step and the buses run and the Cockney spirit is unbroken, which tells us about morale.

Q2(a), the incident log, marked

How useful is the incident log for an enquiry into how well the emergency services coped with the raids of September 1940? The log is useful for its content because it records the timings that the enquiry needs: heavy rescue was asked for at 21.50 and arrived at 22.35, forty-five minutes in which three people lay trapped, and the rest centre opened within twenty minutes but was already short of blankets. My own knowledge explains the delay: on the worst nights of September 1940 a borough might log more than a hundred incidents, and the heavy rescue squads, many of them building workers recruited in 1939, could not be everywhere. The provenance adds to the usefulness. A warden wrote it the same night for the control centre, not for the public, so there was no reason to soften the timings or the shortage. Its limits are in the same provenance: it is one incident in one street, it says nothing about the boroughs that coped better or worse, and a warden under bombardment recorded what he could see, not what the fire brigade or the hospitals were doing. It is highly useful for the detail of one response and needs setting beside the borough totals for a judgement about the services as a whole. What earned the marks: content quoted and tied to the enquiry; own knowledge used to explain the content; provenance used as a strength and as a limit; and a judgement about usefulness for this enquiry, not a general verdict.

Write the 8-mark answer

How useful are the incident log (Source A) and the newsreel commentary (Source B) for an enquiry into the impact of the Blitz on the East End of London? Explain your answer, using both sources and your knowledge of the historical context.

• For each source, say what its content tells you about the impact on the East End, quoting or describing a detail
• For each source, say what its nature, origin and purpose add, and what they limit
• Use at least two pieces of your own knowledge to test the sources: Black Saturday, the Tilbury shelter, the Savoy protest, South Hallsville, the Home Intelligence reports
• Say which enquiries each source would serve better than this one, in a sentence, to show you understand usefulness is specific
• Finish with a judgement on the usefulness of each for THIS enquiry, not on which source is better

Q2(b): the follow-up

The detail is the fractured gas main in the incident log. Which follow-up would score all four marks?

• Question: how often did bombing cut gas, water and electricity supplies in Stepney in the autumn of 1940, and how long did repairs take? Source: the records of the gas company and the borough engineer, because they logged every fracture and every repair with dates, for their own operations rather than for the public.
• Question: how many people died in the Blitz? Source: a history textbook.
• Question: were gas mains damaged? Source: a newsreel, because it would show the damage.
• Question: how were gas leaks dealt with? Source: council records.