Amy Miller
Year 11 History Controlled Assessment

' The war in the air in both wars had the same main aim – to destroy civilian morale'
Use the sources and your own knowledge to show how far the sources support this interpretation.

In this controlled assessment I will be exploring in a historical enquiry on whether or not the given sources provided will support the interpretation of ' The war in the air in both wars had the same main aim – to destroy civilian morale'. With my own subject knowledge I will be investigating the reliability of those sources as well as their restrictions to support the interpretation.

Source 1
My first source is a section of a newspaper article, including a picture, titled 'Saving Little Lives' talking about London children's bomb shelters from 1918.
This article is used as a form a British propaganda informing that 'the Kaiser would kill' the children of London and called the German 'barbaric' and they would 'slay' the children
'without compassion'. This is clearly a biased opinion against Germans by one British journalist who is using the death of children to bring hatred to the German people. The reporter states facts about the bomb shelters that was made but is biased on the Germans saying they are that barbaric as to 'slay' British children 'without compassion' and without mercy. Children were deliberately used to cause outrage and anger towards the Germans. By 1918 (the date of this article) many British people became tired of the war and many started to question the whole meaning of it. The government didn't want people to feel anti-war so used propaganda immensely any way they could to get back to support and nationalism of the people. The Government had control of all media during the war through the Defence Of Realm Act and used this to their advantage overflowing Britain with war propaganda and using society's most vulnerable, the children, for sympathy and wanted more people to want to fight again and remind everyone who worked for the war that they were 'Saving Little Lives' against the cruelty of the 'barbaric' Germans. The bitterness of the reporter from the war shines through his work which does give a limitation to the source as it deems to question his reliability. This source is limited by its overuse of using children as a way of gaining sympathy which questions its reliability as it seems to be used as more of a propaganda piece rather than an article. The start of the article says 'These children of London are taught to protect themselves' with their 'reinforced concrete dug-outs'. This creates a sense of safety and gives the impression that the children are much safer than previously thought thus keeping civilian morale maintained for the feeling of being safe. However, 'the little ones rush when the dreaded warning of an attack is sounded' creates fear, and vulnerability towards the children, which destroys civilian morale with their fear. This mix matched play on words creates a sense of safety just to knock it back down with fear which is worse then just feeling fear as their hope was taken away from them, resulting in a definite destruction of civilian morale with in this source thus being a useful source in my historical enquiry.

Source 2
My second source is a text taken from an English translation of Manfred Von Richthofen's autobiography 'The Red Battle Fighter', published in 1918. Von Richthofen was also widely known as Red Baron. He was a German fighter pilot with the Imperial German Army Air Service during World War I. He is considered the top ace of that war, being officially credited with 80 air combat victories. Lanoe George Hawker who was a British flying ace, with seven credited victories, during the First World War. He was the first British flying ace, and the third pilot to receive the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. In this text