First World War Factory

1. All of the sources in the booklet are useful as they all show us different aspects of the war. However I think that Source B is the most useful as although it contains no facts it tells us a lot by showing us the atmosphere of a First World War factory. Source B is more useful when grouped with Source D as this gives us a written account describing a First World War factory.

Source A is a written primary source. It is a song sung by women in the Land Army in World War Two. At face value the lyrics of this stanza of a song tell us that women could help in world war two by working on farms despite the fact that they are unable to fight (‘ Though we can’t fire a gun’). Some of the strengths of this source are that it tells us about some of the duties of the Land Army and it is a written source and so is likely to be authentic and more reliable than a memorized equivalent. However this source has a number of weaknesses ; the foremost of which being that there is no information as to who was the writer of the song. This means that we do not know for sure whether it was written by a government official or something that was improvised by the women of the Land Army themselves. If it was written by a government official this source would be interesting because it shows what the government thought would be effective propaganda to persuade people to join the Land Army and increase the women already in it. If it were written by the women themselves it would show what they really thought about the Land Army and it would show that morale was high given the highly positive lyrics. If feel that given it was a written source and most unofficial songs would not have been written down and the lyrics are quite formal. This would fit in with the fact that many people’s entertainment in the Second World War was singing and so many propaganda song were written. This source therefore is limited in it’s usefulness as it tells us very few real facts about the Land Army and contains little information about how the women of the Land Army really felt. It is likely reliable as I know that women in the Land Army were made to be highly mobile as they were mainly single and so required to be mobile and therefore march to the fields.

Source B is a visual source. However we do not know if it is primary or secondary as the painting is undated and so we cannot tell if the painting was painted actually in the factory at the time or painted from photographs or memory after the war . This could effect the reliability of the source as it may also have been based from memory.Paintings are also not always reliable as they are often works of art or of the artists imagination and can show events and scenes that never actually took place. However this does not mean that the painting in Source B is not useful as painting can capture the emotion and atmosphere of a place in a way in which photographs cannot, moreover photographs only capture a snapshot of the events which are taking place whereas a painting can act as a summary of what is happening. This is shown in Source B by how all of the different processes of shell manufacturing are taking place simultaneously when they may not have done so in reality. This source shows women working in a munitions factory in the First World War; this tells me that women were used in munitions production in World War One. This seems like a reliable source and many women did work in factories in the World Wars due to manpower shortages. It fits into my wider knowledge that women were not allowed to reach senior levels as there is a man in uniform at the right side near the back of the picture appearing to be supervising production. I think that this source is useful to shows what a Great War munitions factory may have looked like and aids understanding of what the atmosphere of a munitions factory would like. This source is linked to source B as they are both not sources which are not definite facts and contain no statistics but helps understanding of what it was like in a First World War munitions factory.

Source C is a secondary source which is an extract taken from a textbook by Michael Lynch which is called Access to History .This source tells us a series of facts about Women working in the First and Second World Wars. It’s strengths are that it tells you a lot of facts and figures about women in both wars and as it is the only source relevant to both wars it enables us to compare the impact women had on the war effort in both world wars. However there is no footnote so we do not know where the author got his information. The information seems to be correct for example it states that in the First World War 250,000 women became land workers and other research 250,000 worked on in agricultural positions. Another example of a parallel between the source and other research is that the source states that 500,000 women did clerical work in the First World War and other research suggests that 500,000 took up clerical positions in private offices. However the lack of explanation of the data in the source (eg failing to mention that the clerical positions were private sector only) raises concerns about the reliability of this source. Furthermore it does not tell us the population ( in reality about 7 million working age women). This means that we do not know the context from this source alone. There is also no explanation to add any depth to the source. I think that this source is reliable as it was taken from a major history publication, however it could be biased as we do not no the context