PRESENTING THE PAST

The following examples focus on WWI & WWII but they are equally applicable to your other areas of study. History will be my judge. How history will judge the past, and how you will judge the past, will depend very much on the evidence put before you. There are a vast range of sources, depictions of the past, versions of events, portrayals of people and representations of what happened that it is very difficult to decide what is true. What follows are some hints and suggestions about how to handle the sources from the past to help understand how they support or contradict a view of the past. PROPAGANDA You will come across many different forms of propaganda in history but also in your everyday life. If you think of propaganda as being a tool of persuasion, a method used to influence human behaviour or thought processes; you will recognise that this can take many forms. Hitler thought that propaganda was a means of selling ideas to the vast bulk of the population; he did not target the intellectuals who he despised, but the broad masses of the German people. He saw himself as a salesman for political ideas.

Although a clever exponent of the art of propaganda, Hitler and the Nazis were not the only ones to use it. The aim of propaganda in general terms is to send a message that promotes social ends, sells a product or wins an election. The tried and trusted method for this is the manipulation of basic human emotions, to provoke a reaction.

There are several methods for appealing to human emotions;

Appeal to peoples fears, what are they concerned about? What should they worry about? Use negative images or language to undermine the target. Use emotionally suggestive words.

Have the message given by someone respected, appeal to peoples own ideals. Use the flag, John Bull, Uncle Sam or other authority figure to give the message some gravitas.

Think how advertisers nowadays seek celebrity endorsements. A testimonial from David Beckham is worth more than one by thousands of other footballers.

Appeal to ordinary people; claim to be like them, to understand their situation and problems. Not to be hidden away in an ivory tower, or an expert. Bend the rules of language, use euphemisms to hide the reality of the situation. Think how the labelling of the psychological damage inflicted on soldiers has changed this century; e.g. in World war One troops were said to suffer from shell shock, by World War Two it was called combat fatigue, nowadays it is referred to as post traumatic stress disorder. It has been removed from the context of war and becomes a medical label or condition.

Appeal to basic emotions fear, flattery, hatred, prejudices, group identity, patriotism, convictions, envy, greed, one-upmanship, selfishness, egotism, arrogance, pride, lust, peer pressure. Crank up their fears and then offer a solution, a way to save them from these fears.

Propaganda developed as the last century progressed and the role of governments changed. During the First World War the role of the state increased and the government interfered more and more in the lives of ordinary people. Initially several agencies were involved with the propaganda efforts which involved censorship of the press and post, countering German propaganda, raising civilian morale and promoting the war effort. The War Propaganda Bureau was set up in 1914 and was responsible for the Your Country

needs You which saw the rush to colours in August-September 1914. In 1915 after the shell shortage scandal the Bureau promoted a positive role for women and handled the move towards conscription in 1916. Public morale was endangered by Zeppelin raids and food shortages in the later years of the war. Government propaganda was directed at the issues of Kitcheners Army, Conscription, women and work, food shortages and air raids. By the end of the war these campaigns were handled by the Ministry of Information. In 1939 the Ministry of Information was centralised and responsible for publicity, propaganda, news and censorship. POSTERS Posters are an obvious propaganda method and have been employed by all sorts of governments and groups. The sales pitch tends to rely on visuals and short sharp messages, the message has to be conveyed quickly and easily. You will be expected to identify how posters can be useful to historians. They can be useful in terms of content, what they show you about contemporary objects and fashions. However you will be expected to deal fully with the attitudes on display, the attitudes of the government towards the people, the behaviour they felt needed adjusting and how the people of the time saw their role. In World War One the poster campaigns tackled the following issues;

Recruitment, to gather men and resources for the war effort. Thrift to promote the health of the economy, Funds from the public in the form of war bonds. To provoke outrage at the behaviour of the Germans, To promote the idea of a just war, to justify British involvement.

In World War Two the poster campaigns tackled the following issues;

Production Morale Recruitment Security Savings/Austerity Health and Safety.

Cartoons Cartoons are another visual source which can have a dramatic impact on the audience. As a picture they can also be open to misinterpretation and the message conveyed is not always the one that the artist intended to receive. The cartoon as a humorous drawing first appeared in the magazine Punch (1841-2002). Initially the cartoons poked fun at the upper middle classes, trying to prick their pomposity and egos. They could be described as being irreverent (not respectful), witty, sarcastic (making a biting or wounding remark) taunting or making the topics of the cartoon seem ridiculous.

One cartoonist you are going to meet on a regular basis in years 11 and 12 is David Low (1891-1963) who worked for the Evening Standard and the Manchester Guardian. It has been argued that he waged a personal war against the dictators, Hitler and Mussolini. He saw Hitler as a threat to the peace of Europe. He created a character, Colonel Blimp, who symbolised the stupidity and reaction of conservative forces in Britain who failed to take the threat of Hitler seriously. However his cartoons of Hitler provoked a much stronger reaction. Low did not portray Hitler as a wicked or frightening monster but more as a figure of fun, of ridicule, a ludicrous, comic little devil. His cartoons were seen as a threat to AngloGerman relations, he was asked by the government to tone down his attacks during the Berlin Olympics (1936) and again in 1937. He obliged for a matter of weeks but launched his attacks again once Hitler completed the Anschluss with Austria in 1938. Low criticised Neville Chamberlain and the policy of appeasement, which is surprising as the proprietor of the Evening Standard, Lord Beaverbrook, was a supporter of the policy. At the end of the war it was revealed that Low was on a Gestapo death list. A caricature can be seen as a gross distortion of a persons traits, personality, peculiarities or appearance. They can be nasty, cruel and vicious. Study your cartoon, is the artist poking fun at someone or trying to destroy their credibility. PAINTINGS The nature of art in World War One changed to suit the reality of the new type of warfare. Artists had to react to the issues of patriotism, the new technology and the horror of the experience of war. They did not aim to provide a documentary

experience of war, from the perspective as if you were there; they did not try to imitate what they saw. Paintings were not going to portray heroic realism or patriotic allegory. The camera had developed enough by this time to provide the sensationalist pictures of the war, to provide the documentary record, to show the death and reality of the war. The camera could describe the war. The artists had to respond to the new demands, to think about how to portray brief violent events; how to show the deprivation, the fear, the injury, the deaths, the mass destruction, the countless victims, the injuries, the horrors of war. They had to paint landscapes that were devoid of colour and recognisable features. To show the mechanization of war, to show the importance of industry, the war was not won by the military alone. The soldier was not the main means of killing, guns, the artillery accounted for 67% of the casualties. The artists were making judgements on what were the important messages and ideas to be drawn from the war.

Prose and Poetry

Have some forms of presenting the past distorted the perception of what really happened? It has been claimed that World War One was a Literary war that it was based upon the interpretations of half a dozen poets usually middle class, public school boys. Vivien Noakes, author of Voices of Silence: The alternative book of First World War Poetry writes No other war in history has produced as much poetry as did the First World War and with no other war has poetry so much influenced popular perception and understanding of the conflict. The emphasis on the poetry and the prose of Robert Graves Goodbye to all That and Erich Maria Remarques All Quiet on the Western Front, as records of the war have emphasised the horrors of war and the suffering endured by the soldiers rather than viewing the war as an essential military victory that ensured national survival.

The general disillusionment that we now associate with the First World War was a product of the peace rather than of the war, of broken promises and a sense of betrayal It was this period which saw the First World War depicted as a futile massacre of a generation, sent to the slaughter by incompetent and asinine generals. It was seen as an awful, stupid, useless war which sent 750,000 British soldiers to needless deaths. Vivien Noakes suggests that in contemporary sources she finds little criticism of the actual conduct of the war. The acceptance of military incompetence, as hinted at in Siegfried Sassoons poem The General , developed by Alan Clarke in his book Lions led by Donkeys and portrayed in the theatre and film versions of Oh What a Lovely War saw World War One portrayed as a period of intense suffering and tragedy. The Second World War is seen more positively, as the triumph over evil, a good and just war that destroyed the fascist spectre in Europe. The literary outpourings after the war did not romanticise the war, did not write of glory, honour and patriotic duty but concentrated on the grim reality of the ordinary soldiers experiences. They wrote of the brutality of conflict, the conditions in the trenches, the death of friends, the fear and foreboding that went with them, the meaningless deaths, the suppressed emotions and the general acceptance of their lot. Their overriding concern was for personal survival. FILMS Film is a way of presenting the past, of fleshing out the bones, but can it be seen as a record of the past? Does history just provide a backdrop to the plot, a setting for the characters, rather than try to capture the reality of the past? Can a film be held up as evidence of the past? Films represent the past; they are not showing what actually happened but a version of what happened as interpreted by the director, the actors, special effects, editors and the script. Films do not show the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Historical films are popular, think about Troy, Alexander Titanic. They have an historical narrative running through them. Should Pirates of the Caribbean be seen as an historical adventure or a costume romp?

Films rely on studios and stage sets, computer graphics. Films are based on selective and partial viewpoints; they are an edited view of the past. A film can capture a feeling for the time; it can create a mood, a picture of the past. It can bring it to life Films also tend to be products and reflections of the age when they were produced. All Quiet on the Western Front was an anti-war film which suggested the futility of war, which challenged the view of heroism and adventure. This appeared in the 1930s when there was a strong feeling that the horrors of World War One should not be repeated. A lot of soldiers had written about their experiences and the conditions they had endured and war was not seen as a glorious struggle but a war of attrition, a dehumanising experience. Questions to consider

Does the film fit in with your historical knowledge? What issues are not addressed in the film? How are the main characters portrayed in the film? Why do you think they are represented this way? Who made this film? What is their viewpoint? Who is the intended audience? Why was the film produced? What is the film based on?