Paper 1 Practice; term 2

1. With reference to origin and purpose, discuss the values and limitations of the two sources for historians studying Operation Barbarossa. You do an OPVL on both sources.

The origin of Why Nations Go To War was written by John G. Stoessinger, who is a former student that has always been interested in finding "new" explanations for war. The purpose of this book is to take a new look at "the age old scourge" of war, while giving people a deeper understanding of the causes of war. In the case of the chapter regarding Operation Barbarossa, the purpose is to give people his opinion of the causes of Operation Barbarossa, which poses a limitation to this source. Because the purpose is to give one person's opinion, it can not include every single possible explanation for why the war happened, and therefore important details could be left out. Also, because the purpose was to provide new explanations for why Operation Barbarossa began, some of the older explanations, which could have been important, are left out, which is a weakness. However, a strength of this source comes with the origin of it. John Stoessinger, the author of the book, lived through the twentieth century, when Operation Barbarossa was going on. However, the origin also poses a limitation because it is a second hand source, and even though he was alive during Operation Barbarossa, he was not actually in Germany and Russia when the event was taking place.

The origin of this Chapter 5 worksheet is from the Longman 20th Century History Textbook. It is written by Josh Brooman, and it is a book from a British perspective. The purpose of this chapter was to inform people of the reasons behind why Germany attacked the USSR, and how the USSR was saved, and not defeated by the Germans. Because of the origin of the book being a textbook, it is meant to inform people- which can create a limitation. For the most part, there should be no biases, because it is simply meant to show people what happened at this time. Also, because it was written from a British perspective, and British was not involved in this war, the book is valuable because there are no other biases of that nature. However, because the purpose of the chapter is basically to focus on how the USSR was saved, there are limitations, because it doesn't talk much about what life was like in Germany. Therefore, it leaves the readers a bit clueless as to the conditions in Germany, and it makes them look like the bad guy, even though this may not have been the case.

2. Students will compare and contrast the views of why Hitler's Invasion of Russia failed as expressed in the sources.

The book, "The Global War," written by Josh Brooman, and the book "Why Nations Goto War." written by John Stoessinger have similar as well as different views of why Hitler's Invasion of Russia failed.

In the book, "Why Nations Goto War," the main focus of Hitler's failure were results of his irrationality. In this book, it says that he acted extremely loving to all people, but the reality of it was that he hated them. Therefore, this was seen as a reason as to why Hitler's invasion of Russia failed. However, "The Global War" doesn't even mention this idea at all. Instead, the worksheet focuses more on the help that the United States and Britain gave to Russia, which enabled them to be strengthened. This was the main focus of the worksheet, instead of directly blaming it on the failure of Hitler. Also, "Why Nations Goto War" talks about winter affecting the German military, so that they were unable to achieve what they wanted, because of the conditions. For example, tanks froze and sometimes even took 12 hours to start up... this was a big impact on Germany. However, the other worksheet, chapter 5, only focuses on winter being a problem- rather than actually talking about how this affected the Germans into loosing.

However, along with the differences between the two sources, there were several agreements as well. Both sources seemed to agree that all the mistakes Stalin had first made, enabled him to realize what to do better so that he could rise to power and ultimately win. As mentioned earlier in the previous paragraph, both sources also mention how winter affected the people... although the extent to which this was talked about varies, it was still mentioned in both sources, which shows a strong similarity. Also, both of the sources seemed to mention how terrible the Nazis treated the Russians, which ultimately discusses a similarity for how the Russians were able to come to power through learning to resist their cruelty.

In conclusion, although both sources have differences, it appears as though their similar views are very strong. This therefore allows the reader to be certain of some things that happened during this time period, and get a better understanding of why the Russians gained power instead of Hitler.