Stalemate Practice Questions

Study Source A below, then answer the question.

Source A: From the diary of a British infantry officer, written in July 1916, a week after the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

We were told that a week of shelling would leave nothing alive in the German lines and that we could walk across. So we walked, as ordered, in long lines. The wire in front of us was not cut; the shells had only thrown it into heaps. As soon as our guns lifted, the Germans came up out of their deep dugouts and their machine guns opened on us before we were halfway over. My company lost more than half its men in the first hour, and for a few hundred yards of ground. Those who planned this have never seen that wire.

Study Source A below, then answer the question.

Source A: From a report written in December 1917 by a British officer for his divisional headquarters, a few weeks after the attack at Cambrai in which large numbers of tanks were used together.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

These machines did in a single morning what our guns had failed to do in weeks of bombardment at Ypres. They crushed the wire flat so that the infantry walked across it instead of being caught in it, and they carried bundles of brushwood to drop into the enemy trenches and bridge them. The machine-gun posts that have cost this battalion so many men were silenced before they could fire. It is true that many tanks broke down or stuck fast, and the ground taken could not all be held. Even so, no other weapon has yet carried infantry through such defences so quickly.

Study Sources B and C below, then answer the question.

Source B: From a report in a British weekly newspaper, published in May 1915, describing the landings on the Gallipoli peninsula for readers at home.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

Our men went ashore from open boats under a storm of fire from the cliffs, and nothing in this war has been finer. A footing has been won at Helles and at the Anzac beaches, and it is held. The Turk fights stubbornly, but he cannot long resist the guns of the fleet. Once the peninsula is ours the way to Constantinople is open, Germany loses an ally, and supplies may at last reach our Russian friends. Readers may look forward with confidence to news of a further advance.

Source C: From a letter written by an Australian soldier at Anzac Cove to his brother in Australia, September 1915.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

We have been clinging to these ridges since April and our line has hardly moved a hundred yards. The Turks sit above us and look down into our trenches. The August push towards the heights cost us dearly and gained nothing, and the new landing further up the coast at Suvla has stuck fast as well. Water comes in tins from the ships and is rationed. Half the battalion has dysentery, the flies are on everything, and men are being taken off sick faster than they are being hit.

Study Sources B and C below, then answer the question.

Source B: From an editorial in a British daily newspaper, published in August 1914, written for British readers shortly after Britain declared war on Germany.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

Germany's armies crossed the Belgian frontier on 4 August, after Belgium refused to let them pass. By treaty Britain is bound to defend Belgian neutrality, and this nation does not break its word. The Belgian army, small though it is, has held the forts of Liège far longer than the Kaiser's generals can have expected, and every hour of delay is an hour gained for France. Let no reader doubt the justice of our cause: we fight for the rights of a small nation trampled by a great one.

Source C: From the memoirs of a German infantry officer who served in the advance of 1914, published in Germany in 1924.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

We crossed into Belgium full of confidence; the timetable allowed us no rest. The forts at Liège held us up, and behind them the roads were choked and the railways broken. At Mons the British regulars fired so fast that we believed every man had a machine gun. Day after day we marched in the heat, outrunning our supply wagons. When the order came in September to fall back from the Marne, we understood at last that France would not be beaten in six weeks, and we began to dig.