Edexcel GCSE History: Source Utility (how useful are Sources B and C?)

Source B — an invented police report written for this exercise, in the style of a confidential report by a German police officer to his superiors, dated 1 July 1934, on the Night of the Long Knives.

Acting upon orders received in the early hours, units of the SS detained a number of senior SA leaders at the resort of Bad Wiessee and elsewhere. Herr Röhm and several others were taken into custody; a number have since been shot. The operation was carried out swiftly and is now complete. It is given out officially that a plot against the state by the SA leadership had been uncovered and forestalled, though I am bound to record that no evidence of such a plot was placed before this office. Certain other arrests, of persons unconnected with the SA, were also made during the night, and old scores appear to have been settled under cover of the action. The public is calm; the newspapers carry only the official account.

Source C — an invented diary extract written for this exercise, in the style of a diary kept by a middle-class woman in Berlin, dated 3 July 1934.

What relief there is in the city! For months the brown-shirted bullies of the SA have swaggered through the streets, brawling and thieving, until decent people feared them more than any criminal. Now the Führer has acted: the radio says he has struck down Röhm and the rowdies who were plotting against him, and has cleansed the movement of its rotten element. My husband says we should not believe all we are told, and that men were killed without trial, which cannot be lawful. But I confess I am glad the SA is humbled, and so are most of our neighbours, who say the Führer has shown he will keep order at any cost.

How useful are Sources B and C for an enquiry into the Night of the Long Knives in June and July 1934? Explain your answer, using Sources B and C and your own knowledge. (8 marks)

Source B — an invented leaflet written for this exercise, in the style of a leaflet handed out by the Montgomery Improvement Association, dated December 1955, during the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama.

Do not ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday and after. If you work, take a cab, share a ride, or walk. Come to the mass meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church for further instruction. We are not asking for trouble; we are asking only that a tired woman who has paid her fare be allowed to keep her seat. They have arrested Mrs Parks for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. We are many, and we are the ones who fill those buses. If we stand together and keep off them, the company cannot pay its way, and the city will have to listen. Walk in dignity, and let no one be drawn into violence.

Source C — an invented memoir written for this exercise, in the style of a memoir by a white bus-company manager in Montgomery, recalling the boycott years later.

I will not pretend we understood, at first, what we were dealing with. We assumed it would fizzle out in a week, as such things did; the coloured folk had no cars to speak of and a long way to walk. But week after week the buses ran empty through their neighbourhoods, and our takings fell by the better part of two-thirds, for they had been the bulk of our custom. They organised car-pools with a discipline that astonished us, and the churches were behind it. The city would not give an inch on the seating, and the company was caught between them, losing money it could not afford to lose. It went on for over a year, until the courts settled it against us.

How useful are Sources B and C for an enquiry into the methods and impact of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 to 1956? Explain your answer, using Sources B and C and your own knowledge. (8 marks)

Source B — an invented report written for this exercise, in the style of a confidential report by an SPD (Social Democratic) observer compiled for party leaders in exile, dated 1936, on opinion inside Nazi Germany.

The terror has done its work. Open opposition has ceased; the concentration camps and the ever-present fear of the informer have silenced all but the boldest. Yet it would be wrong to report that the regime is loved by all. Among the workers there is much grumbling at wages held down while the rich grow richer, and the older trade unionists have not forgotten that their organisations were smashed. But — and this we must say plainly — many are genuinely won over: there is work again where there was none, the streets are orderly, and the people take pride in a Germany that the world once more respects. Discontent there is, but it is private, and it does not threaten the regime.

Source C — an invented letter written for this exercise, in the style of a letter from a German factory worker to a cousin abroad, dated 1937.

You ask whether things are as bad as your newspapers say. I will be honest, as I trust this letter will reach you safely. There is work now, and a wage, which under the old governments there was not, and for that a man is grateful when he has a family to feed. We are taken on cheap trips, and the wireless and the films are full of fine things. But a man may not speak his mind, and I weigh every word even at my own bench, for one careless remark reported by the wrong ears can finish him. I will not pretend to you that we are unhappy; only that we are not free, and that I have learned to keep the difference to myself.

How useful are Sources B and C for an enquiry into how far ordinary Germans supported the Nazi regime in the 1930s? Explain your answer, using Sources B and C and your own knowledge. (8 marks)

Source B — an invented speech extract written for this exercise, in the style of a public statement by a Southern state governor, reported in an American newspaper, dated 1963.

I was elected by the people of this state, and the people of this state have spoken plainly: they will not have their schools and their customs overthrown by judges in Washington who know nothing of our way of life. Segregation is the law and the will of this state, and I shall use every lawful power of my office to maintain it. Let no outside agitator imagine that he can come here and stir our contented coloured people against their neighbours. We seek no quarrel, but we shall not yield our right to govern our own affairs. The federal government may send what it pleases; this state will stand.

Source C — an invented account written for this exercise, in the style of a recollection by a black civil-rights volunteer in the South, recorded some years afterwards.

We knew before we set out that we might not come back. In those parishes a black man who tried to register to vote could lose his job, his credit, his home, or his life, and the sheriff was as likely to be in the Klan as to protect you. We went house to house in the evenings, by lamplight, and grown men who had farmed all their lives were afraid even to put their names to a form. Some found the courage, and walked to the courthouse together so that no one stood alone. A few of our number were beaten, and one church where we met was burned. But the fear was breaking, slowly, and that was the thing they could not abide.

How useful are Sources B and C for an enquiry into white resistance to the civil rights movement in the American South in the early 1960s? Explain your answer, using Sources B and C and your own knowledge. (8 marks)

Source B — an invented broadcast script written for this exercise, in the style of an American government radio broadcast to the public, dated October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

My fellow Americans. This government has obtained unmistakable evidence that the Soviet Union is building bases for offensive nuclear missiles upon the island of Cuba, ninety miles from our shores. Such weapons, in such a place, are a deliberate threat to the peace of this hemisphere and cannot be tolerated. I have therefore ordered a strict quarantine of all offensive military equipment bound for Cuba. Ships carrying such cargoes will be turned back. I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt this reckless provocation and to withdraw these weapons under the supervision of the United Nations. We do not desire war, but we will not shrink from the defence of our security, whatever the cost.

Source C — an invented diary extract written for this exercise, in the style of a diary kept by a schoolteacher in Florida, dated October 1962.

I have never known days like these. The children practise crouching beneath their desks, and their mothers come early to take them home, white-faced, as though the bombs might fall before the bell. At the store the shelves are stripped of tinned food and water, and our neighbour has dug a shelter in his yard. The radio speaks of ships approaching the blockade and no one knows whether they will stop or steam on. My husband says little but does not sleep. We are told the President is firm and the nation must hold its nerve, and we try, but every hour that the wireless brings no news is an hour we hardly dare to breathe.

How useful are Sources B and C for an enquiry into the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962? Explain your answer, using Sources B and C and your own knowledge. (8 marks)