(Sources) Which is more useful... (11 marks)
Example:
Which of the sources is more useful to an historian studying the economic recovery of Weimar?
Source C
Joseph Goebbels, a member of the Nazi Party writing in a pamphlet called, We Demand, published in 1927:
Three million people lack work. The government work to conceal the misery. They speak of silver linings. Things are getting better for them and worse for us. Only the complete collapse of our people can follow from these irresponsible policies.
Source D
Gustav Stresemann, the German Foreign Minister, in a speech given to The League of Nations (September 1929):
The economic position is only flourishing on the surface. Germany is in fact dancing on a volcano. If the short-term loans are called in by America, a large section of our economy would collapse.
Tips:
On a question about source usefulness, you need to look at who the evidence is from, when it was produced and why it has been produced. Then use some of your contextual knowledge to support and/or question the evidence in the source. A structure you might want to follow would be:
- for your introduction you might want to start by showing that both sources could be seen as useful
- next, look at the content from source C
- look at the attribution of the source
- now link the attribution and your own knowledge
- from here look at the content for source D
- after looking at the content from source D, use the attribution of the source and your own knowledge to see how useful the source is
- finally, reach a balanced judgement about which source is more useful than the other
Remember that even though neither source is necessarily more useful than the other it is still important that you make a judgement on which source is more useful, and you should always look to focus on which is more useful in helping historians to find out about the issue highlighted in the question.