Ablett joined the army on 20 February 1850 at the age of 19 years and five months, being assigned to the 3rd Battalion, Grenadier Guards. He would go on to serve in the Crimean War, seeing action at the Battle of Alma, Battle of Inkerman and the Battle of Balaclava, earning service bars for each. But it was at the rank of private in early September 1855 when he performed the deed which would earn him a Victoria Cross for bravery while in the trenches at the siege of Sebastopol
A working company of Grenadiers were moving explosives into a forward trench when an alert sentry spotted a high trajectory shell heading straight for the Grenadier’s trench, now packed full with gun powder barrels. The sentry just had time to let out a desperate warning cry when the shell fell, with its fuse burning. There was panic in the trench as everyone seeking their own survival dived for cover, yet in a split second, Ablett acted, He rushed towards the hot and smoking shell and succeeded in lifting it but it was red hot from the friction of the barrel so burning Alfred’s hands, it slipped between his legs. He quickly turned and with superhuman strength picked up the heavy burning object again and managed to throw it outside the trench. It exploded and Ablett was thrown to the ground and covered with earth.
Sergeant Baker who was in charge of the working party, ran forward but surprisingly, Alfred Ablett arose from the debris like a phoenix. Was he hurt? “No; but I have had a good shaking“ was his reply. Private Ablett had saved the British trenches from disaster and the lives of all his comrades too, His Commanding Officer promoted him to Corporal and gave him his own personal silk neck tie which Her Majesty, Queen Victoria had given to him. Ablett was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal [DCM] for his general conduct in the campaign, later when the Queen’s special award was introduced, he was awarded the Victoria Cross for his outstanding bravery in the trenches, After the war back in England, he was promoted to Sergeant and it was soon after that, he signed on to complete an army career of 2l years.
Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure, Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals of the poor
Weather very wet since my last. We are in a most deplorable condition. Reinforcements go into trench, so the fresh troops make no difference; duty very hard. A little snow fell yesterday; to-day rather fine, but very dirty. Served out to-day with comforters and gloves. The most disgraceful thing imaginable, I am now almost barefoot and cannot get a pair of boots; and even if I did get the boots that our Government serves out to us, they would be but of little use; for during this weather, we cannot step without going six or eight inches deep in mid or water and then our stockings get wet and in that condition we have to remain until the weather clears up and the sun comes out to dry them. We still have to carry our meat and biscuits up from Balaclava; we are in a miserable plight when we return to camp and perhaps for duty that night. Some days we get quarter of a pound of pork and about six ounces of biscuits. I am at this moment fit to eat my fingers’ ends.
19th.
Very miserable yesterday. To-day rather fine. Obliged to report myself to the Doctor, being very ill; having caught a severe cold. I am scarcely able to walk. The Doctor gave me some medicine and sent me to my tent.
20th.
To-day is very fine and, thank God, I feel a little better. Nothing more than usual to-day; that is, men dying very fast from dysentery and the severity of the weather.
24th.
Very wet since my last date; nothing but continual rain – rain – rain. On the morning of the 21st, the enemy made a sortie on our advanced, in front of the 21-gun battery; they drove our men out and held possession of the work for an hour and a half. The Company I belong to went on duty there next morning; five of our men lay dead in the work, stripped of almost everything they had on; they were bayoneted while asleep. The enemy came on them quite by surprise. The poor fellows, being tired and worn out with heavy duty, were nearly all asleep. The enemy took away all our wounded as well as their own and everything else they could lay their hands on. It was a most disgraceful affair on our part; there was certainly some neglect of duty somewhere, but it cannot be made out where. Two companies of our regiment were on at the time and several others. Our men were commanded by an Officer of the 34th regiment, who was taken prisoner; the 34th are all young hands. It is both snowing and raining at this time and is bitter cold.
25th.
Christmas-day. Last night was a beautiful frosty night; to-day it is also very fine; the frosty weather appears to have set in. Such a Christmas-day I never passed in my life before,. I cam from the trenches this morning, so managed to get a bottle of brandy and intended having a bit of a spree, but I was taken in for the Company for the trenches this evening; so I left my bottle for to-morrow and contented myself with my grog. My Christmas dinner consisted of a little salt pork and hard biscuit.
26th.
A very sharp frost last night; very fine to-day and very little firing going on. I happened rather lucky last night, after I got into the 21-gun battery. I was walking about on the platform of one of the guns; the night was beautiful and I alone, thinking about the place where I spent my last Christmas-day, when a young sailor came up to me and said, “Well Corporal, how did you enjoy your Christmas dinner?” “Well,” said I, “I enjoyed it pretty well, because I had good reason for doing so,” “Why,” said Jack, “had you something extra, then?” “No,” I said; “nothing but our regular rations and very little of that; but I knew that I could get nothing else, therefore I enjoyed it.” “Well,” says Jack, “will you have a bit of plum pudding?” I said “I should like to have some; for if I pass to-day over without any, it will be the first time since I have been able to eat any.” So Jack handed me “a lump of dough,” as he called it. I took it and you may depend I was pleased with it. In return, I gave Jack a drop out of my grog bottle, which I always used to carry with me; so I and Jack passed the night in talking about Old England and the merry Christmas they were spending there. Little does a man think, when seated by his fire-side at home, what hardships his own countrymen are enduring for his sake. I often wonder if a soldier will be treated the same in England as he used to be. Orders issued last night and read to us to-day, that the Queen had been pleased to allow every soldier that serves in the Crimea to have a medal; and those who were in the bloody battles of the Alma and Inkermann to wear two clasps; one for each engagement.
27th.
Nothing particular to-day. No firing. Weather fine.
28th.
Came off duty this morning. Rather fine, but very cold.
30th.
Cold and miserable.
31st.
Came off the advanced works, Gordon’s battery. Very cold; a little snow fell in the night. Went down to Balaclava to-day; returned very tired and weary.
Queen’s Regulations provided that each soldier should receive 1½ lb. of leaven bread or 1 lb. of biscuit and 1 lb. of fresh or salt meat a day. For this his pay was stopped 3½d. Anything else he needed he was expected to buy. Lord Raglan recognised that this system was unworkable in Turkey and the Crimea and had ordered that, for the stoppage of a further penny, each soldier should receive an ounce of coffee and 1¾ ounces of sugar. Later on he ordered that two ounces of rice or barley should be added to the daily ration, an extra half-pound of meat and a free issue of a quarter of a pint of spirits. But transport difficulties had made it impossible to get these rations up to the men. For three or four days at a time they sometimes had nothing to eat but biscuit. The fresh meat that came up perhaps once in ten days was ‘seldom eatable’. On Christmas Day Colonel Bell’s men got no rations at all. ‘I kicked up a dust’, he noted in his diary. ‘At the close of the day the Commissary did serve out a small portion of fresh meat. Too late! no fires, or means of cooking!’
The men, in any event, had little appetite and often when the full rations did come they were too exhausted to collect them. They were more concerned in getting their coffee and rum than anything else; and they went to great trouble with their green coffee-berries, using cannon-balls and shell-cases to grind them with, and anything they could lay their hands on to cook with. When only four bags of fuel were served out to the three thousand men of the 3rd Division’s 1st Brigade, on 31 December, they were issued with one pound of coal each. A few days later they were using old broken boots instead.
‘Well, my lads,’ said their brigadier, ‘this is a sort of fuel I never saw tried before.’ ‘Oh! indeed, sir, they burn very well. If only we had more of them and they were a bit drier.’
An officer of the 46th saw his men cutting up their dried meat into little strips and using that as fuel to cook their coffee with. Men pilfered bits of gabions and even pick and shovel handles and chopped them up before they could be recognised.
RSM Arthur Baker 30th Division, 4th Army, Somme 1916 with Sgt Billy Morris and three others.
When my grandchildren ask how I lost my leg, I always say the same thing: “I didn’t lose it. I know exactly where it is.” Of course that’s not completely true. But more or less. More or less, I know where the explosion came that took me out of the war. It was at Montauban. Or, as we called it, Monty-Bong. July 1st 1916. First Day of the Somme. The bloodiest day in the whole bloody war.
Three dear friends lie there still.
Fifty thousand casualties on the first day. And it went on for months. Think of that.
I was forty-three. Easily the oldest in the whole Division – or at least in the fighting end of it. There were plenty of older ones at HQ or who turned up at Chapel or visited the trenches to give us pep talks.
This was planned as the breakthrough, you see. After eighteen months of stalemate we were going to smash through and mop them up in a tidal wave of khaki. It must have been obvious to everyone what was coming. When we went over the top that July morning, it was into a weird silence that followed a full week of day and night intensive bombing. The attack was supposed to be coordinated with the French, but Verdun had put paid to that. The feeling was: “Now it’s our turn.” It wasn’t an optimistic feeling. “Come on, lads! The enemy trenches are less than three hundred yards away!”Lieutenant Swanson used to say. “ Just two football pitches, lads. Think of that!” He made it sound easy.
As RSM, I studied the maps with great attention. If I was to lead, I had to know where our boys were heading. Guillemont to the east and Mametz to the west. To the north: Bazentin-le-Petit and Bazentin-le-Grand. Bernafay and Trônes woods to the north-east and Maricourt to the south.
I tried to get all the unfamiliar names in my mind and tie them into visible landmarks. A stunted tree. A ruined barn. A chalk escarpment.
In the event, it was not difficult to see where to go. The German first defensive position ran south of the village, along the lower slopes of Montauban Spur. That’s where our two-football-pitch sprint ended. The finishing line.
Obviously, the Hun knew we were coming. They’d known for weeks, but -as we later realised- the Enemy intelligence anticipated an offensive against the Fricourt and Gommecourt spurs, with a possible supporting attack in between, rather than an attack further south around Montauban and the Somme river. We got lucky. If you want to put it like that.
A million lads would have thought differently. This is when we started calling Haig “the Butcher.’
The official story is plain enough We- the 30th Division- “attacked behind a creeping barrage and captured its objectives of Montauban and the Montauban Ridge, inflicting many casualties on Bavarian Infantry Regiment 6, of the 10th Bavarian Division and Infantry Regiment 62 of the 12th Division. A German counter-attack in the early hours of 2 July was a costly failure. The 30th Division began operations against Bernafay and Trônes woods on 3 July.”
We mounted up at the whistle at 7.30am with a line almost two miles long, running hell for leather across a blighted desertscape. No one had had any stomach for breakfast, but that was the thought that filled me: how hungry I was! This was the occasion when Captain Nevill did the famous trick with the footballs, kicking them across No Man’s Land to spur the attackers on. He only lived a few minutes. It was applauded in a rueful way, on our side, but just seen as evidence of “Tommy stupidity” on the other. Not for the first time, I agreed with their point of view.
The relentless bombardment had succeeded in disabling most of the German artillery when we attacked, and many of the German guns had been knocked out. The German artillery command post had also been wiped out by a single heavy shell. That shell probably saved all our lives, but I shuddered at the mess.
The wire had been well cut, and the French heavy artillery had destroyed many of the German’s deep dugouts – which were not as good in this sector – by using HE, not shrapnel, shells. Other divisions were not so lucky (again that word), and found the defenders emerging unscathed from bases cut deep into the earth.
Because of the shellfire, the Germans had been unable to relieve the Regiment defending this section of line, and the German soldiers had been reduced to exhaustion and shell-shock. The Germans were mostly caught in their dugouts, and we met only pockets of stiff resistance. Instead, we found many places full only of dead bodies – particularly in the Glatz Redoubt (labelled ‘g’ on the map) and in the cellars of Montauban – which shows how successful the artillery bombardment had been. (The only living thing found in Montauban was a fox.)
By 8.30am, we (the 30th Division) had joined up with the French Army at the Glatz Redoubt and consolidated our position, ready to move on.
This photograph was taken on the first day of the Somme. The original caption read: ‘In Montauban Alley, the final objective- taken about 6pm’. The objective on the first day was the French village of Montauban.
It was one of the few objectives successfully taken on 1 July 1916. At this stage my leg still had a couple of weeks to limp along.
Well, the attack continued to proceed more or less according to plan. We used ‘appropriate strategies’ to remove different obstacles, bringing up Lewis guns to enfilade and clear the Jerry machine-gun posts. In places, we attacked under a smoke-screen cover, with teams of bombers used to clear the Enemy trenches and machine-gun emplacements. And – most terrifying- flame-throwers were used to clear the badly-cratered ground along the main road.
We advanced so quickly that at points we had to wait until the artillery lifted (compared to further north, where the artillery ran on ahead of the attack). In all, 1882 German prisoners were taken and the HQ of the Germans’ 62nd Regiment was captured.
Montauban was captured by 12.30pm, and we moved out to establish a front line along their objective – a trench known as Montauban Alley. We looked out over a broad plain deserted except for fleeing Germans.
When we totted up in the Alley, we counted three thousand killed or wounded in our division.
The most glaring thing about the Montauban attack, however, if you’ll allow a bit of hindsight, was the LACK of a result. Having taken Montauban, the XIIIth Corps could have outflanked the German armies further north and achieved the ‘breakthrough’ Haig had wanted. However, while Haig had planned for a breakthrough, the commander of our 4th Army, Rawlinson, had preferred a ‘bite and hold’ strategy. Congreve, being a careful commander, preferred to follow Rawlinson, and so he ordered his men to consolidate, and the opportunity of 1 July was lost.
But it didn’t seem so at the time. There was a huge surge of adrenalin that had carried us forward, and it was hardly dissipated even by the enormous casualty lists. And, of course, we simply didn’t know of the almost total failure of advance on other sectors.
We feasted on the notion of ‘hard-fought victory.’
After a preliminary bombardment on 8 July, XIII Corps was to occupy the south end of Trônes Wood, Maltz Horn Trench and capture Maltz Horn Farm, as the French 39th Division on the right took the rest of Maltz Horn Trench, up to Hardecourt knoll and from there to Hardecourt. No man’s land opposite the British was 1,100–1,500 yd (1,000–1,400 m) wide and under German observation but the western approach from Bernafay Wood, held by the 9th (Scottish) Division was not visible from Longueval.
An attack could then be made from the south-west on Maltz Horn Farm, out of view of the German second position. On 9 July the 30th Division plan was to attack at 3:00 a.m. after a short bombardment. Next day another attack was mounted after a German counter-attack recovered the wood and recaptured the western edge. On 11 July British troops were withdrawn and a bombardment, said by German witnesses to be “the fiercest yet experienced”, opened at 2:40 a.m. before the attack.
On 12 July the 30th Division reported that it held the wood but that all three brigades were exhausted, so the 55th Brigade of the 18th (Eastern) Division was attached that morning.
We were played out. And I was legless, lying unconscious, and in pieces in the muddy entrance to the light railway line that ran through the centre of the wood. My own recollection is confused- muddled in the extreme. I remember issuing orders, as we prepared to assume defensive positions before the expected counter-attack. The blast that took us out -myself and several companions- could easily have come from our own guns. It was dark – so dark that you couldn’t distinguish blood from mud. One moment we were completely focused, the next everything was over forever.
And that’s where my leg lies. To this day, for all I know.
After the First World War, the desire to rebuild and restructure society took many different forms in different countries. In the 1920s, American intellectuals paid a considerable amount of attention to Mussolini‘s early Fascist movement in Italy, but few of them became his supporters. However, he was initially very popular in the Italian American community.
In John P. Diggins’ fine work, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton University Press, 1972), there’s even a connecting line with a Mafia-style organisation and ideology in both countries.
During the 1930s, Virgil Effinger led the paramilitary Black Legion, a violent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan that sought to establish fascism in the United States by launching a revolution. Although it was responsible for a number of attacks, the Black Legion was only a peripheral band of militants. Effinger himself had served with the United States Army during the Spanish–American War, settled in Ohio and worked as a salesman in Lima. He was a strong racist, anti-Semite and anti-Catholic, joining the Klu Klux Klan and attaining the rank of Grand Titan, before taking a large group of them -about ten thousand in all- in a much more violent direction. They recruited police officers, National Guardsmen, and former soldiers in their ranks, along with ambitious men who seemed to have a future in politics. As one journalist observed at the time, “Those who could not think for themselves but allowed themselves to be impressed as blind dupes, the cowardly, sadist types, were candidates for the Nazis and the Legion.” Effinger assigned the group’s Legionnaires to flog Jews, whom they believed caused the economic crisis. The Legion also bombed the headquarters of workers unions who hired immigrants and set fire to the homes of Catholics who strayed from “true” Christian values. In Effinger’s attempt to create a mythology around his organization, he rewrote history, as despotic leaders do, and claimed the Black Legion led the American Revolution and carried out the Boston Tea Party. Effinger even saw himself as president someday, ruling with an iron fist.
Many served life sentences for murder, but he himself was never convicted, denying even membership in the organisation.
An early Humphrey Bogart film (1937) challenged their perspective. There’s an excellent review in the link here.
Positive reception
However, though there were several other groups too, which raised some concerns during the interwar period, it was largely viewed positively by the U.S. and British governments, the corporate community, and a significant portion of the elite. This was because the fascist interpretation of extreme nationalism allowed for significant economic influence in the West while also destroying the left and the hated labour groups and union activists. Hitler, like Saddam Hussein much later, enjoyed strong British and U.S. support until his direct action, which severely damaged British and U.S. interests.
William Philips, the American ambassador to Italy, was “greatly impressed by the efforts of Benito Mussolini to improve the conditions of the masses” and found “much evidence” In support of the fascist stance that “they represent a true democracy in as much as the welfare of the people is their principal objective.”
He found Mussolini’s achievements “astounding [and] a source of constant amazement,” and greatly admired his “great human qualities.” United States Department of State enthusiastically agreed, praising fascism for having “brought order out of chaos, discipline out of license, and solvency out of bankruptcy” as well as Mussolini’s “magnificent” achievements in Ethiopia. According to Scott Newton, by the time the war broke out in 1939, Britain was more sympathetic to Adolf Hitler for reasons centered on trade and financial relations as well as a policy of self-preservation for the British establishment in the face of growing democratic challenges.
German American Bund
Poster for German-American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden (1939)
The German American Bund, was the most prominent and well-organized fascist organization in the United States. It was founded in 1936, following the model of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. It appeared shortly after the founding of several smaller groups, including the Friends of New Germany (1933) and the Silver Legion of America, founded in 1933 by William Dudley Pelley and the Free Society of Teutonia. Membership in the German-American Bund was only open to American citizens of German descent. Its main goal was to promote a favourable view of Nazi Germany.
The Bund was very active. Its members were issued uniforms and they also attended training camps. The Bund held rallies with Nazi insignia and procedures such as the Hitler salute. Its leaders denounced the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jewish-American groups, Communism, “Moscow-directed” trade unions and American boycotts of German goods. They claimed that George Washington was “the first Fascist” because he did not believe that democracy would work.
The high point of the Bund’s activities was the rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on February 20, 1939, with some 20,000 people in attendance.The anti-Semitic Speakers repeatedly referred to President Roosevelt “Frank D. Rosenfeld”, calling his New Deal the “Jew Deal”, and denouncing the Bolshevik-Jewish American leadership. The rally ended with violence between protesters and Bund “storm-troopers”.
In 1939, America’s top fascist, the leader of the Bund, Fritz Julius Kuhn, was investigated by the city of New York and found to be embezzling Bund funds for his own use. He was arrested, his citizenship was revoked, and he was deported. After the War, he was arrested and imprisoned again.
In 1940, the U.S. Army organized a draft in an attempt to bring citizens into military service. The Bund advised its members not to submit to the draft. On this basis, the Bund was outlawed by the U.S. government, and its leader fled to Mexico.
Father Charles Coughlin
Father Charles Coughlin was a Roman Catholic priest who hosted a very popular radio program in the late 1930s, on which he often ventured into politics. In 1932 he endorsed the election of President Franklin Roosevelt, but he gradually turned against Roosevelt and became a harsh critic of him. His radio program and his newspaper, “Social Justice”, denounced Roosevelt, the “big banks”, and “the Jews”. When the United States entered World War II, the U.S. government took his radio broadcasts off the air, and blocked his newspaper from the mail. He abandoned politics, but continued to be a parish priest until his death in 1979.
The American architect-to-be Philip Johnson was a correspondent (in Germany) for Coughlin’s newspaper, between 1934 and 1940 (before beginning his architectural career). He wrote articles favourable to the Nazis; and critical of “the Jews”, and he also took part in a Nazi-sponsored press tour, in which he covered the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland. He quit the newspaper in 1940, was investigated by the FBI and was eventually cleared for army service in World War II. Years later he would refer to these activities as “the stupidest thing [sic.] I ever did … [which] I never can atone for”.
Ezra Pound
The American poet Ezra Pound moved from the United States to Italy in 1924, and he became a staunch supporter of Benito Mussolini, the founder of a fascist state. He wrote articles and made radio broadcasts which were critical of the United States, international bankers, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Jews. His propaganda was not well received in the U.S. After 1945, he was taken to the United States, where he was imprisoned for his actions on behalf of fascism. He was placed in a psychiatric hospital for twelve years, but in 1958, he was finally released after a campaign was launched on his behalf by American writers. He returned to Italy, where he died in 1972.
World War II and “The Great Sedition Trial” (1944)
During World War II, first Canada and then the United States battled the Axis powers. As part of the war effort, they suppressed the fascist movements within their borders, which were already weakened by the widespread public perception that they were fifth columns. This suppression consisted of the internment of fascist leaders, the disbanding of fascist organizations, the censorship of fascist propaganda, and pervasive government propaganda against fascism.
In the US, this campaign of suppression culminated in November 1944 in “The Great Sedition Trial”, in which George Sylvester Viereck, Lawrence Dennis, Elizabeth Dilling, William Dudley Pelley, Joe McWilliams, Robert Edward Edmondson, Gerald Winrod, William Griffin, and, in absentia, Ulrich Fleischhauer were all put on trial for aiding the Nazi cause, supporting fascism and isolationism. After the death of the judge, however, a mistrial was declared and all of the charges were dropped.
It’s almost a metaphor for a subtext tendency to allow these things to persist.
In the words of a later historian, it was a ‘mockery of justice.‘ However, the Bogart film, referred to above, provides a “What if” judge’s conclusion to the trial, in my opinion. Here’s a clip:
Abstracted from Wikpedia and other sources for A Level essays
British public opinion had been quite favourable towards the Kaiser in his first twelve years on the throne, but it turned sour in the late 1890s. During the First World War, he became the central target of British anti-German propaganda and the personification of a hated enemy.
Nothing Wilhelm did in the international arena was of more influence than his decision to pursue a policy of massive naval construction. A powerful navy was Wilhelm’s pet project. He had inherited from his mother a love of the British Royal Navy, which was at that time the world’s largest. He once confided to his uncle, the Prince of Wales, that his dream was to have a “fleet of my own some day”. Wilhelm’s frustration over his fleet’s poor showing at the Fleet Review at his grandmother’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, combined with his inability to exert German influence in South Africa following the dispatch of the Kruger telegram, led to Wilhelm taking definitive steps toward the construction of a fleet to rival that of his British cousins. Wilhelm called on the services of the dynamic naval officer Alfred von Tirpitz, whom he appointed to the head of the Imperial Naval Office in 1897.
The new admiral had conceived of what came to be known as the “Risk Theory” or the Tirpitz Plan, by which Germany could force Britain to accede to German demands in the international arena through the threat posed by a powerful battlefleet concentrated in the North Sea. Tirpitz enjoyed Wilhelm’s full support in his advocacy of successive naval bills of 1897 and 1900, by which the German navy was built up to contend with that of the British Empire. Naval expansion under the Fleet Acts eventually led to severe financial strains in Germany by 1914, as by 1906 Wilhelm had committed his navy to construction of the much larger, more expensive dreadnought type of battleship.
The British depended on naval superiority and its response was to make Germany its most feared enemy.
Examine the painting above as a GCSE deduction/ inference question. Using your knowledge of Government censorship, conscription and the circumstances of the last two years of World War 1: Why was this painting banned? (12 marks)
Students studying Britain during World War One, whether it be for AQA, OCR or Edexcel, need to know about censorship. This deceptively simple lesson asks penetrating questions which both engage and challenge. Students analyse one of Nevinson’s famous paintings, Paths of Glory, perhaps surprised that it was censored as it seems less graphic than others. Close analysis of the detail of the painting, including its title and provenance gives students a deeper insight into the nature of censorship.
Step 1
This lesson starts with a close analysis of Nevinson’s painting Paths to Glory. Students are asked to look at a copy of the image and to discuss in pairs what their first impressions are. These are then shared orally.
Step 2
Students are then told that the painting was censored and are asked if they are surprised? Was this image any worse than others that were not censored?
Step 3
Knowing it was censored, the students then work together to annotate their own copy. The key point you want to bring out here is not just simple observation but deduction too. You could use the technique of putting a separate inner frame around the image for observations and then an outer frame for deductions. Instead this lesson simply asks for deductions. To explain the way observation leads to deduction, one annotation is modelled for them.
Step 4
Students feedback and add any new ideas onto their own copy. Offer some more sophisticated conclusions which art historians have come up with. Some able students might want to add these to their own copy.
Step 5
Now take the learning further by concentrating on the title. Students may not know that this comes from Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard, but when they are given detail of the provenance they may see how this made the painting more contentious.
Step 6
Now place the painting in the context of the war and of the government’s overall policy towards censorship, using the textbook or other sources within the department.
Step 7
Conclude by asking three students to come to the front and interpret the painting One must be Nevinson, a second the censor and a third a GCSE textbook writer. Each has to make as many relevant comments as they can about the image.
What can you infer about the Hitler Youth Movement from this photograph?
EXAMINER’S NOTES:
This question requires students to make two inferences from a source and it is sometimes regarded as an ‘easy’ question. However, students need to be sure that the inferences they make from the source are not dependent on their own knowledge.
It was easier to select details in the photograph which supported inferences about the membership or activities of the Hitler Youth than its role in society.
For example, the photograph showed boys of a range of ages, all in uniform and therefore valid inferences were made that the Hitler Youth membership was restricted to boys, included boys of a range of ages, that uniform was compulsory and that there was a military style discipline. They also had large backpacks, so inferences that members of the Hitler Youth engaged in outdoor activities such as camping trips were also credited.
However, claims that the Hitler Youth was restricted to Aryan boys or that it was intended to inculcate devotion to Hitler or to train boys to be soldiers could not be supported from details in the photograph. The focus of the question also needs to be addressed; inferences had to be about the Hitler Youth, not the Nazis or society in Germany.
It should be recognised that details from the source can only be rewarded if they are provided as support for an inference. No marks were available for students who provided simple paraphrases of the source and some students tried to use the source attribution but this often resulted in claims that the boys had been invited to a party.
In the mid-17th century, a wave of religious reform transformed the way in which Christmas was celebrated in England. Oliver Cromwell — the General responsible for leading the parliamentary army during the English Civil War — took over England in 1645. Supported by his Puritan forces, Cromwell believed it was his mission to cleanse the country of decadence.
Starting with Christmas
In 1644 he enforced an Act of Parliament banning Christmas celebrations. Christmas was regarded by the Puritans as a wasteful festival that threatened core Christian beliefs. Consequently, all activities relating to Christmas, including attending mass, were forbidden. Not surprisingly, the ban was hugely unpopular and many people continued to celebrate Christmas secretly.
The Puritan War on Christmas lasted right through the period, until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Under the Commonwealth, mince pies, holly and other popular customs fell victim to the spirited Puritan attempt to eradicate every last remnant of merrymaking during the Christmas period.
In the first half of the 17th century Christmas was an important religious festival and a time when the English population would indulge in a variety of traditional pastimes. The 25th December was a public holiday, during which all places of work closed and people attended special church services. The next eleven days included additional masses, with businesses open sporadically and for shorter hours than usual. During the twelve days of Christmas, buildings were dressed with rosemary, holly and ivy and families attended Christmas Day mass. As well as marking the day’s religious elements, there was also non-stop dancing, singing, drinking, exchanging of presents and stage plays. The population indulged in feasts of roast beef, plum porridge, minced pies and special ale. Twelfth Night, the final day of celebration, often saw a fresh bout of feasting and carnivals.
It’s no surprise that the daily celebrations often led to drunkenness, promiscuity, gambling and other forms of excess. Sixteenth and seventeenth century Puritans frowned on what they saw as a frenzy of disorder and disturbance. In the Late 1500’s, Philip Stubbes, a strict protestant expressed the Puritan view in his famed book The Anatomie of Abuses, when he noted:
‘More mischief is that time committed than in all the year besides … What dicing and carding, what eating and drinking, what banqueting and feasting is then used … to the great dishonour of God and the impoverishing of the realm.’
As well as disliking the waste and debauchery that went along with the celebration of Christmas, the Puritans viewed the festival (Christ’s mass) as an unwanted remnant of the Roman Catholic Church and, therefore, a tool of encouragement for the dissentient community that remained in both England and Wales. They argued that nowhere in the Bible had God called upon his people to celebrate the nativity in this manner. They proposed a stricter observance of Sundays, the Lord’s Day, along with banning the immoral celebration of Christmas — as well as Easter, Whitsun and saints’ days. Preferring to call the period Christ-tide, and thus removing the Catholic ‘mass’ element, the Puritans reasoned that it should remain only as a day of fasting and prayer.
King Charles I had largely supported the existing traditions and festivities but, as control passed to the Long Parliament in the mid 1600’s, Parliament set in motion their idea of completely eradicating the celebration of Christmas.
Shortly before the Civil War had begun in January 1642, Charles I had accorded Parliament’s request to make the last Wednesday in each month a day of fasting.
Tough on fun
In January 1645 parliament enlisted the help of a group of ministers to create a Directory of Public Worship establishing a new organisation of the church and new forms of worship that were to be adopted and followed in both England and Wales. According to the Directory, the population was to strictly observe Sundays as holy days and were not to recognise other festival days, including Christmas, since they had no biblical justification.
Parliamentary legislation embraced the Directory of Public Worship as the only legal form of worship allowed in England and Wales. Two years later Parliament reinstated the law by passing an Ordinance affirming the abolition of the feasts of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun.
Oliver Cromwell regarded Charles I as an insurgent secret Catholic who was subverting the Protestant faith. The Stuart King was deposed and executed by Cromwell in 1649 and for the next four years England was run by Parliament. But Cromwell had other plans. He regarded the current system as ineffective and damaging to the country. Supported by the army, on 20 April 1653 he led a body of musketeers to Westminster and forcibly expelled parliament. He then established himself as Lord Protector and moved in to the Palace of Whitehall. The spectacular Banqueting House is the only complete building of Whitehall to remain standing to this day. The Palace was famously taken from Cardinal Wolsey by Henry VIII and acted as the Royal residence until the ascension of James I.
The Puritans believed – to put it with a crass simplicity- that a welcome into heaven would be contingent upon a grim and rigorous lifestyle. Enjoyment for enjoyment’s sake was disapproved of. Cromwell ordered for inns and playhouses to be shut down, most sports were banned and those caught swearing would receive a fine. Women caught working on the Sabbath could be put in the stocks. They had to wear a long black dress, a white apron, a white headdress and no makeup. The men had an equally sober appearance, dressed head to toe in black and sporting short hair.
All shops and markets were to stay open throughout the 25th December and anyone caught holding or attending a special Christmas church service would suffer a penalty.
Sniffing out turkeys
In the city of London things were even stricter as soldiers were ordered to patrol the streets, seizing any food they discovered was being prepared for a Christmas celebration.
Despite imposing such rigid measures on the common people, it appears that Cromwell himself didn’t quite live up to his preaching. He liked music, playing bowls and hunting and, after becoming Lord Protectorate, soon took to the high life. For his daughter’s wedding he even permitted a lavish feast and entertainment fit for royalty.
In 1656 legislation was passed to ensure that Sundays were more stringently observed as the Lord’s Day and, thus, a day of rest. The regular monthly fast day had always been hugely unpopular and impossible to enforce and was subsequently dissolved.
Despite the threat of fines and punishment many people continued to celebrate Christmas clandestinely. The ban had never been popular and many people still held mass on the 25th December to mark Christ’s nativity also marked the day as a secular holiday. In the late 1640s Cromwell tried to put a stop to these public celebrations and force businesses to stay open. As a result, violent encounters took place between supporters and opponents of Christmas in many towns, including London, Canterbury and Norwich.
Cromwell was Lord Protector until his death in 1658, whereby Charles II was enthusiastically welcomed back to England to take the throne as the country’s rightful heir.
With the restoration of the monarchy in 1661, Oliver Cromwell was once more a despised figure. Cromwell was originally buried with great ceremony in Westminster Abbey, a famous gothic church in London that houses the tombs of kings and queens dating back to Edward the Confessor, as well as countless memorials to distinguished English subjects. Upon taking the throne, one of the King’s first orders was to exhume Cromwell’s lifeless body and take it to be hung at Tyburn gallows, at the top of Hyde Park near Marble Arch in London. This was the first permanent gallows to be established in London in 1196 and was the main site for public executions until 1783. This site is also famous because 105 Catholic martyrs were put to their deaths here from 1535 to 1681. A convent — founded in 1901 — now stands on the site, in which around 20 nuns live and work. A kind of penance?
And what of Cromwell himself, the Scrooge of the feast? Cromwell’s body was decapitated and his head displayed at Westminster Hall for over 20 years. Finished in 1099 this is the oldest surviving section of the Palace of Westminster. The trials of William Wallace, Sir Thomas Moore, Guy Fawkes and King Charles I all took place here, so it was a fitting site at which to display Cromwell’s treacherous head. After changing hands over the next three centuries, in 1960 Cromwell’s head was finally laid to rest at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, which he had attended in 1616 to 1617.
Once Charles II was restored to the throne, all legislation banning Christmas — enforced from 1642 to 1660 — was dropped and the common people were once again allowed to mark the Twelve Days of Christmas. Old traditions were revived with renewed enthusiasm and Christmas was celebrated throughout the country as both a religious and secular festival.
When I was a child, my father told me that five generations on the male line of my family had served in the armed forces. My dad himself served in World War Two. His dad, my grandad, served in the First World War. His father in India and South Africa, and my father’s great grandad in the Crimean War. This last was particularly interesting, because I distinctly remember visiting my grandmother in Dollis Hill, Willesden – at 32 Bertie Road, NW10- and being shown an old sepia photo of a rather dashing Hussar, sword in hand and a prodigious moustache, on the back of a black horse.
Perhaps it’s something of a letdown to the ghosts of my ancestors that I became a vicar instead, but my father never let me think so. It’s about his experience of war that I’d like to write.
I once spoke in an unguarded way about patriotism, or the idea of a “just war” and he was scornful in the extreme. He quoted from Wordsworth’s Solitary Reaper:
“Will no one tell me what she sings?—
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago…”
All that stuff, he said, was “old, unhappy, far-off things…” However, that wasn’t always the case for him. He was born in 1922, and as a teenager in London imbibed a strong feeling of pacifism, or at least the feeling that after the horrors of the First World War, (where his own father had lost a leg and gained a medal), such things must never happen again. Anything was preferable to that.
But he fell prey to the rousing jingoism of Churchill’s speeches in the early thirties, that Hitler was a mad dog that had to be put down. Or, with alternative animal imagery, ‘You cannot reason with a Tiger when your head is in its mouth’.
And there was another, rather secret, motivation that prompted his change of heart. My grandfather had had two families. My dad was the first child of the second marriage. So he had two older half-brothers, both in their twenties at this time. These young men had joined the Blackshirts, Sir Oswald Mosley’s Fascist organisation, which at that time numbered around 40,000 men. It was a big deal. I had quite a turn, recently, looking at archive footage of the Cable Street riots, and a series of accompanying photos, to see what resembled the face of my father in a Blackshirt uniform. My dad told me two things about these half-brothers. First, he said they were Mosley’s ‘right-hand men.’ (which the photo would seem to validate). Second, both were interned during the Second World War as enemies of the state.
So -and here’s my point!- I think my father found neutrality impossible by 1937. He promptly lied about his age and joined the regular army. By the time war broke out, he was already a sergeant involved in the training of recruits.
He had a number of experiences during his ten years in the forces. He spoke about regular service being interspersed with operations with the Commandos in three locations (North Africa, Burma and France). He spoke about laying signal lines ahead of the D-Day invasion, being parachuted into enemy territory three days ahead of the landings. He spoke about running a Quarter-master’s store in India, which sounds somewhat more sedate. Generally speaking he described the war as a sequence of “one year of confused boredom, followed by ten seconds of gut-wrenching terror.”
But I heard more years later, when my oldest son, Luke, quizzed him about one-on-one combat. For some reason he began to talk, and when I had carefully ushered my son off to bed, told me just why he could never speak about war. It was because it was still raw, and it was just too terrible to contemplate.
Do you remember the My Lai massacre? The TV never told much of the dreadful details at the time -or, at least, I never heard them. But, basically, it was reported as an American infantry regiment massacring a Vietnamese village in 1968. Five hundred dead. Men, women and children. I was a child, and I spoke up in horror to my father, expecting him to nod and agree. Instead he grew white with rage and swore at me. He told me I had no idea what I was talking about. He said that you walk along and every bush that quivers might be someone ready to kill you, so you just “spray everything with bullets.” I’ve no idea what he was really telling me, but I believe he was letting me know that something of this nature had been in his experience too. We never talked about it again.
He genuinely loved the ‘Burmese’ people, being strongly impacted by the Buddhism of some he met, and their simple, communal lives. He had two water-colours of a village he stayed at, painted by a fellow soldier, that were on the wall by his easy chair until the day he died.
After the war, he stayed on in India, a Captain now. He was co-opted on to a Forces Newspaper and -in that capacity- actually interviewed Gandhi in 1946. He had negative comments about Mountbatten and the partition of India and Pakistan. It all sounded a bit confusing to me until one school Parents’ Evening twenty years later- I’d be about 14- he met Mr Jackson, my Deputy Head. They began talking about “India after the war” and Mr Jackson spoke of similar experiences. I suddenly realized that both of them had been involved in intelligence-gathering. Not really ‘spy-stuff,’ but just the low-level gathering of information, and that the ‘reporter’ position was to facilitate that endeavour.
Well, after India’s Independence in 1947, he returned to London and began a new life. He was still only 25, a hard-bitten veteran.
And he never attended Remembrance Parades or Regimental reunions. He never paraded a flag, and scorned those who did. He never wore his medals. When I talked about patriotism, he mocked me, and said that those who were stirred by ‘love of country’ were confused, and not thinking intelligently.
‘Eisenhower’s foreign policy in the years 1953 to 1959 marked a change in how the US dealt with the Soviet Union.’ Explain why you agree or disagree with this view. (25)
Eisenhower’s 1952 candidacy was motivated in large part by a change in how the US dealt with the Soviet Union. He stood in opposition to Taft’s isolationist views; he did not share Taft’s concerns regarding U.S. involvement in collective security and international trade, the latter of which was embodied by the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
The Cold War dominated international politics in the 1950s. As both the United States and the Soviet Union possessed nuclear weapons, any conflict presented the risk of escalation into nuclear warfare.Eisenhower continued the basic Truman administration policy of containment of Soviet expansion and the strengthening of the economies of Western Europe. Eisenhower’s overall Cold War policy was described by NSC 174, which held that the rollback of Soviet influence was a long-term goal, but that the United States would not provoke war with the Soviet Union.He planned for the full mobilization of the country to counter Soviet power, and emphasized making a “public effort to explain to the American people why such a militaristic mobilization of their society was needed.”
After Joseph Stalin died in March 1953, Georgy Malenkov took leadership of the Soviet Union. Malenkov proposed a “peaceful coexistence” with the West, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill proposed a summit of the world leaders. Fearing that the summit would delay the rearmament of West Germany, and skeptical of Malenkov’s intentions and ability to stay in power, the Eisenhower administration nixed the summit idea. In April, Eisenhower delivered his “Chance for Peace speech,” in which he called for an armistice in Korea, free elections to re-unify Germany, the “full independence” of Eastern European nations, and United Nations control of atomic energy. Though well received in the West, the Soviet leadership viewed Eisenhower’s speech as little more than propaganda. In 1954, a more confrontational leader, Nikita Khrushchev, took charge in the Soviet Union. Eisenhower became increasingly skeptical of the possibility of cooperation with the Soviet Union after it refused to support his Atoms for Peace proposal, which called for the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the creation of nuclear power plants
The United States foreign policy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, from 1953 to 1961, focused on the Cold War. The United States built up a stockpile of nuclear weapons and nuclear delivery systems to deter military threats and save money while cutting back on expensive Army combat units. A major uprising broke out in Hungary in 1956; the Eisenhower administration did not become directly involved, but condemned the military invasion by the Soviet Union. Eisenhower sought to reach a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union, but the Kremlin used the 1960 U-2 incident to cancel a scheduled summit in Paris.
As he promised, Eisenhower quickly ended the fighting in Korea, leaving it divided North and South. The U.S. has kept major forces there ever since to deter North Korea. In 1954, he played a key role in the Senate’s defeat of the Bricker Amendment, which would have limited the president’s treaty making power and ability to enter into executive agreements with foreign leaders. The Eisenhower administration used propaganda and covert action extensively, and the Central Intelligence Agency supported two military coups: the 1953 Iranian coup d’état and the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état. The administration did not approve the partition of Vietnam at the 1954 Geneva Conference, and directed economic and military aid and advice to South Vietnam. Washington led the establishment of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization as an alliance of anti-Communist states in Southeast Asia. It ended two crises with China over Taiwan.
In 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, sparking the Suez Crisis, in which a coalition of France, Britain, and Israel took control of the canal. Concerned about the economic and political impacts of the invasion, Eisenhower had warned the three against any such action. When they invaded anyway he used heavy financial and diplomatic pressures Britain and France to withdraw. In the aftermath of the crisis, Eisenhower announced the Eisenhower Doctrine, under which any country in the Middle East could request American economic assistance or aid from American military forces. The Cuban Revolution broke out during Eisenhower’s second term, resulting in the replacement of pro-U.S. President Fulgencio Batista with Fidel Castro. In response to the revolution, the Eisenhower administration broke ties with Cuba and the CIA began preparations for an invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles, ultimately resulting in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion after Eisenhower left office.
In all these ways, Eisehower’s administration did indeed mark a shift in how the US dealt with the Soviet Union.
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