Passchendaele primary sources

This assignment will give you the opportunity to function as a historian. You will be presented with a range of primary sources dealing with the Canadian role in the battle for Passchendaele in 1917. These sources, which will be posted on the Brightspace website for this course, will include official reports, personal accounts, private letters, or other kinds of official and private documents. In addition, selections from secondary sources dealing with the Passchendaele offensive will be supplied to assist you in understanding the broader context and implications of the operation. These secondary sources may feature conflicting points of view.

Using evidence found in the sources provided, you will construct an analytical essay focusing on the capture of Passchendaele on November 6, 1917. In addition to examining the course of the operation, the essay must attempt to answer the following two questions:

1) To what degree was the Canadian attack carefully organized and skillfully carried out?

2) Were the results of the attack worth the effort and the casualties?

You are free to employ your textbook and additional assigned readings as supplementary sources of information. However, since the purpose of this assignment is to provide experience in working with primary sources, the majority of the essay must be based on primary source material. When reading and analyzing primary and secondary source material, you will have to decide what is important about the particular sources you choose to use. You will have to interpret evidence and draw clear conclusions. Additional detailed instructions and advice for this assignment will be posted on Brightspace.

All evidence must be properly cited using either footnotes or endnotes. All source material employed must be listed in a separate bibliography at the end of the essay. Essays should be 4 to 6 typed double-spaced pages in length, not counting the title page, bibliography, and footnotes or endnotes. Essays with less than 4 full pages of text may be penalized for being too brief.