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When accounts of the same battle or campaign contradict one another, how do historians decide what to trust? A soldier’s letter may be close to the event, while an official report could have been edited to serve a political purpose.
What kinds of corroboration are most useful when studying wartime primary sources—for example, comparing letters with records from the other side, later testimony, or physical evidence? I’m interested in how uncertainty is handled when no single account can be treated as definitive.
