6hi03/d – the challenge of fascism section a d1 – from ... · d1 – from kaiser to führer:...

6HI03/D – The Challenge of Fascism

SECTION A

Answer ONE question in Section A on the topic for which you have been prepared.

You should start the answer to your chosen question in Section A on page 3.Section B begins on page 11.

D1 – From Kaiser to Führer: Germany, 1900–45

Answer EITHER Question 1 OR Question 2.

EITHER

1. ‘The impact of the First World War merely heightened existing social and political tensions which had divided Germany before 1914.’

How far do you agree with this judgement?

OR

2. ‘The chaotic nature of the Nazi governmental structure explains the failures in German war production during the Second World War.’


D2 – Britain and the Challenge of Fascism: Saving Europe at a Cost? c1925–60


EITHER

3. ‘Between 1933 and 1937, the British public’s hostility to the confrontation of foreign powers left the National Government with no alternative to a policy of appeasing Hitler and Mussolini.’


OR

4. ‘The British bombing offensive of 1942–45 failed to inflict crucial damage on the German war machine.’

How far do you agree with this opinion?

TOTAL FOR SECTION A: 30 MARKS

(Total 30 marks)

(Total 30 marks)

(Total 30 marks)

(Total 30 marks)

Sample Assessment Materials © Edexcel Limited 2007 Edexcel GCE in History364

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SECTION A


You should start the answer to your chosen question in Section A on page 3.Section B begins on page 11.



EITHER

1 ‘Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933 because he was leader of the most popular party in Germany.’ How far do you agree with this opinion?

(Total for Question 1 = 30 marks)

OR

2 ‘The Final Solution evolved because of the chaotic nature of the Nazi Regime in the years 1939–42.’ How far do you agree with this opinion?




EITHER

3 ‘Retreats and defeats marked the first two years of the war for Britain.’ How far do you agree with this opinion?


OR

4 ‘The establishment of a successful war economy transformed Britain in the years 1940–45.’ How far do you agree with this judgement?


TOTAL FOR SECTION A = 30 MARKS

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SECTION A


You should start the answer to your chosen question in Section A on page 3.

Section B begins on page 11.



EITHER

1 To what extent was the effective government of Germany in the years 1919–33 handicapped by the nature of the Weimar Constitution?


OR

2 To what extent did the Nazi Regime face serious opposition within Germany during the years 1939–45?




EITHER

3 ‘In the years 1925–37, successive British governments felt that Germany had legitimate grievances and this largely explains the policy of appeasement.’ How far do you agree with these judgements?


OR

4 To what extent was the British commitment of massive resources to the campaign in North Africa and the Mediterranean, in the years 1940–44, a strategic mistake?



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SECTION A


You should start the answer to your chosen question in Section A on page 3.

Section B begins on page 11.



EITHER

1 To what extent was Germany a parliamentary democracy in the years 1900–14?


OR

2 ‘The transformation in the fortunes of the Nazi Party in the years 1930–33 was largely because of Hitler’s remarkable talents as a politician.’ How far do you agree with this opinion?




EITHER

3 ‘The widespread public revulsion to the horrors of war explains Britain’s policy of appeasement in the years 1933–37.’ How far do you agree with this opinion?


OR

4 ‘Victory in the Battle of the Atlantic was crucial to victory in western Europe.’ How far do you agree with this opinion?



SECTION B

Answer ONE question in Section B on the topic for which you have been prepared.

You should start the answer to your chosen question in Section B on page 13.


Study Sources 1 to 6. Answer EITHER Question 5 OR Question 6.

EITHER

5. Use Sources 1, 2 and 3 and your own knowledge.

‘Decisions made in Berlin from 1900 determined the outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914.’

How far do you agree with this opinion? Explain your answer, using the evidence of Sources 1, 2 and 3 and your own knowledge of the issues related to this controversy.

OR

6. Use Sources 4, 5 and 6 and your own knowledge.

‘The Nazi regime depended more on its broad popularity than on terror in the years 1933–39.’

How far do you agree with this opinion? Explain your answer, using the evidence of Sources 4, 5 and 6 and your own knowledge of the issues related to this controversy.

(Total 40 marks)

(Total 40 marks)

Edexcel GCE in History © Edexcel Limited 2007 Sample Assessment Materials 373

Sources for use with Section B. Answer ONE question in Section B on the topic for which you have been prepared.


Sources for use with Question 5

SOURCE 1 (From Hans-Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire 1871–1918, published 1985)

In the 1890s, commercial rivalry in the world’s markets increased dramatically. Above all, German policy embarked on a collision course with Britain’s vital interests when the decision was taken to expand the battle fleet. From the time of the first Supplementary Navy Bill of 1900, there was no doubt as to Germany’s aims, with their sometimes openly declared, sometimes carefully concealed, aggressive intent. Nor was there any inclination in London to meet this new danger with a child-like trust. Germany’s naval policy was too unmistakably bound up with ‘the image of the enemy across the Channel’ for the British to sit back and wait for things to happen. We need to bear in mind both the domestic political dimensions of the ‘Tirpitz-Plan’, as well as the German decision not to yield on battleship building. That plus the decision to arm against Britain on such a massive, concentrated scale, without cause from London, shows how Germany’s moves on the chess board determined the rules of the game up to 1914.

SOURCE 2(From Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War, published 1998)

The extent of German malice aforethought must not be exaggerated. For men who have been accused of planning a war, the senior members of the German General Staff were uncannily relaxed in July 1914. At the time the Kaiser issued his famous ‘blank cheque’ to the Austrians, Moltke, Waldersee, Groener, chief of the Railway Section, and Major Nicolai, the head of key intelligence agency Section 111b, were all on holiday (in separate resorts, it should be said). Tirpitz and Admiral von Pohl were too. It was only on 16th July that Nicolai’s stand-in, Captain Kurt Neuhof, was advised to step up surveillance of Russian military activity. Nicolai himself was not back at his desk for another two days. Even then his orders to the so-called ‘tension travellers’ – ie German spies in Russia and France – were merely to find out ‘whether war preparations are taking place in France and Russia’.

SOURCE 3(From John Keegan, The First World War, published 1998)

The existence of a permanent medium of negotiation between the European powers might have robbed the war plans that lay in their pigeonholes of their menacing capacity to determine events instantly. In Germany, Russia and Austria, where the sovereign was commander in chief both in name and fact, and where each organ of the military system answered directly to him, communication between these different organs was beset by secretiveness and jealousy. The system, disastrously, took its most extreme form in Germany. In the crisis of 1914, the Kaiser, when he alone might have put the brakes to the inevitable progression of the Schlieffen Plan, found he did not understand the machinery he was supposed to control. He panicked and let the Schlieffen Plan determine events.

Sample Assessment Materials © Edexcel Limited 2007 Edexcel GCE in History388



SOURCE 4(From Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler, published 2001)

Most people in Nazi Germany had no direct confrontation with the Gestapo, Kripo, or the concentration camps. Moreover, while they read many stories about the ‘People’s Court’, rather few people attended its sessions. In other words, for most Germans, the coercive or terroristic side of Hitler’s dictatorship was created by what passed along by word of mouth, by what they read in the press, or heard on the radio. Historians have paid remarkably little attention to these representations, when in fact these played an important role in the dictatorship.

At every level, there was much popular support for the expanding missions of the new police and the camps, especially as the latter were presented in the media and elsewhere as boot-camps in which the state would confine both ‘political criminals’ and variously defined asocials, in order to subject them to ‘work therapy’.

SOURCE 5(From Richard J Evans, The Third Reich in Power, published 2005)

At the same time, the Gestapo was only part of a much wider net of surveillance, terror and persecution cast by the Nazi regime over German society in the 1930s; others included the SA and SS, the Criminal Police, the prison service, the social services and employment offices, the medical profession, health centres and hospitals, the Hitler Youth, the Block Wardens. Even apparently politically neutral organizations like tax offices, the railway and the post office were involved. All of these provided information about deviants and dissidents to the Gestapo, the courts and the prosecution service, forming a very mixed, uncoordinated but pervasive system of control, in which the Gestapo was merely one institution among many. Everything that happened in the Third Reich took place in a pervasive atmosphere of fear and terror, which never slackened and indeed became far more intense towards the end. ‘Do you know what fear is?’ an elderly worker asked an interviewer some years after it was all over: ‘No’. ‘The Third Reich was fear,’ the worker replied.

SOURCE 6(From E A Johnson, The Nazi Terror, published 1999)

The key to understanding the sometimes brutal, but always effective, Nazi terror lies in its selective nature. Never implemented in a blanket or indiscriminate fashion, it specifically targeted and ruthlessly moved against the Nazi regime’s racial, political and social enemies; at the same time it often ignored or dismissed expressions of non-conformity and mild disobedience on the part of other German citizens. The two-way treatment of different sections of the German population helped the Nazi regime to gain support among the populace. Indeed, many Germans perceived the terror not as a personal threat to them but as something that served their interests by removing threats to their material well-being and to their sense of community and order.

Edexcel GCE in History © Edexcel Limited 2007 Sample Assessment Materials 389

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SECTION B




Study the relevant sources in the Sources Insert.Answer EITHER Question 5 OR Question 6.

EITHER

5 Use Sources 1, 2 and 3 and your own knowledge.

‘German aggression was responsible for the outbreak of a general European war in August 1914.’ How far do you agree with this judgement?

Explain your answer, using Sources 1, 2 and 3 and your own knowledge of the issues related to this controversy.


OR


To what extent do you agree with the view that Hitler was ‘a non-interventionist dictator’ (Source 4, line 32)?



2N35150RA

Sources for use with Section B. Answer ONE question in Section B on the topic for which you have been prepared.



SOURCE 1(From Gordon Corrigan, Mud, Blood and Poppycock, published 2003)

Fischer, the German historian, is adamant that Germany’s foreign policy aims were focused on annexation, and that she went to war to achieve these aims. What is undeniable is that Germany, by offering unconditional support to Austria-Hungary in her dispute with Serbia, precipitated the series of events that led to war. Long before that, at least as early as 1906, Germany had in place a plan for an aggressive war based on the premise that Germany would have to fight Russia and France simultaneously, with Britain as a possible ally of France.

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SOURCE 2(From L. F. C. Turner, The Origins of the First World War, published 1970)

After Sarajevo, Wilhelm II and Bethmann Hollweg courted a great war and, in view of the prevailing mood in Paris and St. Petersburg, there was little hope of averting catastrophe after the Austrian ultimatum was presented in Belgrade. The crisis got out of control because Bethmann pushed Austria into a premature declaration of war on Serbia. The French General Staff drove Russia along the fatal path to mobilization. This conduct reflected French confidence in victory, but was also a reaction to the German war plan devised by Count von Schlieffen. That plan, with its flagrant violations of neutrality, had been approved by the German Government since 1904. In the final phase, military considerations were of decisive importance.

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SOURCE 3(From James Joll, The Origins of the First World War, published 1984)

The arms race, in which all the major powers were involved, has contributed to the sense that war was bound to come, and sooner rather than later. It caused serious financial difficulties for all the governments involved in it; and yet they were convinced that there was no way of stopping it. Although publicly it was justified as having a deterrent effect which would make for peace rather than for war, no government had, in fact, been deterred from arming by the arms programmes of their rivals, but rather had increased their own armament production. By 1914 Tirpitz had hoped that the German fleet would be so strong that no British government would risk going to war. The British were determined to maintain their naval superiority, whatever the financial and political cost. The continuing international tension, and the strains of the armaments race, each contributed to a mood in which war was accepted almost as a relief. As a French observer in 1912 put it, ‘How many times in the last two years have we heard people repeat “Better war than this perpetual waiting!”’.

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SOURCE 4(From Ian Kershaw in The Third Reich, edited by Christian Leitz, published 1999)

Hitler was, on the whole, a non-interventionist dictator as far as government administration was concerned. His sporadic directives, when they came, tended to be unclear and to be conveyed verbally, usually by Lammers, the head of the Reich Chancellery. Hitler chaired no formal committees after the first years of the regime, when the Cabinet (which he hated chairing) faded into non-existence.

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SOURCE 5(From Joseph W. Bendersky, A History of Nazi Germany, published 1985)

Government in the Third Reich was characterized by jealousy and bureaucratic empire-building. Party officials, more often than not, tended to view the will of the Führer and the welfare of the nation from the point of view of their own career advancement, or the narrow interests of their own particular organisation. Party officials engaged in bureaucratic wars to expand their power as well as to prevent encroachments by rival organisations.

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SOURCE 6(From Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, published 2005)

Hitler’s Bohemian lifestyle did not mean that he was lazy or inactive, or that he withdrew from domestic politics after 1933. When the occasion demanded, he could intervene powerfully and decisively. Albert Speer, who was with him often in the second half of the 1930s, observed that, while he appeared to waste a great deal of time, ‘he often allowed a problem to mature during the weeks when he seemed entirely taken up with trivial matters. Then, after the “sudden insight” came, he would spend a few days of intensive work giving final shape to his solution.’ Hitler, in other words, was erratic rather than lazy in his working habits. He wrote his own speeches, and he frequently engaged in lengthy and exhausting tours around Germany, speaking, meeting officials and carrying out his ceremonial functions as head of state. In areas where he did take a real interest, he did not hesitate to give a direct lead, even on matters of detail. In art and culture, for instance, Hitler laid down the policy to be followed, and personally inspected the pictures selected for exhibition or suppression. His prejudices – against the composer Paul Hindemith, for example – invariably proved decisive. In racial policy, too, Hitler took a leading role, pushing on or slowing down the implementation of antisemitic and other measures as he thought circumstances dictated. In areas such as these, Hitler was not merely reacting to initiatives from his subordinates, as some have suggested.

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SECTION B




Study the relevant sources in the Sources Insert.


EITHER


To what extent was the nature of the Schlieffen Plan responsible for the outbreak of a general European war in August 1914?



OR


How far do you agree that Hitler’s Regime was a ‘consensus dictatorship’ (Source 4, line 36)?



2P36358A

Sources for use with Section B. Answer ONE question in Section B on the topic for which you

have been prepared.



SOURCE 1

(From A. J. P. Taylor, How Wars Begin, published 1977)

One essential part of the Schlieffen plan was to go through Belgium. The other essential part, which was equally important, was that there could be no delay between mobilisation and war. If there were delay then Russia would catch up and the Germans would get the two-front war after all. So the moment that the Germans decided on mobilisation, they decided for war, or rather war followed of itself. The railway timetables, which in other countries brought men to their mobilising centres, in the Schlieffen Plan continued and brought the troops not only to their barracks, but also into Belgium and Northern France. The German mobilisation plan actually laid down the first 40 days of the German invasion of France and none of it could be altered because, if it did, all the timetables would go wrong. Thus the decision for mobilisation which the German general staff made, and which Bethmann endorsed on 29 July, was a decision for a general European war.

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SOURCE 2

(From Gordon Martel, The Origins of the First World War, published 1987)

Germany had really decided to force a war before Russia mobilised. Although the war plans are important in understanding why the crisis unfolded in the way that it did, they provide only a partial answer to the question, ‘why did the war begin?’ Ultimately, the Germans’ decision to force a war with Russia was not determined so much by railway timetables as by their belief that they could not permit Austria-Hungary to be defeated and that, if a war for the future of the Balkans and the near east had to be fought some time, the best time was now.

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SOURCE 3

(From J. Grenville, A World History of the Twentieth Century, published 1980)

The years from 1912 to 1914 marked a vital change. A new fatalism about the inevitability of war was spreading among those who controlled policy, and even larger armies were being trained for this eventuality throughout the continent. With Poincaré as President of France, Russia would not again be left in the lurch by her French ally, whenever Russia judged her vital interests to be at stake in the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire. Poincaré’s support for Russia did not waver during the critical final days before the outbreak of war and was a crucial factor in the decision the Tsar and his ministers took to mobilise, which made war inevitable in 1914.

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SOURCE 4

(From Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: the Age of Social Catastrophe, published 2007)

Hitler believed passionately that political authority had to be based on popularity and be backed by the people belonging to it. Hitler had nothing but contempt for the Soviet-style dictators and the terror they used on their own people, and in stark contrast he set out to win over the hearts and minds of all non-Jewish Germans in a communal bonding based on the ‘exclusion’ of the Jews and others deemed racially unfit. What he wanted was dictatorship by consent of the initiated. Hitler’s hybrid form of government can be called a consensus dictatorship.

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SOURCE 5

(From Mary Fulbrook, The Fontana History of Germany 1918–1990, published 1991)

The Nazi regime was bolstered by an elaborate apparatus of terror. The first concentration camp for political opponents of the regime was opened at Dachau, near Munich, with considerable fanfare and publicity in March 1933. In subsequent years, well before the radicalization of the wartime period, a network of concentration camps was set up across Germany. The SS of Heinrich Himmler was able to arrest, torture and murder, with little respect for any rule of law. Himmler, between 1934 and 1936, took over the police powers of the Reich and State Ministries of the Interior, effectively controlling the means of terror in the Third Reich. Fear of arrest, and fear of informers, led to public conformity and the leading of a double life for many Germans, who withheld their real views and feelings for expression only in complete privacy in the company of family and close friends.

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SOURCE 6

(From Eric A. Johnson, Nazi Terror, published 1999)

Most Germans were not Nazis. Nor were they Jews, members of the Communist underground, or Jehovah’s Witnesses. Most slept soundly, worked productively, and enjoyed their lives during the peacetime years of National Socialist rule. Why should they not have? The economy was improving, most were finding employment, and their country was regaining its pride and was still at peace. They knew that Jews, Communists, Socialists, and some religious activists suffered persecution. They could read about it in the daily newspapers. They knew that there was a strong police presence, an excess of laws placing limitations on personal freedom, and potential danger for those who refused to comply with Hitler’s wishes. Many grumbled and complained privately, but most found little difficulty in conforming. Many, probably most, still believed that the police and the laws were there to protect them. Nazi terror posed no real threat to most ordinary Germans.

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SECTION B




Study the relevant sources in the Sources Insert.


EITHER


‘The First World War did not arise primarily as a result of planned German aggression.’ How far do you agree with this opinion?



OR


‘Hitler was a dictator who did not dictate.’ How far do you agree with this opinion?



2P38349A

Sources for use with Section B. Answer ONE question in Section B on the topic for which you

have been prepared.



SOURCE 1

(From Steven Ozment, A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People, published 2004)

A deliberate German programme to occupy Central Europe came after, not before, the outbreak of the war in 1914, which at its beginning was to be a defensive war, despite an offensive strategy to that end. Many in states beyond Germany had been willing to risk war as a solution to the problems they faced. However, neither the Germans, nor anyone else at the time, had a special plan to dominate Europe.

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SOURCE 2

(From Lynn Abrams, Bismarck and the German Empire, published 1995)

Germany’s responsibility for the outbreak of war has been debated at length. In 1961 Fritz Fischer controversially argued that Germany bore full responsibility for the war and furthermore, that under Wilhelm II she had planned a war in order to achieve great power status. In the 1970s, Hans-Ulrich Wehler developed a parallel argument to the Fischer thesis. Wehler emphasised the primacy of domestic policy in the development of foreign policy and proposed that the out-dated character of the Second Empire was to blame for the descent into war. By 1914, war was the only final means by which the ruling elites could seek to maintain their power against the threat of new social forces, ‘an escape forwards’. Both of these views have much to recommend them.

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SOURCE 3

(From James Joll, The Origins of the First World War, published 1984)

Those political leaders who took the decision to go to war had a sense of the overriding importance of preserving what were regarded as vital national interests. These national interests were partly defined in traditional territorial or strategic terms – the recovery by France of Alsace-Lorraine, the securing for Russia of Constantinople and the Straits, the British concern that the coast of Belgium should not be occupied by a hostile power. National interests were also defined in more general terms about the necessity of maintaining or changing the balance of power, about the international struggle for survival and the inevitability of war. When the decision to go to war was taken, governments were able to fight the war because subjects accepted the necessity for it. To most people war appeared, or was presented, as an inescapable necessity if they were to preserve their country and their homes from foreign invasion; and they did not question what they had heard for generations about the glories and superior qualities of their own nation.

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SOURCE 4

(From Tim Kirk, Nazi Germany, published 2007)

Our understanding of Hitler himself has changed. We have long known that he avoided the responsibility of making difficult decisions. Indeed, one of the striking features of Hitler’s attitude to government was his sheer lack of interest in many of the more routine matters that demanded his attention. This was reflected in his frequent absences from Berlin, and in his late nights and leisurely morning routine even when he was in the capital. It was an approach to government and to leadership that contrasted starkly with Stalin’s obsessive will to control all aspects of policy.

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SOURCE 5

(From Frederic Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, published 2002)

Hitler was anything but a dreamy lover of art with his head in the clouds. He was shrewd and highly intelligent and enjoyed an extraordinary memory. According to his Finance Minister he was able to ‘recall statistical data about the most obscure topics with amazing precision’ and could ‘get right to the heart of a problem, to draw concise conclusions from long discussions and to throw new light on a matter that had been the object of lengthy deliberation’. One of the rare foreigners to know him personally and professionally, the French Ambassador, found Hitler an ice-cold realist and a profoundly calculating person. The ambassador also described him as lazy, incapable of tying himself down to any regular work routine and hating to read documents. However, Hitler insisted on being orally informed of everything that went on and took an interest in the smallest details. There was nothing that happened in the Reich of which he was unaware, including actions taken by officials to whom he allowed broad administrative freedom.

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SOURCE 6

(From Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, published 2005)

The absence of routine in Hitler’s style of leadership meant that he paid little attention to detailed issues in which he was not interested, such as the management of the labour force, or details of financial management, which he happily left to Schacht and his successors. This could mean on occasion that he put his signature to measures which had to be shelved because of opposition from powerful vested interests, as in a decree on the Labour Front issued in October 1934. It also meant that those who had, or controlled, direct personal access to him could wield considerable influence. Access became an increasingly important key to power.

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