Conflict & Tension, 1918–1939
Wider world depth study - the peace treaties, the League of Nations, and the road to the Second World War (Paper 1).
Learn
Conflict & Tension, 1918–1939, explained point by point
Everything the GCSE specification expects you to be able to do, and how to actually do it - the same lesson a signed-in student studies from.
Describe the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and explain the reactions to it
The 1919 treaty hit Germany with the war guilt clause (Article 231), £6.6 billion reparations, a 100,000-man army limit and major land losses. The "Big Three" wanted different things - Clemenceau revenge, Wilson his Fourteen Points, Lloyd George a middle path - so nobody left happy. Germans called it a "diktat", and that resentment fuels the whole rest of the period, so know the terms well enough to link them to later events.
Explain the successes and failures of the League of Nations in the 1920s and 1930s
The League settled small disputes in the 1920s (the Åland Islands, Upper Silesia) and its agencies did real good - but it had no army, and the USA never joined. The real tests broke it: Manchuria (1931) and Abyssinia (1935–36), where Japan and Italy simply ignored it. A balanced answer weighs the genuine 1920s successes against the 1930s failures and explains WHY the failures mattered more.
Explain how Hitler's foreign policy dismantled the peace settlement, 1933–1939
Track the escalating steps: leaving the League (1933), rearmament and conscription (1935), remilitarising the Rhineland (1936), Anschluss with Austria (1938), the Sudetenland and Munich (1938), then the rest of Czechoslovakia (March 1939). Each unopposed step made the next one easier. Learn the sequence with dates - chronology questions and "how did X lead to Y" answers both depend on it.
Evaluate appeasement and explain the final road to war in 1939
Appeasement - giving Hitler what he demanded to avoid war - peaked at Munich in September 1938. There is a real debate to have: it bought Britain time to rearm, but it also convinced Hitler the West would never fight. The Nazi–Soviet Pact (August 1939) removed his last obstacle, and the invasion of Poland on 1 September brought the declarations of war. Be ready to argue both sides of appeasement before reaching your own judgement.
Write a balanced "how far do you agree" essay with a supported judgement
The big essay gives you a statement - "Appeasement was the main cause of the Second World War. How far do you agree?" - and wants a two-sided argument. Build paragraphs for the statement AND for other factors (Versailles, the League's failure, Hitler's aims), each with specific evidence, then commit to a judgement that explains which factor mattered most and why. Sitting on the fence caps the mark; a reasoned verdict lifts it.
Analyse sources from the period, using provenance and context (the source questions)
This paper asks how sources support a view or how useful they are. Anchor every inference in the source's details, then bring in provenance: a 1938 British cartoon mocking Chamberlain tells you appeasement was already contested at the time. Place each source in its moment - what had just happened when it was made? - and test it against what you know.
Practice
Try a Conflict & Tension, 1918–1939 question
A GCSE-style original task from this topic. Sketch a quick plan of your own before you open what a strong answer covers.
Study Source A and then answer the question that follows. Source A - an illustrative editorial in the style of a German nationalist newspaper, June 1919, written for this practice question (it is an original source, not a real newspaper article): "Yesterday our representatives signed the shameful dictated peace of Versailles. We were promised a peace built on Wilson’s Fourteen Points; instead we are handed a document written by vengeful men we were never permitted to meet. Our army is to be cut to a hundred thousand men, our colonies stolen, our people in the Rhineland placed under the boots of foreign soldiers. And we are commanded to confess that the war was our doing alone. No German heart will ever accept this humiliation." How useful is Source A to a historian studying German reactions to the Treaty of Versailles? Explain your answer using Source A and your contextual knowledge. [8 marks]
Show what a strong answer covers
The marking points an examiner looks for. Not a model answer - a checklist to plan against.
- AO3: evaluates the usefulness of the content using contextual knowledge, e.g. the source accurately reflects real terms - the 100,000-man army, loss of colonies, Rhineland occupation and Article 231 (the war guilt clause) - and the widespread "diktat" and "stab in the back" feeling in Germany in 1919
- AO3: evaluates the provenance - a nationalist newspaper in June 1919 shows the immediate, emotive reaction the historian is studying, but as a nationalist voice it represents one strand of opinion and is written to stir anger, so it cannot speak for all Germans
- AO3: reaches a supported judgement about usefulness for this specific enquiry, e.g. highly useful as direct evidence of the anger and the language of humiliation, though it needs balancing with other viewpoints such as those who saw signing as unavoidable