Cambridge A Level World History (9489): European option: European history, 1919-41 – Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, for revision and practice on this content. They are not reproduced past-paper questions. They use Paper 4’s essay format and 30-mark tariff, but the paper’s exact selection and wording are not replicated – Cambridge holds copyright in its own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available through your school or Cambridge’s own resources.

Related: European option revision notes and study guide.

Cambridge 9489 Paper 4 asks you to write two 30-mark essays in 1 hour 45 minutes on your chosen option, using the command words assess (“make an informed judgement”) or evaluate (“judge… the quality, importance, amount, or value”). The nine questions below cover all twelve key questions of the European option, so whichever two you are set, you have practised the skill.

How Paper 4 essays are marked

Published 9489 Paper 4 mark schemes award 15 marks for AO1 (knowledge) and 15 for AO2 (analysis and judgement), each on five levels.

Level	AO2 (15)	AO1 (15)
5 (13-15)	Valid, wide-ranging criteria; consistently analytical; balanced, sustained argument; clear sustained judgement	Carefully selected, fully focused, wide-ranging, consistently precise and accurate
4 (10-12)	Valid criteria; analytical but uneven; attempts balance; supported judgement	Appropriately selected, mostly focused, a range of points, mostly accurate
3 (7-9)	Attempts criteria; some analysis with description; argument lacks balance; weakly substantiated judgement	Mostly relevant, descriptive in places, narrow range
2 (4-6)	Implicit criteria; mainly descriptive; inconsistent argument; assertion	Narrative, not linked to the argument, frequent inaccuracy
1 (1-3)	Addresses the topic, not the question	Limited, inaccurate or vague

The questions

1. “Mussolini became prime minister in 1922 because the liberal state was unwilling to resist him.” Assess this view. [30] (Key question 1.1)

2. Evaluate the extent to which Mussolini’s economic policies achieved their aims. [30] (1.3)

3. Assess the success of fascist policies towards the Church and young people in Italy. [30] (1.4, 1.2)

4. “Stalin’s control of the party machine was the main reason he emerged as Lenin’s successor.” Assess this view. [30] (2.1)

5. Evaluate the view that the human cost of collectivisation outweighed its achievements. [30] (2.3)

6. Assess the reasons for the Terror and Purges of the 1930s. [30] (2.2, 2.4)

7. Evaluate the view that Hitler’s consolidation of power in 1933-34 depended more on legal methods than on terror. [30] (3.1)

8. “Nazi economic policy served rearmament rather than the German people.” Assess this view. [30] (3.3, 3.4)

9. Assess the extent of opposition to the Nazi regime in the years 1933-41. [30] (3.2)

Indicative content

These notes show the range of material an examiner would credit. They are not model essays: a Level 5 answer selects from them, sets criteria and argues to a judgement.

Question 1

• For the view: Facta’s government asked the king to sign a martial-law decree on 28 October 1922, and Victor Emmanuel III refused to sign it; the army could have dispersed the poorly armed squads. Liberal leaders (Giolitti in 1921) had included fascists in the National Blocs, legitimising them; police and prefects often tolerated squad violence during the Biennio Rosso.
• Against / other factors: the impact of war and the “mutilated victory”; Fiume as a model of defiance; economic crisis and fear of socialism among landowners and industrialists; Mussolini’s “dual policy” of threatening violence while negotiating; the PNF’s growth after 1921.
• Judgement criterion: distinguish preconditions (war, crisis) from the decisive moment (the king’s refusal). A strong answer might argue that liberal unwillingness was decisive in October 1922 but was itself a product of fear of the left.

Question 2

• Aims: national prestige, self-sufficiency, a “Third Way” between capitalism and socialism, and preparing for war.
• Successes: Battle for Grain increased wheat output; land reclamation in the Pontine Marshes created new towns; IRI rescued banks and industries in the Depression and made the state a major industrial owner; public works reduced unemployment.
• Failures: “Quota 90” overvalued the lira, damaging exports; grain policy displaced more suitable crops; the Corporate State gave employers more power than workers and changed little in practice; autarky after the 1935 sanctions was never achieved; Italy entered war in 1940 with weak industrial capacity.
• Judgement: prestige aims partly met; economic modernisation and readiness for war were not.

Question 3

• Church: early anti-clericalism abandoned; Lateran Treaties (1929) recognised Vatican City and Catholicism as the state religion – a major gain in consent. Tensions over Catholic Action (1931) and the 1938 racial laws show limits.
• Youth: Gentile reform (1923), textbook changes, teachers’ oath; ONB (1926) and later GIL; university fascist groups. Limits: membership was patchy in the south and countryside; the Church kept its own youth influence.
• Judgement criterion: success as control versus success as indoctrination; compromise with the Church bought support but conceded independence.

Question 4

• For: General Secretary from 1922; Orgburo and appointments; the “Lenin enrolment” of new members loyal to the apparatus; control of delegates to congresses.
• Other factors: rivals’ weaknesses (Trotsky’s arrogance and absence from Lenin’s funeral; Zinoviev and Kamenev’s opposition to the October 1917 rising); suppression of Lenin’s Testament (May 1924); the popular appeal of “Socialism in One Country”; Stalin’s shifting alliances – first with Zinoviev and Kamenev against Trotsky, then with the Right against the United Opposition, then against the Right in 1928-29; the cult of “Lenin’s disciple”.
• Judgement: the party machine provided the means; ideology and rivals’ errors provided the opportunities.

Question 5

• Costs: dekulakisation and deportations; the famine of 1932-33, including in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, with millions of deaths; huge losses of livestock as peasants slaughtered animals; low productivity on collective farms.
• Achievements (on Stalin’s terms): the state gained control of grain procurement; labour moved from countryside to industry, supporting the Five Year Plans; by the late 1930s most households were collectivised; machine tractor stations extended state control.
• Judgement criterion: “achievement” for whom – the regime’s industrial and political aims, or the peasantry? Valid answers can reach either verdict if the criterion is explicit.

Question 6

• Reasons: Stalin’s insecurity and personality; elimination of Old Bolsheviks and potential rivals (show trials of 1936-38); the Kirov murder (December 1934) as pretext; scapegoating for economic failures (“wreckers”); fear of war and a “fifth column”, including the Red Army purge of 1937; a dynamic of NKVD quotas and denunciations once the Yezhovshchina began.
• Wider effects on society (2.4 link): fear and conformity; the Gulag as a labour source for projects.
• Judgement: weigh “top-down” explanations (Stalin’s intention) against “bottom-up” ones (local denunciation, institutional momentum).

Question 7

• Legal methods: appointment by Hindenburg; the Reichstag Fire Decree under Article 48; the March 1933 election; the Enabling Act passed with Centre Party votes (23 March 1933); Gleichschaltung laws; Hindenburg’s death and the army oath.
• Terror: SA auxiliary police; early camps such as Dachau (March 1933); arrest of KPD deputies before the Enabling Act vote, SA intimidation in the chamber; banning of trade unions (May 1933) and parties (July 1933); Night of the Long Knives (30 June 1934).
• Judgement: the “legal revolution” was legality made possible by terror; a strong answer shows how each legal step depended on coercion.

Question 8

• For: Mefo bills hid rearmament spending; the New Plan and the Four Year Plan prioritised raw materials and war industry; consumer goods and food imports were squeezed (“guns or butter”); the DAF froze wages and abolished trade union bargaining.
• Against: unemployment fell from about six million to under half a million by 1938; KdF holidays, Beauty of Labour and the promise of the Volkswagen; farmers protected by tariffs and the Reich Food Estate.
• Judgement criterion: separate short-term recovery (1933-36) from the war economy after 1936; ask which groups benefited.

Question 9

• Evidence of opposition: underground KPD and SPD networks; the Confessing Church and the Pastors’ Emergency League (Niemöller); Bishop Galen’s sermon against the euthanasia programme (August 1941), which led to the official programme being halted; youth non-conformity among the Swing movement and Edelweiss Pirates; passive resistance such as grumbling, refusing the Hitler salute or listening to foreign radio.
• Limits: left-wing parties banned in 1933 and their leaders arrested or exiled; the Gestapo, SD, SS, block wardens and concentration camps; propaganda (Goebbels, Nuremberg rallies, 1936 Olympics) and economic recovery producing consent; the churches mostly protested only when their own interests were threatened.
• Judgement criterion: define opposition – active resistance aiming to overthrow the regime was very limited before 1941, whereas non-conformity was widespread but did not threaten Nazi control.

Planning drill

For any of the questions above, take five minutes to write: (1) your criterion for judgement, (2) three arguments for, (3) two or three arguments against, (4) a one-line judgement. Then write for 45 minutes. Two essays in 1 hour 45 minutes gives about 52 minutes each.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need historians in Paper 4? No. Paper 4 tests AO1 and AO2 only; interpretations are assessed on Paper 3. Use evidence and argument instead.

Can one essay cover two key questions? Yes – questions 3, 6 and 8 above deliberately cross key questions, as real questions sometimes do.

What makes the judgement “sustained”? Each paragraph ends with a mini-judgement that links back to the question, so the conclusion confirms an argument the reader has already followed.