International Relations since 1919: Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, for revision and practice on this content. They are not reproduced past-paper questions. The wording and exact sources below are invented for practice purposes, but the structure follows the syllabus’s own: on Paper 1, Core Content questions are three-part structured essays, split (a), (b), (c); on Paper 2, one document question with up to seven sources is set on a single prescribed Core Content topic. Cambridge International holds copyright in its own papers; use these alongside the official past papers available through your school or Cambridge directly.

Related: International Relations since 1919 study guide

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Paper 1 style: Structured Questions (Section A — Core Content)

On the real paper, Section A offers 8 questions (4 on this option, 4 on the Nineteenth Century option) and candidates answer two, plus one further question from Section B on a Depth Study (not covered by this Core Content resource). Practise any two of the four questions below; each is worth 20 marks, split across three parts.

Question 1: The Paris Peace Settlement

(a) Describe the aims of two of the “Big Three” at the Paris Peace Conference. [4]

(b) Explain why Georges Clemenceau wanted a harsh settlement imposed on Germany. [6]

(c) ‘The Treaty of Versailles was fair to Germany.’ How far do you agree? [10]

Worked answer

(a) Any two: Wilson aimed for a settlement based on his Fourteen Points and self-determination, seeking a lasting peace rather than punitive terms. Clemenceau wanted Germany permanently weakened to protect French security, given France’s direct experience of invasion. Lloyd George sought a settlement firm enough to satisfy British public opinion but not so harsh that it would destabilise Europe and damage post-war trade. [4]

(b) France had suffered enormous casualties and physical destruction on its own territory, unlike Britain or the USA, giving Clemenceau strong domestic pressure to secure compensation and security; France had also been invaded by Germany twice in living memory (1870 and 1914), so Clemenceau wanted territorial and financial concessions — such as reparations and the loss of territory like Alsace-Lorraine — to both punish Germany and permanently reduce its capacity to threaten France again. [6]

(c) For fairness: Germany was held responsible under the “war guilt” clause partly because its own actions (the invasion of Belgium and France) had triggered the wider war, and the terms were arguably less harsh than Germany itself had imposed on defeated Russia at Brest-Litovsk in 1918. Against fairness: the loss of territory, the scale of reparations, and the military restrictions arguably went beyond what was needed for French and Allied security, and instead created lasting German resentment that later fed into support for extremist politics. Judgement: a strong answer weighs both cases explicitly rather than simply describing the terms, and might conclude that the treaty was defensible in principle (given Germany’s role in causing the war) but its practical severity — especially reparations and war guilt — went further than was needed to achieve lasting security, which is part of why it proved so politically damaging in Germany. [10] (Marks for weighing both cases with evidence and reaching an explicit conclusion.)

Question 2: The League of Nations

(a) Describe the structure and membership of the League of Nations. [4]

(b) Explain two reasons for the League’s failure to resolve the Manchurian and Abyssinian crises of the 1930s. [6]

(c) ‘The League of Nations was doomed to fail from its creation.’ How far do you agree? [10]

Worked answer

(a) The League was created as part of the peace settlement with the aim of preventing future war through collective security. Its structure included an Assembly (all member states), a Council (permanent and rotating members with greater power), and a Secretariat. Membership was limited from the start — the USA never joined despite Wilson’s role in founding it, and Germany and the USSR were excluded or joined only later. [4]

(b) Any two: the League had no standing army, so it could not enforce its decisions with force against Japan in Manchuria or Italy in Abyssinia. Key powers pursued self-interest over collective security — Britain and France were unwilling to risk war with Italy over Abyssinia given the wider international climate of the 1930s. The League’s economic sanctions were incomplete and inconsistently applied (oil sanctions against Italy were never imposed), reducing their effectiveness. [6]

(c) For “doomed from the start”: the structural weaknesses — no armed force, the absence of major powers such as the USA, and the requirement for unanimous Council decisions — were built in from the League’s creation and were never resolved. Against: the League had genuine early successes in some border and humanitarian disputes during the 1920s (for example the Aaland Islands dispute and its work on refugees and health), which suggests failure was not inevitable but resulted from the specific later decisions of member states not to enforce collective security against major powers in the 1930s. Judgement: a strong answer concludes with an explicit view on which case is stronger, using specific evidence — for example, arguing that the structural weaknesses made failure likely once a major power chose to act aggressively, but the League’s actual collapse in the 1930s still required the specific choice by Britain and France not to confront Japan and Italy, so “doomed from creation” somewhat overstates the case. [10] (Marks for weighing both cases with evidence and reaching an explicit conclusion.)

Question 3: The Origins of the Second World War in Europe

(a) Describe three steps in Hitler’s foreign policy that increased the risk of war in the 1930s. [4]

(b) Explain how the policy of appeasement encouraged Hitler to take greater risks. [6]

(c) ‘Hitler’s foreign policy was entirely to blame for the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939.’ How far do you agree? [10]

Worked answer

(a) Any three: rearmament in breach of the Treaty of Versailles; the remilitarisation of the Rhineland (1936); the Anschluss with Austria (1938); the Sudeten crisis and Munich Agreement (1938); the invasion of Poland (1939). [4]

(b) Each time Hitler tested whether Britain and France would resist — the Rhineland, the Anschluss, the Sudetenland — they responded with concessions rather than confrontation, which Hitler read as evidence that the Western powers lacked the will to enforce the post-war settlement by force; this pattern of unresisted escalation encouraged him to take progressively larger risks, culminating in the invasion of Poland once he judged, wrongly, that Britain and France would again fail to act decisively. [6]

(c) For Hitler’s responsibility: his rearmament, the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss, the Sudeten crisis and Munich Agreement, and the invasion of Poland show a consistent pattern of deliberate, aggressive expansion that directly and repeatedly challenged the post-war settlement. Against “entirely”: the failure of appeasement by Britain and France emboldened Hitler to take greater risks than he might otherwise have judged safe; the weakness of the League of Nations, exposed by Manchuria and Abyssinia, removed an international check on aggression; and the terms of Versailles itself created the German resentment that Hitler was able to exploit for domestic political support. Judgement: a strong answer reaches a supported judgement rather than simply listing causes on both sides — for example, arguing that Hitler’s own ambitions and choices were the driving force, but that the international context (appeasement, League weakness, Versailles resentment) determined how far he was able to go before he was finally resisted, so “entirely to blame” understates how much these other factors shaped the timing and scale of what became possible. [10] (Marks for weighing Hitler’s responsibility against other factors with evidence, and reaching an explicit conclusion.)

Question 4: The Cold War and the Decline of Soviet Control

(a) Describe two reasons why the wartime alliance between the USA and the USSR broke down between 1945 and 1948. [4]

(b) Explain why the Berlin Blockade (1948–49) was a turning point in relations between the USA and the USSR. [6]

(c) ‘The Solidarity movement was the single most important reason for the decline of Soviet control over Eastern Europe.’ How far do you agree? [10]

Worked answer

(a) Any two: the alliance was based on the shared aim of defeating Nazi Germany, which disappeared once that goal was achieved in 1945, and disagreements then emerged over the post-war occupation of Germany and reparations. Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe by 1948, installing communist governments in states liberated by the Red Army, alarmed the USA and Britain, who saw this as a breach of wartime promises of free elections. [4]

(b) The USSR’s blockade of West Berlin was intended to force the Western powers out of the city, but the Berlin Airlift successfully supplied the city by air for nearly a year, which was seen as a clear Western victory and a Soviet failure; the crisis hardened the division of Germany and Europe into opposing blocs, directly contributing to the formation of NATO (1949) and the separate West and East German states, and demonstrated that neither side was willing to risk direct military conflict — a pattern of confrontation through proxy actions rather than direct war that characterised much of the rest of the Cold War. [6]

(c) For Solidarity’s importance: founded in Poland in 1980, it was the first independent trade union movement to win mass popular support within the Soviet bloc, and its survival — even through the Polish government’s own imposition of martial law in December 1981 — showed communist rule could face organised, sustained internal opposition; by 1988–89 it had been legalised and entered round-table talks that led directly to Poland’s first partly-free elections since the war. Against Solidarity as the single most important reason: Solidarity’s early resilience in 1980–81 did not by itself end Soviet control — it was suppressed by martial law and only regained ground once Gorbachev’s own reforms from the mid-1980s (glasnost, and the effective abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine of military intervention in satellite states) removed the Soviet willingness to prop up unpopular communist governments by force; the USSR’s own economic weakness, strained further by the arms race with the USA, also made continued control over Eastern Europe increasingly costly to sustain. Judgement: a strong answer might argue that Solidarity demonstrated, as early as 1980, that popular opposition to communist rule was possible and durable, but that its eventual success in 1989 depended on a separate and later development — Gorbachev’s change in Soviet policy — without which martial law might have contained it indefinitely, as it very nearly did; Solidarity and Gorbachev’s reforms should therefore be treated as interacting causes from different periods rather than Solidarity alone being decisive. [10] (Marks for accurate chronology, weighing Solidarity against other factors, and reaching an explicit, well-supported conclusion.)

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Where marks are usually lost

• Describing Hitler’s actions in isolation without weighing appeasement and the League’s weakness as contributing factors — a “how far” question requires balance.
• Naming League of Nations weaknesses without linking them to the specific outcome in Manchuria or Abyssinia.
• Treating the breakdown of the US-Soviet alliance as caused only by ideology, missing the concrete disputes over occupied Germany and Eastern Europe.
• Attributing Solidarity’s 1980 emergence to Gorbachev, who did not take office until 1985 — check the chronology before linking a cause to an effect.

Paper 2 style: Document Question (one question, five parts, 40 marks)

The real Paper 2 sets one document question, on a single prescribed Core Content topic, with up to seven sources. This illustrative question uses three.

Illustrative topic: The Berlin Blockade, 1948–49

Source A — from a Soviet government statement, June 1948: “Technical difficulties have made it necessary to suspend all rail, road and canal traffic between the western zones and Berlin.”

Source B — from a British government minister’s diary, June 1948: “There is nothing ‘technical’ about this. Stalin is trying to starve West Berlin into submission and force us out of the city altogether.”

Source C — from a modern historian: “The Airlift was a propaganda triumph as much as a logistical one: it let the Western powers appear as Berlin’s protectors, feeding a former enemy capital by air rather than abandoning it.”

(a) What reason does Source A give for the suspension of traffic to Berlin? [4]

(b) Why do you think the British minister in Source B rejected the Soviet explanation? [6]

(c) How far do Sources A and B agree about the purpose of the blockade? [8]

(d) How useful is Source C to a historian studying the significance of the Berlin Airlift? [7]

(e) ‘The Berlin Blockade was a turning point in the Cold War.’ How far do the sources support this view? [15]

Worked answer

(a) Source A gives “technical difficulties” as the reason for suspending rail, road and canal traffic between the western zones and Berlin. [4]

(b) The British minister almost certainly rejected the Soviet explanation because the blockade began shortly after the Western powers introduced a new currency in their zones, and its timing and completeness (covering all surface routes at once) looked far more like a deliberate political and military pressure tactic than a genuine technical breakdown; a diary entry, written privately rather than for publication, is also more likely to reflect the minister’s candid assessment than a diplomatic public statement would. [6]

(c) The two sources disagree sharply: Source A presents the suspension as an unavoidable technical matter, while Source B explicitly rejects that framing and states the real purpose was to starve West Berlin and force the Western powers out of the city. Their only point of overlap is that both acknowledge the traffic suspension actually happened; they offer entirely opposed explanations of its purpose, which reflects each source’s political position rather than a genuine factual disagreement about events on the ground. [8]

(d) Source C is useful because it offers a historian’s later, wider-context judgement about the significance of the Airlift (as a propaganda success) rather than simply describing events, which is valuable for an essay assessing turning points rather than narrating them; its usefulness is limited by being a general assessment without specific supporting evidence in this extract, and, as a secondary interpretation, it should be checked against primary material (such as Sources A and B) rather than relied on alone. [7]

(e) Source B directly supports the claim by describing the blockade as an attempt to force the Western powers out of Berlin altogether — a serious escalation that, if successful, would have reshaped the post-war settlement. Source C supports the claim from a different angle, arguing the Airlift’s propaganda success helped define the Western powers’ Cold War identity as protectors against Soviet pressure. Source A, on its own, does not support the claim (it denies any political purpose at all), but the historical record’s rejection of the “technical difficulties” explanation, combined with what actually followed — the crisis directly contributing to the formation of NATO in 1949 and the permanent division of Germany into two states — supports treating it as a genuine turning point rather than a temporary local dispute. A well-supported judgement should conclude that the sources, read together with the blockade’s known consequences, support the view that 1948–49 marked the point at which Cold War confrontation became institutionalised into fixed opposing blocs, rather than remaining a series of separate, reversible disputes. [15] (Marks for accurate use of all three sources with attention to provenance, own knowledge, and a sustained judgement.)

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Official syllabus

Cambridge IGCSE History (0470) syllabus for examination in 2024, 2025 and 2026, Core Content Option B (“International Relations since 1919”) and the assessment overview (Paper 1: Structured Questions, three-part essays, 60 marks; Paper 2: Document Question, five parts, up to seven sources, 40 marks) — cambridgeinternational.org. The exact mark split within each part is set by Cambridge’s own question papers and mark schemes each series and is not published in the syllabus itself; the splits above are illustrative only. Verified 2026-09-11.