How important were other fronts?

Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 · Paper 1 Section B, Depth Study A Syllabus: 2027 and 2028 Depth Study A: The First World War, 1914 to 1918 Key Question 3 of four

This is the Key Question about everything the war did away from the trenches of France and Belgium: the sea, Gallipoli, the Eastern Front, and the civilian populations of the countries doing the fighting. Cambridge does not ask you to describe those four things. It asks how important they were, which is a question about the outcome of the war, not about the campaigns themselves.

That distinction is the whole file. A candidate who can narrate Jutland, Gallipoli, Brusilov and rationing in order, accurately, and in that order, is writing a Level 2 answer. The mark is for saying what those things did to the result of the war, and for being able to argue it both ways: that the other fronts decided the outcome, and that the war was always going to be won and lost on the Western Front.

The file is built around Cambridge's four focus points, because each one is a ready made 10 mark essay title and each one has been set as a real question more than once. Section 3 shows how often, and where on the paper.

1. What the syllabus actually asks

This is the wording printed in the Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028. Learn the Key Question itself. The 10 mark part is built out of it, series after series.

Key Question 3

How important were other fronts?

Focus points

• Who won the war at sea?
• Why did the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915 fail?
• How important was the Eastern Front?
• What was the impact of war on civilian populations?

Cambridge prints those four lines and nothing else under this Key Question. There is no separate specified content list for it, because Depth Study A prints one specified content list for the whole depth study, covering all four of its Key Questions in one run. Here is that list in full, exactly as the syllabus gives it, with date ranges written out:

Specified content, Depth Study A: The First World War, 1914 to 1918

• The Schlieffen Plan and how it worked in practice:
• the German advance through Belgium and the impact of the British Expeditionary Force
• the effect on the western front of Russian mobilisation
• The battles of Mons and the Marne, the race to the sea and the First Battle of Ypres:
• the reaction to the stalemate: trenches and the development of a war of attrition
• The nature and problems of trench warfare
• The use and impact of developments such as tanks, machine guns, aircraft and gas
• The impact of the battles of Verdun and the Somme:
• the leadership and tactics of Haig at the Battle of the Somme
• The role and experiences of British Empire troops on the Western Front:
• Case study: Indian troops
• Case study: Canadian troops
• The war in Africa:
• Case study: German East Africa
• Case study: South West Africa
• Contribution of Japan in Asia:
• the siege of Tsingtao
• naval assistance in securing the sea lanes
• The Arab Revolt
• The war at sea:
• the Battle of Jutland and its consequences
• the use of convoys and submarines and the U-boat campaign
• The reasons for, and results of, the Gallipoli campaign
• Events on the Eastern Front and the defeat of Russia
• The impact of war on civilian populations
• The German offensive of 1918 and the Allied advance:
• the impact of American entry into the war
• Conditions in Germany towards the end of the war:
• the Kiel Mutiny and German Revolution
• the abdication of the Kaiser
• The Armistice

The four items that belong to this Key Question

The list runs in the same order as the four Key Questions, and this Key Question's share of it is four consecutive items, sitting between the Arab Revolt and the German offensive of 1918:

• The war at sea: the Battle of Jutland and its consequences; the use of convoys and submarines and the U-boat campaign
• The reasons for, and results of, the Gallipoli campaign
• Events on the Eastern Front and the defeat of Russia
• The impact of war on civilian populations

Four items, matching four focus points, one to one. That is your scope boundary, and it is tighter than the phrase "other fronts" sounds. Read it carefully before you revise anything, because the next section is about what it excludes.

Read the focus points as arguments, not as a list

Cambridge defines its own three layers in the front matter of the syllabus: key questions define the over-arching issues, focus points identify the issues that enable candidates to gain an understanding of the key question, and specified content provides guidance on what needs to be studied.

So the four focus points are not four topics to learn in turn. They are four arguments, each with two sides, and each already set as a real 10 mark question in this corpus.

Notice the first focus point. "Who won the war at sea?" is phrased as though there is an answer, and Cambridge's own mark schemes credit three of them: Britain won, Germany won, and neither won. The exemplar answers on both sides of a 2018 question print the British victory at Heligoland Bight and the German victory at Coronel side by side, under the same question stem. If you have only revised one answer, you have a one sided answer before you start writing.

"How important" is the whole question

The Key Question does not say "what happened on the other fronts". It says how important they were, and importance is always importance to something. Here it is importance to the outcome of the war, and Cambridge says so in its own words. The mark scheme for the June 2022 question on the Eastern Front prints this as an acceptable Level 3 answer, whole:

The war could only be won and lost on the Western Front. Developments on the Eastern Front were only important because of the effect they had on the Western Front.

That is the counter-case, printed by Cambridge, and it is worth as many marks as the case for the other fronts. This file exists to make sure you can write both.

2. Where this Key Question stops, and where Key Question 2 starts

Depth Study A has four Key Questions, and three of them border this one. The syllabus draws every border in the specified content list above, which is why it is worth reading that list rather than the focus points alone.

Key Question 1 owns the Western Front

Why was there stalemate on the Western Front? takes the Schlieffen Plan in practice, Belgium and the British Expeditionary Force, Mons, the Marne, the race to the sea, the First Battle of Ypres, trenches and attrition, tanks, machine guns, aircraft, gas, Verdun, the Somme and Haig. None of that is yours.

You will still need it, and this is the trap. Almost every 10 mark question on your Key Question is a comparison with the Western Front: was the Eastern Front more important than the Western Front, was the war at sea more important than the home fronts, did the failure at Gallipoli matter given that the war had to be won in France. You need enough Western Front material to run the other side of the comparison, and no more. Verdun, the Somme, the Ludendorff Offensive and the American entry are the four that keep appearing in Cambridge's own counter-arguments on this Key Question.

Key Question 4 owns 1918

Why did Germany ask for an armistice in 1918? takes the German offensive of 1918, the impact of American entry, conditions in Germany towards the end of the war, the Kiel Mutiny, the German Revolution, the abdication of the Kaiser and the Armistice.

The border that actually bites is starvation in Germany. Hunger in Germany is the consequence of the blockade, which is yours, and it is also part of the conditions that produced the Kiel Mutiny, which is Key Question 4's. Cambridge itself runs the chain across the border: a June 2020 exemplar on the war at sea ends with riots in Germany and the collapse of 1918. So use it, but use it as evidence that the sea mattered, not as a narrative of the German Revolution. If your paragraph ends with the Kaiser abdicating and never returns to the blockade, you have answered Key Question 4 in a Key Question 3 question.

Key Question 2 is the closest neighbour, and the line is not where you would guess

To what extent was it a world war? is a separate Key Question with a separate file, the To what extent was it a world war? notes. Its focus points are the role of British Empire troops on the Western Front, the contribution of Indian and South African troops in Africa, the contribution of Japan to the Allied victory, and the importance of the Arab Revolt. Its specified content is British Empire troops on the Western Front with Indian and Canadian case studies, the war in Africa with German East Africa and South West Africa case studies, Japan in Asia including the siege of Tsingtao and naval assistance in securing the sea lanes, and the Arab Revolt.

Two things follow, and both are counter-intuitive.

Africa is not one of your "other fronts". German East Africa and South West Africa are fronts, they are a long way from the Western Front, and they belong to Key Question 2. So does the Arab Revolt, and so does Tsingtao. "Other fronts" in this syllabus does not mean "everywhere that is not France". It means the four named items in section 1.

Some naval war is not yours either. The syllabus places naval assistance in securing the sea lanes, by Japan, under Key Question 2, while the Battle of Jutland, convoys, submarines and the U-boat campaign sit under Key Question 3. The line is not the sea. The line is what the question is about.

That is the real distinction between the two Key Questions, and it is worth stating plainly:

1. Key Question 2 asks who was in the war and how far it reached
2. Key Question 3 asks whether the fighting away from the Western Front changed the result
3. so the same event can belong to either, depending on which question is being answered about it

Japanese ships escorting convoys are evidence of the war's reach, which is Key Question 2. British ships escorting convoys are evidence of what kept Britain in the war, which is yours. A question that asks how important the Japanese contribution was is a Key Question 2 question even though it is about the sea, and Cambridge has set exactly that question, in June 2024.

The one place past papers will mislead you

Depth Study A was reorganised for the 2024 series. The papers from 2018 to 2023 were set against a version of this depth study that had three Key Questions rather than four, and the middle one covered "other fronts" without a separate world war Key Question beside it. That is why the 2018 to 2023 papers put the war at sea, Gallipoli, the Eastern Front and civilian life all inside a single question, often under a stem such as "The First World War was fought on several fronts", and never ask about Tsingtao, Canadian troops or South West Africa at all. From 2024, those appear, and they appear in a separate question from yours.

So when you use a pre-2024 paper for practice, treat the whole of its "other fronts" question as yours. When you use a 2024 paper, check which of the two Depth Study A questions you are looking at, because one of them is now Key Question 2's.

3. How Paper 1 sets this Key Question

The marking is on a different page, and this section does not repeat it

The paper structure, the assessment objective split, the (a) 4, (b) 6 and (c) 10 division, all three level ladders, the two rules Cambridge changed for the 2024 series, the shape of an explanation on the page and the faults examiners name every series are in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes. That page says it applies to Section B, and it does. Read it once. Nothing below repeats any of it. What follows is only what is true of this Key Question.

Section B is Questions 9 to 18, and Depth Study A is Questions 9 and 10

Section A is Questions 1 to 8, the Core Content, and you answer two of them. Section B is the depth studies, two questions on each, and you answer one.

The 2027 syllabus lists five depth studies, A to E, in this order: the First World War, Germany, Russia, the United States, and the Second World War in Europe and the Asia Pacific. Two questions each, numbered from 9, gives:

That is exactly the numbering used on the 2024 papers, which were the first set against a five depth study syllabus, and the numbering can be read off the question papers themselves. The 2018 to 2023 papers ran to Question 22, because there were seven depth studies then, but Depth Study A was Questions 9 and 10 in every single one of the 48 papers read for these notes. Your questions are 9 and 10, and they always have been.

How often this Key Question is set, and where

Reading the Depth Study A section of all 48 Paper 1 question papers from 2018 to 2024:

So this Key Question carries a full question on 28 papers in 48, which is more than half, and it has a presence on 31. That makes it the most heavily set of the four Depth Study A Key Questions in the corpus, ahead of the Western Front stalemate.

Of those 28 full questions, 22 were Question 10 and 6 were Question 9. The pattern is strong and it has a shape behind it. Question 9 is the Western Front question on almost every paper. Question 10 is the other one, and on more than three quarters of the papers that set this Key Question, the other one was yours.

Do not treat that as a guarantee. Six papers put it at Question 9, including three of the four papers in 2023 and the March 2019 and March 2021 papers. Read both questions before you choose.

Which fronts the questions keep coming back to

Counting question parts, not papers, across all 48:

Three things fall out of that, and each one is worth a revision decision.

The war at sea is set in three pieces that keep recurring together. Jutland is named in nine question parts, the blockade in seven, and U-boats, submarines and convoys in sixteen. And the commonest 10 mark question of all on this Key Question is a comparison between two of them: Jutland against the U-boat campaign, the blockade against the U-boat campaign, Jutland against the convoy system, the blockade against the home fronts. Those exact pairings appear in June 2019, June 2021, June 2020, June 2023, March 2023 and November 2024. Section 4 is built to answer them.

Civilian populations is not a soft option. It carries more question parts than any other single focus point, and it is the one candidates most often answer badly, because the material is easy to describe and hard to make argue. Section 7 says how.

Gallipoli is set less often than the other three, and it is almost always the same question. Of the 11 parts, nearly all ask why it failed or whether the failure mattered. Almost none asks you to narrate the campaign. Two ask about the aims. Prepare it as an argument, not a story.

What the examiner reports show about this slot

One further fact comes from the Principal Examiner reports for Paper 1, and it changes how much guidance you can expect to find. In 15 of the 48 series and component combinations, the report for Question 10 reads, in substance, that there were too few responses to that question for meaningful comments to be made. Question 9 never carries that note.

So within Depth Study A, far more candidates answer Question 9 than Question 10, and Question 10 is where this Key Question usually sits. Two consequences.

Examiner guidance on your content is thinner than on the Western Front. The general faults in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes therefore carry more weight here, because they are much of what is available. Section 9 gives the ones Cambridge does name on this content specifically.

Fewer candidates prepare it. That is not a reason to avoid it. The mark schemes on this content are unusually generous with indicative material, as sections 4 to 7 show, and a prepared answer on Question 10 is competing against a thin field.

4. Focus point: who won the war at sea?

Cambridge's own question stems have asked this four different ways: was the blockade the most important aspect of the war at sea, did the Dreadnoughts play a significant part, was Germany successful at sea, and did Britain win the war at sea. All four are the same argument, so learn it once.

What the two navies were actually for

Both sides wanted the same two things: their own supplies to arrive, and the enemy's not to. Britain, an island, needed imports to eat and to make weapons. Germany, blockaded, needed imports to eat and to make weapons. Neither navy was trying to win a battle for its own sake, which is why counting ships sunk answers the wrong question.

1. Britain and Germany both depended on seaborne supply
2. each side's navy therefore attacked the other's supply rather than its fleet
3. so the war at sea is decided by starvation, not by battles

Keep that chain in your head. It is what turns a description of Jutland into an explanation of Jutland.

The British blockade

Britain declared the North Sea a British military area and stopped merchant shipping bound for Germany. Neutral merchant ships were searched for any goods that might help the German war effort, food included. The aim, in Cambridge's phrase, was to starve Germany into submission.

What Cambridge credits as the benefits Britain gained:

• German imports fell by 60 per cent.
• The blockade cut off Germany's supply of nitrates, which hit the production of explosives.
• Germany's ability to feed its population was badly affected.
• The German armaments industry was badly affected.
• German morale fell and the German people became less keen to support the war effort, while British morale rose.
• Food riots broke out across Germany.

The blockade is slow, and that is its character. It did not win a battle in any month of the war. Its results appear in Germany's food supply from 1916 onwards, which is why this focus point and the civilian populations focus point are really one argument seen from two ends. Section 7 has the German figures.

The Battle of Jutland, 1916

The one full fleet action of the war, and the one where the facts and the significance point in opposite directions. That is exactly why Cambridge likes it.

What happened, from the mark schemes:

• The Germans wanted to lure the British fleet out into the North Sea.
• Jellicoe's fleet left base earlier than the Germans expected.
• German ships sank HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary. Britain lost three battle cruisers.
• The British inflicted heavy damage on German ships.
• Scheer was forced to retreat and sail for home, under cover from submarines. The British fleet failed to catch them.
• Germany lost 11 ships. Britain lost 14 ships, and almost 7,000 British sailors were killed, injured or captured.
• Neither side gained a major victory. Both sides claimed one.

What it meant, which is where the marks are:

• The German High Seas Fleet returned to port and stayed there for the rest of the war. Germany did not risk a major sea battle again.
• Britain kept control of the North Sea.
• Because Britain kept control of the North Sea, the blockade of the German coast could continue.
• Germany had failed to break the blockade, which had been the point of coming out.

1. Germany lost fewer ships at Jutland than Britain
2. but the German fleet never sailed again, leaving Britain in control of the North Sea
3. so the blockade continued for two more years and Germany starved

That single line is the answer to "who won the war at sea", and it is why a candidate who only knows the ship losses will argue the wrong way round. Cambridge's own Level 2 list prints both "Germany lost fewer ships than Britain at the Battle of Jutland" and "Britain maintained its control of the North Sea after the Battle of Jutland" as valid points. The first is a fact. The second is an argument.

The U-boat campaign

This is the German answer to the blockade, and the only thing in the whole war at sea that came close to winning it.

• U-boats were German submarines. Unrestricted submarine warfare meant that all ships heading for Britain, military and merchant, were targets, with no warning.
• Germany launched it in 1915. The liner Lusitania was sunk in May 1915 and 128 American passengers were killed, producing outrage in the United States, and Germany called the policy off.
• It was resumed in 1917, with the stated aim of sinking 600,000 tons of shipping a month, because Germany was making no headway on the Western Front.
• Britain imported around 60 per cent of its food.
• U-boats sank about 500 merchant ships. Almost three million tons of shipping were lost.
• By the summer of 1917 Britain was in crisis, in Cambridge's own exemplar with only a few days of supplies left, and rationing followed in 1918.

1. Germany could not break the blockade with its surface fleet
2. so it attacked British supply with submarines instead
3. and by 1917 the country that was blockading was itself weeks from running out of food

That reversal is the strongest single point available on this focus point, and it is what makes "who won the war at sea" a real question rather than a rhetorical one.

How the U-boats were beaten

Cambridge credits four methods, and it is worth knowing all four, because the commonest 10 mark question here asks you to rank them.

• Convoys. Merchant ships crossed the Atlantic in large groups escorted by warships and sometimes aircraft, which made it far harder for a submarine to attack an isolated ship and dangerous to attack in daylight. Cambridge's own figure is that Allied shipping losses fell by 20 per cent after the convoy system was introduced.
• Mines. Laid in the North Sea. One mark scheme states flatly that mines destroyed more U-boats than any other weapon.
• Depth charges, used from 1916, sometimes dropped by escorting aircraft.
• Q-ships. Heavily armed ships disguised as merchant ships, with guns hidden under fake lifeboats and funnels or disguised as cargo, meant to lure a submarine to the surface and then destroy it.

Cambridge's own documents disagree about how well Q-ships worked, and section 12 says so. Do not try to settle it. If you need Q-ships in an explanation, explain what they were for and let the effectiveness be the thing you are arguing about.

The rest of the naval war, which examiners do credit

Most candidates know Jutland and nothing else. Cambridge's exemplars for "Britain won the war at sea" reach further, and these are the facts they print:

• Heligoland Bight, August 1914. A large British force attacked German shipping at the German naval base at Heligoland. 712 German sailors were killed and 6 German ships were lost. Britain lost 35 sailors and no ships, though some were damaged.
• Coronel, November 1914. A small fleet of German cruisers sank two British cruisers off the coast of Chile. 1,600 British men were killed. Germany lost no ships and had three men wounded. Cambridge notes that this was Britain's first naval defeat since 1812.
• The Falkland Islands and Dogger Bank, both credited as British successes.

Heligoland Bight and Coronel are the pair to learn, because they let you open both sides of the argument with a named battle and a number rather than a generalisation.

Building the argument both ways

Britain won it. Control of the North Sea from Jutland onwards, a blockade sustained for the rest of the war, German imports down 60 per cent, German rations cut, food riots, and a German fleet that mutinied rather than sail. Britain's own crisis of 1917 was survived; Germany's was not.

Germany won more of it than that suggests. More British ships and more British sailors lost at Jutland, a clear German victory at Coronel, and a submarine campaign that in 1917 came closer to forcing Britain out of the war than anything the German army achieved before 1918.

Neither side won it, and that is why it mattered. The one fleet action was indecisive and the fleets barely met again. The war at sea was not decided by winning; it was decided by which side could endure a siege longer, and Britain could.

The third of those is the one that reaches Level 5 most easily, because it answers the question asked rather than picking a flag.

5. Focus point: why did the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915 fail?

Cambridge has set this focus point eleven times and almost always in the same shape: why it failed, or whether the failure mattered. It has twice asked whether the decision to launch it made sense at all. It has almost never asked for a narrative.

Why it was tried

The reasons are the half of this focus point candidates skip, and they are also the half that lets you argue the campaign was a good idea badly executed. Cambridge's own list of aims:

• To knock Turkey out of the war and capture Constantinople.
• To open a sea route through the Dardanelles to Russia, so that supplies could reach the Russian front.
• To help Russia by taking pressure off it on the Eastern Front.
• To open a new front in the south east, and to attack the "soft under-belly" of Europe.
• To isolate Germany by defeating its allies, and to attack Austria-Hungary through the Balkans.
• To encourage neutral countries such as Greece, Romania and Bulgaria to join the Allied side.
• To reduce pressure on the Western Front and to shorten the war.

1. By 1915 the Western Front was deadlocked and neither side could break through
2. so the Allies looked for a way to win the war somewhere else and help Russia at the same time
3. which is why the plan was reasonable even though the execution was not

Cambridge prints that argument almost word for word as an acceptable answer to "the decision to launch the Gallipoli campaign made little sense": that it was a good idea, worth trying, and just carried out badly.

What happened

The Royal Navy bombarded Turkish forts along the Dardanelles first, about a month before the landings. British, French, Australian and New Zealand troops landed in April 1915. British troops landed at Cape Helles; Australian and New Zealand troops at what later became known as Anzac Cove.

From Cambridge's own descriptions of the landings and after:

• The landings were made in the dark and assault formations became confused.
• Troops were put ashore a mile north of the intended beach.
• Out of date maps were used. One mark scheme states that the British relied on a tourist guide book.
• The landings had not been practised.
• There was barbed wire on the beaches, and high hills and cliffs behind them. Steep cliffs hampered the ANZAC forces.
• Turkish troops were ready and waiting, with a clear line of fire onto the beaches. The first Allied troops charged up steep hillsides under concentrated machine gun fire.
• Some Turkish trenches were captured and some Allied troops dug trenches on the beaches, but the force was trapped there.
• The troops suffered great heat and shortage of water, then floods and very cold weather. Disease spread quickly.
• A second attack was attempted in August and made little progress.
• The force withdrew after heavy casualties.

The four explanations Cambridge credits, and how to rank them

Every Gallipoli question in this corpus is answered out of these four. Learn them as four explanations, each with a mechanism attached, not as four labels.

1. Turkish preparation and the loss of surprise. The earlier naval attack had told the Turks an attack was coming. A German commander, Otto Liman von Sanders, doubled the defensive forces and dug them into strong positions on the hills overlooking the beaches where the Allies were likely to land, and gave the Turkish forces lessons in defending trench positions with machine guns, grenades and bayonets. The Turks held all the high ground.

2. Not enough troops. General Sir Ian Hamilton, the Allied commander, was advised by Greek military leaders that at least 150,000 men would be needed. Lord Kitchener, who did not agree with launching the attack at all, authorised only half that number. Cambridge's own exemplar draws the conclusion for you: even with surprise, the Allies would have been outnumbered.

3. Planning and execution. Landings not practised, out of date maps, troops put ashore in the wrong place, no account taken of the extremes of weather, army and navy operations not combined, the whole plan too ambitious.

4. The Western Front came first. Kitchener believed the war would be won on the Western Front, not in the east, and forces were not released from it. This is the explanation that links back to the Key Question, and it is the most useful one, because it is simultaneously a reason for failure and an argument about importance.

1. The Allies underestimated Turkey and gave Gallipoli half the men it needed
2. because commanders believed the real war was in France
3. so the campaign that was meant to prove the other fronts mattered was starved by the belief that they did not

Whether the failure mattered, which is the actual Key Question

Cambridge set this directly in June 2021: how important was the failure of the Gallipoli campaign. Both sides are printed in the mark scheme.

It mattered. By 1915 the Western Front was deadlocked and no breakthrough was coming. Gallipoli was the attempt to win the war somewhere else. It was a disaster, tens of thousands were killed, and the rest withdrew. Because it failed, there was no breakthrough anywhere and the war ran for years more. Cambridge also credits the political consequences: Winston Churchill resigned from the government because it had been his idea, and the Prime Minister resigned. Examiner comments add a further consequence: news of the casualty rates at campaigns such as Gallipoli discouraged volunteers in Britain, which fed the move to conscription.

It did not matter much. The purpose was to help Russia by defeating Turkey. Within two years Russia had a revolution and left the war anyway, so the help would have made little difference. And in the end the war had to be won on the Western Front, which makes Gallipoli, in Cambridge's own printed phrase, irrelevant to the outcome.

Those two are a complete Level 4 answer between them. The tenth mark is deciding which, with a reason.

6. Focus point: how important was the Eastern Front?

This focus point is set about fifteen times, and it splits cleanly in two. The Eastern Front mattered in 1914, because it broke the German plan. It mattered again in 1918, because Russia's collapse released the German army. In between, Russia lost.

1914: the front that broke the Schlieffen Plan

The Schlieffen Plan depended on Germany defeating France within six weeks and only then turning east, so that it never had to fight two fronts at once. Russia mobilised faster than Germany expected, and Germany moved 100,000 troops from the Western Front to meet it.

1. Russia mobilised faster than Germany had planned for
2. Germany pulled 100,000 troops out of the advance on Paris to defend the east
3. the advance slowed, France was not defeated in six weeks, and Germany spent the rest of the war fighting on two fronts

That chain is the single most valuable thing on this focus point. It is Cambridge's own Level 3 exemplar, almost word for word, and it is the reason a candidate can argue that the Eastern Front was decisive without ever describing a battle in the east. The Eastern Front's first and largest effect on the war was felt in France, in August 1914, and it was permanent.

Note the overlap with Key Question 1, which owns the failure of the Schlieffen Plan. The same event, argued from the other end. In a Key Question 1 answer, Russian mobilisation is one reason the Plan failed. In your answer, the failure of the Plan is the evidence that the Eastern Front mattered. Same facts, opposite direction of argument.

What happened in the east

• Russia's large army began the war well, with some victories and advances.
• It was then defeated at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes, with enormous casualties.
• It had success against the Austrian army in Galicia in 1916.
• The Brusilov Offensive was planned by General Brusilov to knock Austria out of the war and divert German forces before the Somme offensive. The Russians prepared with reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. It lasted three months, advanced 30 km at first and seriously damaged the Austrian army, in one Cambridge exemplar destroying half of it. Other Russian generals were reluctant to follow up, German reinforcements arrived, and the Russians were pushed back to where they started. Cambridge's figures are that the Russians lost over 1 million men and had 1.5 million casualties, and could not launch another offensive.
• The Brusilov Offensive relieved pressure on the Allies in the west, at Verdun and the Somme.
• Russian troops were badly equipped, without boots or basic ammunition, many untrained, with poor supply lines. By 1917 morale was very low and there were mass desertions.

Note what Brusilov is for in an answer. It is the proof that the Eastern Front was doing something for the Allies even while Russia was losing: it drew Austrian and German strength away from France in the same summer as the Somme. That is a Level 3 explanation with a mechanism in it, which is more than "there was fighting in the east too".

Why Russia left, and what its leaving did

The commander of the Russian forces resigned in 1915 and the Tsar took his place, which attached every subsequent defeat to the Tsar personally. In February 1917 soldiers refused to fire on demonstrators in Petrograd and the Tsar was forced to abdicate. The Provisional Government decided to continue the war, a very unpopular decision. The Bolsheviks promised land to the peasants, more soldiers left the front for home, and after the Bolsheviks took power Russia left the war.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, March 1918. Russia left the war and lost, on Cambridge's figures, almost 300,000 square miles of territory, Ukraine and Finland among the land lost, and the land gained in the Russo-Turkish War returned to the Ottoman Empire. The figures for population, coal and industry differ between Cambridge documents, and section 12 lists them. The treaty also led to the Russian Civil War.

What the defeat of Russia did to the war:

• Germany no longer had to fight on two fronts at once.
• Large numbers of German soldiers and large amounts of German armaments moved to the Western Front, giving Germany an advantage over the Allies.
• That made the German offensive of March 1918 possible. It was Germany's last chance of victory, and at first it succeeded, pushing the Allies back almost to Paris.
• The Allies were dismayed at Brest-Litovsk and regarded it as a betrayal.
• Germany's territorial gains in the east had to be occupied and defended, which absorbed troops.
• It made the arrival of American troops in the west even more important.

1. Russia's collapse freed the German army from the east
2. Germany could concentrate everything on the Western Front for one offensive in March 1918
3. so the Eastern Front decided the shape of the war's final year even after it had ceased to exist

The argument both ways

The Eastern Front was important. It caused the failure of the Schlieffen Plan, which caused the two front war and the stalemate. It tied up German troops that would otherwise have been in France. Early Russian victories over Austria forced Germany to rush reinforcements east. Brusilov relieved pressure on Verdun and the Somme. And its collapse made the German offensive of 1918 possible. Cambridge adds a neat supporting point: the fact that the Allies attempted Gallipoli at all shows how important they thought the Eastern Front was.

The Western Front was more important. This is where the main German armies were, where the Americans sent their troops, and where the failure of the German offensive of 1918 finished Germany off. Developments in the east mattered only through their effect in the west. And the decisive test: Russia left the war in 1918 and the Allies still won.

That last point is the sharpest counter-argument available on this whole Key Question, and it is Cambridge's own. Have an answer to it.

7. Focus point: what was the impact of war on civilian populations?

The most heavily set focus point of the four, and the one where candidates most often write a Level 2 answer while knowing plenty. The reason is that the material describes easily. Rationing, women in factories, DORA, food queues: all of it is easy to list and none of it, listed, says anything about the outcome of the war.

The fix is to keep asking what the civilian experience did. In Britain it kept the country in the war. In Germany and Russia it took the country out of it.

Britain: how a state made civilians into a war effort

The Defence of the Realm Act, 1914. DORA let the government make any regulation it considered necessary for the safety of the country, without going back to Parliament for each one. Under it the government could seize land or buildings, take over industries important to the war effort, and control all docks and railways. The coal mines were nationalised. Strikes were made illegal in vital industries such as mining. Miners, farmers and machine-tool operators were barred from joining the army because their skills were needed. The "Direction of Labour" allowed a man to be directed into a job vital to the war effort. Land could be taken over and turned to farm production. Air raid precautions were brought in. The press was censored, so that sensitive information did not reach the enemy and only good news was published, keeping civilian morale up.

Recruitment, then conscription. The war began with a volunteer army, raised by Lord Kitchener. Pals Battalions were made up of friends who volunteered together, sometimes signing up at football matches, and were kept in the same units on the theory that they would fight better alongside their pals. Propaganda ran on posters, leaflets and film: recruitment posters such as "Kitchener Wants You", atrocity propaganda to make people hate the Germans, and posters urging women into munitions factories, the Land Army and the Auxiliary Corps.

Volunteering was not enough. Casualties were huge, more men were needed, and the war had stopped looking like an adventure. The Military Service Act of January 1916 made all single men and childless widowers aged 18 to 41 liable for conscription; a second Act in June 1916 extended it to all men in that range; in 1918 the age limit went up to 50. Over a million men were enlisted by conscription. Those called up could appeal to local military service tribunals for exemption, on grounds of conscience or family.

Conscientious objectors. The 1916 Act allowed men to object to conscription, some on religious grounds, some because they belonged to political groups that opposed British involvement. Applicants had to argue their case before a tribunal whose members decided whether they were genuine or cowards. Almost 20,000 men registered as conscientious objectors between 1916 and 1918. Some, such as the Richmond 16, were imprisoned. Others worked in non-combatant roles such as providing medical aid to wounded soldiers.

Food. Britain imported around 60 per cent of its food, which is what made the U-boat campaign dangerous. The responses were to protect the shipping, to grow more, and to share out what there was. Britain increased the area of farmland and increased imports from America. Rationing was introduced in 1918, covering a limited number of foods, with ration cards limiting how much each person could buy.

Women. The proportion of women in employment in Britain rose from 24 per cent in 1914 to 37 per cent by 1918. The Land Army was formed in 1915 so that food production could continue while men were released for the army. Women worked on farms, in munitions factories and on public transport, and wartime jobs were often better paid than the domestic work many had done before. Cambridge gives one comparison from outside Britain: in France, almost a third of all jobs in armaments production were filled by women.

The war reached British civilians directly, through bombing by German ships and by Zeppelins, which bombed London.

1. Britain's civilians were mobilised by law, by propaganda and by rationing
2. which kept the factories, the farms and the army supplied through the U-boat crisis of 1917
3. so the home front is why Britain survived the one period when it could have been forced out of the war

Germany: how a blockade defeated a country from inside

Germany already had conscription in 1914, and 3.8 million reserves were called up at the start of the war. Women and young people filled the jobs the men left, many in munitions.

Then the blockade did its work.

• German imports fell by 60 per cent.
• The potato crop failed in 1916. Potatoes were a staple of the German diet and had to be replaced with turnips, normally cattle fodder. This is the turnip winter of 1917.
• Sawdust was put into bread because there was not enough flour.
• In February 1917 civilian rations were cut by more than half, to only 1,000 calories a day.
• There were food riots and strikes across Germany.
• By the end of the war the German population was facing starvation.

Two things make this the most useful material in the whole Key Question. First, it is the point where three focus points meet: the blockade is the war at sea, the starvation is the civilian impact, and the collapse is the reason Germany asked for an armistice. Second, Cambridge's own exemplars run the chain all the way through, which means you are allowed to as well.

1. The British blockade cut German imports by 60 per cent
2. German civilians were reduced to 1,000 calories a day and turnips, and rioted
3. and a government whose population was starving could not go on fighting in 1918

That is a complete Level 3 explanation on either the war at sea focus point or this one, and it is the strongest single argument that the other fronts decided the war.

Russia: how food shortages brought down a government

Cambridge treats Russian civilians as part of this focus point, and it is worth knowing because it links the civilian impact to the Eastern Front.

Russia's railway system was poor, and most trains were carrying men and armaments to the front rather than wheat to the cities. Military needs came first. Russia lost land in Poland and the west during the war, which knocked out the main north to south railway line used to move food, and the towns filled with refugees from that lost land, increasing demand. Some peasants hoarded grain and the government refused to pay higher prices for it. Prices rose dramatically, so people could not afford what food there was. The result was bread riots, and Cambridge's own Level 2 list states the consequence plainly: food shortages led to the fall of the government in Russia.

Comparing the home fronts, which is what Cambridge asks

The question set twice in this corpus is whether German civilians suffered more than British civilians, and once whether the home fronts mattered more than the war at sea. Both are comparisons, so hold the two experiences side by side.

Britain suffered. As an island it was especially vulnerable to blockade, unrestricted submarine warfare had a devastating effect, rationing followed, conscription took men aged 18 to 41 out of families, and civilians were bombed from the air.

Germany suffered more. The blockade was continuous rather than a crisis survived, rations were halved to a level Britain never approached, the food was cattle fodder, and the state was in riot by the end.

The judgement most available at Level 5 is the one about consequences rather than severity: British civilians suffered and the country stayed in the war; German and Russian civilians suffered and their governments fell.

8. Putting the whole Key Question together

The 10 mark part will not usually ask "how important were other fronts" in those words. It will ask a version of it: was the Eastern Front more important than the Western Front, did the war at sea matter more than the home fronts, was the failure at Gallipoli important, did Britain win the war at sea. Every one of them wants the same two cases.

The case that the other fronts decided the war

• The Eastern Front broke the Schlieffen Plan in 1914 and created the two front war that produced the stalemate.
• The Eastern Front's collapse in 1918 released the German army for its last offensive.
• The blockade, made possible by control of the North Sea after Jutland, cut German imports by 60 per cent and reduced German civilians to 1,000 calories a day, producing the riots and exhaustion that made continuing the war impossible.
• The U-boat campaign of 1917 came closer to forcing Britain out of the war than any German operation on the Western Front before 1918.
• Civilian collapse ended Russia's war outright, and civilian collapse is a large part of why Germany asked for an armistice.

The case that the war was won and lost on the Western Front

• The main German armies were in the west, and that is where the Americans sent their troops.
• The German offensive of 1918 failed in the west, and the Allied advance that followed, including Amiens, is what finished Germany.
• Gallipoli failed and the war continued regardless; in Cambridge's own phrase, in the end the war had to be won on the Western Front.
• Russia left the war in 1918 and the Allies still won, so the Eastern Front cannot have been decisive on its own.
• Every effect claimed for the other fronts is an effect on the Western Front, which is an argument for the primacy of the Western Front, not against it.

The move that reaches Level 5

The second list contains its own answer, and Cambridge lets you use it. If the Eastern Front mattered because of what it did to the west, and the blockade mattered because of what it did to Germany's ability to keep armies in the west, then the honest judgement is not "the other fronts were more important" or "less important". It is a statement about how they mattered.

1. The other fronts did not win the war anywhere but France
2. they decided how many men Germany could put into France, and for how long its people would let it
3. so they were decisive without ever being where the decision was taken

Write a version of that sentence and you have answered the exact question asked, with a reason attached, which is what the tenth mark is for.

9. What examiner reports say candidates get wrong on this content

The faults that apply anywhere on the paper, overwriting part (a), listing instead of explaining, a one sided part (c), finishing without a judgement, are in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes. These are the ones Cambridge names on this content. There are not many, because as section 3 explained, the reports on Question 10 are often too thin to comment.

• Describing the methods instead of judging them. On the 2018 question about the convoy system, the report notes that candidates knew the convoy system, Q ships and mines in detail and described them in detail, but needed to explain why each method was or was not effective. Knowing more about Q-ships is not the route to more marks. Saying what they achieved is.
• Listing naval facts without explaining them. On the 2018 question "Britain won the war at sea", the report records answers that stated Britain kept control of the North Sea, carried out a blockade, and that German submarine warfare was very successful, and then stopped. All three are the beginnings of explanations. None of them is one.
• Generalising about Jutland. Candidates wrote that Jutland was important because ships were lost at sea. The report names it. Section 4 has what to write instead.
• Answering with the ship losses rather than the consequences. The 2019 report describes effective answers as those that used the ships sunk and casualties at Jutland to argue that Germany was successful, and then balanced it with British control of the North Sea and the blockade. The weak answers had the numbers and no argument.
• Confusing the home front with the front line. Two reports name it: candidates who wrote about the front line in Belgium and France when the question asked about the British home front, and candidates who wrote about how women contributed at the front line when the question was about the home front.
• Bringing this content into a Western Front question. The 2023 report on a Western Front question records answers that included material from the war at sea and the Eastern Front, which lacked relevance there. The traffic goes both ways, and Question 9 and Question 10 sit on facing pages.
• Narrating a campaign instead of assessing it. On a Gallipoli question, the report describes answers consisting of detailed knowledge and narratives of the aims and events of the campaign, which would have been improved by linking its impact to the course of the war. That is this Key Question's characteristic failure, in one sentence.

10. Judgement sentences for this Key Question

The tenth mark is a separate act, as the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes explain, and it is one sentence. Each of these states a position and attaches a reason. Adapt the wording to the exact question asked.

• "Germany won the Battle of Jutland and lost the war at sea, because the fleet that sank more ships spent the next two years in port while the blockade went on."
• "The other fronts mattered through the Western Front rather than instead of it, because every effect they had was an effect on how many Germans could stand in France and for how long."
• "The U-boat campaign was more important than the blockade, because it could have won the war in months, while the blockade needed years."
• "The blockade was more important than the U-boat campaign, because Britain found an answer to the submarines and Germany never found an answer to the blockade."
• "Gallipoli was a sound idea executed badly, because the aim of relieving Russia was worth the attempt and the reasons it failed were all decisions rather than impossibilities."
• "The failure at Gallipoli mattered less than it appears, because the ally it was meant to save left the war within two years for reasons Gallipoli could not have touched."
• "The Eastern Front was decisive twice and irrelevant in between, because it broke the Schlieffen Plan in 1914 and released the German army in 1918, and changed nothing in the years between."
• "Russia's departure shows the Eastern Front mattered and shows it was not enough, because it gave Germany its best chance of victory and Germany still lost."
• "German civilians suffered more than British civilians, because both were hungry but only one government fell."
• "The home fronts decided the war and the battlefields recorded it, because the two countries that collapsed were the two whose civilians ran out of food first."

11. Quick revision

• Section B is Questions 9 to 18. Depth Study A is Questions 9 and 10, and you answer one question in Section B.
• This Key Question is set on 28 of 48 papers, more than any other in Depth Study A. 22 of those 28 were Question 10. Question 9 is usually the Western Front.
• Scope is four items only: the war at sea, Gallipoli, the Eastern Front, civilian populations. Africa, the Arab Revolt, Tsingtao, Indian and Canadian troops belong to Key Question 2.
• Blockade: North Sea declared a British military area, neutral ships searched, German imports fell 60 per cent, nitrates cut, armaments hit, food riots.
• Jutland 1916: Germany lost 11 ships, Britain 14 and almost 7,000 sailors. HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary lost. Scheer retreated; the German fleet never sailed again; Britain kept the North Sea; the blockade continued.
• U-boats: unrestricted warfare from 1915, called off after the Lusitania, May 1915, 128 American passengers killed; resumed 1917 aiming at 600,000 tons a month; about 500 merchant ships sunk; Britain imported around 60 per cent of its food; rationing 1918.
• Beating the U-boats: convoys, losses down 20 per cent; mines; depth charges from 1916; Q-ships.
• Other naval actions: Heligoland Bight, August 1914, 712 German sailors and 6 German ships lost against 35 British sailors. Coronel, November 1914, two British cruisers sunk off Chile, 1,600 British dead, Britain's first naval defeat since 1812. Also Falkland Islands and Dogger Bank.
• Gallipoli aims: knock Turkey out, take Constantinople, open the Dardanelles to supply Russia, relieve the Eastern Front, bring in Greece, Romania and Bulgaria, shorten the war.
• Gallipoli failure, four explanations: Turkish preparation under Otto Liman von Sanders and the surprise lost to the earlier naval attack; Hamilton advised he needed 150,000 men and Kitchener authorised half; planning, out of date maps, unpractised landings, wrong beach, no weather planning; and the Western Front taking priority.
• Gallipoli results: trapped on the beaches, heat, water shortage, disease, floods and cold, a failed second attack in August, withdrawal. Churchill resigned.
• Eastern Front 1914: Russian mobilisation forced Germany to move 100,000 troops west to east; the Schlieffen Plan's six week timetable failed; two front war.
• Eastern Front battles: defeats at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes; success in Galicia in 1916; Brusilov Offensive, three months, 30 km, half the Austrian army damaged, over 1 million Russians lost, pushed back to the start, but it relieved Verdun and the Somme.
• Brest-Litovsk, March 1918: Russia out of the war, almost 300,000 square miles lost, Ukraine and Finland gone. Germany moved troops west and launched the March 1918 offensive.
• Britain's home front: DORA 1914, censorship, nationalised mines, strikes banned in vital industries. Pals Battalions, Kitchener's volunteers, "Kitchener Wants You". Military Service Act January 1916, ages 18 to 41, extended June 1916, age 50 by 1918, over a million conscripted. Almost 20,000 conscientious objectors, tribunals, the Richmond 16. Rationing 1918. Women in employment 24 per cent in 1914 to 37 per cent in 1918, Land Army 1915. Zeppelin bombing.
• Germany's home front: imports down 60 per cent, potato crop failed 1916, turnip winter 1917, sawdust in bread, rations cut in February 1917 to 1,000 calories a day, food riots, starvation by 1918. Conscription already in place, 3.8 million reserves called up in 1914.
• Russia's home front: railways carrying men not wheat, main north to south line lost with the western territories, refugees, hoarding, prices soaring, bread riots, and the fall of the government.
• The counter-case you must be able to answer: Russia left the war in 1918 and the Allies still won.
• Never narrate a campaign. Every question here asks what it did to the outcome.

12. Where these facts come from

Everything above is taken from Cambridge's own published 0470 materials, meaning the syllabus for 2027 and 2028, the Paper 1 mark schemes from 2018 to 2024, and the Principal Examiner reports from 2018 to 2024. Nothing has been added from elsewhere.

From the syllabus: the Key Question wording, the four focus points, the whole Depth Study A specified content list, the definitions of key question, focus point and specified content, the five depth studies and their order, and the Section A and Section B structure.

From the Paper 1 question papers, 2018 to 2024: the Depth Study A question numbering of 9 and 10 in all 48 papers, the five depth study numbering of 9 to 18 on the 2024 papers, and every count in section 3, which was made by reading the Depth Study A section of all 48 papers and classifying each of the 96 questions against the four focus points.

From the Paper 1 mark schemes, 2018 to 2024: every date, figure and name in sections 4 to 8. Specifically, the blockade's effects and the 60 per cent fall in German imports; the Jutland account including Jellicoe, Scheer, HMS Indefatigable, HMS Queen Mary, the three battle cruisers, the 11 and 14 ship losses and the almost 7,000 British casualties; the unrestricted submarine warfare campaign, the Lusitania and the 128 American passengers, the 600,000 tons a month target, the roughly 500 merchant ships, the almost three million tons, and the 60 per cent food import figure; the convoy system and the 20 per cent fall in losses, mines, depth charges from 1916 and Q-ships; Heligoland Bight with its 712, 6 and 35, and Coronel with its 1,600 and the 1812 comparison; the full Gallipoli aims list, the Dardanelles bombardment, Cape Helles and Anzac Cove, the out of date maps and the tourist guide book, Otto Liman von Sanders, General Sir Ian Hamilton, the 150,000 figure and Kitchener's halving of it, the August attack and the withdrawal, and Churchill's resignation; the 100,000 troops moved east in 1914 and the six week Schlieffen timetable, Tannenberg, the Masurian Lakes, Galicia in 1916, the Brusilov Offensive with its three months, 30 km, half the Austrian army, over 1 million losses and 1.5 million casualties, and the Petrograd soldiers refusing to fire; the Brest-Litovsk terms; DORA and every measure listed under it, the Pals Battalions, the propaganda list, the Military Service Acts of January and June 1916 and the 1918 extension to 50, the over one million conscripted, the almost 20,000 conscientious objectors and the Richmond 16, rationing in 1918, the 24 to 37 per cent employment figures, the Land Army of 1915 and the French armaments figure; the turnip winter, the 1916 potato failure, the sawdust, the February 1917 cut to 1,000 calories, the 3.8 million German reserves; and the Russian railway, hoarding, refugee and price material.

From the Principal Examiner reports, 2018 to 2024: every fault quoted in section 9, and the count of series in which the report for Question 10 records too few responses to comment on.

Where Cambridge's own materials disagree, and you should not try to reconcile them

Every one of these is a case where two Cambridge documents print different things. Do not decide between them and do not build an explanation that depends on the disputed number. In every case the mark is for the effect, not the figure, so explain the effect.

• When the convoy system started. One mark scheme prints "the convoy system was introduced in June 1917"; another prints "the convoy system was introduced in June 1916". Both are Cambridge Paper 1 mark schemes.
• When unrestricted submarine warfare resumed. Several mark schemes say Germany resumed it in 1917. One says Germany called it off and it "resumed again in 1916". One 2024 scheme has it launched in 1915, abandoned after the Lusitania, and resumed in 1917.
• Whether Q-ships worked. One mark scheme credits "In 1917, 6 U-boats were sunk by Q ships" and describes them as effective initially. Another credits "They were not very effective and more Q-ships were sunk than submarines". A third credits "It was mines that defeated the German U-boats, not the Dreadnoughts".
• When Gallipoli was evacuated. One mark scheme has the troops withdrawing "in November" of 1915. Another exemplar says "in the end, they were withdrawn in 1916".
• What Russia lost at Brest-Litovsk. One mark scheme gives 90 per cent of coal mines, almost 300,000 square miles and almost 25 per cent of the population. Another says Russia lost a quarter of its industry. Examiner reports elsewhere in the corpus give 34 per cent of the population and most of the coalmines, and 32 per cent of agricultural land with 54 per cent of industry, both with a payment of 300 million roubles. These cannot all be the same treaty terms. Use the territory and the exit from the war, which every document agrees on.
• Britain's food imports. Two documents say Britain imported around 60 per cent of its food. A third says "the Germans realised Britain only produced 60 per cent of its food and needed to import". Those are opposite claims about the same number.
• What was rationed in Britain. One mark scheme names meat, butter and cheese. Another names sugar and meat. An examiner report names sugar, butter and meat.
• Jutland's ship losses. One scheme gives Germany 11 and Britain 14. Another credits "Germany lost fewer ships than Britain". An older one credits "Britain lost three battle cruisers". The direction is consistent; the counts are not identical, so quote the direction.

Not verified against the corpus, and therefore left out above

The following were deliberately not written into this file because no Cambridge 0470 document read for these notes states them: total casualty figures for the Gallipoli campaign; total casualty figures for the Eastern Front or for any battle on it other than the Brusilov figures given; the exact dates of the Gallipoli landings beyond April 1915 and of the withdrawal; the tonnage sunk in any individual month of the U-boat campaign; the number of ships in either fleet at Jutland; the number of Q-ships built; the calorie level of British rations; and the number of German civilians who died as a result of the blockade. Several of those numbers are widely quoted elsewhere and every one of them would look plausible in an answer. None is needed for a top band response to any question in this corpus.

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