Why did Germany ask for an armistice in 1918?

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 4 of four

This is the last of the four Key Questions in Depth Study A, and it is the only one that asks you to explain an outcome rather than describe a condition. The first three ask what the war was like: why it stalled, how far it spread, what happened away from the Western Front. This one asks why one side stopped fighting.

That difference decides how the file is built. Everything below is arranged around a single problem: in the spring of 1918 Germany attacked and very nearly won, and by the autumn of the same year it was asking for terms. A good answer to this Key Question explains how both of those things were true, and it does it without sliding into the peace settlement that followed.

What this file covers. The entry of the United States and what it changed. The German offensive of 1918 and why it failed. Conditions inside Germany, the naval mutinies, the revolution and the abdication. The Armistice itself, its terms, and why both sides signed it.

What it does not cover, deliberately. The Treaty of Versailles. The armistice and the peace are different events, made by different people, a year apart, and Cambridge examines them in different places. The peace settlement is Core Content Option B Key Question 1, Was the Treaty of Versailles fair?, which has its own notes covering the terms, the German reaction and the impact to the end of 1923. It also does not cover what the new German Republic then had to live with. That is Depth Study B Key Question 1, Was the Weimar Republic doomed from the start?, whose first focus point is how Germany emerged from defeat at the end of the First World War. Your job here stops at the moment the guns stop.

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, because examiners build 10 mark questions directly out of it, sometimes almost word for word.

Key Question 4

Why did Germany ask for an armistice in 1918?

Focus points

• What was the importance of America's entry into the war?
• Why was the German offensive of 1918 unsuccessful?
• Why did revolution break out in Germany in October 1918?
• Why was the Armistice signed?

Specified content

The syllabus prints one list of specified content for the whole of Depth Study A rather than one list per Key Question. Here is the full list, verbatim, with ranges written out:

• 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

Which of that list is yours

The final three bullets are this Key Question. Read them in order and they are almost a sentence: the offensive and the Allied advance, then conditions in Germany, then the Armistice. That is the shape of the answer.

Two earlier bullets reach into your territory even though they sit under other Key Questions, and mark schemes credit them here.

The war at sea. The British naval blockade is listed under the war at sea, which is Key Question 3. Its consequences inside Germany, the food shortages and the war weariness, are unambiguously yours, and mark schemes for this Key Question use them constantly. Unrestricted submarine warfare is the same: listed as a naval topic, but it is also the single largest reason the United States declared war.

The impact of war on civilian populations. Listed separately, and in Key Question 3 it means all civilian populations. Here it narrows to one: German civilians in 1917 and 1918.

Read the focus points as arguments, not as headings

Cambridge defines the three layers itself. 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 a focus point is not a sub-topic to memorise. It is an argument you must be able to run both ways, and it is a ready-made 10 mark title.

Every one of those four column-three questions is a real Cambridge 10 mark question from the last seven years, quoted from the paper. There is no guesswork in this table.

2. Where this Key Question sits on the paper

The ladders, the mark split, the assessment objective weighting and the two rules Cambridge changed for the 2024 series are all set out in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes, and that page applies to Section B exactly as it does to Section A. Read it once before you read this. Nothing below repeats it.

What is specific to this Key Question is where it appears and how often.

Depth Study A is Question 9 and Question 10

Section B begins at Question 9 in every paper, and the depth studies are numbered in syllabus order, two questions each. Depth Study A is always the first, so it is always Question 9 and Question 10.

The number Section B ends at has changed, and the change is recent.

The 2027 syllabus lists five depth studies, so Questions 9 to 18 is what you will sit. What did not move, in any of the 48 Paper 1 papers read for these notes, is the position of Depth Study A at the front of the section.

This Key Question is Question 10, and never Question 9

Across all 48 papers from 2018 to 2024, 22 set a question on this Key Question, and all 22 were Question 10. Not one Question 9 in seven years touched America's entry, the 1918 offensive, the revolution or the Armistice. Question 9 has been the Western Front, the new weapons, Verdun and the Somme, the war at sea, Gallipoli, and from 2024 the Empire and Arab Revolt content. Question 10 has been everything else, including all of this Key Question.

That is worth knowing before you open the paper, because you answer only one question from Section B. If you have revised this Key Question and Question 10 is on it, you already know which of the two to take.

The 22 papers produced 66 question parts, of which 62 sit squarely inside this Key Question. The other four borrowed from elsewhere in the depth study: the Hindenburg Line, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the U-boat campaign and the naval blockade. Question 10 mixes, and that is the second thing to know: a Question 10 that looks like it is about the end of the war can still have a naval part (b).

Which focus point takes the 10 mark part

The 22 part (c) questions divide almost evenly across three of the four focus points.

There is no safe one to skip. The two that carry the most 10 mark questions are the offensive and the Armistice, and they are the two that most obviously require both sides.

A caution about 2024 and after

Of the 41 papers from 2018 to 2023, 20 set this Key Question. Of the seven papers in the 2024 series, only two did. The sample is small, so do not treat it as a trend yet, but there is an obvious mechanism: the 2027 syllabus content on British Empire troops, Japan, the Arab Revolt and the war in Africa is new and substantial, and in 2024 it took Question 9 and Question 10 slots that older topics used to hold. Assume this Key Question can appear and assume it can be absent.

Examiner reports say very little about this Key Question, and that is information

Depth Study A is a minority choice. In most series the Principal Examiner report for Question 10 says only that there were too few responses for meaningful comments to be made. Substantive comment survives in two places, June 2018 and November 2020, and both are used below. It means that for this Key Question the mark schemes, not the reports, are the guide to what earns credit, and it also means you will not find the usual weight of published examiner advice on it anywhere.

3. Germany's position at the start of 1918

Before any of the four focus points, fix the situation they all argue about. Cambridge asked for exactly this in one paper, "Describe the situation facing German forces at the start of 1918", and the mark scheme is a clean summary of the problem.

Germany was still fighting on the Eastern Front. All the reservists at home had been called up. The submarine campaign against Britain had failed to force a decision. The United States was expected to send large numbers of men to reinforce the Allies. The British blockade of German ports meant the army was running short of food and armaments, and news of the shortages at home was affecting the morale of the troops.

Set against that were two genuine advantages. Russia's defeat released German divisions from the east for use in the west. And the German army was sitting behind the Hindenburg Line, a defensive system of concrete bunkers, underground tunnels and rows of barbed wire built in the winter of 1916 to 1917 and meant, in Cambridge's own phrase, to make an Allied advance impossible.

1. Russia leaves the war
2. German divisions move west and Germany briefly has more men on the Western Front than the Allies
3. but American troops are crossing the Atlantic and the blockade is emptying German larders
4. the advantage is temporary and shrinking
5. Germany can only use it by attacking at once.

That single chain is the reason the 1918 offensive happened, and it is also the reason its failure was fatal. Germany spent its last advantage on it.

4. Focus point one: what was the importance of America's entry into the war?

Split this into two questions, because Cambridge sets both and they are not the same. Why did the United States enter? And what difference did entering make? Part (a) and part (b) usually ask the first. Part (c) almost always asks the second.

Why the United States entered

Submarine warfare, over two phases. In 1915 a German U-boat sank the liner Lusitania, and Cambridge's mark scheme records 128 American passengers killed. President Wilson warned Germany, and Germany suspended the practice. The decisive step was the resumption. Germany reintroduced unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, and American ships began going down in numbers: one mark scheme credits the point that eight American ships were sunk by U-boats in eight weeks in 1917. Merchant shipping near British waters was attacked, American lives were lost, and American public opinion moved.

The Zimmermann Telegram. Issued in January 1917 by the German Foreign Secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German ambassador in Mexico. It proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico if the United States declared war on Germany, promised generous German financial support, and promised that Mexico would regain lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. It also revealed that unrestricted submarine warfare would resume in February. British intelligence intercepted and decoded it, and it was splashed across the front pages of American newspapers.

Wilson's own position. Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war, and the mark schemes credit the argument that the United States considered Germany to be at odds with the American belief in democracy, and that Wilson wanted to make the world safe for democracy. Cambridge dates the entry to April 1917.

1. Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917
2. American merchant ships and American lives are lost
3. the Zimmermann Telegram is decoded and published in American newspapers
4. a distant naval quarrel becomes a direct territorial threat
5. American public opinion turns and Wilson asks Congress for war in April 1917.

Notice that the telegram alone did not do it and the submarines alone did not do it. The mark schemes for this focus point are unusually clear that these are two reasons, which is exactly what a part (b) needs.

What difference it made

This is the argument, and Cambridge has set it five times as a 10 mark question. The mark schemes print both sides in almost equal weight, which tells you the examiners regard it as genuinely open.

The case that it was decisive.

• Numbers, arriving at the worst possible moment for Germany. Cambridge's mark schemes give the build-up as roughly 300,000 American troops in France by March 1918, a further 800,000 by July, and around two million by November. One mark scheme puts total American recruitment at almost five million.
• Direction of travel. Germany was losing men it could not replace at the same time as the Allies were gaining men. The mark schemes return to this contrast again and again, and it is the strongest single form of the argument.
• Morale. Described as an enormous psychological boost to Allied troops and as devastating for German morale.
• Freeing up experience. The arrival of fresh American troops let the Allies move their more experienced soldiers to the sectors where the Germans were still attacking.
• At sea. American destroyers and merchant ships strengthened the anti-submarine effort and helped mine the North Sea.
• On the battlefield. Cambridge credits Cantigny, the second Battle of the Marne, Le Hamel, and the part American soldiers played in the final Hundred Days Offensive.

The case that it was not.

• Timing. Large numbers did not arrive until the summer of 1918, more than a year after the declaration of war.
• No decisive battle. Cambridge prints the point plainly: the Americans never won a victory on the battlefield that was essential to ending the war, and the United States Army did not win a big battle by itself.
• Inexperience. American soldiers were not prepared for trench warfare.
• Other causes were doing the work. The failure of the German offensive, the blockade, and the collapse at home are all offered by the mark schemes as alternatives that would have produced the same result.

The strongest judgement available, and the one the mark schemes come closest to endorsing, does not choose between arrival and effect. It says that the expectation of American troops was decisive before the troops themselves were. Germany attacked in March 1918 because the Americans were coming, not because they had come.

5. Focus point two: why was the German offensive of 1918 unsuccessful?

Cambridge calls this the Ludendorff Offensive, the German offensive of 1918 and the Spring Offensive in different papers. They are the same thing. One mark scheme also gives the German code name, Operation Michael.

What it was

It began in March 1918 and ran until August. It used troops brought from the Eastern Front. It consisted of four major attacks, opened with enormous bombardments, and used creeping barrages and poison gas. Ludendorff's aims, as Cambridge lists them, were to defeat the Allies before the Americans were ready to fight, to make the most of the extra troops released by Russia's withdrawal, to break through the Allied lines and split the British from the French, to outflank and destroy the British army, and to put three fresh German armies against one overstretched British one. One mark scheme adds the calculation behind it: once the British were defeated, the French would ask for an armistice.

It came close. In the first three weeks German forces advanced 35 miles.

Why it failed

The mark schemes offer two clusters of reasons, and the interesting one is not the obvious one.

The German army was too weak to finish what it started. Casualties were enormous: one mark scheme records 240,000 lost in the attack at the Somme alone, another puts German casualties at a million by August and at 1.75 million across 1918 as a whole. The replacements were poor, described as new, young, untrained soldiers, badly fed and ill disciplined. Influenza swept the army, and by August one mark scheme reports that only two of thirteen divisions were fit for action. Morale collapsed, alcohol abuse and desertion spread, and there were no reserves left to call on.

The offensive failed because it worked. This is the argument Cambridge prints most often, and the one that separates a strong answer from an average one. By breaking out from the fortified Hindenburg Line, the Germans turned a war of attrition into a war of movement. A war of movement needed troops, tanks and aircraft, and the Allies had more of all three. The land captured in the first weeks then had to be defended, and Ludendorff had neither the reserves nor the supplies to defend it. Out in the open the German army was, in the mark scheme's phrase, no match for the Allies.

1. Ludendorff attacks to beat the Americans to the punch
2. the German army breaks out of the Hindenburg Line and advances fast
3. the war becomes one of movement, which suits the side with more tanks, aircraft and fresh men
4. the captured ground must now be held with reserves Germany does not have
5. the French counter-attack at the Marne in July stops the advance
6. Germany has left its own defences and cannot get back behind them.

Allied strength and Allied method. The French counter-attacked at the Marne in July and pushed Ludendorff onto the defensive. General Foch co-ordinated Allied defences and forces. Allied tactics were combined and deliberate: creeping barrages protecting advancing infantry, surprise attacks, good reconnaissance, and attacks combining air, tanks, artillery and infantry together. The Allies had superiority in shells and tanks.

Amiens, August 1918. Cambridge treats this as the turning point of the fighting, and gives it more hard detail than almost anything else in the depth study. A combined infantry, artillery, tank and air offensive, based on precise intelligence, using over 500 tanks, broke through the German defences in fog and advanced eight miles. Around 400,000 Germans were taken prisoner and around 400 field guns were captured. Cambridge records that Ludendorff called it the black day of the German army, and that it was the battle that persuaded Ludendorff and the Kaiser they had to end the war. The Hindenburg Line itself was broken at the end of September.

A trap in the wording. "Germany made an error in deciding to launch its 1918 Offensive" is a real 10 mark question, and the mark scheme's Level 5 example argues that it was not an error, because doing nothing was certain defeat and attacking was the only chance of victory. A one-sided answer saying the offensive was obviously a mistake because it failed will not reach the top. Failure and error are different claims, and the question asks about the second.

6. Focus point three: why did revolution break out in Germany in October 1918?

The syllabus dates the revolution to October 1918 and so do the question papers. Section 9 below deals with the fact that Cambridge's own materials also put much of what happened in November. Take the October dating as the one that governs the question, and read section 9 before you write about dates at all.

The long cause: the blockade and hunger

The British naval blockade is the background to everything in this section, and mark schemes credit it heavily even though it is formally listed under the war at sea.

Neutral merchant ships in the North Sea were intercepted and anything that could help Germany was confiscated. German imports fell by 60 per cent. Germany could not feed its population and could not keep its armaments industry supplied. The potato crop failed in the winter of 1916 to 1917, producing what Cambridge calls the turnip winter, when people survived on fodder kept for cattle; sawdust went into bread because there was not enough flour; milk and butter supplies dropped sharply. By 1917 the mark schemes record the daily ration reduced to 1,000 calories, food riots across the country, starvation and disease. One mark scheme states that over 300,000 civilians died in 1918 of starvation or hypothermia. Influenza killed thousands more.

1. the blockade cuts German imports by 60 per cent
2. food and raw materials run short and the ration falls to 1,000 calories
3. hunger produces food riots and then war weariness
4. support for continuing the war drains away in the cities
5. by 1918 the German government is facing its own population as well as the Allies.

Cambridge names this cause first in several mark schemes, calling war weariness the long-term cause of the revolution.

The political cause: who was actually running Germany

The other half of the argument, and the half candidates usually miss.

There was open conflict between the generals and the Reichstag. The generals interfered in domestic affairs to the point that Cambridge's mark scheme repeats the label used for their power, the silent dictatorship. The Reichstag wanted the war ended and became openly critical of how it was being run.

Then the army itself changed sides on the question. At the end of September, Ludendorff and Hindenburg agreed that Germany had no choice but to ask for an armistice, because if it did not, the Allies would invade Germany and destroy its army in the process.

What followed is what one mark scheme calls a revolution from above: a new government appointed to prevent a real revolution. In October, Prince Max von Baden was appointed Chancellor. Cambridge records that the Kaiser introduced the October Reforms, which established a parliamentary monarchy and transferred power to the Reichstag. On 3 October, Chancellor Max von Baden asked for an armistice.

And the reforms did not buy what they were meant to buy, because of one Allied condition. President Wilson would not accept peace negotiations while the Kaiser was still in power, and stated that Kaiser Wilhelm would not be allowed to take part in any peace talks. Cambridge puts it flatly in one mark scheme: it was a condition for peace that Germany became more democratic and the Kaiser should abdicate.

The trigger: Kiel and Wilhelmshaven

Admiral Scheer planned one last major battle in the North Sea against the British fleet. The German navy was outnumbered and outgunned, it had been stuck in port since Jutland, and morale and discipline among sailors who had spent two years in harbour were poor. The sailors regarded the war as over, they knew armistice talks were already under way, and they judged the plan a suicide mission.

Cambridge's account of what happened, assembled from several mark schemes: sailors refused to return from leave, and refused to set sail on 30 October. Several hundred were arrested for mutiny. The remaining sailors demanded their release and tried to stop the fleet sailing. When they were ignored, they demanded the end of the war. There were large demonstrations by sailors and workers. Soldiers sent to put the rebellion down joined the protestors instead. Councils of soldiers, workers and sailors were set up, including industrial workers from Kiel, and issued demands including freedom of speech and the release of political prisoners. Naval commanders had to drop the plan to send out the fleet.

Cambridge's own summary of the significance is the sentence to remember: the mutiny was the catalyst for open revolution throughout Germany.

Within a week there were riots across the country. There was a general strike in Berlin. An independent Socialist Republic was declared in Bavaria, with a Bavarian Republic set up in Munich. The Social Democrats called for the Kaiser's abdication. Politicians feared a socialist revolution and feared civil war.

The abdication

Prince Max announced the Kaiser's abdication on 9 November. The Kaiser fled to Holland. The Social Democrat leader Ebert took power, and a German Republic was declared with Ebert as Chancellor.

1. the Kaiser refuses to go while the Allies refuse to talk to him
2. sailors at Kiel refuse to sail on 30 October and are arrested
3. the mutiny spreads into councils, strikes and riots across Germany within a week
4. politicians face the choice between abdication and civil war
5. Prince Max announces the abdication on 9 November and a Republic is declared.

Stop at the Republic. What Ebert's government then inherited, the constitution, the risings, the reparations and the label of November Criminals, is Depth Study B's first Key Question, Was the Weimar Republic doomed from the start? A sentence saying the new Republic signed the armistice is inside your question. Three paragraphs on the Weimar constitution are not.

The argument to be able to run both ways

"Revolution broke out because the German people were starving" and "socialist ideas caused the revolution" are both real 10 mark questions. The two sides are hunger and politics.

Hunger. The blockade, the ration, the turnip winter, the deaths, the food riots. This is the cause with the numbers attached, and it explains why ordinary people were on the streets.

Politics. The quarrel between the generals and the Reichstag, the silent dictatorship, the demand for a democratic Germany as an Allied precondition, the spread of socialist ideas among sailors and soldiers, the fear of a repeat of Russia. Cambridge's own Level 3 example on the socialist question runs the political case, and notes the Kaiser abdicated in fear of a radical socialist revolution.

A judgement that reaches Level 5 usually links them rather than picking: hunger produced the crowds, politics decided what the crowds demanded.

7. Focus point four: why was the Armistice signed?

Two parties signed, and Cambridge asks about both. Most candidates only revise one.

Why Germany asked

The mark schemes group the reasons under two headings, which is convenient, because that is also the shape of the commonest 10 mark question on this Key Question.

The military case. The offensive had failed and had been Germany's last hope. The army was in full retreat and, by the start of November, in a state of permanent retreat. It was short of men, short of weapons and short of morale, with desertions rising. The Hindenburg Line had been broken at the end of September. Amiens had persuaded the high command that the war could not be won. Ludendorff and Hindenburg had already concluded at the end of September that an armistice was needed. One mark scheme records German generals warning by September that they could not hold the front for more than two more hours. And the alternative to an armistice was an Allied invasion of Germany that would destroy the German army in the field, which is where the fear-of-invasion argument comes from. An armistice also, in the mark scheme's phrase, saved the face of the German army.

The domestic case. Starvation and disease. Riots across the country. The mutinies. The abdication. The fear of a socialist revolution and the fear of civil war. And a straightforward constitutional point: the biggest obstacle to peace was the Kaiser, and once he had gone Germany was ready to sign.

Germany's allies. A third reason worth one sentence in any answer, because almost nobody writes it: Turkey and Austria were talking about surrender and wanted a peace deal of their own. Cambridge credits it.

1. the Offensive fails and the army retreats behind a broken Hindenburg Line
2. the high command tells the government the war is lost and an invasion is coming
3. the government asks for terms on 3 October but Wilson will not negotiate with the Kaiser
4. the mutinies and riots make the Kaiser's position impossible
5. the Kaiser abdicates on 9 November and the new Republic signs.

Why the Allies agreed

Cambridge has set this as its own 6 mark question, and it catches candidates who have only revised the German side.

The Allies agreed because the alternative was to march into Germany and conquer it. They had suffered heavy casualties, their armies were exhausted, and they wanted the slaughter ended in the quickest possible way rather than fighting all the way through Germany. And they could afford to agree, because Germany was in a weak state and the terms could therefore be harsh. Cambridge's own note is that the terms were very favourable to the Allies, which is why they would agree to them.

The terms

Assembled from the three mark schemes that set this as a 4 mark question. Note that Cambridge does not print an identical list twice, so learn the shared core.

• The fighting was to stop, on the Western Front.
• German forces were to leave French and Belgian territory, and to withdraw behind the Rhine.
• Territory vacated by the Germans was to be occupied by Allied troops, and the Allies were to occupy territory east of the Rhine. One mark scheme specifies ten kilometres east of the Rhine, and one describes the Rhineland as declared a demilitarised zone.
• German military machinery and equipment was to be surrendered, including planes, ships and machine guns.
• German ships were to be interned or disarmed.
• Allied prisoners of war were to be released. German prisoners were not.
• The naval blockade of Germany was to continue, with no relaxation.
• The inhabitants of areas evacuated by the Germans were to be repatriated.

Two of Cambridge's own comments on the terms are more useful than the list itself. First: although it was not a surrender, it was really a defeat for Germany. Second: Germany asked for an armistice because its position was hopeless.

That is also the cleanest possible bridge to the Treaty of Versailles without crossing into it. The armistice was already one-sided; the release of Allied prisoners without German ones and the continuation of the blockade are the two clauses that show it. What the Allies then did with that position belongs to Was the Treaty of Versailles fair?, and one of the arguments there, that the German reaction to the Treaty was less reasonable than it looked because Germany had agreed to the terms of the Armistice first, only makes sense if you know this list.

Does Cambridge print the date of the Armistice?

No. Not in the 2027 and 2028 syllabus, and not in any of the 48 Paper 1 mark schemes or question papers read for these notes.

Cambridge prints November 1918 and nothing more precise. It asks "Why were the Allies prepared to agree to an armistice with Germany in November 1918?" It prints "The Kaiser abdicated in November 1918, the armistice was then signed." Elsewhere in the corpus it will happily date the abdication announcement to 9 November and the request for an armistice to 3 October, so the omission of the signing date is not an accident of style.

You almost certainly know the date. It is in every textbook. It is deliberately not asserted here, because these notes only state what Cambridge itself prints, and because no mark on this Key Question depends on it: no mark scheme awards a point for it, and no question has ever asked for it. If you want to write it, check it in your own textbook first.

8. Where Cambridge's own documents disagree

Four places. In each of them the disagreement is inside Cambridge's own published materials, which means there is nothing for you to reconcile. Do not try. Learn the safe version, and where the safe version is "Cambridge says both", know that too.

How close the Germans got to Paris

Three mark schemes say the offensive pushed the Allies to within five miles of Paris. One says the attack pushed the Allies back to within 50 miles of Paris by the summer.

That is a factor of ten, in Cambridge's own mark schemes, on the same event. Both would be credited by the examiner who wrote them. Do not quote a distance from Paris. Write that the Germans came close enough to Paris to threaten it and then attach the figure that no mark scheme disputes: an advance of 35 miles in the first three weeks.

October or November

The syllabus focus point says revolution broke out in Germany in October 1918. Question papers repeat it: "revolution broke out in Germany in October 1918", "What happened at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven in October 1918?"

The same corpus also dates the component events into November. Sailors refused to set sail on 30 October. Prince Max announced the abdication on 9 November. One paper asks "Why was a republic declared in Germany in November 1918?" Another asks candidates to "Describe the events in November 1918 that led to the Kaiser's abdication." A third asks what happened at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven "towards the end of 1918". And one mark scheme manages both in a single answer, crediting "In November the Kaiser introduced the October Reforms".

There is a real event underneath this: a political crisis that began in September and October and whose decisive moments fell in the first ten days of November. Cambridge's habit is to name the whole crisis by its starting month and its individual events by their own.

The rule that follows is a marking rule, not a history rule, and it is the single most valuable thing in this section. Answer the date in the question you are given. The November 2020 Principal Examiner report, commenting on the question about revolution in October 1918, records that some candidates included events after October 1918, for example the events of November 1918. That is the date-limit fault, and on this Key Question it is unusually easy to commit, because the events genuinely straddle the boundary. If the question says October, the mutinies and the spread of the revolt are your material and the abdication is context, not content. If the question says November, the abdication and the Republic are the answer.

The Hindenburg Line, used two ways

Mark schemes say the Germans broke out from the heavily fortified Hindenburg Line in March 1918, which is the argument that the offensive failed because it succeeded. One mark scheme instead says the Germans broke through it. Separately, and correctly in every version, the Allies broke the Hindenburg Line at the end of September 1918.

Two different events, one name. Write "the Germans left the Hindenburg Line in March" and "the Allies broke the Hindenburg Line in late September" and you cannot be misread.

The High Seas Fleet

One mark scheme refers to "sailors of the German High Seas Fleet". Two others describe the Kiel mutiny as a refusal to join "a large naval assault on Britain's High Seas Fleet". The same name is attached to both navies in the same corpus.

Write "the German High Seas Fleet" and "the British fleet". Cambridge's own most recent usage supports the first, and the second avoids the problem entirely.

Two smaller variations, worth a line

Where the March offensive struck: one mark scheme says the Germans attacked near Arras, another says they attacked at the Somme. Write that the offensive opened on the British sector of the Western Front.

What to call the offensive: Ludendorff Offensive, German offensive of 1918, Spring Offensive and Operation Michael all appear. Use the name the question uses.

9. What belongs to a different Key Question

This Key Question sits at a junction, and three of the four roads out of it lead somewhere that earns nothing here.

The peace settlement. The Treaty of Versailles, the Big Three, war guilt, reparations, the German reaction, the November Criminals, the impact to 1923. All of it is Core Content Option B Key Question 1, Was the Treaty of Versailles fair?, and it has its own notes. The armistice was a ceasefire agreed in November 1918. The Treaty was signed in 1919. A question about why Germany asked for an armistice is not a question about whether the peace was fair, and the examiner report fault of answering a different question is exactly what happens when a candidate slides from one to the other.

How Germany emerged from defeat. The Weimar constitution, proportional representation, the Spartacists, the Kapp Putsch, hyperinflation, Stresemann. That is Depth Study B Key Question 1, Was the Weimar Republic doomed from the start? Your material ends when Ebert's government exists. Theirs begins there.

The war at sea and the other fronts. Jutland, convoys, Q ships, Gallipoli, Brest-Litovsk and the Eastern Front are Depth Study A Key Question 3, How important were other fronts? The exception, and it is a large one, is that the consequences inside Germany of the blockade are yours. A Question 10 will sometimes put a naval part (b) beside two parts from this Key Question, so knowing where the boundary is matters more here than the boundary itself.

Trenches, Verdun, the Somme, tanks and gas. Depth Study A Key Question 1, Why was there stalemate on the Western Front? These are Question 9 material and have never once been set on Question 10 as part of this Key Question.

10. Writing the three parts on this Key Question

The ladders are in the marking notes. What follows is how they land on this content specifically.

Part (a), four marks

The commonest (a) questions here are the terms of the Armistice, what happened in the Kiel Mutiny, the Zimmermann Telegram, the contribution of American forces, conditions facing German civilians in 1918, and the aims of the March 1918 offensive. Every one of them is a list.

From the 2024 series, four separate points is the whole task, and elaborating a point adds nothing. On the Kiel Mutiny that means four of: the order to sail, the refusal, the arrests, the demand for the prisoners' release, the demonstrations, the soldiers joining the protestors, the councils, the spread across Germany. Four short sentences. Stop.

The named fault from the June 2018 examiner report is answering these in very general terms. "The Americans were angry with Germany" earns nothing. "The Zimmermann Telegram promised Mexico territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona" earns one.

Part (b), six marks

Two explained reasons is six. On this Key Question the two reasons are almost always available in the same pair: something happening on the battlefield and something happening inside Germany. Why the offensive was launched: the Americans were coming, and Germany could not survive another winter. Why the mutiny happened: the plan was suicidal, and morale had rotted in harbour since Jutland. Why the Kaiser abdicated: the country was in revolt, and the Allies would not negotiate with him.

The fifth mark comes from a specific fact sitting inside the explanation, not beside it. "The blockade caused food shortages" is Level 2. "The blockade cut German imports by 60 per cent, which is why the daily ration had fallen to 1,000 calories by 1917 and why food riots spread across the country" is the explanation with the fact inside it.

Part (c), ten marks

Every one of the 22 part (c) questions read for these notes is a two-sided question with a natural pair already built in. That is unusually kind, and it means the balance requirement is easy to meet if you spot the pair before you start writing.

One explanation on each side is seven marks. Additional explanations take you to eight and nine. The tenth mark is a stated judgement that answers the exact question asked.

Judgement sentences that work on this Key Question, each stating a position and attaching a reason:

• "The offensive mattered more than the revolution, because the revolution only became possible once the army had told the government the war was lost."
• "American entry was decisive before American troops were, because Germany attacked in March 1918 precisely to beat them."
• "Hunger brought Germans onto the streets, but politics decided what they asked for, so the revolution was political in its demands and economic in its causes."
• "It was not an error, because the alternative was certain defeat rather than possible defeat."

11. Quick revision

• Where it sits. Section B, Depth Study A, Question 10. In all 22 papers from 2018 to 2024 that set this Key Question, it was Question 10 every time, never Question 9. Section B runs Q9 to Q18 from 2024, and ran Q9 to Q22 when there were seven depth studies.
• Why the USA entered. Unrestricted submarine warfare resumed in 1917, plus the Zimmermann Telegram of January 1917 promising Mexico territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Entry in April 1917.
• What the USA changed. Roughly 300,000 troops by March 1918, about two million by November. The Allies were gaining men while Germany was losing them. Against that: no decisive American battle, and large numbers only from summer 1918.
• The offensive. March to August 1918. Aim: win before the Americans arrive. 35 miles in three weeks. Failed because Germany had no reserves, and because leaving the Hindenburg Line turned attrition into movement, which suited the Allies.
• Amiens, August 1918. Combined attack, over 500 tanks, eight miles, around 400,000 prisoners and 400 field guns. Ludendorff's black day. Hindenburg Line broken at the end of September.
• Conditions in Germany. Blockade cut imports by 60 per cent. Turnip winter of 1916 to 1917. Ration down to 1,000 calories by 1917. Over 300,000 civilian deaths in 1918 from starvation or hypothermia.
• The political crisis. End of September, Ludendorff and Hindenburg say an armistice is needed. Prince Max von Baden Chancellor in October, asks for an armistice on 3 October. October Reforms make Germany a parliamentary monarchy. Wilson will not negotiate while the Kaiser rules.
• The trigger. Sailors at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven refuse to sail on 30 October. Councils, strikes, riots, Bavarian Republic. Abdication announced by Prince Max on 9 November. Ebert takes power, Republic declared.
• Armistice terms. Fighting stops, Germans leave France and Belgium and withdraw behind the Rhine, Allied occupation east of the Rhine, war material surrendered, ships interned or disarmed, Allied prisoners released but not German ones, blockade continues.
• Cambridge does not print the date of the Armistice. Only "November 1918".
• Never quote a distance from Paris. Cambridge's own mark schemes say five miles and 50 miles.
• Answer the date in the question. October means October. The November 2020 examiner report names candidates who wrote November events into an October question.
• Marks. (a) four separate points, no credit for elaboration from 2024. (b) two explained reasons for 6. (c) one explanation on each side for 7, plus a stated judgement for 10.

Where these facts come from

Taken from Cambridge's own published 0470 materials, meaning the syllabus for 2027 and 2028, all 48 Paper 1 question papers and mark schemes from 2018 to 2024, and the Principal Examiner reports for the same series:

the Key Question, focus point and specified content wording; the Section B question numbering and the change from seven depth studies to five; the count of 22 papers setting this Key Question and their distribution across the focus points; the sinking of the Lusitania and the figure of 128 American passengers; eight American ships sunk in eight weeks in 1917; the Zimmermann Telegram, its date of January 1917, Arthur Zimmermann's name and role, the Mexican alliance, the Texas, New Mexico and Arizona promise, and the British interception; American entry in April 1917; the troop figures of 300,000 by March 1918, a further 800,000 by July and about two million by November, and the almost five million recruited; Cantigny, Le Hamel, the second Battle of the Marne and the Hundred Days Offensive; the March to August 1918 dating of the offensive, Operation Michael, the 35 mile advance, the aims list, and the 240,000, one million and 1.75 million casualty figures; the influenza epidemic and the two of thirteen divisions fit for action; the Hindenburg Line's construction in the winter of 1916 to 1917 and its breaking at the end of September 1918; Foch's co-ordination, creeping barrages and combined attacks; the Battle of Amiens, the eight mile advance, the 500 tanks, the 400,000 prisoners, the 400 field guns and the black day of the German army; the 60 per cent fall in imports, the 1,000 calorie ration, the turnip winter, the sawdust in bread and the 300,000 civilian deaths in 1918; the silent dictatorship, the October Reforms, Prince Max von Baden's appointment and his armistice request on 3 October; Wilson's refusal to negotiate with the Kaiser; Admiral Scheer's plan, the refusal to sail on 30 October, the arrests, the councils and the demands; the Bavarian Republic, the Berlin general strike and the Social Democrats' call for abdication; the announcement of the abdication on 9 November, the flight to Holland and Ebert's Republic; every clause in the list of Armistice terms; the Allied reasons for agreeing; and both examiner report observations, from June 2018 and November 2020.

Deliberately left out because Cambridge does not print it in the materials read for these notes:

• The exact date of the Armistice. Cambridge prints "November 1918" and no more, in the syllabus and in all 48 Paper 1 papers and mark schemes. It is not asserted here. No mark on this Key Question has ever depended on it. Check your own textbook before writing it.
• The exact date of the Kiel Mutiny's outbreak. Cambridge dates the refusal to sail to 30 October and dates the mutiny variously to October, to November and to "towards the end of 1918".
• The exact date the Kaiser left Germany, as opposed to the 9 November announcement of the abdication.
• The exact date the United States declared war, beyond the month of April 1917.
• The distance the German advance reached from Paris. Cambridge's mark schemes give two irreconcilable figures. See section 8.
• The strength of the German army in 1918, in divisions or men, other than the two of thirteen divisions fit for action.
• The name of the place the Armistice was signed, and the names of the signatories on either side.

None of those is needed for a top answer, which is why they are listed here rather than guessed at above.

Not the topic you were looking for? Describe what you are stuck on in your own words and we will take you to the notes that answer it.