Why was Hitler able to dominate Germany by 1934?

Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 · Paper 1 Section B, Depth Study B Syllabus: 2027 and 2028 Depth Study B: Germany, 1918 to 1945 Key Question 2 of three

This file covers one Key Question: how a party that held thirty two Reichstag seats in 1924 and 2.6 per cent of the vote in 1928 came to hold Germany completely by August 1934. It runs from the founding of the Nazi Party through the Munich Putsch, the wilderness years, the Depression, the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933, and the eighteen months of consolidation that ended with the death of Hindenburg and the army oath.

It stops there. The Key Question printed in the syllabus ends at 1934, and so does this page.

Three neighbouring pages own what this one does not. Key Question 1, "Was the Weimar Republic doomed from the start?", owns the Republic's founding, the Constitution, the crises of 1919 to 1923 and the Stresemann recovery. Key Question 3(a), "How effectively did the Nazis control Germany, 1933 to 1945?", owns the Gestapo, the SS, censorship, the churches and the persecution of minorities. Key Question 3(b), "What was it like to live in Nazi Germany?", owns young people, women, workers and the war years. And in Core Content Option B, "How far was Hitler's foreign policy to blame for the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939?" owns everything Hitler did outside Germany's borders.

The line that matters most is the one inside 1933. Getting Hitler into the Chancellery is this page. Ruling from it after 1934 is Key Question 3. Examiners police that line hard, and section 9 shows exactly how.

Everything about how this paper is marked, including the (a) 4, (b) 6 and (c) 10 split, the three level ladders, the two rule changes that landed in 2024 and the sentence shapes that reach the top band, is on the separate page How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1. That page applies to Section B, which is where this Key Question is set. Read it before this one. None of it is repeated here.

1. What the syllabus actually asks

This is the wording printed in the Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028, on the Depth Study B pages. The syllabus writes its date ranges with dashes; they are written out in full below, and nowhere else is a word changed.

Key Question 2

Why was Hitler able to dominate Germany by 1934?

Focus points

• What did the Nazi Party stand for in the 1920s?
• Why did the Nazis have little success before 1930?
• Why was Hitler able to become Chancellor by 1933?
• How did Hitler consolidate his power in 1933 to 1934?

The specified content, and which parts of it are yours

Cambridge prints one Specified content list for the whole of Depth Study B, not one per Key Question. Here it is in full, so you can see where your share sits. The bolded items are the ones this Key Question owns.

• The Revolution of 1918 and the establishment of the Republic
• The Versailles Settlement and German reactions to it
• The Weimar Constitution, the main political divisions, the role of the army
• Political disorder, 1919 to 1923:
• threats from the left and the right
• economic crises and hyper-inflation
• the occupation of the Ruhr
• The Stresemann era:
• economic achievements
• foreign policy achievements
• Cultural achievements of the Weimar period
• The early years of the Nazi Party:
• Nazi ideas and methods
• the Munich Putsch
• the roles of Hitler and other Nazi leaders
• The impact of the Depression on Germany:
• political, economic and social crisis of 1930 to 1933
• reasons for the Nazis' rise to power
• Hitler takes power
• the Reichstag Fire and the election of 1933
• Nazi rule in Germany:
• the Enabling Act
• the Night of the Long Knives
• the death of Hindenburg
• the removal of opposition
• methods of control and repression
• use of culture and the mass media
• Economic policy including rearmament
• Different experiences of Nazi rule:
• women and young people
• anti-Semitism
• persecution of minorities
• opposition to Nazi rule
• Impact of the Second World War on Germany:
• the conversion to a war economy
• the Final Solution

Two of those bolded items need a word of warning.

"The removal of opposition" straddles the boundary. Banning the trade unions and the other parties in 1933, and destroying the SA in 1934, are yours. The Gestapo, the concentration camp system and the churches as a continuing machinery of repression belong to Key Question 3(a). The test is the date: if it happened by August 1934 as part of Hitler making himself secure, it is here.

The Stresemann era is not yours, but you cannot answer focus point 2 without it. Cambridge's own mark schemes explain the Nazis' failure before 1930 almost entirely through Weimar's success. Borrow it as a cause. Do not narrate it.

Four focus points, four ready-made essay titles

Cambridge says focus points "identify the issues that enable candidates to gain an understanding of the key question". They are not four topics to learn in sequence. Each one is already a 10 mark question, and each has been set as one.

Notice that the last two focus points are causal questions with rival answers already built in. That is why they make good 10 mark questions and why one-sided answers on them are so common.

2. Where this Key Question is set on the paper

Paper 1 has eight Section A questions on Core Content, numbered 1 to 8. Section B is Questions 9 to 18. The syllabus says Section B "contains two questions on each of the five depth studies", and the papers place them in syllabus order, two apiece:

So on every paper from 2018 to 2024, Germany is Questions 11 and 12, and you answer one of the two. Cambridge does not publish this and no syllabus prints it. It comes from reading all forty eight Paper 1 question papers from 2018 to 2024.

How the two Germany slots divide

The division inside those two slots is nearly as regular as the slots themselves.

Both columns total 48, which is the check that the count is right.

Your Key Question was set on 23 of the 48 papers, and 21 of those 23 were Question 11. Roughly speaking, Question 11 is Weimar or the rise of Hitler and Question 12 is the regime. If you have revised Key Questions 1 and 2 and opened the paper at Question 11, you will almost always have a question you can answer.

Three qualifications, all of which come from the papers themselves.

Question 11 alternates. Across the forty eight papers, Question 11 was Key Question 1 twenty six times and Key Question 2 twenty one times. In some series all three variants went the same way: in November 2023, papers 1, 2 and 3 all set your Key Question at Question 11. In other series it was split. There is no pattern you can bet on, so revise both.

The pairing broke in 2024, twice. In June 2024 paper 3 and March 2024 paper 2, Key Question 2 appeared at Question 12, and Question 11 was Key Question 1 both times. And in November 2024 paper 3, both questions came from Key Question 3, so neither Key Question 1 nor Key Question 2 appeared on that paper at all. Treat the table as a strong tendency, not a rule, and read both Germany questions before choosing.

Questions mix focus points freely. A single Question 11 will often take part (a) from one focus point, part (b) from another and part (c) from a third. June 2024 paper 2 is the cleanest example: (a) asked for the events of 1932 to 1933 that led to Hitler's appointment, (b) asked why the Nazis had little success before 1930, and (c) asked about the Night of the Long Knives and consolidation in 1933 to 1934. That is three of your four focus points in one question, and it is why revising this Key Question in pieces does not work.

Two places it is not set

Paper 2 never touches a Depth Study. The syllabus states that Paper 2 candidates "answer one question on one prescribed topic taken from Section A (Core content)". No source paper will ever ask you about the Munich Putsch or the Enabling Act.

Paper 4 does, at Questions 3 and 4. See section 8.

3. Focus point 1: what the Nazi Party stood for in the 1920s

The trap in this focus point is treating it as a list of beliefs. Cambridge sets it as a causal question: did the ideas win support, or did the methods and the leader?

The party and the programme

Hitler joined the German Workers' Party in 1919 and was in charge of its propaganda by 1920. In 1920 he and other Nazi leaders announced the 25 Point Programme. He designed the swastika flag and oversaw the change of the party's name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party, the NSDAP. He assumed the leadership of the party in 1921.

Get the date of the 25 Point Programme right. It is 1920, three years before the Munich Putsch. Examiner reports record candidates placing it after the Putsch by confusing it with Mein Kampf, which Hitler dictated in prison in 1924.

The points Cambridge's mark schemes credit:

• The abolition of the Treaty of Versailles
• Union of Germany and Austria
• Only "pure" Germans to live in Germany
• Jews and other "non-Germans" to be excluded from Germany
• Large industries and businesses to be nationalised
• Improved old age pensions
• A strong central government
• Lebensraum
• A Greater Germany
• Profit sharing in heavy industries

Cambridge also credits the observation that the programme "contained some socialist ideas". That is not a throwaway. The nationalisation, the profit sharing and the pensions are the socialist half of the programme, and the tension between that half and the nationalist half runs all the way to the Night of the Long Knives in section 6. Cambridge's own mark scheme notes that leading members of the SA and the Strasser brothers held socialist aims, and that conservative elites feared the radical social policies in the 25 Point Programme. The same document that won the Nazis street support cost them respectable support.

Hitler's own commitments, as Cambridge lists them: anti-Semitism, the destruction of communism, the abolition of the Treaty of Versailles, gaining Lebensraum, and a one party system of government.

The methods

The SA was founded by Hitler in 1921 and was, in the mark schemes' own phrase, his private army. What it did in the 1920s:

• Acted as the paramilitary wing of the party, led by Ernst Röhm
• Disrupted the meetings of other parties
• Intimidated and attacked Jews and communists
• Protected Hitler and other leaders at Nazi meetings and rallies
• Delivered Nazi leaflets and put up posters
• Ran soup kitchens
• Gave the impression of creating order

That last pair is the argument. The SA was simultaneously the reason working people took the Nazis seriously and the reason the middle classes did not. Cambridge's mark schemes describe it as "seen as thugs and poorly disciplined", and note that some members committed criminal acts and that Röhm was unpopular with the army and with traditional elites including Hindenburg. Keep both halves; a one-sided account of the SA cannot answer any question Cambridge sets about it.

The Munich Putsch, 1923

What Hitler did, in the terms the mark schemes credit: he plotted with nationalist politicians to have a revolution; during a meeting in a beer hall he announced that he was taking over the government of Bavaria; he forced other right wing leaders to agree to rebel; he persuaded General Ludendorff to support him; and he and the SA planned to march through Munich.

Why it failed:

• The army remained loyal to the Weimar government
• The police remained loyal to the Bavarian government
• The people did not rise up to support the Nazis
• It was poorly organised
• The government had already deposed the left wing government in Saxony
• The Nazi Party was too small
• Hitler fled

Sixteen Nazis were killed. The leaders were arrested and put on trial for treason. The Nazi Party and the SA were banned. Hitler was imprisoned for nine months and dictated Mein Kampf.

And here is the reason the Munich Putsch is set as a 10 mark question over and over. Every one of those consequences can be argued both ways:

1. the Putsch fails and the party is banned and its leader jailed
2. but the treason trial is public, so Hitler is heard nationally instead of only in Bavaria
3. the nine months inside give him the time to write the ideology down and to conclude that force will not work
4. he emerges committed to winning power by election
5. the failure is what converts the Nazis into a party that could take power legally nine years later.

A Principal Examiner report puts the qualification on that argument better than any textbook: the change of tactics "did not help Hitler become Chancellor in 1933; it helped him change tactics, which only started working when the Depression hit Germany." Cambridge is telling you that the Munich Putsch is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. Use the chain, then use that qualification as the judgement.

4. Focus point 2: why the Nazis had little success before 1930

What the record actually was

Cambridge's figures for the wilderness years, from its own mark schemes:

The shape of that table is the point. Membership rose more than thirtyfold while the vote share fell. The Nazis were building an organisation that nobody wanted to vote for.

Why nobody voted for them

Cambridge's explanations divide cleanly into Weimar's strength and the Nazis' own weakness, and a Level 4 answer needs one from each column.

Weimar was working.

• Stresemann's policies from 1923 to 1929
• An economic boom: industry doing well, jobs, wages going up, a higher standard of living
• The Dawes Plan
• Political stability, with moderate coalition parties winning at the polls
• A cultural revival
• Germany's international reputation had recovered
• The election of Hindenburg as President in 1925 appeased nationalists

The Nazis were unelectable.

• Their leader had recently been convicted of high treason, and people were put off that he had been in prison
• The party and the SA had been banned
• Violent anti-Semitism was not a mainstream view in the 1920s
• Anti-liberal ideas and violent methods alienated moderate voters
• Conservative elites feared the radical social policies in the 25 Point Programme
• Most industrial workers supported the Social Democrats and the Communists
• There was a lack of support from the police and the army
• Political opponents disrupted their meetings

1. Germany prospers on American loans and Stresemann's diplomacy
2. voters have no grievance for an extreme party to feed on
3. the Nazis' violence looks like a threat to the recovery rather than a cure for anything
4. so the party grows in members and shrinks at the ballot box.

What Hitler changed after 1924

Cambridge treats the reorganisation as the reason the Nazis were ready when the Depression came, and as the rival explanation to the Depression itself. The changes:

• The party would use legal means through elections rather than violent revolution
• The organisation was rebuilt across the whole country, with local offices
• The most modern propaganda methods were used: film, radio, torch-lit parades and mass rallies
• The support base was widened, with a wider range of policies to appeal to different groups
• A great deal of work went into increasing membership
• The party became more professional at fighting elections
• Hitler himself was a formidable public speaker

Goebbels is the concrete example. He was appointed Gauleiter for Berlin in 1926, took control of the SA and SS in Berlin, edited a Nazi newspaper, organised soup kitchens in Berlin, began producing posters, films, rallies and radio broadcasts, and in 1928 was one of the first Nazis to win election to the Reichstag.

The judgement Cambridge wants

June 2024 paper 3 set exactly this as a 10 mark question: whether the Nazis became more successful in the years 1925 to 1932 because of the changes Hitler made. The Level 5 exemplar comes down against the statement, and its reasoning is worth learning as a shape:

1. Hitler made most of the changes years before Nazi fortunes turned
2. the changes were in place through the late 1920s while the vote stayed tiny
3. what changed in 1930 was the Depression, not the party
4. so the Depression caused the success, and the reorganisation only decided that the Nazis rather than someone else would collect it.

That is a judgement, not a summary. It states which factor mattered more and gives a reason, which is the whole of the tenth mark.

5. Focus point 3: why Hitler was able to become Chancellor by 1933

This is the commonest 10 mark title on the Key Question and it has two rival answers: the votes, and the deal.

The Depression

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 hit an economy that, in the mark schemes' words, did not have strong enough foundations. It looked healthy but depended on American loans. When the US stock market crashed, American banks wanted their money back to survive their own crisis. German banks started to collapse and unemployment increased. Cambridge also lists the death of Stresemann in 1929 as having a considerable impact, and notes that German farming had never really recovered.

▶

Unemployment reached 4 million by 1930 and, on Cambridge's most repeated figure, nearly 6 million by 1932. Section 7 covers the fact that Cambridge prints that peak in more than one way.

What the Nazis offered

• Firm government and full employment; a promise to create jobs
• Rebuilding the armed forces and a programme of public works
• Groups to blame: the Jews and the November Criminals
• A promise to make Germany great again
• Goebbels's propaganda machine, working on the fears of the middle classes by what Cambridge's mark schemes call negative cohesion, uniting people against a common enemy rather than for a programme
• Soup kitchens and hostels for the unemployed
• Flexible promises: Hitler often changed unpopular policies
• The SA, beating up opponents and making a communist uprising look imminent
• Financial support from industrialists who feared a communist revolution as in Russia and wanted their private property protected

The Communists are half of this story. Cambridge records them as the third largest party after 1930 with 13 per cent of the vote, rising to 17 per cent by November 1932. Their growth is what turned frightened industrialists and frightened middle class voters towards the Nazis.

The elections

Why Hindenburg beat Hitler in 1932 is set as a 6 mark question in its own right, and the reasons are the mirror image of the Nazi appeal: many voters did not trust Hitler and the Nazi Party; middle class voters were put off by the behaviour of the SA and thought them little better than thugs; Nazi propaganda was too radical for many middle class Germans; Hindenburg represented the old order and was a well respected figure; the Centre Party and the Conservatives supported him; many veterans' organisations supported him; and some voters thought the worst of the Depression was over, which made Hitler's promises seem less relevant.

The deal

The sequence Cambridge asks candidates to describe, in order:

1. In the presidential election in March 1932, Hindenburg remained President, but Hitler showed his popularity despite losing.
2. In May 1932, von Papen was appointed Chancellor.
3. In July 1932, the Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag.
4. Hitler demanded that he should be appointed Chancellor, as constitutional convention gave the leader of the largest party. Hindenburg refused, and described him as "the vulgar little corporal".
5. In the second election in November the Nazis were still the largest party. Von Papen failed to find support as Chancellor.
6. In December, von Schleicher became Chancellor but did not have enough support and could not command a Reichstag majority without Nazi co-operation. Von Papen played the role of power broker to displace him. Von Schleicher resigned.
7. At the end of January, von Papen persuaded Hindenburg to appoint Hitler, with von Papen as Vice-Chancellor so that he could control Hitler. Hitler was to be offered three cabinet positions out of twelve ministers. The calculation was that without a majority the extreme Nazi policies could be resisted.
8. Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January 1933.

Two consequences of Nazi electoral strength that are easy to miss and that examiners credit: it allowed the Nazis to block government legislation, which forced Hindenburg to use Article 48 and rule by decree, and it was the reason the elites wanted Hitler at all. They were not buying his policies. They were buying his votes.

1. the Depression destroys the moderate parties' claim to competence
2. the Nazi vote rises until no government can be formed without them
3. they then block legislation, so Hindenburg governs by decree and democracy is already hollow before Hitler enters it
4. von Papen concludes that the only way to use Nazi popularity is to put Hitler in office and box him in with a conservative cabinet
5. Hitler is appointed Chancellor in January 1933 by men who thought they had captured him.

That chain is the answer to the "how far" in almost every version of this question. Neither the votes nor the deal is sufficient alone: the votes made Hitler unavoidable, the deal made him Chancellor.

6. Focus point 4: how Hitler consolidated his power in 1933 to 1934

In January 1933 Hitler was Chancellor of a cabinet in which he had three of twelve posts, under a President who could dismiss him, with no Reichstag majority and an army that did not trust him. By August 1934 all four of those constraints were gone. This focus point is the story of how, and Cambridge sets it as a 10 mark question more often than any other part of the Key Question.

The Reichstag Fire, February 1933

The Reichstag burned down in February 1933, after Hitler became Chancellor and before the March election. The Nazis blamed the communists; one was arrested and later found guilty. Hitler claimed it was the beginning of a communist uprising and persuaded Hindenburg to issue an emergency decree, which Cambridge names both the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Decree for the Protection of People and State.

What the decree did: gave the police powers to search houses, confiscate property and detain people without trial; suspended civil rights. Around 4,000 communists were arrested. The Communist Party was effectively banned in the March elections, its meetings broken up by the SA, and communists were rounded up and sent to the early concentration camps. Dachau, the first camp to house opponents of the Nazis, was set up in March 1933.

Note carefully what the decree did not do. It did not make Hitler a dictator and it was not the Enabling Act. Section 9 explains why that distinction costs more marks than any other on this Key Question.

The March 1933 election

The Nazis took 44 per cent of the vote, remained the largest party and came close to an overall majority, but did not have one. The communists elected were not allowed to take their seats, which left the Nazis with a working majority in a Reichstag that no longer contained their main opponents.

The Enabling Act, March 1933

The Enabling Act gave Hitler the power to make laws without the Reichstag for four years, bypassing the Weimar Constitution, without the consent of the Reichstag or the President. It required a two thirds majority of Reichstag members. Hitler obtained it by expelling the communist members, ordering the SA to continue intimidating the opposition, and governing in coalition with the nationalists and the Centre Party.

What he then did with it, with the dates Cambridge prints:

The route from 1930 to the Enabling Act, in one line

1. the 1930 election makes the Nazis the second largest party
2. July 1932 makes them the largest, so no government can be formed without them
3. von Papen's deal makes Hitler Chancellor in January 1933
4. the Reichstag Fire in February gives him an emergency decree and 4,000 communist arrests
5. the March election gives him 44 per cent, and the excluded communists give him a working majority
6. that majority, plus SA intimidation and Centre Party votes, delivers the two thirds needed for the Enabling Act in March
7. and the Act lets him abolish the trade unions in May and the other parties in June, so that within six months of taking office there is nothing left to vote against him.

The Night of the Long Knives, 30 June 1934

By mid 1934 Hitler had almost every legal power and one unsolved problem: the army. Cambridge's Level 5 exemplar states it plainly. He was almost a dictator but had not won over the army, which could have overthrown him whenever it wanted, and which regarded the SA as a rabble and a threat.

Why it happened:

• The army was suspicious of the SA and feared Röhm wanted to turn it into the new official German army
• Röhm wanted a second revolution and more radical socialist policies than Hitler was pursuing, and was openly criticising him
• Leading industrialists felt the SA programme was too close to communism, and Hitler needed their support
• The SA was large enough to be a genuine rival power base under Röhm
• Hindenburg threatened martial law if the Nazis did not curtail the SA

What happened, in the detail the mark schemes credit: Hitler gave the SA leave; in June 1934 he confronted Röhm, arriving at a hotel in Bad Wiessee with armed SS men; he informed Röhm and other SA leaders that they were under arrest; they were taken to Munich, where Röhm and the SA commanders were shot, Röhm having been offered the chance to commit suicide first; the SS broke into the homes of SA figures and over the next four days other leaders were arrested and shot; Hitler had his predecessor as Chancellor, von Schleicher, murdered. Cambridge estimates that between 200 and 400 were killed.

The consequence is the whole point. The army was pleased, Hindenburg thanked him, and the SS emerged strengthened at the SA's expense.

1. the SA is the muscle that put Hitler in power and the obstacle to the army accepting him
2. Röhm's demand for a second revolution makes him a threat to Hitler and to the industrialists at the same time
3. destroying the SA leadership removes a rival, reassures the generals and reassures big business in one night
4. so the army has no reason left to move against Hitler, and six weeks later it swears to him personally.

The death of Hindenburg, August 1934

Hindenburg died in August 1934. Hitler combined the offices of Chancellor and President and abolished the position of President. The army swore the Army Oath to Hitler personally in the same month.

Cambridge names the resulting office in more than one way across its mark schemes: Hitler "became President", "became Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Army", "made himself Reich Fuhrer", and "became the Fuhrer". They describe the same thing. Write what the office did rather than betting on a title, and you cannot be wrong.

Which factor was most important

Cambridge has set this as a 10 mark question with three different pairings: Reichstag Fire against Enabling Act, Enabling Act against Night of the Long Knives, and Reichstag Fire against Night of the Long Knives. Whichever pairing you get, the same three arguments are available, and the mark schemes accept all three:

The Reichstag Fire came first, so everything followed from it. A Level 5 exemplar makes exactly this argument: the emergency powers and the Enabling Act gave Hitler enormous power, but they might not have happened without the fire, because it was the fire that let him show the communists as a threat and persuade Hindenburg he needed extra powers.

The Enabling Act was the moment of transformation. It turned a Chancellor who could be dismissed into a legislator who did not need parliament. Everything from May 1933 onwards is done under it.

The Night of the Long Knives was the one that made him safe. The other two gave him legal power; only this one removed the force that could have taken it away. Cambridge's exemplar: "Only then was Hitler secure."

The strongest judgements do not just pick one. They say what kind of importance each had: the fire supplied the opportunity, the Act supplied the legal power, and the purge supplied the security. Then they say which of those Hitler could least have done without, and why.

7. The numbers Cambridge prints, and the three it prints two ways

Election results and unemployment figures are exactly where an invented number looks plausible, so use only the ones below, all of which come from Cambridge's own mark schemes.

Reliable, printed the same way across several papers:

• 32 Reichstag seats, May 1924
• 2.6 per cent of the vote, 1928
• Nazi membership 3,000 to 100,000 between 1924 and 1929
• SA membership over 100,000 by 1928
• 107 seats and second place, 1930
• Hitler 13 million votes to Hindenburg's 19 million, March 1932 presidential election
• Nazis lost 34 seats in November 1932 but stayed the largest party
• Communists 13 per cent after 1930, rising to 17 per cent by November 1932
• 44 per cent of the vote, March 1933
• Around 4,000 communists arrested after the Reichstag Fire
• Between 200 and 400 killed in the Night of the Long Knives
• 16 Nazis killed in the Munich Putsch
• Hitler imprisoned for nine months in 1924

Three that Cambridge itself prints inconsistently. Do not try to reconcile them. Pick the version that appears more often, and if you are unsure, describe the change rather than quoting a number.

The July 1932 result. One mark scheme gives "37 per cent of the vote", another "37.3 per cent of the national vote", and a third describes it as "37 per cent of seats in July and 33 per cent in November". Vote share and seat share are not the same measurement. Every version agrees the Nazis became the largest party, which is the fact the questions actually turn on. Say that.

The March 1933 result. Three separate Paper 4 mark schemes give 44 per cent of the vote. One Paper 1 exemplar says Hitler "nearly got 50 per cent of the total vote". Forty four is the better attested figure. What matters for the argument is that the Nazis fell short of a majority, which both versions imply and which is why the exclusion of the communist deputies mattered so much.

The peak of unemployment. Cambridge variously prints "nearly 6 million in 1932", "6 million by 1932", "over 6 million", "it went up to six million" and "nearly 6 million by 1933". It also prints "4 million by 1930", which is a different year and not a contradiction. Write "around 6 million by 1932" and you are inside every version Cambridge has published.

One more inconsistency, and it is a date. One 2021 Paper 1 mark scheme exemplar says the move against Röhm happened "in June 1933". Every other Cambridge document, including the syllabus ordering and several other mark schemes, dates the Night of the Long Knives to June 1934, and one names 30 June 1934 exactly. The 1933 reference is an error in a single exemplar answer. Use 1934.

A note on the size of the SA. Cambridge's mark schemes give it as "over two million members", "over 2 million members", "4 million strong", "up to four million SA supporters" and "four million SA supporters", without saying which year each figure belongs to. The safe form is that the SA had grown to millions of members by the early 1930s, which is what one mark scheme says in exactly those words. The argument never depends on which million.

8. Where else this Key Question is examined

Paper 4, Alternative to Coursework, is one hour, 40 marks and 30 per cent of the qualification. Candidates answer one question on a depth study, and Depth Study B is Questions 3 and 4 on every Paper 4 from 2018 to 2024.

The format changed for the 2024 series. Up to 2023 each question was a single 40 mark essay in the form "How important was X..." or "How significant was X... Explain your answer." From 2024 it splits into (a) 15 marks, "Write an account of..." and (b) 25 marks, "Discuss the importance of..." or "Discuss the impact of...".

Your Key Question is set there often, and the titles are worth reading as revision prompts because they name the factor Cambridge thinks is arguable. Real examples: how important Nazi electoral success was to Hitler's appointment as Chancellor; how significant gaining the support of the armed forces was in the consolidation of power between 1933 and 1934; how significant the Enabling Act was in allowing Hitler to establish a dictatorship by 1934; how significant Hindenburg was in Hitler's takeover between 1933 and 1934; how significant the SA and SS were in securing Nazi power by 1934; how important the 25 Point Programme was to the development of the Nazi Party to 1934; how important their ideology was as a reason for the Nazis' lack of electoral success before 1930; and, in the new format, "Write an account of the results achieved by the Nazis in Reichstag elections up to 1933", paired with "Discuss the importance of President Hindenburg."

If your centre does Paper 4 rather than coursework, the content on this page is the content for it. Only the question shapes differ.

9. The mistakes examiner reports name on this Key Question

The faults that apply to every question on the paper are on How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1. These are the ones that only bite here, and every one of them appears in more than one Principal Examiner report.

Confusing the Enabling Act with the Reichstag Fire Decree. The single most reported error on this Key Question. Reports describe candidates seeing the Enabling Act and the Decree for the Protection of People and State as the same thing, following immediately on from the fire, and therefore asserting that the crackdown on communists straight after the fire was carried out under the Enabling Act "when in fact this was still to come". They are two documents, a month apart, and one is the reason the other could be passed.

Getting the chronology of 1933 backwards. Reports name candidates putting the Enabling Act before the Reichstag Fire, and the misconception that Hitler did not become Chancellor until after the fire. He was Chancellor first. The order is Chancellor in January, fire in February, election and Act in March.

Confusing the Night of the Long Knives with Kristallnacht. Reported in at least four separate series, sometimes as "the Night of Broken Glass". One is June 1934 and is about the SA; the other is 1938 and is about Jewish businesses and property, and belongs to Key Question 3.

Confusing the Munich Putsch with the Kapp Putsch, and with the Munich Agreement. The Kapp Putsch is Key Question 1. The Munich Agreement is Core Content foreign policy in 1938. Reports also record candidates stating that the Munich Putsch was carried out by communists; it was not.

Confusing the Reichstag Fire with Kristallnacht, and the SA with the SS or the Gestapo. Both reported.

Writing about the wrong side of January 1933. This is the commonest structural fault and it goes in both directions. Asked why Hitler became Chancellor, candidates write about the Reichstag Fire and the Night of the Long Knives, which happened afterwards. Asked about consolidation in 1933 to 1934, candidates write at length about why Hitler came to power, which one report says "was not the focus of the question". Another states it flatly: "the focus of the question is clearly 1933 to 1934 rather than pre 1933."

Confusing "consolidation of power" with "support". Named explicitly in a report. Consolidation is about removing the people and institutions that could have stopped him. Popularity is a different question and mostly a different Key Question.

Describing the Munich Putsch instead of judging it. Reports repeatedly find candidates who know the events perfectly and never deploy them. The events of the Putsch are worth 4 marks in part (a) and nothing at all in part (c) unless they are attached to an argument.

Ignoring the date limit. A question about the Nazi Party up to 1932 is marked to 1932, and reports record candidates losing the end of their answer by carrying on into the appointment as Chancellor. A question about Hitler's leadership up to 1924 does not want his early life or the war.

Not knowing the industrialists. One report notes that candidates were unfamiliar with how the support of wealthy industrialists helped Hitler become Chancellor and gave one-sided answers as a result. It is the least well known of the standard factors and therefore the cheapest to learn.

10. Quick revision

• The Key Question ends at 1934. Consolidation is yours. Ruling after 1934 is Key Question 3.
• Section B is Questions 9 to 18. Germany is always Questions 11 and 12. Your Key Question was set on 23 of 48 papers, 21 of them at Question 11, but the pairing broke twice in 2024 so read both questions.
• 25 Point Programme: 1920. Before the Putsch, not after. Mein Kampf is 1924.
• The wilderness years in one line: 32 seats in 1924, 2.6 per cent in 1928, membership from 3,000 to 100,000. Organisation up, votes down.
• Why no success before 1930: Weimar was working, and the Nazis were unelectable. You need one reason from each side.
• The Munich Putsch cuts both ways: ban, arrest and prison, against a national platform, Mein Kampf and the switch to legal methods.
• The Depression is the hinge. Around 6 million unemployed by 1932, Communists rising to 17 per cent, industrialists frightened into funding the Nazis.
• Chancellor by deal, not by appointment as of right. Largest party from July 1932, but Hindenburg refused him twice; von Papen delivered him in January 1933 expecting to control him with three cabinet posts out of twelve.
• The consolidation order: Chancellor January 1933, Reichstag Fire February, 44 per cent and the Enabling Act March, Dachau March, trade unions May, civil service purge May, other parties June, Concordat September, Night of the Long Knives 30 June 1934, Hindenburg dies and the army swears the oath August 1934.
• The decree is not the Act. The Reichstag Fire Decree suspended civil rights. The Enabling Act let Hitler make laws for four years. A month apart, and the first is why the second passed.
• The three-way judgement: the fire gave opportunity, the Act gave legal power, the purge gave security. Say which he could least have done without.
• Never write about the Gestapo, the churches, the Hitler Youth, women, the war economy or Kristallnacht. All of those are Key Question 3 and none of them earns a mark here.

Where these facts come from

Everything substantive above is taken from Cambridge's own documents, and each claim can be checked against a named one.

The Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028. The Key Question, all four focus points and the full Depth Study B specified content list, from pages 21 and 22. The definitions of key question, focus point and specified content. The statement that Section B contains two questions on each of the five depth studies. The statement that Paper 2 candidates answer on a prescribed topic taken from Core content only. The Paper 4 format, timing and weighting. The statement in the changes section that "There are no significant changes which affect teaching", which is why past papers from 2018 to 2024 remain usable for this Depth Study.

Paper 1 question papers, March, June and November 2018 to 2024, forty eight papers. The finding that Section B occupies Questions 9 to 18 and that Depth Study B is always Questions 11 and 12. The slot table in section 2, built by reading the printed stem of every Question 11 and Question 12 in all forty eight papers and recording which Key Question each examined. The two 2024 papers that moved this Key Question to Question 12, and the November 2024 paper on which neither Key Question 1 nor Key Question 2 appeared.

Paper 1 mark schemes, 2018 to 2024. Everything in sections 3 to 6 that is not attributed to Paper 4 below: the 25 Point Programme contents, the founding of the SA in 1921 and its activities, Hitler's actions during the Munich Putsch and the reasons it failed, the wilderness years figures for seats, vote share, party membership and the ban to 1927, Goebbels's Berlin appointments and his 1928 election, the reasons for the lack of success before 1930, the changes Hitler made after 1924, the collapse of the German economy after 1929, the full sequence of events from March 1932 to January 1933 including von Papen's deal and the three cabinet posts, Hindenburg's refusal and his description of Hitler, the reasons Hindenburg won the 1932 presidential election, the Reichstag Fire and the emergency decree, the two thirds requirement for the Enabling Act, the dated list of measures from March 1933 to August 1934, the full narrative of the Night of the Long Knives including Bad Wiessee, Röhm, von Schleicher and the estimate of 200 to 400 killed, and all the exemplar arguments quoted or paraphrased in sections 4 and 6.

Paper 4 question papers and mark schemes, 2018 to 2024. The finding that Depth Study B is Questions 3 and 4, and the change of format for 2024. Hitler joining the German Workers' Party in 1919, his charge of propaganda by 1920, the swastika flag, the change of name to the NSDAP and his assumption of the leadership in 1921. The 1924 pseudonym National Socialist Freedom Movement under Röhm and Ludendorff. The December 1924 seat loss. The sixteen killed in the Munich Putsch and the nine month sentence. The 107 seats in 1930, the Communist 13 and 17 per cent, the 13 million to 19 million presidential figures, and the 44 per cent in March 1933. The 4,000 communist arrests, Dachau in March 1933 and the Concordat in September 1933. Hindenburg's threat of martial law before the purge, his congratulation afterwards, and the abolition of the presidency. The SA membership figure for 1928. The list of Paper 4 titles in section 8.

Principal Examiner reports, 2018 to 2024. All of section 9. The observation that the change of tactics after the Munich Putsch "did not help Hitler become Chancellor in 1933; it helped him change tactics, which only started working when the Depression hit Germany", from the March 2018 report. The statement that "the focus of the question is clearly 1933 to 1934 rather than pre 1933", from the November 2019 report. The confusion between the Enabling Act and the Decree for the Protection of People and State, from the November 2021 report. The misconception that Hitler did not become Chancellor until after the Reichstag Fire, from the March 2024 report. The confusion of consolidation with support, from the March 2022 report.

Where Cambridge contradicts itself. Section 7 names four cases: the July 1932 result, the March 1933 result, the peak unemployment figure, and one exemplar that misdates the Night of the Long Knives to 1933. None has been silently resolved above, and none should be resolved in an exam answer.

Not verified, and therefore not asserted above. The precise number of SA members in any given year, for the reason given at the end of section 7. The exact date in February 1933 of the Reichstag Fire, which the mark schemes read give only as February. The exact date in August 1934 of Hindenburg's death and of the army oath, which the mark schemes give only as August. The name of the man convicted of the Reichstag Fire, whom Cambridge refers to only as "one" communist "arrested and later found guilty". Vote totals, turnout figures, seat counts for any party other than the Nazis and the Communists, and membership figures for the Nazi Party after 1929, none of which are printed in the documents read and none of which any question set has required.

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