How effectively did the Nazis control Germany?

Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 · Paper 1 Section B, Depth Study B Syllabus: 2027 and 2028 Depth study B: Germany, 1918 to 1945 Key Question 3, part (a) of two

This file covers the twelve years in which the Nazi Party held power in Germany, and it covers one question about them: how far the regime actually controlled the country it ruled. That means the machinery of control, which is the police, the courts, the camps and the informers; the propaganda and the censorship; the persecution of the groups the regime defined as enemies; and, on the other side of the argument, everyone who resisted, evaded or ignored it.

The command in the Key Question is how effectively. That word is the whole examination. A file that only described the Gestapo, the rallies and the camps would arm you for one side of a ten mark question, and one side is capped at 6 out of 10 on every part (c) on this paper. Cambridge has built the counter-argument into the specification: one of the five focus points under this part is about opposition, and the syllabus lists it first. Everything below is arranged so that you finish holding both sides.

Two warnings before anything else. This part shares a Key Question number with a different question, and the boundary between them is the least obvious one in the whole syllabus, so section 2 is not optional reading. And this is content where a confidently invented figure is worse than a lost mark. Every number, name and date on this page comes from a Cambridge document; section 14 says which, and section 13 says where Cambridge contradicts itself.

1. What the syllabus actually asks

The unusual shape of Key Question 3

Depth study B is the only one of the five depth studies whose Key Question 3 is not a question. Depth studies A, C, D and E each print four numbered Key Questions, every one of them phrased as a question. Depth study B prints three, and the third is a bare heading that is then split in two.

Here is exactly how Cambridge sets it out on page 21 of the syllabus for 2027 and 2028, in the printed order and with the printed numbering:

3 The Nazi regime

>

(a) How effectively did the Nazis control Germany, 1933 to 1945?

>

(b) What was it like to live in Nazi Germany?

The parts are labelled (a) and (b), in round brackets, exactly as described, and each carries its own list of focus points underneath it. Cambridge does not number them 3.1 and 3.2, and it does not call them Key Questions 3 and 4. The heading "The Nazi regime" is not itself examinable wording; it is a container.

You are reading part (a). Part (b) has its own file.

The focus points for part (a)

These five, in this order, are what the syllabus prints under part (a):

• How much opposition was there to the Nazi regime?
• How effectively did the Nazis deal with their political opponents?
• How did the Nazis use culture and the mass media to control the people?
• Why did the Nazis persecute many groups in German society?
• Was Nazi Germany a totalitarian state?

Read the order again. Cambridge puts opposition first and the totalitarian question last. That is not an accident of layout. The syllabus is telling you that the answer to "how effectively" is contested, that the contest starts with the people who resisted, and that "was it totalitarian" is the conclusion you argue towards rather than the description you start from.

For completeness, these four are the focus points for part (b), which belong to your neighbour and not to you: how young people reacted to the Nazi regime; how successful Nazi policies towards women and the family were; whether most people in Germany benefited from Nazi rule; and how the coming of war changed life in Nazi Germany.

The specified content, and the catch inside it

Here is the catch. The syllabus does not give Key Question 3 its own specified content. Depth study B prints one single Specified content list, on page 22, covering the whole depth study from 1918 to 1945. It is not divided by Key Question, and no bullet is labelled as belonging to part (a) or part (b).

These are the bullets from that list that bear on part (a), quoted as Cambridge prints them:

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

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

Three consequences follow, and each of them is a place students lose marks.

The first three sub-bullets under "Nazi rule in Germany" are not yours. The Enabling Act, the Night of the Long Knives and the death of Hindenburg all happened in 1933 and 1934 and all belong to Key Question 2's focus point on how Hitler consolidated his power. They sit in the same block as "methods of control and repression" only because the block is undivided. Section 2 handles that boundary properly.

"Women and young people" and "the conversion to a war economy" are not yours either. They map onto part (b)'s focus points. They appear in the same list because the list is not split.

"Anti-Semitism", "persecution of minorities", "opposition to Nazi rule", "methods of control and repression", "use of culture and the mass media" and "the Final Solution" are yours. Those six are the spine of this file.

The syllabus explains what these three layers are for, and the definition is worth having:

Key questions define the over-arching issues.
Focus points identify the issues that enable candidates to gain an understanding of the key question.
Specified content provides guidance on what needs to be studied for each key question.

So the focus points are the arguments and the specified content is the evidence. That is why the sections below are built around focus points and not around a list of Nazi institutions.

Two small points of wording

The syllabus writes the date range as a compressed pair of years. This file writes it out as 1933 to 1945 throughout, and the depth study title as Germany, 1918 to 1945. Nothing turns on it; write it however your habit runs.

The syllabus says candidates must study at least one of the five depth studies. Section B of the paper offers a question on each, and you answer one. Germany is by a wide margin the most popular choice, which section 3 evidences.

2. Where this part stops, and where the neighbours start

Three neighbours touch this part. Two of them are inside Depth study B and one is in the Core Content. Students wander into all three, and examiner reports name the wandering explicitly.

Key Question 2 owns everything up to 1934

Key Question 2 is Why was Hitler able to dominate Germany by 1934? Its last focus point is how Hitler consolidated his power in 1933 and 1934. That gives it the Reichstag Fire, the emergency decrees, the March 1933 election, the Enabling Act, the banning of the other parties, the abolition of the trade unions, the Night of the Long Knives and the death of Hindenburg.

Your part starts where the regime is already installed and asks how well it then held the country for eleven more years. In practice the two overlap at a seam rather than a line, because the machinery Hitler built in 1933 and 1934 is the machinery that then did the controlling. The workable rule is:

1. Key Question 2 asks how the Nazis got the power
2. part 3(a) asks how well the power then worked
3. so the same event belongs to 2 when it explains the seizure and to 3(a) when it explains the grip.

The Enabling Act is a Key Question 2 answer to "how did he consolidate", and a part 3(a) answer to "why could nobody organise against him afterwards". Write it in the second sense here, briefly, and do not retell the 1933 story.

Examiner reports show what happens when this is ignored. On a November 2023 question about opposition to the Nazis, the report notes that a small number of responses wrote about opposition to the Weimar government in the 1920s, such as the Spartacists, "which lacked relevance to this question". On a November 2020 question about why the Nazis gained support, the report notes the reverse error: candidates wrote about coercion through the 1930s, including the Gestapo, when the question was about the appeal that got them into power.

Part (b) owns the experience of being governed

This is the boundary that matters most, and it is genuinely subtle, because part (a) and part (b) are about the same twelve years and often about the same events.

The line is between the regime and the people.

1. part (a) asks whether the regime controlled Germany
2. part (b) asks what living in Germany was like
3. so the same fact belongs to (a) when it explains the grip and to (b) when it describes the experience.

A practical test. Look at the subject of your sentence. If the subject is the regime and the verb is doing something to Germans, you are in part (a). If the subject is a group of Germans and the verb is experiencing something, you are in part (b).

Worked both ways on the same material:

Youth opposition sits exactly on the line and Cambridge puts it on both sides. "How much opposition was there to the Nazi regime?" is a part (a) focus point. "How did young people react to the Nazi regime?" is a part (b) focus point. The Edelweiss Pirates, the Swing movement and the White Rose therefore answer both. Cambridge's own mark schemes cite the same three groups under questions about Nazi control and under questions about whether the Hitler Youth won young people over. Do not try to allocate them. Learn them once and use them wherever the question asks.

The one thing you must not do is write a part (a) answer that is really a part (b) answer. A question that asks how effectively the Nazis controlled Germany is not answered by describing rationing, or the League of German Maidens, or the medals awarded to mothers, unless you say in the same sentence what that did to the regime's grip.

The Core Content owns foreign policy

Nothing about Hitler's foreign policy is examined here. Rearmament, the Rhineland, Anschluss, Munich and the Nazi-Soviet Pact belong to Core Content Option B, Key Question 3, on whether Hitler's foreign policy was to blame for the outbreak of war in 1939. That is a different section of the same paper.

The one crossing point is real but narrow. Cambridge's mark schemes credit "Some people were against Hitler because they thought his foreign policies were disastrous for Germany" as a reason for opposition, and the July 1944 bomb plot by senior army officers is described in one scheme as an attempt "to kill Hitler and end the war". Foreign policy is allowed in here only as a motive for opposition. It is never allowed in as a topic.

3. How Paper 1 sets this part

The marking is not repeated here. The three mark ladders, the assessment objective split, the 4, 6 and 10 mark division, the sentence shapes that reach each level, the two rules Cambridge changed for the 2024 series and the faults that examiner reports name on every question in the paper are all set out in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes. Read that page once, early. Nothing below restates any of it.

What is specific to this part is where it sits on the paper, how often it is set, and one reliable tell that tells you which Key Question a question belongs to before you have read part (a).

Section B is Questions 9 onwards, and Germany is always 11 and 12

Paper 1 has two sections. Section A is the Core Content and runs from Question 1 to Question 8; those eight are somebody else's notes. Section B is headed "SECTION B: DEPTH STUDIES" and begins at Question 9. Two questions are set on each depth study, in the order the syllabus lists them.

Forty-eight Paper 1 mark schemes were read for these notes, covering every February and March, May and June, and October and November series from 2018 to 2024, all variants. The numbering works like this:

The 2027 syllabus offers five depth studies, so Section B on your paper will run from Question 9 to Question 18. The older papers carried seven, because China, South Africa, and Israelis and Palestinians were then depth studies E, F and G. They have been deleted. That changes the top of the range but it does not move Germany, because Germany is depth study B either way.

Depth study B is Questions 11 and 12 in every one of the 48 mark schemes read. Not once in seven years did it move. The mark schemes confirm it directly: the printed heading "Depth Study B: Germany, 1918 to 1945" sits immediately above question 11 and the heading "Depth Study C: Russia, 1905 to 1941" sits immediately below question 12.

How often this part is set, and where

Questions 11 and 12 divide the depth study between them, but Cambridge does not assign a fixed Key Question to a fixed number. Any of Key Questions 1, 2, 3(a) and 3(b) can appear at either number.

Counting the ten mark part (c) only, because it is the part that decides the grade and the one that is unambiguously about a single Key Question:

Twenty-five plus twenty-two plus two is forty-nine, which is one too many, and the extra one is the check that the count is right: October and November 2024, variant 3 set both, at Question 11 and Question 12 respectively. That single paper is also the only one of the 48 in which this part appeared at Question 11 rather than Question 12. Question 11 there reads "The Nazis aimed to gain complete control over Germany" and Question 12 reads "Life changed under the Nazi regime, especially in wartime". Neither Key Question 1 nor Key Question 2 appeared on that paper at all.

Counting more loosely, and including the four and six mark parts, 34 of the 48 papers set at least one question part on this part of the syllabus. Two papers, May and June 2024 variant 3 and February and March 2024 variant 2, set no Key Question 3 material at all: both Germany questions came from Key Questions 1 and 2.

So the practical position is that roughly one paper in two puts a ten mark question on this part, and roughly seven papers in ten touch it somewhere. It is the single most heavily examined part of the most popular depth study on the paper. It is not a topic to gamble on skipping.

Papers do not respect the (a) and (b) split

They mostly respect it, and then they do not.

Where a Germany question is set on Key Question 3, all three of its parts usually come from the same half. But sixteen of the 48 papers set a single numbered question whose three parts draw from both (a) and (b). May and June 2019 variant 2, Question 12, is typical: part (a) asks how the regime used informers, which is (a); part (b) asks why the Nazis made extensive changes to the school curriculum, which is (b); part (c) asks how much opposition there was, which is (a) again.

That number moves a little depending on how you allocate youth opposition, which as section 2 explained genuinely belongs to both. Treat sixteen as approximately one in three rather than as a precise constant.

What this means for you is simple and slightly annoying: revising this part alone does not guarantee you a whole question. You may be handed a three part question in which one part is your neighbour's. Since both parts are in the same depth study and the same file set, this costs nothing if you have read both.

The tell in the lead-in sentence

Every question in Section B opens with a scene setting sentence before part (a). That sentence is a reliable signal, and almost nobody uses it.

In 22 of the 48 papers, the Germany question that examines this part opens with a lead-in sentence that names control, opposition or staying in power. All 22 are questions on this part. There are no false positives in the 48 papers read.

Examples, quoted from the question papers:

• "Hitler aimed to control every aspect of life in Germany."
• "The Nazi regime used both terror and persuasion to stay in power."
• "The Nazis did as much as they could to try and ensure they faced little opposition."
• "The Nazis used repression to control the German people."
• "The Nazis aimed to gain complete control over Germany."

Compare the lead-ins that flag part (b): "Life in Germany changed under the Nazis", "People living in Nazi Germany had different experiences", "Women, children and the family were important to the Nazis", "Society changed under Nazi rule".

1. read the lead-in before part (a)
2. a lead-in naming control, opposition or power means all three parts are probably from this file
3. a lead-in naming life, society, experience or groups means they are probably from part (b)
4. you now know which set of notes you are answering from before you have read a single command word.

Cambridge does not publish this and it is not in any syllabus. It is what the 48 question papers do.

4. The frame: what "how effectively" actually asks

Before the focus points, the shape of the argument, because this is where most of the ten marks are won and lost.

"How effectively" is a degree question, not a description question. It presupposes that there was control and asks you to measure it. There are three ways to measure it, and Cambridge's mark schemes reward all three.

Measure one: did anyone successfully stop them? On this measure the answer is close to total. Cambridge's own mark schemes print the position bluntly: "there were no uprisings against Nazi rule", "the youth groups were an irritant but never posed a real threat", "The Kreisau Circle achieved little and they were all arrested", the July 1944 bomb plot "failed". The regime was never overthrown from within and fell only to military defeat.

Measure two: did control require force, and does needing force count as failure? This is the sharpest available argument and Cambridge prints it as a creditable Level 3 explanation in its own mark scheme:

"None of this would have been necessary if the propaganda had been effective."

That sentence, from a March 2019 scheme and reprinted in November 2023, is a gift. It converts the evidence of repression into evidence against effectiveness. Use it and the shape of your part (c) changes: instead of listing control on one side and opposition on the other, you argue about what the machinery's existence proves.

Measure three: did control extend everywhere? This is where the top band lives, because it forces you to name places the regime did not reach. Cambridge's own list of those places is short and precise: the Catholic Church was not fully controlled; the attempt to build a single Protestant Reich Church was not successful; young people in the Swing movement and the Edelweiss Pirates refused to conform; and, in a point almost no candidate makes, the economy was mostly in the hands of private enterprise.

The best judgements distinguish obedience from belief. A country in which nobody rebels because everyone is frightened is controlled in a different sense from a country in which nobody rebels because everyone agrees. Cambridge's mark schemes credit both readings and the examiner reports reward candidates who notice the difference.

1. the machinery worked
2. so no organised opposition survived
3. but the machinery had to keep working for twelve years
4. which shows consent was never secure enough to do the job on its own
5. so control was near total in effect and permanently incomplete in foundation.

The five sections that follow take the focus points in an order that builds that argument. Cambridge lists opposition first; this file takes the machinery first so that the opposition section has something to measure itself against. Section 1 gives the syllabus order, and the syllabus map at the end shows where each focus point is covered.

5. Focus point: how effectively did the Nazis deal with their political opponents?

The regime had a legal answer, a police answer and a judicial answer, and all three were in place within about eighteen months of Hitler taking office.

The legal answer: no lawful opposition

The other political parties went first. Cambridge's mark schemes record that the Communist Party was banned, communists were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, no new political parties were allowed to be formed, trade unions were closed down, the Church was banned from political activity and civil rights were suspended. One scheme's Level 3 exemplar sets out the result: "By July 1933 all political parties apart from the Nazi Party had been banned and Germany therefore became a one-party state."

That mattered more than it sounds. Cambridge's mark schemes make the mechanism explicit: "Political parties were banned so it was difficult for people to organise opposition." Opposition after 1933 was not merely illegal. It had no vehicle.

The police answer: the Gestapo, the SS and the informers

The Gestapo was the secret police. Cambridge's mark schemes credit the following as its powers and activities: it sought out enemies of Nazism such as socialists; it arrested political opponents and trade union leaders; it arrested people on suspicion alone; it could imprison people and send them to concentration camps without going to court; it tapped telephones and intercepted mail; it ran a network of informers; it used torture and blackmail to get confessions; its job was to deal with sabotage, treason and acts against the Nazi Party and Germany; it closed down anti-Nazi newspapers; it dealt with student opposition; it operated above the law; and, later, it was involved in the Holocaust. One scheme adds the line candidates remember: "Many people it arrested simply disappeared."

The SS had powers to arrest people, interrogate them and search their property. It ran the concentration camps where critics of Hitler were imprisoned. Cambridge's scheme says it "turned Germany into a police state" and that it "dealt with political enemies of Hitler".

The informers are the part candidates under-use, and Cambridge prints a figure for them. A May and June 2019 mark scheme credits "There were approximately 150 000 informers." The same scheme describes the Block Warden who watched a group of homes and wrote reports on them, members of the Hitler Youth used to inform on their parents, people used to spy on their next door neighbours, and informers reporting people for telling anti-Nazi jokes or for not flying a Nazi flag. Another scheme puts it as "There were informers in every street and every apartment block", and a third records that "Sometimes husbands and wives reported on each other."

The mechanism Cambridge rewards is not the arrest. It is the uncertainty:

1. the Gestapo could arrest without charge and send to a camp without trial
2. informers were everywhere and unidentifiable
3. so nobody knew who could safely be spoken to
4. so Germans policed their own speech
5. and the regime got obedience without needing to arrest most of the people it frightened.

Cambridge's own exemplar makes the same point in one clause: "no one knew who to trust".

The judicial answer: courts that could not acquit

Cambridge's mark schemes credit all of the following as changes to the justice system: the Nazis took control of the courts; all magistrates and judges had to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler; Jewish judges and lawyers were sacked; special courts were established for political crimes; the People's Court was set up by Hitler to try enemies of the state; opponents rarely received a fair trial; Nazis who committed crimes rarely went to court; and the number of offences which carried the death penalty was increased from 3 to 43. One scheme adds that telling anti-Nazi jokes carried the death penalty.

That figure, 3 to 43, is worth memorising precisely because it is exactly the kind of specific contextual knowledge that lifts a part (b) explanation from four marks to five.

Was it effective? Both sides

For. No political party ever functioned again. Cambridge's schemes say the Gestapo "got rid of most opposition to the Nazis" and that its work meant "there was little opposition to Nazi policies". Communists and Social Democrats were driven underground and, in Cambridge's own words, "had to work underground and achieved little". A scheme summarises the outcome: "There was no large-scale rebellion against the Nazis and possible enemies were quickly locked up."

Against. The underground did not stop. Cambridge credits "The SDP kept an underground opposition movement going throughout the Nazi period" and "Communists and Social Democrats did manage to circulate newspapers and pamphlets". Twelve years of continuous secret political organisation, by parties that had been banned, arrested and camped, is not the record of a state that had solved its opposition. And the machinery itself never got smaller: informers, camps and special courts were still running in 1944.

1. banning the parties removed organised opposition
2. but the parties survived underground for the whole twelve years
3. so the regime never converted suppression into permanence
4. it only kept re-applying it.

6. Focus point: how did the Nazis use culture and the mass media to control the people?

Cambridge's mark schemes credit the founding fact first: in 1933 the Ministry for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda was set up under Goebbels. Everything below hangs from that.

The radio, which is the one to know in detail

This is the best documented instrument in the whole depth study, because Cambridge gives it a figure and a product name.

Cambridge's schemes credit: radio programmes were controlled by the Nazis; cheap radios were made available, called "The People's Receiver"; 70 per cent of German households had a radio by 1939; it was not possible to listen to foreign broadcasts on these radios; all cafes, bars and factories had radios so that people could hear Nazi broadcasts everywhere; and Goebbels made sure loudspeakers were put up in the streets so that Hitler's speeches could be heard everywhere.

Cambridge's own Level 3 exemplar draws the chain for you: the Nazis understood "that if people heard all about Nazi policy in their own homes, with the content controlled by the Nazis, they would be able to win people over to their ideas". Another exemplar adds the point about repetition: Hitler's speeches were broadcast "over and over again, with the aim of ensuring that his ideas would be heard and eventually believed by ordinary German people".

1. cheap sets put a radio in seven households in ten
2. the sets could not receive foreign stations
3. loudspeakers covered the streets, cafes and factories
4. so there was no unofficial version of events available anywhere
5. and a message with no competitor becomes difficult to disbelieve.

Censorship

Cambridge's schemes credit: all newspapers were under Nazi control, and newspapers and magazines that were anti-Nazi were closed down; journalists were told what to write; books were censored and libraries were not allowed to hold Jewish or Communist books; there were public book burnings where "un-German" books were burned; art galleries had to remove much of the art that had been popular in the Weimar Republic; work by Jewish or communist writers or artists was banned; writers had to show pro-Nazi attitudes for their work to be published; jazz music was banned; and many cultural figures left for the USA.

On what replaced it: paintings showed images of the ideal Aryan family; approved art glorified strong heroes and "degenerate art" was banned; film and newsreels praised the Nazis; theatre, cinema and music were used to support Nazi values; culture "had to praise Hitler and the Third Reich"; and architecture was used, with grand buildings put up to glorify Germany and the regime.

Rallies and the Olympics

The Nuremberg rallies. Cambridge credits: this was the annual rally of the Nazi Party; over half a million supporters would take part; there would be torchlight processions, and marches by soldiers with flags and drums; Hitler and other leading Nazis would make speeches; they were used to announce new policies such as compulsory military service; they showed solidarity between the German people and the Nazi Party; and they created a personality cult around Hitler. Germans were also made to celebrate fixed dates including Hitler's birthday and the anniversary of the Munich Putsch.

Cambridge's exemplar explains why this counts as control rather than spectacle: the rallies "emphasised that Germany was well-ordered and powerful under the control of the Nazis", and the displays and speeches "gave the German people a sense of belonging to a great and successful movement". Belonging is the mechanism. A person who feels part of a successful movement does not need to be frightened out of opposing it.

The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Cambridge credits: a massive new stadium had been built in Berlin; the Games were filmed so they could be seen around the world; the aim was to show the world how modern, strong, civilised and successful Nazi Germany was and how superior the Aryan race was; Hitler hoped German athletes would win many medals; and it was to impress foreign visitors. One examiner report adds that candidates gained credit for noting the use of modern lighting and television cameras, and for "the downplaying of the anti-Semitic messages during the Olympics".

That last detail is the useful one. A regime that had to hide its own central policy for a fortnight to impress visitors was managing an audience, not simply ruling one.

Was it effective? Both sides

For. Cambridge's own Level 3 exemplar is the model: "Because people did not hear any dissenting voices and only positive views about Nazi policy, it was hard to challenge what they were told." Another runs through posters, flags, photographs of Hitler, loudspeakers in factories, indoctrination through the school curriculum and the Hitler Youth, and music, and concludes: "It is not surprising that, under all this pressure, many Germans supported the Nazis."

Against. Cambridge prints the counter-argument as a creditable explanation, and it is the strongest single line available on this focus point: "Nazi propaganda did not win the support of the German people by itself. Other methods had to be used as well and these were based on terror and force. ... None of this would have been necessary if the propaganda had been effective."

And there is small, evidenced evasion. Cambridge credits "There was passive resistance with people arriving late at cinemas to miss the Nazi propaganda." That is not heroic and it is not organised, but it is a person deciding not to be persuaded, and it is exactly the kind of specific detail that turns a general assertion into a Level 3 or Level 4 point.

7. Focus point: why did the Nazis persecute many groups in German society?

This focus point asks why. It is a causes question, and it must be answered factually and precisely, in the terms the mark schemes credit. Cambridge is unambiguous about what those terms are.

The groups Cambridge names

The syllabus names anti-Semitism and persecution of minorities in the specified content, and the Final Solution under the impact of the war. The mark schemes name the groups. They are:

• Jews
• Gypsies, also referred to as Romani in the Nuremberg Laws mark scheme
• The mentally ill, and "handicapped infants"
• Disabled people
• "Undesirables" such as tramps, targeted under a Sterilisation Law
• Black people, whom Cambridge's mark scheme records as covered by the Nuremberg Laws
• Religious opponents and political opponents, persecuted for what they did rather than for what the regime said they were

The reasons Cambridge credits

The master race theory is the primary reason and the mark schemes say so. Cambridge's Level 3 exemplar: "The Nazis persecuted racial minorities because they believed in the Master Race theory. Hitler claimed that the Germans were Aryan and were physically and intellectually superior to all other races. Non-Aryans, such as the Jews, were blamed for setbacks such as defeat in the First World War or the Great Depression."

A fuller exemplar adds the two steps that follow from it. First, the race had to be kept pure, so mixing had to be prevented: "a threat to this were 'inferior' groups like Jews and gypsies. Germans marrying Jews had to be stopped." Second, superiority implied a destiny: Germans were "supposed to be more intelligent, stronger and more determined than other races and these characteristics would ensure that they eventually came to dominate the world", so "other races who did not have these attributes were inferior and policies were made which prioritised Aryans and discriminated against other groups".

Scapegoating. Cambridge credits: Hitler blamed the Jews for the problems facing Germany, for defeat in the First World War, and for the Great Depression. An examiner report records that candidates explained Hitler blamed the Jews for the defeat of 1918 "as he thought that they had forced the surrender of the German Army".

Usefulness to the state. For gypsies and the mentally ill the mark schemes credit a different logic, and it is the one candidates most often miss. Cambridge's exemplar: "They persecuted these people because they thought they were a danger and a burden for the Nazi state. They thought the gypsies were lazy and did not contribute to the Nazi state." The Level 2 list adds: the Nazis regarded the mentally ill as expensive and as a burden on the state; they thought "everyone had to be useful"; they saw gypsies as homeless and work-shy.

Economic and political reasons, which the mark schemes credit alongside the racial ones. Cambridge credits: the Nazis wanted to drive the Jews out of business; when Jews were driven out of their professions "it meant that other people were able to take their jobs"; the boycott of April 1933 was a way for the Nazis "to test their anti-Semitic ideas on the German people"; and the Nazis publicly justified the boycott as revenge for hostile international press coverage after Hitler's appointment. An examiner report on a question about whether the reasons were racial notes that candidates "needed to identify and then explain which persecutions were racially motivated and which persecutions were for other reasons", so the non-racial reasons are examined, not decorative.

What was done, in Cambridge's own terms

The sequence matters because Cambridge examines it as a sequence.

April 1933: the boycott of Jewish businesses. SA men stood outside Jewish shops; adverts were placed in the newspapers telling people not to shop in Jewish stores; posters on the shop windows told people to stay away; the newspapers gave people a list of businesses to avoid; the Star of David identified Jewish businesses; Jewish doctors' practices were also targeted.

1933 onwards: exclusion by law. Jews were banned from holding positions in the Civil Service and from public services such as teaching. Jewish judges and lawyers were sacked. A Sterilisation Law was passed for those the Nazis saw as "undesirables" such as tramps. Gypsies had to register with the authorities and a law banned marriage between gypsies and Aryans. A secret "euthanasia" campaign was begun against the mentally ill and handicapped infants; Cambridge's scheme records that "Some were starved to death while others were killed in gas chambers."

1935: the Nuremberg Laws. These were two laws, created during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. Cambridge names them: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour. Their effect, in the mark schemes' own terms: a citizen was defined as a person of German or related blood, so Jews were defined as a separate race and could not be full citizens of Germany; Jews lost their German citizenship, had no political rights and were not allowed to vote; marriages between Jews and Germans were forbidden and sexual relations between them were criminalised; people who broke the marriage law were imprisoned; Jews were not allowed to employ German women under the age of 45 as maids; Jews got no help from the government in education and healthcare; a person with three or four Jewish grandparents was a Jew; and the laws included Romani and black people.

Note the last two points. The definitional clause is what made the law operable, and the fact that the laws reached beyond the Jews is a detail Cambridge prints and most candidates do not have.

1938: Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. The trigger Cambridge credits is that a Jewish student shot a German diplomat in France dead. What happened: Jewish shops, businesses and homes were attacked and their windows broken; synagogues were attacked and burned to the ground; hundreds of Jews were murdered; thousands were sent to concentration camps; Jews were made to pay 1 billion Reichsmarks for the damage; and many Jews tried to leave Germany afterwards.

Why it mattered, in Cambridge's own exemplar: "it was a turning point in the nature of Nazi persecution of the Jews. There was a change from economic and social persecution to physical persecutions with Jews being murdered and beaten. It can be seen as an important step towards the Holocaust. The Nazis were no longer just trying to eject Jews from Germany but were now thinking of destroying them."

Cambridge also credits the internal politics: Goebbels planned it to increase his standing in the eyes of Hitler, and it took place as part of a power struggle between Goebbels and Himmler. And it credits the deception: "The Nazis tried to make it look like a spontaneous rising by the German people against Jews to try and show that the German people were behind them in their anti-Semitic policies."

1939 to 1945: the Final Solution. Cambridge's mark schemes set out the escalation: the plan to deport the Jews failed, including the Madagascar Plan; in Poland, Jews were forced into poor ghettos where living conditions meant disease was rife, killing many; when the Soviet Union was invaded, the Einsatzgruppen followed the army into Russia, rounding up and murdering any Jews they encountered; Nazi officials then looked for what one scheme calls "a more efficient method"; death camps were built in the occupied territories, especially Poland, where the Nazis thought they could get away with murdering the Jews in secret; the Wannsee Conference was held in 1942 and the decision was taken to eliminate all the Jews in Europe; and mass killing in gas chambers followed.

Cambridge prints one figure for the outcome, and only one: "Six million Jews were murdered." That is the figure to use. Cambridge prints no death toll for any other persecuted group in the Paper 1 materials read for these notes, and none is supplied here.

Cambridge's exemplar also links the war itself to the escalation: "The war radicalised the Nazis' policies against the Jews and plans for deportation to the East turned into mass murder instead."

How this focus point is examined

Almost always as a why question at part (b), or as a part (c) about whether the reasons were racial. Two examples of the latter, both real: "The reasons why Nazis persecuted groups in German society were racial. How far do you agree with this statement?" and "Why did the Nazi master race theory lead to the persecution of certain groups in German society?"

For a part (c) on that hypothesis, the two sides Cambridge credits are racial ideology on one side, and economic, political and utilitarian motives on the other. They are not alternatives to each other in fact, and the strongest judgements say so: the racial theory supplied the definition of who was to be persecuted, and the other motives supplied the timing and the method.

8. Focus point: how much opposition was there to the Nazi regime?

The syllabus puts this first. It carries the counter-argument for every other question in this part, and it is the section examiner reports say candidates handle worst.

Political opposition

Communists and Social Democrats operated underground for the whole period. Cambridge credits: they kept an underground movement going throughout the Nazi period; they circulated newspapers and pamphlets; and, in the regime's favour, "Communists and Social Democrats had to work underground and achieved little."

The trade unions are a case where Cambridge's own documents point two ways, and section 13 sets that out.

Religious opposition

The regime's relationship with the churches began with an agreement and ended with arrests.

Cambridge credits the policy first: Hitler made the Concordat with the Church in 1933, agreeing not to interfere with the Catholic Church if the Church kept out of politics. The Nazis set up the Reich Church, a single Protestant church under a Nazi bishop, in which "the bible was replaced with Mein Kampf". Then, Cambridge records, "In 1937, Hitler did start attacking the Catholic Church and arresting priests", members of the Confessing Church were arrested, and large amounts of church property were confiscated.

The named individuals Cambridge credits:

• Bishop Galen, also printed as Cardinal Galen, who denounced euthanasia and forced sterilisation. Cambridge's exemplar makes him the single best piece of evidence that Nazi control was incomplete: "Because he was very popular, the Nazis were afraid to arrest him and for a time euthanasia policies were stopped." Another mark scheme prints, as a creditable statement, "No action was taken against Cardinal Galen."
• Pastor Niemöller, who was sent to a concentration camp.
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who preached against the Nazis and was hanged.
• Schneider, who was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp.
• Pope Pius XI, who denounced Nazism as anti-Christian and criticised the Nazis for their abuse of human rights. Cambridge records that priests and nuns who read out the Pope's comments were sent to concentration camps, and that three Catholic priests were executed for distributing copies of Galen's sermons.

Cambridge also credits the structural reason churchmen objected: many young Germans belonged to church youth groups, these were seen as a rival to the Hitler Youth and were closed; Catholic priests disliked the changes the Nazis made in education; and some encouraged young people in their congregations not to attend Hitler Youth meetings. And it credits, on the regime's side of the ledger, that "The Reich Church was not successful."

Youth opposition

The Edelweiss Pirates. Cambridge credits: they were teenagers who liked to go camping and hiking; they disliked the strict regimentation and sexual segregation of the Hitler Youth; they mocked the Nazis, changed the lyrics of songs, and scrawled anti-Nazi graffiti on walls; they taunted and attacked members of the Hitler Youth and even the Gestapo; during the war they carried out acts of sabotage, sheltered army deserters and escaped prisoners, and distributed Allied leaflets; in Cologne they helped to shelter army deserters and escaped prisoners; and they assassinated a Gestapo chief. Cambridge's exemplar draws the conclusion for you: "The Nazis were worried about them because they executed many of their leaders in 1944."

The Swing movement. Cambridge credits: they deliberately rebelled against Nazi control; they had long hair and dressed in American and English fashion; they listened to jazz music, which the regime had banned; they had dance bars; and they accepted Jews at their clubs. One exemplar concludes: "Clearly Germany was not a totalitarian state if some young people behaved in a manner that was objectionable to the Nazi regime." Another scheme takes the opposite view of the same facts: "The Swing movement was just interested in jazz music and American fashions."

The White Rose. Cambridge credits: it was made up of university students; it distributed leaflets denouncing Nazi policies and encouraging people to resist the Nazis; it opposed the Nazi slaughter of Jews and criticised the treatment of the Jews; it tried to get people to oppose the German war effort; and its leaders were executed.

Elite and military opposition

The Kreisau Circle organised secret meetings to discuss how Germany would be governed after Hitler's removal. Its members included aristocrats and army officers, and they were, in Cambridge's phrase, "prepared to risk their lives to hold opposition meetings". Cambridge is equally clear about the outcome: "The Kreisau Circle achieved little and they were all arrested."

The July Bomb Plot of 1944. Cambridge's exemplar: "senior army officers plotted to kill Hitler and end the war. A bomb was set off in a briefcase near where Hitler was working but someone moved the briefcase at the last moment and the blast missed Hitler. However, if this had worked and killed Hitler it would have been devastating." That final clause is the argument. The plot failed, but a question about how much opposition there was is not answered by counting only the successes.

Passive and everyday opposition

Cambridge credits, as points worth marks: "There was much passive opposition like telling anti-Nazi jokes"; "Many people silently opposed the Nazis"; "There was a lot of grumbling about Nazi rule but the Gestapo dealt with this easily"; people arriving late at cinemas to miss the propaganda; and, on the Jewish boycott of April 1933, that "many Germans took no notice of the SA men who were standing guard outside the shops and carried on shopping as they usually did".

That last one is the most useful sentence in this section. It is Cambridge's own evidence that a headline persecution policy was quietly ignored by ordinary people in its first month.

The war changed the quantity

Cambridge is consistent that opposition grew after 1939. It credits: "Opposition to the Nazis grew in the latter parts of the war when people became disillusioned"; "Opposition was more effective when the war started to go badly for the Nazis"; "During the war the Hitler Youth became less fun and more young people refused to join it"; and, of the Edelweiss Pirates, that most of their listed activities are wartime ones.

1. the regime's control was tightest when it was winning
2. military defeat removed the argument that Nazi rule worked
3. so opposition rose in the last years rather than the first
4. which means "how much opposition" has a different answer in 1936 and in 1944.

That distinction, made in one sentence, is a Level 5 judgement on its own.

How much, then?

Little, on any measure of outcome. Nothing was overthrown. Cambridge's own summary lines: "there were no uprisings against Nazi rule"; "The opposition was not effective"; "the opposition was weak"; "The youth groups were an irritant but never posed a real threat"; "Many opposition groups like White Rose were rounded up by the Gestapo and executed."

More than nothing, and in one case decisive. The euthanasia programme was stopped for a time because a bishop the regime dared not arrest preached against it. That is the only documented instance in Cambridge's Paper 1 materials of opposition changing Nazi policy, and it is therefore the single most valuable example on this focus point.

9. Focus point: was Nazi Germany a totalitarian state?

This is the focus point that gathers all the others, and Cambridge sets it directly: "To what extent was Nazi Germany a totalitarian state?" was a real ten mark question in November 2018.

Handle the word first. A totalitarian state is one that controls every aspect of life, not merely one that is a dictatorship. That distinction is the whole question, because Germany was uncontroversially a dictatorship and arguably not totalitarian.

The case that it was

Cambridge's creditable points: Nazi Germany was a one-party state; it was a police state; schools in Germany were controlled by the Nazi Ministry of Education; mass media and culture were subject to censorship; political control was through a one-party state; judges took an oath of loyalty to Hitler; joining the Hitler Youth became compulsory; the school curriculum was controlled; and, as Cambridge's exemplar puts it, "There were some small underground opposition groups of Communists and Social Democrats, but the Gestapo ensured that these groups were never able to make any serious challenge to the Nazis. Political life in Nazi Germany was strictly controlled."

The case that it was not

This side is shorter, sharper and much less well used by candidates. Cambridge's creditable points:

• "The economy was mostly in the hands of private enterprise." A state that leaves the ownership of its industry in private hands is not controlling every aspect of life. This is Cambridge's own point and almost nobody uses it.
• "The Catholic Church was not fully controlled by the Nazis." The Concordat of 1933 was an agreement between two parties, which is not what total control looks like.
• "The formation of a Protestant Reich Church was not successful."
• "Groups such as the Edelweiss Pirates rebelled against Nazi control." Cambridge's exemplar makes the inference explicit rather than leaving it implied, which is the whole difference between Level 2 and Level 4 here.

The trap the examiner report names

The November 2018 report on this exact question says candidates were more effective at arguing that Germany was totalitarian, and that on the other side "some responses simply listed opposition to the Nazi state, without explaining how this showed that Nazi Germany was not a totalitarian state".

That is the specific fault to avoid. A list of opposition groups does not answer this question. The sentence that does is the one that says what their survival proves.

1. a totalitarian state controls every aspect of life
2. the Nazis controlled politics, law, information, culture and youth
3. but not the ownership of industry, not the Catholic Church, and not every young person
4. so Germany was a total dictatorship with incomplete social reach
5. which is why "to what extent" is the right question and "yes" is the wrong answer.

10. What the papers actually ask

The mark ladders are in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes. What follows is the shape of the questions this part generates, taken from the 48 mark schemes.

The 4 mark families

Every one of these is a real question stem. They come in four recognisable kinds, and you need four separate points on each.

• Name an institution and describe what it did. "Describe how the Nazis used the Gestapo." "Describe how the SS controlled German society." "Describe how the Nazi regime used informers." "In what ways did the police and the courts contribute to Nazi control of the German people?" "What changes did the Nazis make to the justice system in Germany?"
• Name a propaganda instrument. "Describe how the Nazis used the mass media." "Describe how the Nazis used the radio." "Describe Nazi use of censorship." "Describe Nazi influence on German culture and the arts." "Describe what happened at the Nuremberg rallies." "Describe the use of mass rallies by the Nazis." "Describe Goebbels' role in Nazi Germany." "Describe how Goebbels used the 1936 Olympic Games."
• Name a persecution. "What were the Nuremberg Laws of 1935?" "What was the impact of the Nuremberg Laws (1935) on the Jews?" "What legal restrictions did the Nazis place on the Jews up to 1939?" "In what ways did the Nazis discriminate against Jews within German society?" "Describe actions taken by the Nazis against Jewish businesses in 1933." "What impact did Kristallnacht have on the Jews?" "Describe Nazi persecution of any two minority groups in Germany." "Describe how the Nazi regime treated minorities other than the Jews." "Describe Nazi racial theories."
• Name an opposition or a church policy. "Describe the activities of the Edelweiss Pirates." "Describe the activities of the 'Swing' movement." "Describe Nazi policies towards the churches in Germany." "What actions did the Nazis take against religious opponents?"

One examiner report warning applies to a whole sub-family. On "In what ways did the police and the courts contribute to Nazi control", the report records that "Some candidates did not take note of the word 'and' in the question, and only wrote about the police or the courts rather than both, as directed by the question." When a four mark question names two things, split your four points two and two.

The 6 mark families

These are always why questions, and there are five recurring shapes:

• Why an instrument mattered. "Why was the Gestapo important in Nazi Germany?" "Why was the Gestapo feared by Germans?" "Why was the use of the radio a successful method of controlling the German people?" "Why was the radio important to the Nazis?" "Why did the Nazis take control of the mass media?" "Why did the Nazis organise mass rallies?" "Why were the Nuremberg rallies important for Nazi control?" "Why were the 1936 Olympic Games important to Hitler?"
• Why they persecuted. "Why did the Nazis persecute racial minorities in Germany?" "Why did the Nazis persecute gypsies and the mentally ill?" "Why did the Nazi master race theory lead to the persecution of certain groups in German society?" "Why was the 'master race' theory important?"
• Why a specific act of persecution. "Why did the Nazis carry out Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass)?" "Why was Kristallnacht important?" "Why did the Nazis organise a boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933?" "Why did the Nazis introduce the 'Final Solution'?" "Why did the war lead to the Final Solution?"
• Why there was opposition. "Why was there some opposition to Nazi rule?" "Why did some churchmen oppose the Nazis?" "Why did some young people oppose the Nazi regime?" "Why did opposition to the Nazi regime from young people increase after the start of the Second World War?"
• Why they wanted the churches. "Why did the Nazis want to control the Churches?"

The 10 mark families

Twenty-five of the 48 papers set one of these. They fall into three shapes, and the third is the commonest.

The direct verdict. "How effective was Nazi control over Germany?" appears twice in the 48, in November 2023 and November 2024, word for word. Others: "How total was Hitler's control over Germany?"; "How far were the Nazis able to maintain control over the German people between 1933 and 1945?"; "How successful was the Nazi government in controlling the German people?"; "How far do you agree that the Nazis had control over German society?"; "'The Nazis were never in complete control of Germany.' How far do you agree with this statement?"; "To what extent was Nazi Germany a totalitarian state?"

The opposition verdict. "How much opposition was there within Germany to the Nazi regime?"; "'There was little opposition within Germany to the Nazi regime.'"; "'There was no effective opposition to the Nazi regime.'"; "'The most important opposition to the Nazi regime came from young people.'"; "How far do you agree that the most important opposition to the Nazis came from the churches?"

The comparison of two methods. This is the commonest shape and it is the one to prepare for. Cambridge pits control mechanisms against each other: terror against propaganda; terror against persuasion; the secret police against mass media and culture; informers against terror; economic improvements against terror; economic policies against the Gestapo; economic policies against mass media. Also: "'The reasons why Nazis persecuted groups in German society were racial.'" And "How far did Hitler's policies towards the Jews between 1933 and 1938 have popular support?"

For any comparison question, the structure is the same: explain how method A produced obedience, explain how method B produced obedience, then decide, and the deciding sentence has to say why rather than restate both.

The date limits to watch

Two of the stems above carry them and they are marked strictly: "between 1933 and 1945", and "between 1933 and 1938". The second one excludes Kristallnacht in November 1938 only if you are careless about the month, and it excludes the Final Solution entirely. Read the years before you plan.

11. Judgement sentences for this part

Level 5 is Level 4 plus a supported judgement. Never write that there were arguments on both sides; that describes your essay rather than answering the question. Each of these takes a position and attaches a reason, which is all the top band asks for.

On effectiveness of control:

• "Nazi control was effective in outcome but never self-sustaining, because the regime had to keep the Gestapo, the informers and the camps running for twelve years to produce a silence that consent alone would have produced for free."
• "The Nazis controlled Germany more completely than they persuaded it, because the machinery of fear was still expanding in 1944, by which time genuine belief should have made it unnecessary."
• "Control was near total over politics and information and clearly incomplete over conscience, which is why churchmen and not communists produced the only policy the regime reversed."

On terror against propaganda:

• "Propaganda mattered more, because terror can only stop people acting while propaganda decides what they want, and the regime kept winning elections and rallies it did not need to rig."
• "Terror mattered more, because the regime's own behaviour shows what it trusted: it built the camps first and the Ministry of Propaganda in the same year, but it never dared reduce the camps."

On the totalitarian question:

• "Nazi Germany was totalitarian in intention and not in reach, because a state that left industry in private hands and could not absorb the Catholic Church had not in fact reached every aspect of life."

On opposition:

• "There was little opposition and it mattered anyway, because the one time a popular figure spoke publicly the regime backed down, which shows the silence was a choice the Nazis had to keep buying rather than one they had won."
• "Opposition was weakest where the regime was most confident and strongest where it was losing, so the honest answer changes with the date in the question."

On persecution:

• "The racial theory decided who was persecuted and the practical motives decided when and how, so the reasons were racial at the root and opportunistic at the surface."

12. What examiner reports say candidates get wrong here

The general faults, such as overwriting part (a) and listing instead of explaining, are in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes. These are the ones the Principal Examiner reports name on this content specifically.

The counter-argument is described rather than explained. This is the single most repeated observation on this part, and it appears in almost identical words across several series. On the November 2023 question "How effective was Nazi control over Germany?", the report says candidates "wrote more confidently about the use of violence and propaganda to impose the police state" while "counter arguments were less developed and relied on descriptions of the opposition". On the November 2018 totalitarian question, some responses "simply listed opposition to the Nazi state, without explaining how this showed that Nazi Germany was not a totalitarian state". Reports on the March 2022 and November 2020 control questions both close with the same advice: weaker responses "adopted a narrative approach on the control exercised by the Nazis. It is important that reasons are identified and then supporting information is linked to the question."

The fix is one sentence per paragraph. After naming an opposition group, write what its existence proves about the regime's grip.

One-sided answers. Reports name this on the control questions, the opposition questions and the persecution questions. Since 2024, one explanation on each side guarantees 7 out of 10 and a one-sided answer is capped at 6 however good it is, so a single balancing paragraph is worth more than any amount of extra detail on the side you already have.

Confusing the two youth groups. The March 2020 report records, of a question on the Edelweiss Pirates, that "A common misconception was that the Edelweiss Pirates and the 'Swing' Movement were the same group." They are not. The Pirates hiked, fought Hitler Youth members and sabotaged; the Swing movement listened to jazz, dressed in Anglo-American fashion and admitted Jews to its clubs.

Confusing informers with the Gestapo. The June 2019 report says exactly this of a question on informers: weaker responses "wrote at length about the role of the Gestapo in clamping down on opposition and their punishments", and others "assumed that the informers were people who spread the Nazi message through propaganda". Informers were civilians who denounced their neighbours. The Gestapo used them.

Confusing the SA with the SS or the Gestapo. Named in the June 2019 report. The SA was the street force of the 1920s and early 1930s; the SS ran the camps and the police state; the Gestapo was the secret police.

Confusing the Night of the Long Knives with Kristallnacht. Named in the March 2020 report. One is June 1934 and is a Key Question 2 event. The other is November 1938 and is yours.

Writing about the Nuremberg Laws when asked about the Nuremberg rallies. Named in the November 2018 report: "A small number of candidates wrote about the Nuremberg Laws, rather than the Nuremberg rallies." The two share a city and nothing else. The Laws were announced at the rally, which is why the confusion happens.

Describing an institution instead of explaining its effect. The November 2021 report on the Gestapo question: candidates "had a good knowledge of the Gestapo, but described what they did rather than linking it to the question by showing the consequences of their activities on the German people."

Importing the Weimar Republic. The November 2023 report on the churches question notes responses that "included opposition to the Weimar Government in the 1920s such as the Spartacists, which lacked relevance to this question."

13. Where Cambridge's own documents disagree

Four of these are real contradictions and three are spellings. Do not try to reconcile any of them. Pick one form, use it consistently, and do not waste a sentence explaining the discrepancy in an exam.

Whether trade unions could act at all. In the same May and June 2021 mark scheme, on the same ten mark question about effective opposition, Cambridge prints "Trade Unions were banned, so they could do nothing" inside a Level 3 exemplar, and "Trade Unions did manage to organise strikes and demonstrations" in the Level 2 list on the facing side. Both are marked as creditable. Safe on any paper: the trade unions were abolished in 1933 and could not act as legal organisations, which is the version every other mark scheme supports, and which is the one that carries the argument.

Why the Final Solution was introduced. A March 2020 mark scheme lists, as two separate creditable Level 2 statements, "They introduced the Final Solution because the war against Russia was going well" and "They introduced the Final Solution because the war against Russia was going badly." Cambridge is deliberately accepting both. Do not attempt to settle it. If you are writing about timing, use the mechanism Cambridge itself explains in the Level 3 exemplar instead: deportation plans failed, the Einsatzgruppen method did not scale, and the death camps followed.

Who carried out Kristallnacht. Two mark schemes attribute the attacks to the SA, one of them explicitly correcting the Nazis' own claim that ordinary Germans did it: "The Nazis claimed that ordinary Germans had carried out the attacks on the Jews on Kristallnacht, but it was actually SA men." A different scheme lists "During Kristallnacht they attacked Jewish homes and shops" among the activities of the SS. Safe on any paper: Nazi party formations carried out the attacks, and the regime presented them as spontaneous public anger. Say that and you are correct under either scheme.

Galen's rank, and whether the regime touched him. Cambridge prints him as Bishop Galen in two schemes and Cardinal Galen in two others. One scheme also prints "No action was taken against Cardinal Galen" as a creditable point, and another explains that the Nazis "were afraid to arrest him". Those two agree; the titles do not. Write Galen, note that he was a senior Catholic churchman, and give the fact that carries the mark, which is that he denounced euthanasia and forced sterilisation publicly and was not arrested.

Three spellings you will see and should not copy. Cambridge prints Nuremberg seventeen times and Nuremburg once. It prints the pastor's name three ways: with an umlaut, without one, and once with a character that only looks like an umlaut. It prints both Confessing Church and Confessional Church. Nobody has ever lost a mark on the spelling of a German name. Use Nuremberg, Niemöller and Confessing Church, and move on.

14. Quick revision

• The Key Question is a heading, not a question. The syllabus prints "3 The Nazi regime" and splits it into (a) How effectively did the Nazis control Germany, 1933 to 1945? and (b) What was it like to live in Nazi Germany? You want (a).
• The five focus points, in syllabus order: opposition; political opponents; culture and mass media; persecution; totalitarian state. Opposition is listed first, which is the syllabus telling you the answer is not "total".
• The line with part (b): (a) is the regime's grip, (b) is the experience of being governed. Youth opposition sits on both sides and Cambridge credits it on both.
• Key Question 2 owns 1933 and 1934: Reichstag Fire, Enabling Act, banning the parties, Night of the Long Knives, death of Hindenburg. Foreign policy belongs to the Core Content.
• Section B starts at Question 9. Germany is Questions 11 and 12 in all 48 mark schemes from 2018 to 2024. Twenty-five of those 48 put a ten mark question on this part.
• The lead-in sentence is the tell. Twenty-two papers open the Germany question with a sentence naming control, opposition or staying in power, and all 22 are on this part.
• Political opponents: all parties banned by July 1933, one-party state; trade unions abolished; Gestapo arrests on suspicion, without trial, tapping telephones and intercepting mail; approximately 150 000 informers; Block Wardens; Hitler Youth informing on parents; SS runs the camps; judges swear loyalty to Hitler; special courts and the People's Court; death penalty offences increased from 3 to 43.
• Culture and media: Ministry for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda, 1933, under Goebbels; "The People's Receiver"; 70 per cent of households had a radio by 1939; no foreign broadcasts; loudspeakers in the streets; anti-Nazi papers closed; public book burnings; jazz banned; degenerate art removed; Nuremberg rallies, over half a million supporters, torchlight processions, personality cult; 1936 Berlin Olympics, new stadium, filmed, anti-Semitic messaging downplayed.
• Persecution, and why: master race theory, Aryan superiority, purity, non-Aryans blamed for 1918 and the Depression; gypsies and the mentally ill as a "burden" and not "socially useful"; economic and political motives alongside the racial ones.
• Persecution, the sequence: April 1933 boycott, SA outside shops, Star of David; bans from the Civil Service and teaching; Sterilisation Law; secret euthanasia programme against the mentally ill and handicapped infants; gypsies registered and camped; 1935 Nuremberg Laws, two laws, the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, citizenship removed, intermarriage forbidden, three or four Jewish grandparents defines a Jew, and the laws included Romani and black people; 1938 Kristallnacht, triggered by the shooting of a German diplomat in France, synagogues burned, hundreds murdered, thousands camped, 1 billion Reichsmarks imposed, a turning point from economic to physical persecution; ghettos in Poland, Einsatzgruppen, Wannsee Conference 1942, death camps in occupied Poland, six million Jews murdered.
• Opposition: SPD and Communists underground throughout; Concordat 1933; Reich Church with Mein Kampf replacing the Bible, unsuccessful; Galen stops euthanasia for a time; Niemöller camped; Bonhoeffer hanged; Schneider to Buchenwald; Pope Pius XI; three priests executed for distributing Galen's sermons; Edelweiss Pirates, sabotage, deserters, Allied leaflets, a Gestapo chief assassinated, leaders executed 1944; Swing movement, jazz, Anglo-American dress, Jews admitted; White Rose, students, leaflets, executed; Kreisau Circle, arrested; July 1944 bomb plot, failed; passive opposition, anti-Nazi jokes, arriving late at the cinema, ignoring the 1933 boycott. Opposition rose during the war.
• Totalitarian, against: the economy was mostly in private hands; the Catholic Church was not fully controlled; the Reich Church failed; the Pirates and the Swing movement refused to conform.
• The best single counter-line, and it is Cambridge's own: "None of this would have been necessary if the propaganda had been effective."
• The best single piece of evidence that control was incomplete: the euthanasia programme was halted for a time because Galen preached against it and was too popular to arrest.

Where these facts come from

History notes are only as good as their sourcing, so this section is deliberately explicit.

Taken from Cambridge's own published 0470 materials, meaning the syllabus for 2027 and 2028, the 48 Paper 1 mark schemes covering every variant of every February and March, May and June, and October and November series from 2018 to 2024, the matching Paper 1 question papers, and the Principal Examiner reports for those series:

The structure of Key Question 3 and its (a) and (b) labelling; all five focus points for part (a) and all four for part (b); the single undivided Specified content list for depth study B and every bullet quoted from it; the definitions of key question, focus point and specified content; the five depth studies and the instruction to study at least one; the Section B heading and question numbering, the Q9 to Q22 range in 2018 to 2023 and Q9 to Q18 from 2024, and the placement of depth study B at Questions 11 and 12; every question stem quoted in sections 3, 10 and 13; every lead-in sentence quoted in section 3; the Gestapo's powers and activities, the SS's powers, the informer figure of approximately 150 000, the Block Warden, the Hitler Youth informing on parents, the changes to the courts and the increase in capital offences from 3 to 43; the Ministry for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda in 1933 under Goebbels, "The People's Receiver", the 70 per cent radio figure for 1939, the inability to receive foreign stations, the loudspeakers, the newspaper and book censorship and the public book burnings, the banning of jazz and of work by Jewish and communist artists, the Nuremberg rallies and the figure of over half a million, and the 1936 Berlin Olympics including the stadium, the filming and the downplaying of anti-Semitic messaging; the master race theory and every reason for persecution quoted; the naming of Jews, gypsies and Romani, the mentally ill, handicapped infants, disabled people, "undesirables" such as tramps, and black people; the April 1933 boycott and its methods, the professional bans, the Sterilisation Law, the euthanasia programme, the gypsy registration and marriage ban, the two Nuremberg Laws by name and every provision quoted including the grandparent definition and the maids clause, Kristallnacht including the trigger, the synagogues, the deaths, the camps, the 1 billion Reichsmark levy and the Goebbels and Himmler politics, and the wartime escalation including the ghettos, the Einsatzgruppen, the failed Madagascar Plan, the Wannsee Conference of 1942, the death camps in occupied Poland and the figure of six million Jews murdered; the Concordat of 1933, the Reich Church, the Confessing Church, Galen, Niemöller, Bonhoeffer, Schneider, Pope Pius XI and the three executed priests; the Edelweiss Pirates, the Swing movement, the White Rose, the Kreisau Circle and the July 1944 bomb plot, with every activity attributed to each; the passive opposition examples; and every examiner report observation quoted in section 12.

Deliberately not asserted here. Cambridge prints exactly one death figure for the persecutions, six million Jews murdered, and that is the only one given above. Cambridge's Paper 1 materials read for these notes give no figure for the number of gypsies, mentally ill or disabled people killed, no figure for the number of concentration camps or their inmates, no figure for the size of the Gestapo, no figure for the number of political prisoners at any date, no membership number for any opposition group, and no figure for how many Germans were executed for political offences. None of those is supplied. If your textbook gives them, they may well be right, but they are not what these notes assert.

Standard textbook facts that do not appear in the 0470 materials read for these notes, and which you should therefore check against your own textbook before quoting them as precise:

• the exact date of Kristallnacht in November 1938, and the name of the diplomat who was shot
• the exact date of the Wannsee Conference in 1942 and who chaired it
• the exact date of the July 1944 bomb plot and the name of the officer who planted the bomb
• the names of the White Rose and Edelweiss Pirates members who were executed
• the size of the Gestapo as an organisation, and the common claim that it was small relative to its reputation
• the names of the individual concentration and death camps other than Buchenwald, which Cambridge names once
• Himmler's and Heydrich's formal titles and dates in post

None of those is needed for a top answer, which is why they have been left out of the body above rather than asserted.

One housekeeping note. These notes name the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 page as the source for all marking rules. That page currently sits in the published notes folder rather than alongside this file in staging.

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.