How did the Allies achieve victory over the Axis powers?

Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 · Paper 1 Section B, Depth Studies Syllabus: 2027 and 2028 Depth study E: The Second World War in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, 1939 to c.1945 Key Question 4 of four

This is the Key Question that asks you to weigh causes against each other. The Allies won. Nobody disputes that, and no mark is available for saying it. What Cambridge is asking is why, and specifically which of the many things that went the Allies' way did the most work: Allied resources and production, Axis strategic mistakes, the Eastern Front, air and sea power, leadership, and the entry of the United States and the Soviet Union into a war that had begun without either of them.

A chronology of battles cannot answer that. It can reach the middle of the mark range and stop there, because a sequence of events is not an argument about causes. Every 10 mark question Cambridge has so far set on this content asks you to compare one cause with another, and in each case the top band is reserved for a candidate who comes down on one side and says why. So this file is built as a set of comparisons rather than as a timeline.

What the file covers: the Italian campaign, the collapse of Nazi Germany, the defeat of Japan, and the Allied occupations and war crimes trials, which are the four focus points, plus the whole of the Depth study E specified content and which parts of it are yours, plus the boundary with the three neighbouring Key Questions, plus everything Cambridge's own mark schemes have so far shown about how this content is credited.

One warning before anything else, and it shapes everything below. Depth study E is new. Until the 2023 series Cambridge offered seven Depth Studies, including China, South Africa, and the Israelis and Palestinians. Those three were withdrawn and the Second World War took their place from the 2024 series. That means there is almost no past-paper record for this content, and the record that exists is one year old. Across the whole 0470 corpus read for these notes, exactly three Paper 1 questions and three Paper 4 questions have ever been set on this Key Question. Section 3 sets out precisely what they were. Do not plan a revision programme around past-paper practice on this topic, because there is not enough of it to practise on, and do not trust any resource that implies otherwise.

1. What the syllabus actually asks

This is the wording printed in the Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028, in the Depth studies section, under the heading for Depth study E. Learn the Key Question itself, word for word. Cambridge builds 10 mark questions straight out of the focus points, and on this Depth Study it has already done so in its first examinable year.

Key Question 4

How did the Allies achieve victory over the Axis powers?

Focus points

• What was the importance of the Allied advance through Italy?
• Why was Nazi Germany on the point of collapse by April 1945?
• Why were the Allies able to achieve victory over Japan?
• How did the Allies consolidate their victories in Germany and Japan?

A note on the Depth Study title

Cambridge prints the full title of this Depth Study at the head of the content page as Depth study E: The Second World War in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, 1939 to c.1945. The date range is part of the title, and the "c." in front of 1945 is Cambridge's own hedge: the Depth Study runs to about 1945, not to a fixed day in 1945, which is what allows the occupations and the war crimes trials of 1945 and 1946 to sit inside it at all.

The syllabus contents page does not name the five Depth Studies individually. It lists only "Depth studies" and a page number, so the full title is not available there and has to be taken from the content page itself. Shortened forms that drop the date range circulate widely, including on this site's own paper structure page. The date range is the part that tells you where the Depth Study stops, so learn the long form.

The specified content, and which of it is yours

Depth study E prints one list of Specified content covering all four Key Questions together. There is no separate list per Key Question, and the syllabus never tells you which bullet belongs to which Key Question. That matters, because it means the boundary between this file and its three neighbours is something you have to read off the wording rather than something Cambridge hands you.

Here is the whole list, verbatim, undivided as Cambridge prints it, with the bullets that belong to this Key Question marked in bold.

• Extent of German conquest of Europe 1940:
• invasion of and surrender of France; Vichy government in France
• Dunkirk
• German plans to invade Britain (Operation Sea Lion)
• the Battle of Britain and its consequences
• Operation Barbarossa and initial Nazi successes
• German defeat at Stalingrad and its impact
• The reasons for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and its consequences
• Reasons for initial Japanese military successes in Southeast Asia by early 1942:
• Case study: Malaya and Singapore
• The Battle of Midway and its impact
• The impact of bombing on peoples' lives and morale in Europe:
• the Blitz
• Allied bombing of German cities
• The impact of Japanese control on people's lives:
• Case study: Malaya and Singapore
• The impact of Nazi control in occupied Europe:
• Case study: Poland, including circumstances leading to the Holocaust and its impact
• The methods and effectiveness of resistance movements in Malaya and in France
• The Allied invasion of Sicily and victory over German forces in Italy
• The collapse and surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945:
• the D-Day landings and the advance to Germany
• the Russian advance from the East
• The reasons for the defeat of Japan:
• the battles of Guadalcanal and Okinawa
• the US strategy of island-hopping
• the bombing of Japan
• the decision to use the atomic bomb and its consequences
• Consolidation of victory:
• the Allied occupations and control of Germany and Japan
• the war crimes trials in Nuremberg and Tokyo

Four bold bullets, four focus points, in the same order, and they are the last four bullets on the list. The mapping is exact, which makes this the cleanest boundary any Depth Study in the syllabus gives you. It is also, as far as Cambridge's printed documents go, the only boundary there is: the list itself is undivided, and if you are told in a lesson or a textbook that a particular bullet "belongs" to a Key Question, that is somebody's reading of the list, not a statement Cambridge has made.

Read the focus points as arguments, not as a list

Each of the four focus points is already a 10 mark question title, and three of them contain a word that demands a judgement rather than a description. "Importance" in the first, "why" in the second and third. Only the fourth is procedural, and even there Cambridge has turned it into a comparison in practice.

The four sections in the middle of this file take the focus points in Cambridge's own order and set each one up twice: once as the case that this factor was decisive, and once as the case that something else was. That is not a stylistic choice. It is what the mark scheme requires, and section 8 explains why one-sided answers on this content are capped low.

2. Where the boundary falls, and why it is the hardest one in the syllabus

Depth study E has an unusual problem. The same campaigns appear in two Key Questions, once as development and once as cause of victory, and a candidate who has not worked out which is which will answer the wrong question with accurate material and earn very little for it.

Key Question 1 owns how the war in Europe developed

Key Question 1 is How did the Second World War in Europe develop? Its focus points cover Nazi control of Europe in 1940, why Germany could not conquer Britain, why Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and why Stalingrad was a turning point. Its specified content is the German conquest of Europe in 1940 including France, Vichy and Dunkirk, Operation Sea Lion, the Battle of Britain, Operation Barbarossa and the initial Nazi successes, and the German defeat at Stalingrad and its impact.

So the fall of France, the Battle of Britain, Barbarossa and Stalingrad all belong there, not here. See the file How did the Second World War in Europe develop? for those.

Key Question 2 owns how the war in the Asia-Pacific developed

Key Question 2 is How did the Second World War in the Asia-Pacific develop? Its focus points cover the deterioration of United States and Japanese relations, the success of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the reasons for early Japanese success, and why Midway was a turning point. Its specified content is the reasons for Pearl Harbor and its consequences, the reasons for initial Japanese success in Southeast Asia with Malaya and Singapore as the case study, and the Battle of Midway and its impact.

So Pearl Harbor, the fall of Singapore and Midway belong there. See the file How did the Second World War in the Asia-Pacific develop? for those.

The line, stated plainly

Key Questions 1 and 2 ask why the war took the shape it did. Key Question 4 asks why that shape produced an Allied victory. The test is the verb in the question. If the question is why something happened, or why it was a turning point, it is a development question and it belongs to Key Question 1 or 2. If the question asks how far one thing mattered more than another in producing the defeat of Germany or Japan, it is yours.

The practical consequence is that Stalingrad and Midway are legitimately yours as evidence, and are not yours as topics. Cambridge has done exactly this itself. The November 2024 Paper 1 question comparing the D-Day landings with events on the Eastern Front is a Key Question 4 question, and its mark scheme is built almost entirely out of Stalingrad and Kursk. You are expected to use Stalingrad in this file as one term of a comparison. You are not expected to explain in this file why Stalingrad was a turning point, because that is a Key Question 1 question with its own focus point and its own file.

Note also that Kursk is credited in that mark scheme and appears in no specified content bullet anywhere in the Depth Study. Cambridge's mark schemes credit material the syllabus does not name. Use it as supporting weight, never as the backbone of an answer.

Key Question 3 owns the impact on civilian populations

Key Question 3 is What was the impact of war on civilian populations in Europe and the Asia-Pacific? Its specified content is the impact of bombing on people's lives and morale in Europe, meaning the Blitz and the Allied bombing of German cities, the impact of Japanese control with Malaya and Singapore as the case study, the impact of Nazi control in occupied Europe with Poland and the Holocaust as the case study, and resistance movements in Malaya and France.

That gives you a boundary on bombing which is worth reading twice, because it runs the opposite way from the one most people assume.

The atomic bombings are yours, not Key Question 3's. They appear in the specified content once, under "The reasons for the defeat of Japan", as "the decision to use the atomic bomb and its consequences". The same is true of "the bombing of Japan" generally. Key Question 3's bombing content is explicitly limited to Europe. So the Blitz and the Allied bombing of German cities are next door and the bombing of Japan is here, and the reason is that Cambridge frames the bombing of Japan as a cause of surrender rather than as an experience of civilians.

That framing does bend. A November 2024 Paper 4 question asked candidates to discuss the impact of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, and its mark scheme is largely social: deaths, destruction, radiation sickness. So the content is yours but the question can be asked in Key Question 3's register. Learn the consequences as well as the decision.

3. Where this sits on the paper, and exactly how thin the practice is

Depth study E is examined on Paper 1 Section B at Questions 17 and 18, the last slot on the paper. This held in every 2024 paper read. It is also examined on Paper 4, the Alternative to Coursework, at Questions 9 and 10, if your school enters you for Paper 4 rather than the coursework component.

For the marking itself, the level ladders, what counts as an explanation, the four separate points rule on part (a), the balance rule on part (c) and the mistakes examiner reports name every year, read How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1. None of it is repeated here. It applies to this Key Question exactly as it applies to every other question on the paper, and it is the single highest-value thing to read before you revise any content at all.

The whole past-paper record, counted

The corpus behind these notes runs from the 2018 series to the 2024 series. Because Depth study E was not examinable before 2024, the 2024 series is the entire record, and it contains seven Paper 1 papers: one March paper and three each in June and November.

All seven set Depth study E, at Questions 17 and 18, without exception. That is fourteen questions. Sorted by Key Question, they fall out like this.

Three questions. That is your whole Paper 1 record, and here they are in full.

June 2024, paper 0470/11, Question 18. Stem: by 1945 both Germany and Japan had been defeated. (a) Describe how Germany was denazified after the end of the Second World War. (b) Why were the D-Day landings successful? (c) The Japanese defeat was caused by the American use of the atomic bomb. How far do you agree?

June 2024, paper 0470/12, Question 18. Stem: by the end of 1945 the Second World War was over. (a) What was island hopping? (b) Why did the Allies consider it important to hold war crimes trials? (c) Germany collapsed in 1945 because of the Russian advance from the East. How far do you agree?

November 2024, paper 0470/13, Question 18. Stem: the Allies secured victory over Germany. (a) What were the Nuremberg Trials? (b) Why was the defeat of Italy important? (c) The D-Day landings were more important than events on the Eastern Front in securing the defeat of Germany. How far do you agree?

Three more on Paper 4, and no more anywhere

The seven Paper 4 papers of 2024 also all set Depth study E, at Questions 9 and 10, and three of those fourteen questions are on this Key Question.

• June 2024, paper 0470/41, Question 10. (a) Write an account of the Allied invasion of Sicily. (b) Discuss the importance of the fall of Italy in the war in Europe.
• June 2024, paper 0470/43, Question 10. (a) Write an account of the US strategy of island hopping. (b) Discuss the impact of the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan.
• November 2024, paper 0470/43, Question 10. (a) Write an account of the Allied occupation of Germany. (b) Discuss the importance of the Nuremberg Trials.

Six questions in total, across both papers, in the whole published record. Every one of them is from a single series. If you have been given a workbook of past questions on this Key Question, most of what is in it was written by somebody other than Cambridge.

What the pattern shows, and how far to trust it

Across all seven 2024 Paper 1 papers, Question 17 took a development Key Question and Question 18 took a consequences Key Question. Key Question 4 appeared at Question 18 three times and at Question 17 never.

Do not build a revision plan on that. Seven papers is one series, the general rule stated in How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 is that Cambridge does not tie a Key Question to a slot within a Depth Study, and a rule observed in a single year is a coincidence until a second year agrees with it. What the pattern is genuinely worth is this: in every one of the seven papers, one of the two questions was on Key Questions 3 or 4. Revising only Key Questions 1 and 2 would have left you, in 2024, with one question rather than two.

What the examiner reports say, which is almost nothing

There is one Principal Examiner report in the corpus that covers an examinable Depth study E series, the March 2024 report. On Paper 1 Questions 17 and 18 it says there were too few responses for any meaningful comment to be made. On Paper 4 it lists the popularity of the Depth Studies, names B, D, C and A, and says there were too few attempts at Depth study E for any meaningful comment.

That is the entire examiner commentary on this Depth Study. There is no published examiner guidance on what candidates get wrong here, because in its first series almost nobody sat it. Section 9 below is therefore built out of Cambridge's own Level 1 and Level 2 exemplars, which is the mark scheme showing you what a weak answer looks like, rather than out of examiner reports.

4. Focus point 1: What was the importance of the Allied advance through Italy?

The specified content bullet is a single line: The Allied invasion of Sicily and victory over German forces in Italy. Cambridge has examined it twice, once on each paper, and the two mark schemes between them give you the campaign and the argument about it.

What Cambridge credits about the invasion itself

From the Paper 4 mark scheme on the Allied invasion of Sicily, the creditable account runs like this. The operation was codenamed Husky, and it was an amphibious invasion of Sicily intended to remove Fascist and Nazi occupation. Eisenhower was overall commander of two Allied armies with naval and air support. The defenders were the Italian 6th Army and a German panzer division. The attack opened with aerial bombardment aimed at industry and communications, and it followed the defeat of the Axis powers in North Africa. Airborne and amphibious landings secured the ports of Licata and Syracuse, and from the beachheads the Allies tried to split the Axis forces and converge on Etna. Axis leaders began evacuating Sicily by 27 July.

Note what is in that list and what is not. Cambridge credits the codename, the commander, the two ports, the mountain, the North Africa precondition and one late-July date. It gives no troop numbers, no landing date and no order of battle beyond the two named formations. Do not supply those from memory.

The case that Italy mattered a great deal

The Paper 1 mark scheme's own worked explanation runs through Mussolini. The Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943; this brought down the Fascist regime; Mussolini was arrested on 25 July 1943; Hitler therefore lost his ally in Europe and German forces faced threats on two fronts.

1. Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943
2. collapse of the Fascist regime and the arrest of Mussolini on 25 July
3. Hitler loses his only major European ally
4. German forces face threats on two fronts at once

Around that, Cambridge credits four kinds of importance, taken from the Paper 4 scheme. Strategic: the Allies gained control of southern Europe and opened a new front against Nazi Germany. Psychological: a major blow to the Axis powers and their military leadership in 1943, and a morale boost for the Allies, who now had a hold on mainland Europe. Political: Mussolini deposed, and later made puppet leader of the Salo Republic. Military: very heavy casualties, given in that scheme as 1.5 million Axis casualties and 350,000 Allied casualties.

Two further credited points belong to the same side and are more useful than they look, because they connect Italy to the other three focus points. Italy's surrender meant German forces had to be diverted from the Eastern Front and from France, and the Germans had to disarm the Italian forces and take up positions further south than they had intended.

The case that Italy was a distraction

Cambridge credits this side too, in the same mark scheme, which tells you the question is genuinely open. The Allies expected to defeat Italy quickly and did not. The campaign was costly for the Allies, and their troops might have been better deployed elsewhere. And the campaign did not end when Italy fell: Germany only surrendered in Italy after the fall of Berlin in 1945, which is a strong argument that Italy was never the front that decided anything.

That last point is the sharpest weapon on this focus point, because it is chronological rather than interpretative. If the Italian front was still being fought over after Berlin had fallen, it was not the front that brought Germany down.

The judgement this focus point wants

The productive move is to separate what Italy did to Germany's alliance from what it did to Germany's army. The first is decisive and immediate: Hitler lost Mussolini in July 1943 and never got a comparable ally back. The second is slow and expensive on both sides. A judgement that says Italy mattered politically more than militarily is a supported judgement, and it is available from Cambridge's own credited material without inventing anything.

5. Focus point 2: Why was Nazi Germany on the point of collapse by April 1945?

This is the focus point Cambridge has examined hardest, twice in Paper 1 alone, and both times as a straight comparison between the Western and Eastern advances. It is also the focus point where the syllabus wording is most precise: by April 1945, not in 1945, which sets the terminus you are being asked to explain.

The West: why D-Day worked

Cambridge's worked explanation of the success of the D-Day landings is about deception rather than about force. The Allies convinced the Germans that the landings would come much further east, where the Channel was narrower. That forced the Germans to spread their defences along a vast stretch of coast. German armoured divisions were held in reserve because the German command still expected the main attack at the Pas de Calais. The result was that the Allies had weaker defences to overcome than they otherwise would have.

1. Allied deception about the landing site
2. German defences spread thinly along a vast stretch of coast
3. armoured reserves held back for a second attack at the Pas de Calais that never came
4. the Allies land against weaker defences than the Germans could have concentrated

The supporting points Cambridge credits at the identification level are worth knowing because they give you the specific detail that earns the fifth mark on a part (b): Allied planes and warships bombarded German positions; thousands of troops were dropped behind German lines; surprise; the German response was slow because of a complex command structure; the Allies had larger numbers of men and more weapons; careful planning targeted weak points in the German defences; and in 1944 US fighter planes had decimated the German fighter force.

That last one matters more than its position in a bullet list suggests, because it is the only air-power point Cambridge credits anywhere in this Key Question's mark schemes, and air power is one of the causes the question invites you to weigh.

The West: from Normandy to the Rhine

The credited narrative of the Western advance is compact. D-Day gave the Allies a foothold, and from Normandy it became possible to bring in large numbers of US troops. France was liberated, which weakened German defences further. The Allies outnumbered the German troops and made rapid progress through France, reaching the German border by September 1944. Germany's last chance was its counter-offensive in the Ardennes. When that failed the Allies crossed the Rhine and were capturing vast numbers of German soldiers.

1. Ardennes counter-offensive fails
2. the Allies cross the Rhine
3. German soldiers are captured in vast numbers
4. the Western advance meets the Soviet advance on the River Elbe in April

The East: the case that this was the main front

Cambridge's Level 3 explanation on the Eastern side is unusually assertive, and it is the mark scheme's own language, not a candidate's. The fighting on the Eastern Front was far bigger than on the Western Front, more troops were involved and more died, and it was the main front in the war. Without it, the Allies would have needed double the number of troops on the Western Front.

The credited detail behind that runs through three points. First, Stalingrad: the Soviet Union inflicted a catastrophic defeat on the German Sixth Army, surrounded and eventually forced to surrender, and the point of it for this Key Question is not the battle but the demonstration that the Wehrmacht could be defeated. Second, Kursk in July 1943, a huge tank battle won by the Soviet Union, after which the German army was forced into retreat. Third, the advance itself: in April an enormous number of Soviet soldiers and quantities of armaments attacked central Germany, broke through the German lines by the end of the month, encircled Berlin, fought into the centre of the city, and in May Berlin was surrendered to the Russians.

1. Soviet victories at Stalingrad and Kursk
2. the German army is forced into permanent retreat
3. Soviet forces break through in central Germany in April 1945
4. Berlin is encircled, then taken, and surrendered in May

Cambridge also credits Stalin's motive, which is a political point inside a military question and therefore a good one: the Soviet advance moved as fast as it did because Stalin wanted to take as much territory as possible for post-war negotiations, and wanted Berlin before the Western Allies got there.

The link between the two, which is where Level 5 lives

Cambridge's own Level 5 exemplars go two different ways on this comparison, and both are printed as full marks.

The first says the fronts cannot be separated because they were sequential. Planning for D-Day only took shape towards the end of 1943, after the Soviet victories at Stalingrad and Kursk. The Soviets had proved that Hitler could be beaten, and that encouraged the Allies to plan Operation Overlord. On that reading the Eastern Front made the Western Front possible.

The second says they cannot be separated because they were simultaneous. Germany collapsed because it was attacked from east and west at once, and the linking of the Soviet and American forces on the River Elbe in April made German defeat inevitable. Both sides raced towards Berlin to take as much territory as they could.

Either is a supported judgement. What is not creditable at Level 5 is saying that both mattered and stopping. The difference between the two exemplars above and that sentence is that each of them gives a reason for refusing to separate the fronts. One says the East enabled the West; the other says the two together made the outcome inevitable. Pick one.

The condition of Germany itself

Underneath both advances Cambridge credits a set of points about the state of Germany by 1945 that belong to neither front. Germany was being attacked on two fronts at once; Germany was exhausted and did not have the resources to defend itself; and Allied bombing had done terrible damage to German industry and people.

That third point is the one to handle carefully, because the bombing of German cities is Key Question 3's specified content. Here it is legitimate as a cause of collapse, and Cambridge credits it as one. Keep it to a sentence about industrial and manpower capacity and do not slide into the civilian experience, which is the neighbouring file's question.

6. Focus point 3: Why were the Allies able to achieve victory over Japan?

The specified content under this focus point has four sub-bullets: the battles of Guadalcanal and Okinawa, the US strategy of island-hopping, the bombing of Japan, and the decision to use the atomic bomb and its consequences. Cambridge has examined the strategy and the bomb. It has never, in any mark scheme read for these notes, examined Okinawa, and it has mentioned Guadalcanal exactly once. Section 10 says what to do about that.

Island-hopping, which Cambridge has defined twice

This is the one piece of content on this focus point where you have two independent Cambridge definitions, one from Paper 1 and one from Paper 4, and they agree.

It was a military strategy, and it was how the Americans won control across the Pacific. US forces moved from island to island, using each one as a base for capturing the next, bypassing Japanese strongholds and seizing lightly defended islands instead. That let them move across the central Pacific quickly and mount raids on Japanese positions. The stated purposes were to cut off Japanese supply chains from the sea, to reduce casualty rates and to cost less in resources. US submarines and air attacks blockaded Japanese ports and reduced the effectiveness of the Japanese military.

The Paper 4 scheme adds the geography: a two-pronged advance towards Japan, a northern prong through the Marshall Islands and the Marianas towards the Bonin Islands, and a southern prong through the Solomons, New Guinea and the Philippines. The Paper 1 scheme adds that island hopping started at the Battle of Tarawa.

1. Island-hopping bypasses fortified Japanese garrisons
2. lightly held islands become bases for the next advance
3. submarines and air attacks blockade Japanese ports from those bases
4. Japan's sea supply chains are cut and its garrisons are left behind, unsupplied

Note that this is simultaneously a land strategy, a naval strategy and an economic strategy. That makes it the single most useful item on this focus point, because it lets you argue sea power, resources and Axis overextension out of one piece of content.

The case that Japan was beaten before the bomb

Cambridge's Level 5 exemplar on the atomic bomb question comes down against the bomb as the cause, and the reasoning is worth learning as a model. Japan had early successes but was soon overstretched and was up against the military might of the United States. After defeat at Midway and Guadalcanal the Japanese knew they were losing. US bombers were destroying Japanese cities. Japan could probably have fought on for another year, but in that year thousands of men on both sides would have been killed. The atomic bombs did not cause the Japanese defeat, but they hastened it.

The production argument sits underneath that and Cambridge states it plainly: once the United States had decided to fight, its industrial might meant it could pour out vast numbers of ships, aircraft and armaments, and the Japanese economy was one-tenth the size of America's.

1. Japanese economy one-tenth the size of America's
2. the United States out-produces Japan in ships, aircraft and armaments
3. Japan is overstretched across too many fronts at once
4. defeat becomes a question of when rather than whether

Cambridge also credits, at the identification level, a set of points that all belong to this side: Japan was fighting on too many fronts at once; Japan should have concentrated all its forces against the United States; Japan should have used unrestricted submarine warfare against the United States; the Soviet Union had invaded Manchukuo; the United States was planning a blockade of Japan and an invasion of the main island; Japan was already close to defeat in all parts of the fighting; and the Battle of Midway decided the outcome of the war.

The Soviet invasion of Manchukuo is the one to notice. It is the only point in this Key Question's mark schemes that brings the Soviet Union into the Pacific war, and it gives you a second front against Japan to set beside the bomb.

The case that the bomb was decisive

Cambridge's Level 3 explanation on the other side is built on the decision-making inside Japan rather than on the destruction itself. The bombs incinerated large parts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese leadership had been told that unless Japan surrendered it would face "prompt and utter destruction". The effects of the bombs showed the Japanese what they faced if they did not surrender, and this allowed the Emperor to win the discussion in the Japanese Supreme War Council against the hardliners. After the bombings it was impossible for Japan to keep fighting for any length of time.

1. Atomic bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
2. the Japanese leadership faces the promise of prompt and utter destruction
3. the Emperor wins the argument in the Supreme War Council against the hardliners
4. Japan surrenders in weeks rather than in the year it could have fought on

That is the strongest available form of this argument, and it is stronger than the version most candidates write, because it does not claim the bombs made further fighting militarily impossible. It claims they made further fighting politically impossible, which is a claim the evidence supports.

The Paper 4 mark scheme adds the consequences, and its emphasis is different again: Hiroshima did not convince the Japanese military or government to surrender, and it was the second bomb, on Nagasaki, that achieved this. It also credits the military and economic character of Hiroshima as a target: military bases destroyed, the headquarters of the Imperial Army, a supply and logistics base, a large manufacturing industry and important munitions industries producing weapons, boats and plane parts. Alongside that, radiation sickness and fallout, and the destruction of almost all structures within a 2 km radius in Hiroshima.

Casualty figures are covered in section 7, because Cambridge's own documents do not agree on them.

The judgement this focus point wants

The best available shape is the one Cambridge's own Level 5 exemplar uses: distinguish cause from timing. Something can be responsible for when a war ended without being responsible for how it ended. If you argue that Japan's defeat was made certain by American production and by the loss of its sea supply routes, and that the bombs decided the date rather than the outcome, you have taken a position and given a reason for it, which is exactly what the tenth mark is for.

7. Focus point 4: How did the Allies consolidate their victories in Germany and Japan?

The specified content is two sub-bullets: the Allied occupations and control of Germany and Japan, and the war crimes trials in Nuremberg and Tokyo. This is the only focus point in the Key Question that is not phrased as a judgement, and it is the one where Cambridge's questions have been most factual.

Be aware of an imbalance before you start. Everything Cambridge has published on this focus point is about Germany. Japan appears in the specified content and in no mark scheme read for these notes beyond a single Level 1 sentence noting that there were also similar trials in Japan. The Tokyo trials and the occupation of Japan are examinable and unillustrated.

The occupation of Germany

From the Paper 4 mark scheme, the creditable account of the Allied occupation runs through five stages. Agreements between the Grand Alliance were already made at the Yalta Conference. The 1945 Berlin Declaration announced joint sovereignty over Germany by the Allies after the surrender. Four occupation zones were created and ratified at the Potsdam Conference, and Berlin was also divided into four zones. The Allied Control Council was set up under military control to supervise all the zones, with responsibility for denazification and demilitarisation. And the Nuremberg Trials, 1945 to 1946, punished war crimes.

Denazification, in Cambridge's own list

The Paper 1 part (a) on denazification is the fullest single list Cambridge has published on this focus point, and because part (a) now needs four separate points rather than two developed ones, a list is exactly the right form to learn it in.

• The Nazi Party was banned.
• The swastika symbol and Nazi emblem were banned.
• Nazis were removed from important positions in the police and civil service.
• 400,000 Germans were placed in internment camps.
• Denazification was turned over to the Germans.
• In each zone, Germans had to fill in a questionnaire about their past.
• Ex-Nazis were fined; others were forced into retirement or sent to a labour camp.
• Ex-Nazis were forced to visit concentration camps.
• Those guilty of war crimes were tried at the Nuremberg Trials.

The Nuremberg Trials

From the Paper 1 part (a) on the trials: they took place in 1945 to 1946; the Allied powers formed the International Military Tribunal to conduct them; leading Nazis were tried; the charges were crimes against humanity and war crimes; there were four main judges; the first trial involved 21 defendants; almost 200 people were tried in all; and Goering was tried at Nuremberg.

Why the Allies held the trials

Cambridge's worked explanation ties the trials directly to denazification rather than to justice in the abstract: the Allies wanted to discredit the Nazis in the eyes of the German people, to remove any remaining support for Nazism, and to make sure Nazis did not get important jobs in Germany in future.

1. Leading Nazis tried in public at Nuremberg
2. the scale of the atrocities is established on the record
3. Nazism is discredited in the eyes of the German people
4. support for a Nazi revival is removed and ex-Nazis are kept out of important posts

The other credited reasons are that the war crimes had been so terrible; to deter future aggression and war crimes; and to educate the German people about the true extent of the atrocities.

Why the trials are arguable, which is the part most candidates miss

The Paper 4 mark scheme is the one that turns this focus point into an argument, and it does so by crediting criticism. Politically, the trials declared the Nazi Party leadership, the SS, the Gestapo and the German military high command war criminals, which mattered for denazification and for the victims of Nazi persecution. Socially, some victims and resistance fighters in other countries thought the sentences too lenient. Internationally, the trials created international criminal law, and some argued that Allied atrocities should also have been put on trial.

Those last two points are what let you write a two-sided answer on what looks like a purely procedural focus point. The Nuremberg Trials can be argued as the founding act of international criminal law and as victors' justice, and Cambridge credits both.

8. Putting the causes side by side

The Key Question is a weighing question, so this section sets the six causes named in the question out as they actually compete. Nothing here is new content; it is the material above, reorganised so that you can see which cause beats which and on what ground.

Allied resources and production

The strongest single-sentence version Cambridge gives you is the Japanese economy at one-tenth the size of America's, with the United States able to pour out ships, aircraft and armaments once it had decided to fight. In Europe the same argument appears as Germany by 1945 being exhausted and without the resources to defend itself, and as Allied bombing damaging German industry.

The counter-argument is timing. Production explains why the Axis could not win a long war. It does not by itself explain the collapse of April 1945 or the surrender of August 1945, both of which happened on particular dates for particular reasons. That is why production is a strong background cause and a weak proximate one, and saying exactly that is a judgement.

Axis strategic mistakes

Cambridge credits several, and they are unusually concrete. Germany spread its coastal defences and held its armoured reserves back because it believed the Allied deception about the landing site. Germany spent its last reserves on the Ardennes counter-offensive and had nothing left when it failed. Japan fought on too many fronts at once, and Cambridge credits the view that it should have concentrated everything against the United States and should have used unrestricted submarine warfare against American shipping.

The Eastern Front

This is the cause Cambridge's own mark scheme states most forcefully: the Eastern Front was the main front in the war, more troops were involved, more died, and without it the Western Allies would have needed double the number of troops on their own front. Stalingrad and Kursk between them proved the German army could be beaten and forced it into retreat, and the Soviet advance took Berlin.

The counter-argument is not that the Eastern Front was small. It is that it was not sufficient on its own, which is the "attacked from two sides at once" reading, and the meeting on the Elbe in April is the evidence for it.

Air and sea power

Thinner in Cambridge's materials than you might expect, and worth handling honestly. In Europe, the credited points are that US fighter planes had decimated the German fighter force in 1944, and that Allied bombing damaged German industry and people. In the Pacific, sea power is embedded in island-hopping: submarines and air attacks blockading Japanese ports, and a planned blockade of the home islands.

Leadership

Cambridge names very few leaders in this Key Question's mark schemes and you should not invent more. Eisenhower commands the Sicily landings. Stalin drives the pace of the Soviet advance for political reasons and pressed for a second front. Hitler loses Mussolini as an ally in July 1943. The Emperor decides the Japanese surrender against his own hardliners. That is the whole cast. It is enough for one paragraph of a part (c) and not enough for a whole answer.

The entry of the United States and the Soviet Union

The subtlest of the six, because both entries belong to the neighbouring Key Questions as events and to this one as causes. American entry supplies the production argument, the manpower that could be poured into Normandy, the Pacific campaign in its entirety and the atomic bomb. Soviet entry supplies the Eastern Front and, in the Pacific, the invasion of Manchukuo.

The move that reaches Level 5 is to notice that both entries were caused by Axis decisions. Germany invaded the Soviet Union and Japan attacked the United States. If you argue that the Axis powers created the coalition that destroyed them, you have a judgement that unifies the whole Key Question and rests on nothing you had to invent.

Judgement sentences that fit this content

These are shapes, not answers. Each states a position and attaches a reason, which is all the tenth mark asks for.

• "The atomic bombs decided when the war ended, not whether Japan would lose, because Japan's defeat was already certain once its economy and its sea routes were beaten."
• "The Eastern Front mattered more, because the Western Allies only planned Overlord once the Soviet Union had proved that the German army could be beaten."
• "Neither front can be ranked above the other, because it was the two advances meeting that made surrender unavoidable rather than either advance on its own."
• "Italy mattered politically more than militarily, because it cost Hitler his only major ally in 1943 while the fighting there continued past the fall of Berlin."
• "The Axis powers were defeated by the coalition their own decisions created, because Germany chose to invade the Soviet Union and Japan chose to attack the United States."

9. Where Cambridge's own documents disagree

Because the corpus for this Key Question is six questions from one series, its internal disagreements matter more than they would elsewhere. Where two Cambridge documents conflict, do not try to reconcile them. Pick one, use it, and if the point is central to your answer say which paper it came from. Examiners mark what is creditable, and a figure printed in any Cambridge mark scheme is creditable.

The atomic bomb death toll. The June 2024 Paper 1 mark scheme says the bombs killed 200,000 Japanese civilians, and a separate point in the same scheme says the two bombs killed over 200,000 people. The June 2024 Paper 4 mark scheme gives 150,000 killed in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki, which totals 230,000, and separately counts 20,000 military personnel killed at Hiroshima. So the two papers disagree on the total, and they also disagree on whether the figure is civilians only. Use one figure, from one paper, and do not add them together.

What actually produced the Japanese surrender. The Paper 1 Level 5 exemplar says the bombs did not cause the defeat but hastened it. The Paper 4 scheme says Hiroshima did not convince the Japanese military or government to surrender and that the second bomb, on Nagasaki, achieved this. The first treats both bombs as accelerators of an outcome already fixed; the second treats the second bomb as the thing that produced the decision. Both are Cambridge, and both are creditable, and they point in different directions.

Whether Italy helped or wasted the Allied effort. The same November 2024 mark scheme credits both "German forces had to be diverted from the Eastern Front and France" and "the campaign was costly for the Allies and maybe their troops would have been better deployed elsewhere". That is not an error. It is Cambridge telling you the question is genuinely two-sided, which is exactly what you need for a part (c).

The date of the German defeat at Stalingrad. A November 2024 explanation places the defeat of the German Sixth Army "at Stalingrad in 1943", a supporting point in the same scheme dates it to February 1943, and a March 2024 question stem prints the battle as spanning 1942 and 1943. These are consistent if you read the battle as running across the turn of the year and ending in February 1943, but the schemes do not say so, and this belongs to Key Question 1 in any case.

Spelling. One June 2024 mark scheme prints Nuremburg where every other document prints Nuremberg, and one November 2024 scheme prints Pearl Harbour where the rest print Pearl Harbor. Neither costs a mark. Use the syllabus spellings, which are Nuremberg and Pearl Harbor.

Mark schemes credit material the syllabus does not name. Kursk is credited in a Paper 1 mark scheme and appears nowhere in the specified content. The defeat of Poland in 1939 carried a 25 mark Paper 4 question, though the specified content list begins at the German conquest of Europe in 1940. This runs one way only: material outside the specified content can earn marks, but you cannot rely on it being set, and you should not build a revision plan around it.

10. What goes wrong on this content

The faults that apply to any question on this paper, overwriting part (a), listing instead of explaining, one-sided part (c) answers and finishing without a judgement, are in How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1. Because the only examiner report covering an examinable series of this Depth Study says there were too few responses for meaningful comment, the list below is drawn from what Cambridge's own mark schemes place at Level 1 and Level 2, which is the board showing you what a weak answer looks like.

• Answering a "how far" question with a narrative of the ending. The Level 1 exemplars on this content are all like this. One reads, in substance, that the atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the results were terrible, and Japan lost the war. Every clause is true and the whole thing earns one mark, because none of it weighs anything against anything.
• Naming an operation instead of explaining it. Cambridge's printed Level 1 example on the D-Day comparison question is a single sentence giving the codename Operation Overlord. A codename is a label, not a cause.
• Writing about the Eastern Front as a topic rather than as a term of comparison. Stalingrad belongs to Key Question 1 as a turning point and to this Key Question only as evidence in a comparison. A candidate who explains why Stalingrad was a turning point has answered the wrong Key Question with accurate material.
• Confusing this Key Question with Key Question 3 on bombing. The Blitz and the Allied bombing of German cities are next door. The bombing of Japan and the atomic bomb are here. If you are writing about the experience of civilians under bombing in Europe, you have crossed the line.
• Answering a question about consolidation with a question about victory. Denazification, the occupation zones and the trials all happen after the fighting stops. Cambridge has set a 4 mark question and a 6 mark question on them, and neither is answerable with material about how the war was won.
• Adding the two atomic bomb casualty figures together. See section 9. They come from different papers and they are different counts of different things.
• Filling the gaps in the specified content with invented detail. Okinawa is named in the specified content and appears in no mark scheme read for these notes. Guadalcanal appears once, in a single clause. The Tokyo trials and the occupation of Japan appear in none. If you write about them, take your facts from your textbook and know that you are outside anything Cambridge has published on this content.
• Treating the 2024 papers as a pattern. One series is not a pattern. Every Key Question in this Depth Study was set in 2024, and the safest assumption is that any of the four can appear at either question number.

11. Quick revision

• Key Question: How did the Allies achieve victory over the Axis powers? Four focus points: the Allied advance through Italy, why Nazi Germany was on the point of collapse by April 1945, why the Allies defeated Japan, and how the Allies consolidated their victories in Germany and Japan.
• Where it sits: Paper 1 Section B. Depth study E is Questions 17 and 18, the last slot, in all seven 2024 papers. Paper 4 sets it at Questions 9 and 10.
• How much practice exists: almost none. Depth study E is new for 2024, replacing China, South Africa, and the Israelis and Palestinians. Three Paper 1 questions and three Paper 4 questions have ever been set on this Key Question, all in 2024, all on Paper 1 at Question 18 and on Paper 4 at Question 10. The only examiner report covering the series says there were too few responses for meaningful comment.
• Specified content: printed once for the whole Depth Study, undivided. Yours is the last four bullets: Sicily and victory in Italy; the collapse and surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, meaning D-Day and the advance to Germany and the Russian advance from the East; the reasons for the defeat of Japan, meaning Guadalcanal and Okinawa, island-hopping, the bombing of Japan and the atomic bomb; and consolidation of victory, meaning the occupations of Germany and Japan and the trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo.
• Italy: Operation Husky, Eisenhower commanding two Allied armies, Italian 6th Army and a German panzer division defending, following the Axis defeat in North Africa; aerial bombardment of industry and communications; Licata and Syracuse; converge on Etna; Axis evacuation begins by 27 July. Sicily invaded July 1943, Fascist regime collapses, Mussolini arrested 25 July 1943, later puppet leader of the Salo Republic. 1.5 million Axis and 350,000 Allied casualties. Against: costly, slower than expected, and Germany only surrendered in Italy after the fall of Berlin.
• D-Day: deception about the landing site; German defences spread along a vast coast; armoured reserves held for the Pas de Calais; naval and air bombardment; airborne troops behind the lines; slow German response from a complex command structure; US fighter planes decimated the German fighter force in 1944.
• The Western advance: foothold in Normandy, large numbers of US troops brought in, France liberated, German border reached by September 1944, the Ardennes counter-offensive fails, the Allies cross the Rhine, and the two advances meet on the Elbe in April.
• The Eastern advance: the Eastern Front was the main front, and without it the Western Allies would have needed double the troops. Stalingrad destroys the German Sixth Army and proves the Wehrmacht can be beaten; Kursk, July 1943; Soviet breakthrough in central Germany in April 1945; Berlin encircled, taken, and surrendered in May. Stalin moved fast to hold territory for post-war negotiations.
• The link: Overlord was planned at the end of 1943, after Stalingrad and Kursk. That is the sentence that turns two lists into an argument.
• Japan, the long causes: Japanese economy one-tenth the size of America's; US production of ships, aircraft and armaments; Japan overstretched on too many fronts; defeat at Midway and Guadalcanal; island-hopping bypassing strongholds, starting at Tarawa, north through the Marshalls and Marianas towards the Bonin Islands, south through the Solomons, New Guinea and the Philippines; submarine and air blockade of Japanese ports; a planned blockade and invasion of the home islands; the Soviet invasion of Manchukuo.
• Japan, the bomb: Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the warning of "prompt and utter destruction"; the Emperor wins the argument in the Supreme War Council against the hardliners. Casualty figures conflict between papers, so use one and name it. Hiroshima held the headquarters of the Imperial Army and munitions industry; almost all structures destroyed within 2 km; radiation sickness and fallout.
• Consolidation: Yalta, the 1945 Berlin Declaration, four zones ratified at Potsdam with Berlin divided into four, the Allied Control Council, denazification and demilitarisation. Denazification: party and symbols banned, Nazis removed from police and civil service, 400,000 interned, questionnaires in every zone, fines, forced retirement, labour camps, visits to concentration camps. Nuremberg 1945 to 1946, the International Military Tribunal, four main judges, 21 defendants in the first trial, almost 200 tried in all, Goering among them. Arguable both ways: it created international criminal law, and some thought the sentences too lenient while others said Allied atrocities should have been tried too.
• The boundary: yours is cause of victory. Key Question 1 owns the development of the war in Europe, including France, the Battle of Britain, Barbarossa and Stalingrad. Key Question 2 owns the Asia-Pacific, including Pearl Harbor, Singapore and Midway. Key Question 3 owns civilians, including the Blitz and the bombing of German cities. The atomic bomb is yours, not Key Question 3's.
• The judgement: the question is a weighing question. Separate background causes such as production from proximate causes such as the two advances meeting, and separate cause from timing on the bomb. Then say which one you have chosen and why, in one sentence.

Where these facts come from

History notes are only as good as their sourcing, and on this Key Question the sourcing is thin, so this section is deliberately explicit about what came from where and about what has been left out.

From the Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028: the Key Question and all four focus points; the full title of Depth study E including the date range; the whole Depth study E specified content list and the fact that it is printed once and undivided; the four Key Questions of Depth study E and their focus points, used in section 2 to establish the boundaries; the list of the five Depth Studies; and the Paper 1 and Paper 4 structure.

From the Paper 1 mark schemes for the 2024 series, which are the only Paper 1 papers that have examined this Key Question: the Sicily material on the fall of Mussolini and the two-front consequence, and every Level 2 point on the defeat of Italy including Monte Cassino and the surrender in Italy after the fall of Berlin, from November 2024. The D-Day deception explanation, the Pas de Calais reserves, the 1944 decimation of the German fighter force and the other identification points, the denazification list including the 400,000 internments, and the whole atomic bomb question including the one-tenth economy comparison, the "prompt and utter destruction" warning, the Supreme War Council, the Manchukuo invasion, the blockade and invasion plans, and the 200,000 figure, from June 2024. The island-hopping definition including Tarawa, the war crimes trials reasons, and the whole Germany-collapsed comparison including the Elbe meeting, the September 1944 German border, the Ardennes, the Rhine, the April breakthrough, the encirclement of Berlin, the May surrender and Stalin's territorial motive, from June 2024. The Nuremberg Trials list including the International Military Tribunal, the four judges, the 21 defendants, the almost 200 tried and Goering, and the D-Day against Eastern Front comparison including Stalingrad, the Sixth Army, Kursk in July 1943 and the end-of-1943 Overlord planning, from November 2024.

From the Paper 4 mark schemes for the 2024 series: the Operation Husky account including Eisenhower, the Italian 6th Army, the North Africa precondition, Licata, Syracuse, Etna and the 27 July evacuation, and the fall of Italy facets including the 1.5 million and 350,000 casualty figures and the Salo Republic, from June 2024. The island-hopping account including the two prongs and the Marshalls, Marianas, Bonin Islands, Solomons, New Guinea and Philippines, and the atomic bomb consequences including the 150,000 and 80,000 figures, the 20,000 military personnel, the 2 km radius, radiation sickness, the Imperial Army headquarters and the Nagasaki-decided-it claim, from June 2024. The Allied occupation account including Yalta, the Berlin Declaration, the four zones, Potsdam, the Allied Control Council and the 1945 to 1946 trials, and the Nuremberg importance facets including international criminal law, the leniency criticism and the Allied atrocities argument, from November 2024. The Japanese oil material and the Japanese navy material used for context in section 8 also come from the 2024 Paper 4 schemes.

From the Principal Examiner report for March 2024: that there were too few responses to Paper 1 Questions 17 and 18 for meaningful comment, and too few attempts at Depth study E on Paper 4 for meaningful comment. This is the only examiner report in the corpus covering a series in which this Depth Study was examinable.

Established by reading all seven Paper 1 and all seven Paper 4 papers and mark schemes of the 2024 series, because Cambridge publishes it nowhere: that Depth study E was set in every one of the seven Paper 1 papers, always at Questions 17 and 18; that of those fourteen questions, three were on this Key Question and all three were at Question 18; that Depth study E was set in every one of the seven Paper 4 papers at Questions 9 and 10, of which three were on this Key Question and all three at Question 10; and the Key Question breakdown of all fourteen Paper 1 questions in section 3, which totals fourteen and is the check that the count is right.

Unverified, and deliberately left out, because no Cambridge document read for these notes states it. This list is long, and on this Key Question that is the correct outcome rather than a failure. Nothing below should be treated as coming from Cambridge.

• The Battle of Okinawa. Named in the specified content and absent from every 2024 mark scheme read. No date, no participants, no casualties.
• The Battle of Guadalcanal. Named in the specified content and mentioned once, in a single clause listing it beside Midway as a defeat after which Japan knew it was losing. No date, no figures, no narrative.
• Iwo Jima, which appears in no Cambridge document read for these notes at all.
• The Tokyo war crimes trials. Named in the specified content. The only reference in any mark scheme read is a Level 1 sentence noting that there were also similar trials in Japan. No dates, no defendants, no verdicts.
• The Allied occupation of Japan. Named in the specified content and illustrated nowhere.
• The date of the D-Day landings, the number of troops landed, the beaches, and the names of the Allied commanders in Normandy.
• The dates of the atomic bombings and the date of the Japanese surrender.
• The date of German surrender, beyond the credited statement that Berlin was surrendered to the Russians in May.
• The dates of the Ardennes counter-offensive, of the crossing of the Rhine, and of the meeting on the Elbe, beyond the credited "April".
• All production totals for any Allied or Axis power: aircraft, tanks, ships, steel or oil. The only comparative figure Cambridge gives is the one-tenth economy ratio, and it is a ratio, not a total.
• All troop strengths on any front, and all casualty figures other than the Italian campaign figures and the two conflicting atomic bomb figures reproduced above.
• Bombing tonnages and the casualty figures for the conventional bombing of Japan.
• Lend-Lease, and the whole question of Allied aid to the Soviet Union, which appears in no mark scheme read.
• Codebreaking and intelligence. The syllabus mentions Bletchley Park once, and only as an example of an acceptable coursework essay title in the Component 3 guidance. It appears in no specified content bullet and in no mark scheme read. It is not part of this Key Question.

Casualty figures, production totals and operation dates are precisely where an invented number looks plausible on this content. If you want any of the above, take it from your own textbook, attribute it there, and do not assume it came from a Cambridge mark scheme.

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